Episode Transcript
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0:01
Previously on happy Face. There
0:04
was some dark force that
0:06
was trying to get rid of us,
0:08
and I felt that that force was
0:11
your dad. The first year
0:13
was Melissa had went through two fires.
0:16
Then shortly after that we
0:19
go camping and then I
0:21
heard a bear. He cleaned
0:24
fish in front of the cabin, and he
0:26
was sleeping in the car. The
0:29
moment I walked in that house, I felt like I wasn't
0:31
alone, that there were spirits
0:33
there, that I was being watched.
0:36
And it was my first night in
0:39
this new house. I
0:41
fall asleep a little bit, but then I'm awakened
0:43
by being touched. It's not a heavy touch,
0:45
it's a light touch. And
0:47
so I laid on the hallway floor
0:50
with a light on, curled up in a ball,
0:52
hoping that the night would just go away fast.
0:55
And in the morning my dad stepped
0:57
over me and he said, did
1:00
you fall asleep in the hallway? And
1:02
I said, I was being touched, Dad, And
1:05
he said, oh, don't pay any attention
1:07
to them. They bothered me all the
1:09
time at night. Don't
1:12
pay them any mind. And the
1:15
pines with
1:19
the sun, I don't know
1:22
shine oh
1:28
oh nfe through
1:41
a bond. Melissa and her father's
1:43
share involves the spirits they both
1:45
claim to encounter. Even to
1:47
this day. It's
1:49
not a fearful feeling. It's almost a
1:52
peaceful feeling that I have these I have company
1:54
with me. Okay, it's
1:56
like they're they're all watched me so and I would like they're waiting
1:58
for something to happen, like who am I going
2:00
to do next? Or or somebody. That's almost like
2:02
you're my company and I can't get rid of them.
2:05
So I may I have my own little party in my
2:07
own cell, and I'm all by myself, but I've got all these
2:09
eight spirits with me. Perhaps
2:15
these are her father's victims, or
2:18
perhaps something else. Could
2:21
they be the manifestation of the psychopathy
2:24
she fears her father has passed
2:26
on to her. To
2:28
quote Edgar Allan Poe, the
2:31
boundaries which divide life from
2:33
death are at best shadowy
2:35
and vague. Who shall
2:38
say where one ends and
2:40
where the other begins. I'm
2:43
Lauren Bright Pacheco, and this is
2:46
happy face. As
2:57
we drove through her hometown, military
3:00
called her first real encounter. My
3:04
first experience with a spirit was
3:06
when we lived in Charlie parkins Cela
3:08
Washington, a
3:11
neighbor man was watching me. I
3:14
was laying on the couch and
3:16
I remember looking up over the
3:18
couch and seeing
3:21
this white being and
3:24
it was protecting me. So
3:27
in a weird way, it was kind of normal
3:29
in your family. What did your dad talk
3:32
to you about. He
3:35
would comment about seeing
3:37
spirits as well, so
3:39
I felt that he understood what I was
3:41
seeing. It wasn't like an everyday
3:44
conversation. Is just once in a while he would
3:46
talk about a supernatural
3:49
event in his life. There was
3:51
a time where he was
3:54
in a massive car accident where his truck went
3:56
off a cliff, totaled the semi
3:58
truck and fell off the cliff, and
4:00
he said he saw spirits that
4:03
were around him. But my
4:05
first memory of
4:08
seeing anything was
4:10
that was when I was probably
4:12
about four years old, seeing
4:14
a white being and
4:16
it was hovering. I wonder
4:19
if I would have been harmed by the man
4:21
that was watching me, and maybe that being
4:24
was protecting me, But I don't know. I
4:26
don't know how that works. But ever since
4:29
I've seen them.
4:31
Your dad talked a lot
4:33
in his first book
4:35
with Jack Olson about the ghosts in Roberta's
4:38
house. Yeah, what did
4:40
he say that they
4:42
tormented him
4:47
after Keith left Melissa's mom.
