Daughters Of Serial Killers Reflect On Childhoods, Animal Torture, And What It’s Like To Realize Your Dad Is A Murderer

Crime Watch Daily inherently showcases dark, violent, and scary subject matter that also usually features equally dark, violent, and scary people.

Such was the case on a recent episode that explored the brutally sadistic serial murders committed by convicted killer Keith “Happy Face” Jesperson, and a serial killing couple, Suzan and Michael Carson. But beyond just delving into the horrors behind these serial killers’ murders, Crime Watch Daily brought together two daughters of the killers to see what kind of horrors they experienced when they realized their parents were cold blooded killers.

The Daily Mail reports that the daughter of serial killer Keith “Happy Face” Jesperson, Melissa Moore, today a mother with two children of her own, found out her dad was a serial killer when she was just 15-years-old. And Jenn Carson was even younger, discovering her daddy and “frightening” looking step-mom were serial killers when she was only eight.

Crime Watch Daily‘s bringing the two daughters of serial killers together resulted in a discussion about their strange, and sometimes horrifying, childhood memories, but many of which they accepted as normal before learning their fathers were serial murderers.

In fact, according to Moore, she thought her childhood and role as daughter was pretty much normal.

“(My father) was a provider, a protector. He was what I thought every dad should be,” said Moore, reflecting on being the daughter of her serial killer father, Jesperson.

At the same time, as innocence faded for the serial killers’ daughters, it became clear that all was not well, and their lives and childhoods were anything but normal.

“It’s taken us both to some very dark places,” said Moore, a correspondent for Crime Watch Daily, and involuntary member of the quite exclusive daughter-of-a-serial-killer club.

And speaking of exclusivity, said Jenn Carson, “I remember doing research and found out I was more likely to have a parent who died by being struck by lightning than have a parent who was a serial killer.”

As for those dark places that Moore’s serial killer father escorted her to, was a land of vile animal cruelty, where Jesperson would “torture animals that would come on the property.”

Moore related that when she was 5-years-old she saw her dad hanging kittens on a clothes line and, disregarding her screams, torturing them until they were dead.

Along those same lines, Moore says her serial killer dad also once held down a cat and broke its neck in front of she and her siblings, the animal killer doing the ugly deed with a look of “enjoyment” on his face.

Engaging in torturing and killing animals is a notorious red flag pointing toward one being a current or future serial killer, Moore’s dad, Keith “Happy Face” Jesperson, fitting the bill, and being taken into custody in 1995 for murdering eight women. The women the serial killer targeted were generally prostitutes and homeless women, Jesperson raping his victims before choking them to death with his bare hands.

Jesperson, who is currently a 60-year-old prison inmate, was given his “Happy Face” moniker because he’d send authorities and newspapers letters with descriptions of how he carried out his cruel and hideous murders, always including a smiley doodle with the otherwise anonymous letters.

Jenn Carson recalls her childhood home as being really screwed up, but that’s with the benefit of hindsight as it seemed normal to her at the time.

“(My father) was a stay-at-home pot dealer… that’s what he did. At preschool once I got in trouble. We were playing house and I was rolling joints. That was my concept of normal,” said Carson.

Carson’s real mom was replaced by a step-mom named Suzan after her parents divorced when she was five. And while the life of her serial-killer-to-be father was being driven wildly off the rails by drugs, she was also terrified by Suzan

“People talk about Charlie Manson eyes and how some people look frightening, and to me, she looked frightening,” said daughter and step-daughter Jenn of her serial killer step-mom.

Carson’s father and stepmom were arrested in 1983 for the murders of three people.

Described as being a “counter culture” couple in 1970s Northern California, the press labeled the serial killing Carsons, “The San Francisco Witch Killers.”

For Carson, the realization that her father was a murdering serial killer was nothing less than horrifying, leading to a “lifelong struggle” with nightmares.

“I found newspaper articles in the house. I remember the word bludgeoned because I didn’t know what it meant, but I read the other words and I was able to figure out that they stabbed her in the neck 12 times and they hit her over the head (with a frying pan) and that’s when my lifelong struggle with nightmares began.”

Along with the nightmares, Carson said that finding out she was the daughter of a serial killer also left her feeling “so alone.”

Unwarranted guilt is also an unfortunate result of being the daughter of a serial killer, though Moore says that she knows on the surface the murders aren’t her fault.

“I feel in a sense I am related to my father, but I didn’t cause the pain,” Moore has said in the past. “But knowing that my father caused some pain causes me pain”

Being the daughter of a serial killer even led Carson to believe that she was “the daughter of the devil.”

“I instantly thought this world is a very scary place,” said Carson. “I remember thinking ‘I am the daughter of the devil. I must just be evil’… I was going to hurt people too.”

But these two daughters of serial killers seem to be remarkably well-adjusted despite their bizarre and frightening upbringings.

[Images via Wikipedia, Pinterest, and Crime Watch Daily]