Melissa G. Moore
Appearances
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
Well, I wanted to get the head scan because I heard from Dr. Fallon. He's a world-renowned expert and researcher on psychopaths and is one himself. And he has this incredible story of how he discovered he's a psychopath by doing
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
looking at the brain scans of criminals violent criminals and for one of his studies he had somebody put his brain scan in mixed in with a whole bunch of violent criminals and he put it up on the board and he's like oh here's the psychopath and it's his brain scan but um i found him really fascinating because there's this negative association with psychopaths and
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
If you're a psychopath, you're, you know, it's kind of linked to being a killer, but it's actually not the case. He talks about how psychopaths are necessary in our civilization. But he leads me down, if you recall, listening to it, he leads me down a long path of like drawing out after he looks at my head scan to see if I'm a psychopath. Right. And I'm just on edge.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
And then he's like, and you're not a psychopath. I'm like, OK, great. Thank you. Thanks for that. Now I can breathe. But for my kids, they were really interested in that as well. They never let me on to think that it was important to them to have that. But they were being bullied in school. And people were saying your grandfather is a serial killer. Because at that point, I was...
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
working in the media and with public with my story and so that is the dark side of coming forward is you share your story to be a light to others but then you're also a target yeah um and then inadvertently my children um and so they would tell me like they're so glad that they got that scientific proof because it gave them ammo against the bully saying we're not like him right yeah yeah
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
It was blindsiding, obviously, to hear that he was arrested for the murder of Julie Winningham. At that time, he wasn't known as a happy face serial killer. He was dad, and he was a suspect that was charged with the crime of Julie Winningham's murder. So I went to the prison to see if I could look him in the eyes and see the monster that everybody's saying he is.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
No, the shame's still there. I think that's going to be my lifelong journey. I'm always looking at my intentions to make sure that they're pure and probably in a way that other people don't look at their intentions, but I'm constantly evaluating and scrutinizing why I do the things that I do. And that is my North Star always, every day.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
Yes, I've had my own encounters. And I believe that there is an afterlife because of what I've experienced. So in the podcast, I go into detail about the first time I enter into a home unbeknownst to me. that my father had murdered a victim and it felt the energy that I walked into it. I think we all can feel energy.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
If you walk into a room and people have just been fighting, you feel the thickness when you walk in. And that's what it felt like walking into my father's house. This was his home after my parents had divorced and the house that he murdered his first victim, Tanya Bennett. And I'm at this point, just a young teenager. I felt that energy. But then at night, that's when it really started to amplify.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
And I felt like someone was watching me and I felt uneasy. And then my sister talked about her hair is being pulled. And then I go into the living room and I lay down and on the couch and I had a view of the kitchen and I saw the cupboard doors open and shutting on their own. And Then I fell asleep and then I was awoken by the TV turning on when I told my dad, this house is haunted.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
And he said, you know, don't pay them any mind. They bother me too at night. And I look back and I wonder if it was maybe one of his victims.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
So I show up to the jail with my aunt and I remember his hair being shaved. He had really lush, thick hair and he was very vain about it and proud about it. And so it was shocking to see him completely shaven and shackled. When I saw him, I wanted to see if I could see the color. And the first thing he said to me is, Missy, my best advice is to change your last name.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
you know tanya from the house i mean obviously i'll never know um i will say that house has a and i'm not referencing that tanya's the dark energy but there's a dark dark energy in that house and you couldn't pay me to stay the night in that house again wow wow so melissa are you a true crime producer now how was this kind of blossomed for you Yeah.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
So once people started reaching out to me, I'm just like you. Some of them want to come forward with their stories to connect with other people and some people want to do it on the down low. So not everything is in front of the camera, but then there's some people that want to change the narrative. Like, for example, this last summer, I was the executive producer on
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
the life and murder of Nicole Brown, because the OJ Simpson case is such a well-known case. But I felt like the one thing that wasn't really told was Nicole's story through the archive and through her sisters to really tell how this beautiful person is gone and that their children, OJ and Nicole's kids, are left without their mother. But...