4:50
He moved in with his then girlfriend Roberta,
4:53
but he claims they shared her home
4:56
with spirits. In
4:59
one of his conversations with al Carlyle,
5:02
Keith even seems to confirm the
5:04
theory that perhaps these are
5:07
his victims and describes what
5:09
he felt with Tanya Bennett while
5:12
I killed her. I felt like I
5:15
felt like she just absorbed into me. I
5:18
felt like she just came right up in something like I
5:20
could feel she was right there
5:23
like asking me why and all this. I mean, it
5:25
was like she's just right there
5:27
and she just like over just surrounded me. And
5:31
you know, I don't think it frightened
5:33
me, because I've been in a haunted house
5:36
for two years almost
5:38
I felt this stuff before. I felt I
5:41
heard someone hung themselves in the house. But
5:44
I do feel the spirit. I
5:46
feel her when I think of her. Well,
5:49
I'm at night or something like that. I'm laying there and I think they're
5:52
all sitting around watch ma'am in my cell. I think they're
5:54
all sitting there wait for me to go. When
6:01
I was at my dad's house at
6:03
night, I would feel like I was being watched and
6:06
it was multiple as multiple
6:08
female spirits that I couldn't
6:10
see them. I just felt their presence. Not
6:13
bad spirits, but they were uneasy
6:16
spirits. They were like
6:19
trying to get my attention. Nobody
6:23
else will talk to me about the spirits about my dad.
6:26
I'm embarrassed actually telling you about this, because
6:28
I'm thinking you guys are gonna think I'm crazy. But
6:31
I truly I
6:33
actually hear them too. They talk sometimes,
6:35
and they don't talk like audible. I'll
6:38
just have an understanding of
6:40
what they're trying to convey and they
6:42
don't need words for that. The
6:49
house is haunted, and that's my understand
6:51
I actually felt it was too, because the bird
6:53
said it was sort of a mother, and some
6:56
strange things happened that house while I was laying
6:58
there, and like you feel coldness, you feel
7:00
this and that. And so when after
7:02
I killed Tanya, I kind
7:04
of like looked up and I yelled into the
7:06
office and now, you evil son of a bitches, Now I'm
7:09
the most evil person in here. Now shut the funk
7:11
up, leave me alone what I said. And
7:13
I have no problem with the goes after that. From
7:21
Melissa's perspective, her father's
7:24
acceptance of spirits almost
7:26
made her feel like seeing them
7:29
was normal. This is
7:31
making me feel validated
7:33
because it's something that I'm
7:36
afraid that people would think coming crazy.
7:39
After he murdered Tanya
7:42
in that home, he told
7:44
Roberta that maybe the ghosts now
7:47
would leave him alone because they'd know what
7:49
he's capable of. It's
7:52
weird. I know some serial
7:54
killers collect souvenirs like driver's
7:57
licenses or panties, or
8:00
jewelry or hair. Yeah, maybe
8:03
my dad collected spirits. As
8:09
we gathered interviews for this story, a
8:11
pretty distinct theme began to appear, the
8:14
appearance of ghosts. It
8:16
was a twist that honestly split our team
8:18
for a variety of reasons, but it
8:21
was an undeniable one. People
8:23
we spoke to spoke of sensing
8:25
ghosts. Whether these encounters
8:27
were something sparked by psychosis,
8:30
the manifestation of trauma, or
8:32
spirituality remains a question,
8:35
but they were a shared experience
8:37
for Keith, Melissa and Julie's
8:40
son Don. Here's don with
8:43
your mom. Did you ever to refueler
8:46
with you? I
8:48
dried taxi now. I felt my mom in the back of
8:51
my cab. Even when it first happened
8:54
and I had a girlfriend at the time, she didn't
8:56
believe in it, but she felt empties on the edge of
8:58
the bed. My mom called me.
9:02
She called you. They
9:04
say, when the other side contacts you, they
9:07
have made peace. Shortly
9:11
after the first set of trials, I
9:13
went back to San Diego. No
9:16
one had my phone number. I was living
9:19
in a rentom room with a bunch of Mexicans
9:21
that were illegal workers doing tar roofing.
9:25
One night, I decided to answer the phone. Hello,
9:29
sweetie. No one
9:31
ever called me sweetie, and I know my mom's
9:34
voice. Mom.
9:38
Mom.
9:40
I dropped the phone, curled up in a
9:42
corner till daylight. She's
9:45
okay, Okay, my mother
9:48
is at peace. Her and my grandmother
9:50
have come to see me in my dreams.
