Happy Face: The Terrible True Story of Serial Killer Keith Jesperson

Happy Face series has just been released on Paramount+ and is a True Crime series that is based on a disturbing, disturbing, and different real case. The series follows Melisa, a woman who discovers that her father is a serial killer known as Happy Face (which in the series is interpreted by Dennis Quaid) and that he even fought so that the truth could be known, and to save an innocent man who had been accused of the crimes committed by his father. The history of the criminal series sounds too amazing to be true, but it isn’t. Happy Face is a fact and is inspired by the podcast of the same name and autobiography Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter, where the true Melissa Moore tells how, at age 15, he discovered that the father he grew up with was one of the most brutal criminals responsible for the deaths of several people. Keith Jesperson existed, and his daughter’s widow radically changed upon discovering that he was not an ordinary trucker and a dedicated father, but a monster.

The True Story of Melissa G. Moore and the Killer Happy Face: Who’s Keith Jesperson?

The character whom Dennis Quaid interprets in the crime series, Keith Jesperson, was a Canadian trucker and father of a family, who was eventually charged with the brutal murder of 8 women (although the death toll is believed to be much higher) between 1990 and 1995. When the victims began to appear, Jesperson was not a suspect, but everything changed in March 1995, when the body of his girlfriend, Julie Winningham, was found on a highway. Jasperson was arrested and interrogated, and it was there that he said he had killed her after a fight and confessed to having committed more murders. Back then, Melissa Moore, her daughter, was only 15 years old. In an interview with ABC News, Moore revealed that, even before her father was charged, she remembers seeing him torturing animals, and that from a young age, she began to notice some signs that she did not understand at the time, but later identified as signs that his father was a sociopath.

But the crimes began in 1990, when Jasperson raped, beat, and strangled a woman named Taunja Bennett, then disposed of her body along the way, and gradually the authorities linked him to other murders of women. Jasperson was charged with 8 deaths, but the actual number is believed to be much higher. And, as in the case of the Zodiac killer, the killer also wrote letters to the police and journalists, where he spoke about the murders and crimes he had committed. Each of his letters was signed with a Happy Face, and this was what led to the nickname Happy Face. After the truth was discovered, Melissa, who is one of the killer’s three children, cut off all contact and communication with her father, and this has been going on since then. Reports say they have had no contact for several decades.

Where’s Keith Jesperson Today?

According to Forbes, the killer is currently serving his life sentence. Jesperson is in the Oregon State Penitentiary, where his case and his possible connection to other deaths that have not been resolved continue to be investigated. In 2024, the Riverside County, California Attorney’s Office launched a call for help, asking for public support to identify the latest victim of Jesperson, who, according to the killer, was killed in 1992, but has never been identified.

Keith Hunter Jesperson

Born in 1955 in Canada, Jesperson grew up in a family environment marked by violence and emotional abandonment. Since childhood he shows disturbing signs: he kills animals, is isolated, and craves control. As an adult, he moved to the United States, where he worked as a trickster. A profession that offers him anonymity or perfect to start, between 1990 and 1995, a series of homicides then. Victims are vulnerable women, often on the margins of society. He lured them kindly, lured them into a trap, and then killed them, strangling them with his own hands. After his first murder, frustrated that no one recognized him as guilty, Jesperson decides to get noticed: he writes detailed letters to the press, signing them with a smiley face. This is how the nickname that will make him famous is born. In the end, there will be 8 murders officially attributed to him, although Jesperson said he had committed over 160, then retracted part of the confessions. Arrested in 1995, he is serving more life sentences in a maximum-security prison.

Melissa

For Melissa, the eldest daughter, the discovery of the truth is a tsunami. He was 15 when the news of his killer’s father exploded in the newspapers. Until then, he had lived with the restlessness of certain paternal behaviors, such as the day he saw him kill kittens laughing. But nothing had prepared her for the revelation that that man was a serial killer. Shame, fear of judgment, and the feeling of being “contaminated” by their father’s illness overwhelm her. For years he tries to hide, to cancel his surname. Then something changes. Melissa decides to speak. To break the silence and give voice to those who, like her, have been trapped in the shadow of a monster.

In 2008 he published the memoir Shattered Silence and began to participate in talk shows and documentaries. But it’s in 2018, with the podcast Happy Face, who manages to find his voice. In that series, Melissa weaves her personal story to that of her father, between memories, confessions, and phone calls from prison. The podcast becomes a success, thanks to its sincere and introspective tone. From then on, he continues to tell stories of women related to crime, as in the Lipstick & Lies podcast, which he leads together with Jami Rice. His path now also arrives on TV.

Happy Face: The Series

March 21, 2025, Paramount + will launch the TV series Happy Face -here is the review of Happy Face without spoilers – inspired by the podcast and its life. Dennis Quaid plays Keith Jesperson while Annaleigh Ashford gives a face to Melissa, a serene make-up artist, affectionate mother, and wife. But the past comes back to the surface when Jesperson calls the TV show where she works. One of the most powerful aspects of the series is its own Melissa’s work: the trick becomes a metaphor for hiding pain, to disguising yourself every day to survive. “Put on a Happy Face” – wears a Happy Face – recites the acronym, painfully recalling the smiley that signed the father’s crimes. The series addresses a theme often ignored in true crime: collateral victims. We talk about it in detail, but without spoilers, first with the true story of the serial killer Keith Hunter Jesperson and his daughter Melissa and then with that of the TV series Happy Face, in the new episode of Series Crimes.