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
It was about setting the story straight from their point of view. And I feel honored that I get to be in this role, probably like you do, where you get to give a platform for people to tell their story in their own voice. And I'm sure that's what Jennifer feels like as well. It's such a privilege. It really is. Yeah. I mean, it was an incredible privilege.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
Yeah. Mm-hmm. And then I realized, you know, my family historian is gone. And I have so many questions still. She went away too soon. And I'm going to ask my dad more about his history and more about how he met my mom. And so that really was the genesis for me talking to my dad again was just my own curiosity about their love story. So... he calls me at like, I think it's like 5am, 6am.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
Everybody's sleeping in my house. And it's Father's Day. And I picked up. And he was shocked. He's like, wow, you know, like, I'm surprised you answered the phone, Missy. So I started asking him questions. Thankfully, the prison has a timer on it. And Call is only 15 minutes. And in the pre-recorded alert says you have one minute left. And he's like, can I call you back?
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
And I was like, no, I'm busy. And he's like, well, you're you're still my daughter.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
Well, there's a dissociation now. You know, I feel very much like the father that I know has passed back in 95. Like he's gone. And this is a shell, you know, of what that man is. And that's how it's reconciled in my brain is that the real father is gone and this is the version that's left.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
And that's when I knew he was admitting guilt and that this was all this was true. So I, as a teenager, I just started sobbing and crying because at that point, my dad was my savior. He, he was our financial hero. My mom was destitute financially. And when he would roll into town, he would bring groceries like off of his truck. He would bring boxes of, of like pop tarts, like
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
That's like a memory. It's weird what sticks out in your head. Like to this day, I go to the grocery store and I see the Pop-Tarts and I'm like, I don't want those. Like it's his association, right? You know? Yeah. Yeah. I only have good memories. Well, not maybe all good memories, but majority of them really positive memories growing up.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
Well, the more I talk about my story, the more I connect with other families that have a killer or a perpetrator in their family. And it's surprising to me when I came forward with my story originally. That was quite shocking because I felt alone. And then all of a sudden my inbox just started getting filled up.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
And whenever I would see the subject line in my inbox say, I'm just like you, I knew it was authentic. I would open up the email and it would be a story. I'm So and so my family member is this person. Here's a link to the news that, you know, to validate like this is who I'm related to. And thank you for telling me your story. I actually get them daily.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
Just like today, I got a message from a woman whose husband tried to burn her alive. And so it's also survivors of crime. And family members related to the victims.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
Well, I think that's where Jen really took the liberty of the true story. Jen, I'll let you lead off with that.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
That's my vulnerability, though. So my vulnerability is wanting to hold on to the good and the idea of this wonderful dad, because that is the weak point for me and the stronghold my father has to me, which you will see in the series. It's an emotional, toxic entanglement. He preys upon my desire to have that loving father again. And when he lures me in and pulls me in, that's when he strikes.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
I would receive letters from my father in prison, phone calls from strangers. He constantly was trying to stay in communication with me. And people always ask me, why do you keep these letters from your dad? And I couldn't bear to open them because I know he's going to go after my heart. And so I just didn't want to read them.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
I have a theory that he thinks... That I am a part of him, because what we know about narcissists is that they only self serve. So if I'm an appendage of him, then that might evoke why he does the actions he does. That's just my theory.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
There's a lot of levity in that. Some of my favorite scenes and what I love about Annalie is that there's the episode where my dad in prison has a girlfriend, which happened in real life, by the way. My dad had a lot of women writing to him and he would invoke these women to reach out to me and try to have a relationship with me. What do you think that was about? Yeah. Oh, I don't know.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
It's hard to say what that's about. But I found it to be really humorous because it's so absurd. It's so absurd. It's funny. And so I like that Annalie, she got that. And so there's moments of levity. Yeah, it's how we cope. Yes.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
I think she's incredible. I've really appreciated how she respected me as a person. And I also really appreciated her sensitivity to the people that she meets in the series, because I feel like in my own life, I feel like I care and I feel like she portrayed how I care.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
Oh, there's scenes that from his profile or just the way he speaks, he really embodied the matter of factness that my father has. Like in one of the letters he wrote to me, I was a great dad, but the only thing that was wrong is my eight errors in judgment, meaning the murders of the eight women. But that's how he would speak about the victims. Eight heirs in judgment.
48 Hours
Growing Up with the Happy Face Killer | Post Mortem Special
And I felt that Dennis Quaid, he did a great job of portraying my father in that way.