9:52
They came to see me, and I cried
9:54
and they left. They weren't there to make
9:57
me cry. They were letting me know they're at
9:59
peace. Okay. For
10:08
all of Keith's talk about the
10:10
ghosts of his victims, somewhere
10:12
inside he feared them
10:14
for what they really could be a
10:17
manifestation of his own evil.
10:20
Even in jail, he couldn't escape
10:22
Tanya or the rest of his victims.
10:25
Did that seem real to use? Yeah?
10:28
Yeah, it did seem real. Did you feel her
10:30
presence? Yeah, I felt I feel it
10:32
myself. I feel it all the time though, I feel everyone
10:36
everyone I've killed the film.
10:39
I've heard that from others talk
10:41
about it's just a feeling
10:44
that they're just like I feel. If I turned around
10:46
fast enough, I can see him right behind me. Now
10:49
they're guiding me right now, I think is that they're
10:51
they're just there. I mean everywhere I go, there there, They're
10:54
waiting for me to die so that I can be in
10:56
their world. That's what I can
10:59
do. I think they're gonna get even. Yeah,
11:03
they're gonna rule my rous because by that time,
11:05
I think they're going to have control of where they're at and
11:08
I'm just a new guy in the block down. For
11:34
Melissa and perhaps for Dawn, the
11:37
ghosts serve as a way to process
11:40
their trauma or alleviate
11:42
the magnitude of their loss. But
11:45
for Keith, he's become their
11:47
prey. They both haunt and
11:50
hunt him, and to exercise
11:52
his demons, he attempted to purge
11:54
them on paper. Letters
11:59
have definitely been a same you know, with
12:01
my dad on the road
12:03
before he was arrested, he would send us letters.
12:06
He would send us postcards, and
12:09
that's his way of communicating with me my siblings
12:11
while he was on the road as a truck driver. So
12:13
I'd have all these postcards and letters
12:16
from all these different destinations
12:18
and I would look forward to them. Then
12:22
my father was caught by writing a letter,
12:24
a confessional letter to my uncle and grandfather.
12:26
Then when he was arrested,
12:29
he starts writing to the Agonian. And
12:31
then after that he continues
12:33
to write letters to me and tries to stay in communication
12:36
with me, And he writes letters
12:38
to media outlets, and he writes letters
12:40
to want to be writers and biographers.
12:44
He keeps using letters to be his
12:47
medium to the world. When
12:50
speaking about his letter to the Oregonian, Jesperson
12:53
almost makes it seem altruistic
12:56
to free to innocent people, but
12:58
he's unable to con seal his narcissism.
13:02
The good feeling I had when I wrote that smiley
13:04
faced letter and sent it to him that I shouldn't do it, but
13:07
I said, I'm going to do it because I'm trying to get those
13:09
two people out, or I'm trying
13:11
to stir up a hornlessness to get these people out without
13:13
turning myself in. That's when I said, why
13:15
did you care? I didn't
13:18
think it was right that two people could take the blame
13:21
be prosecuted for my murder. I figured
13:23
that I was responsible for that.
13:26
Nobody should be able to take that responsibility from
13:28
me. And then it's
13:31
it's kind of funny in a way that harr I'm a cold
13:33
blood and murder and had I'm worried about two people in president
13:35
doing my time. It makes sense when
13:39
you say I didn't want them to take that responsibility
13:42
away. What do you mean, Well,
13:44
it was my murder, my body count.
13:47
It was like my victim, she hangs
13:49
around me. She's not hanging around them, hanging around
13:51
me, and they're like, we're into wound. We're kind of like
13:55
And the fact that I did eight at
13:57
the end there towards the end, when I said I did it, I did
14:00
it. And it became also important
14:02
on credibility that they believed
14:04
that was mine. He
14:06
wrote a confession letter to his brother after
14:08
Julie's murder, which he later
14:11
claimed meant to serve a dual purpose
14:13
as both confession and suicide.
14:16
Note why take a chance, but
14:19
confessing to him, well,
14:22
I had to when I
14:24
left to go up in the mountains. I
14:27
wrote my letter to my brother, feeling I wasn't
14:29
gonna come back. That
14:31
was my suicide note.
