Shattered Lives

Some people dread the holidays, because it means forced family fun or having to spend time with people they are related to, but feel very little in relation to.

Growing up I didn’t give much thought to the uniqueness of my family. As a teenager I sometimes found certain aspects of family life frustrating or annoying (my ex-step-mother in particular was and still is a nut), but I never felt real shame or embarrassment. I was lucky.

Melissa G. Moore is the daughter of “Happy Face” serial killer, Keith Hunter Jesperson. Between 1990-1995, Jesperson murdered 8 women. He’s currently in the Oregon State Prison serving 3 consecutive life terms. Moore has written a book about her life called  Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter.

Outwardly, Moore’s father was loving, but she never felt comfortable with him. She related to  Lemondrop about her father giving hints about his secrets:

When I was 12, my dad started giving me clues about the murders. I just figured he was reciting details from his detective novels and crime magazines. But he was actually telling me things he’d done! I remember him saying, “I know how to kill someone and get away with it.” When I was 13, he told me that he would cut buttons off jeans so that there wouldn’t be any fingerprints; at another visit he said he could drag a body under his truck to get rid of the teeth so they couldn’t trace any dental records to the body.

So much of a person’s identity can be tied to their relationship to their parents. I know that as I’ve aged, I’ve noticed the similarities between myself and my parents. I’ve tried to either follow their example or do something in complete opposition to it. I can only imagine the questions that Moore must have had about her father’s motivation or the brutal crimes that he carried out. It puts my father’s sins into perspective, that’s for sure.

You can read the rest of  Melissa G. Moore’s interview with Lemondrop here.

Image credit: Barnes and Noble