14:33
I was gonna let my brother know. Yeah,
14:37
mar a letter. I
14:39
said, I killed Julian the truck, then tried
14:42
to explain that I had killed seven others
14:45
here I let the cat out of the bag even all.
14:47
I just instead of just been down for one
14:49
murder and suicide,
14:52
I was trying to explain to my brother
14:55
why I turned out this way. And I couldn't you
14:57
know in a short letter, how can I explain it you
15:00
have? I felt lost at that time.
15:02
I was not feeling myself. I was like, I
15:05
have to end it. I can't let the cops get
15:08
me and let
15:10
the other go so your family wouldn't know
15:12
that well. I when
15:14
I was arrested, when I turned myself in,
15:16
I thought I could just call my brother up and say, just ignore
15:19
the letter, destroy the letter in that
15:21
way, I'll just confess the one murder. And I
15:23
told him all the phone, there's nothing to the letter, it's all
15:25
bullshit, right, so just leave it at that.
15:27
And I figured I just confessed the one murder and I'd
15:30
be punished for the one murder period, and I'd be the end of that
15:32
and I'd get out in fifteen twenty
15:34
years after doing man Juan or man to or
15:37
who are you clearing your conscious when
15:39
when you put the other home of side, that would
15:41
be good a good aspect to it. Keith's
15:45
letter to his brother led to his confession
15:48
to the other murders. I come to
15:50
the realization that I was going
15:53
to be convicted anyway. Like
15:55
I wanted to kill myself though the tooth wouldn't
15:57
come out. But now that I was in custody,
16:00
I knew the truth would come out. One
16:02
of the reasons why I turned myself into I thought, well,
16:04
you know, I said I should face my my problem.
16:07
The first thing I did was I called a cop
16:09
up and I said I did it. I confessed
16:11
to it. I confessed to the one murder I never said. I confessed
16:13
to all of them only after my attorney
16:16
came over and he showed me the letter that my brother didn't
16:18
destroy, and then I was
16:20
faced with having to deal
16:22
with all of them.
16:25
That was the clincher. Keith
16:29
also waged a nearly year long
16:31
letter war with less, his now
16:33
sober and dying father that
16:35
ranged from back and forth blame
16:38
to declarations of love from
16:44
I, the Creation of a serial Killer
16:46
by Jack Olsen, the
16:48
letter from Less the
16:51
last letter you sent me was full
16:53
of bitterness and resentment. It
16:56
left me with a feeling that it
16:58
was not my son that was writing
17:00
that letter. I have never
17:03
reprimanded you for your terrible
17:05
crimes. I have forgiven
17:07
you and have asked the Lord to
17:09
forgive you. Also, you
17:11
have to admit you put your
17:13
family through one hell of a mess.
17:19
Letter from Keith, Dad.
17:23
I do two hours in the morning of classes, so
17:25
if I get out of prison, I won't do this again.
17:29
The class is called anger Management, deals
17:31
with the way I was raised and the punishment
17:33
dished out to me as a child. We
17:36
talked openly about the belt and the wooden
17:38
spoon, and the fist and the back
17:40
hand and the verbal abuse. Under
17:44
the program, we have the prison pointing
17:46
into your corner on why I'm here
17:48
and why I turned out to be a serial killer.
17:52
But that's all right, Dad, I still
17:54
love you anyway.
18:09
Melissa wrote her father after his arrest,
18:12
and he wrote her back. He
18:14
was hurtful and planted seeds in her
18:17
mind that would fester and make her
18:19
wonder for decades if she was
18:21
like him, that his evil could
18:23
also be inside of her somewhere.
18:27
Her husband, Sam would often
18:29
read Keith's letters to act as
18:31
a filter to protect Melissa
18:34
from their worst content. I
18:36
think periodically she would get a letter
18:39
from him, and instead of reading
18:41
it, she would ask me to read it because
18:43
she didn't want to be impacted by his words because
18:46
he was so cruel. I would
18:48
read them, and then I would kind of decipher
18:50
what I thought would be helpful, and then
18:52
like filter out the things that weren't needed. So
18:55
it's not like I read things verbatim back to her. I literally
18:57
just kind of filter through and then go, this is
18:59
what he said, or this is what
19:01
I think might matter. I
19:04
don't think she really wanted to hear from him,
19:06
but she also maybe want to still stay
19:08
connected to him because it was her dad. And
19:11
what was your take on the personality behind
19:13
those letters? You said cruel? Yeah,
19:15
he was strange, weird,
19:18
like inappropriate. He made some of the most
19:20
inappropriate comments to
19:22
your daughter. He just was always out
19:25
of touch with what was appropriate.
19:27
For sure. He
19:29
was always kind of condescending to and
19:33
always trying to tell Melissa that she was.
19:36
I don't think he thinks she's that smart, or
19:39
he feels like it's his job to make her feel
19:41
not smart. He was
19:43
never very kind, never loving
19:45
by any means. Over
19:53
the years, Melissa received many
19:56
letters from Keith, and many
19:58
of them remained unread. They
20:01
just collect. As you can see, they're old. And
20:04
now I'm wondering if
20:07
these are more honest than actually meeting
20:09
him in person, that if these are
20:11
the true his true confessions,
20:13
like a diary versus what
20:16
he would say to my face. I
20:18
don't know why I collect them. Sometimes
20:20
I throw them away when they come in the mail,
20:22
and sometimes I just saved them,
20:24
maybe because I'm not ready to read them
20:27
when I received them, but maybe I think
20:29
that I'll be ready to read them
20:31
another time when this one
20:36
so nine. Dear Melissa, I'll
20:39
let you in on a secret you should be well aware
20:41
of by now, but haven't come to
20:43
understand just yet. It
20:45
matters little what the real truth is
20:48
when telling stories in the press. You see
20:51
most people reading those press reports don't
20:53
know the true facts, and
20:55
they're relying on the reporter to get
20:57
them the story. Therefore
21:00
they read it and believe they are getting
21:02
the truth. Or as close
21:04
to it as they can get. It
21:06
is of entertainment value. People read
21:08
it to pass the time. People
21:11
right to throw across to the public, recording
21:13
it a message. What is the message?
21:17
It's to sell, It's to get
21:20
enough to believe them and not the
21:22
other guy. Does
21:24
it matter that Angelus a Breeze
21:28
was alive when I dragged her
21:30
body down the freeway.
21:34
Does it matter that I plan to kill Laura and Pentland
21:38
hours before I drove over to Wilsonville just
21:40
to see her. Doesn't
21:42
matter that when I drove into
21:44
the rest area at Turnlock that I was going
21:47
to kill someone the first
21:49
one I saw. Doesn't
21:51
matter that every victim to come to
21:53
me after Claudio was going to die
21:57
because I fulfill the plan once
21:59
I decided to kill them.
22:02
My story is the story I wanted
22:04
to tell, the truth, according
22:07
to Keith, the story
22:09
to sell to the public. But apparently
22:12
it won't sell because people such
22:14
as sick, perverted, bloodthirsty monsters
22:17
like publishers and true crime writers and victims
22:20
and their people want to read about
22:22
it. The gore the thought
22:24
process to why I killed. They
22:26
want to tell a morbid tell to
22:28
put me in a certain light of darkness in
22:31
order to sell their books. But Dad,
22:33
you're not telling the truth. I'll tell
22:35
you a story. Musnew it all. Neither
22:38
are you. I know you
22:40
think you can say anything you want and it will be
22:42
published because you are the victim
22:44
here. You are a killer,
22:46
yourself called
22:50
so because you killed your baby, but
22:52
you had a reason right well,
22:55
still murder, killing a baby that
22:57
could have lived and not had
22:59
one thing to do with why she was
23:01
born. Are you caring
23:03
what I did and holding it high to tell the
23:05
world, Hey, look at me. I'm the daughter of the happy
23:08
face killer. I'm a victim here.
23:11
But it seems now that you want
23:13
the world to know who you are, not
23:16
Melissa More but the daughter of the happy
23:18
face killer. I've
23:23
created a monster in you because
23:26
you're telling him you are a victim. He
23:29
wrote what you say and
23:31
believe it even though it isn't true. You
23:34
know this. I
23:36
don't know. He's
23:38
insane and that's not This
23:41
is why I don't read these fucking letters.
23:43
This is why I don't freak them. What
23:46
do you want to say? This is why I don't read them.
23:51
Just what he says, it doesn't make it true.
23:53
Just because he writes, it doesn't make it true.
23:55
It's not true. Do you
23:58
know what? Hell him? The
24:09
letters had undoubtedly opened
24:12
old wounds that had never fully
24:14
healed. It
24:20
also seems that, having
24:22
read the letters that he sends
24:25
you, that this
24:27
is an incarcerated man who
24:29
is still inflicting violence with
24:32
words. Absolutely, it's
24:35
just emotional abuse. It's
24:38
verbal abuse through the writin form.
24:40
So words are his weapon of choice
24:42
now I would
24:45
say words are his weapon instead
24:48
of his hands now, he writes.
24:51
Judging from Melissa's reaction, Keith
24:54
appears to have known exactly what
24:56
he was doing. What
24:58
has always been your eightiest fear with
25:01
your father? But I'm just like him,
25:03
he said, I'm just like him.
25:06
He has told me for years
25:09
growing up, and then after his
25:11
arrest, you're just like me, and
25:16
I believed it. And
25:18
what would that have meant in terms
25:20
of who you are? It
25:23
means I'm a horrible person. It means I'm
25:25
a murderer, I'm a monster, I am
25:29
not human, I am
25:32
I am nothing. And
25:34
what's your greatest fear about
25:37
your mind? Genetically
25:40
that I am wired to
25:42
be like my dad, that I'm
25:44
genetically created a clone
25:46
of my father. I look
25:49
like my father. I smile like my father.
25:52
My eyes are my father, my nose
25:54
is my father. I look in the mirror and
25:56
I see my dad. I
25:58
wanted to know, did
26:01
my insides match my dad too?
26:04
Everything that I am is
26:06
it my dad. I
26:08
thought I was choosing
26:11
to live against my nature and
26:14
that was delusional, and that people
26:16
could see through that, that my
26:18
nature was a psychopath
26:21
and my nature was my father, and
26:24
that I was going against the grain
26:26
of my DNA to be a
26:29
good person. And then you look in
26:31
your children's faces, and what do you say,
26:34
my dad? I
26:36
see my dad's hair, and my son.
26:38
I see my daughter's work, ethic, you
26:41
know, And that's so much to my dad. There's
26:44
so much, you know, that's Ruda and my Dad,
26:46
and I see him everywhere.
26:56
Vill Melissa hadn't heard her father's
26:58
voice and person in nearly
27:01
two decades, she still felt
27:03
as though he were right there with her,
27:06
speaking through his letters. And
27:09
he knew everything.
27:14
He knows all my fears, and
27:17
he put all my insecurities
27:20
on two pages of paper. And
27:24
I wasn't prepared to read his words,
27:26
and it felt a little prophetic in
27:30
some ways when he said you need
27:32
a doctor and tomorrow, I'm gonna
27:34
go see a doctor. Not
27:36
only a doctor could really tell me what's can
27:40
tell me the truth. In
27:47
the next Happy Face, Melissa's
27:50
pet scan brings her face to face
27:52
with a neuroscientist who understands
27:54
psychopathy on a very personal
27:56
level. There's a whole other part
27:59
of psychio with the which are
28:01
these positive or pro social,
28:04
pro social traits. It makes
28:06
sound like you're really nice to be around everything. It just means
28:08
that you can navigate through society
28:11
and everybody thinks you're okay. So
28:13
it makes you more dangerous than one says. So
28:15
you have these pro social traits. People
28:17
with just negative traits, everybody stays away from
28:19
me. Happy
28:25
Faces of production of How Stuff Works. Executive
28:28
producers or Melissa Moore, Lauren Bright,
28:30
Pacheco, mangesh At ticket Ur, and
28:32
Will Pearson. Supervising producer
28:35
is Noel Brown. Music by
28:37
Claire Campbell, Page Campbell and Hope for
28:39
a Golden Summer. Story editor
28:41
is Matt Riddle. Audio editing
28:43
by Chandler Mays and Noel Brown. Assistant
28:46
editor is Taylor Shacogne. Special
28:48
thanks to Phil Stanford, the publishers of
28:50
the Oregonian Newspaper in the Carlisle
28:53
family, burnt
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