Ghosts and Letters

Previously on Happy Face.

There was some dark force that was trying to get rid of us, and I felt that that force was your dad. The first year was Melissa had went through two fires. Then shortly after that we go camping and then I heard a bear. He cleaned fish in front of the cabin.

And he was sleeping in the car.

The moment I walked in that house, I felt like I wasn't alone, that there were spirits there, that I was being watched. And it was my first night in this new house. I fall asleep a little bit, but then I'm awakened by being touched. It's not a heavy touch, it's.

A light touch.

And so I laid on the hallway floor with a light on, curled up in a ball, hoping that the night would just go away fast. And in the morning, my dad stepped over me and he said, why did you fall asleep in the hallway And I said I was being touched, Dad, And he said, oh, don't pay any attention to them. They bothered me all the time that night. Don't pay them any mind.

In the fight, in the fight with the sun, I don't know shine oh sh oh.

Through a bond. Melissa and her father's share involves the spirits they both claim to encounter. Even to this day.

It's not a fearful feeling.

It's almost a peaceful feeling that I have these I have company with me. Okay, It's like they're all watch me, so I'm now was like they're waiting for something to happen, like who am I going to do next or something. But it's almost like my company, and I can't get rid of them. So I I have my own little party in my own cell, and I'm all by myself, but I've got all these apes spirs with me.

Perhaps these are her father's victims, or perhaps something else. Could they be the manifestation of the psychopathy she fears her father has passed on to her. To quote Edgar Allan Poe, the boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy, and they who shall say where one ends and where the other begins. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco, and this is happy face. As we drove through her hometown, military called her first real encounter.

My first experience with a spirit was when we lived in Treli Park and Sela, Washington. A neighbor man was watching me. I was laying on the couch and I remember looking up over the couch and seeing this white being and it was protecting me.

So in a weird way, it was kind of normal in your family. What did your dad talk to you about.

He would comment about seeing spirits as well, so I felt that he understood what I was seeing. It wasn't like an everyday conversation. Is just once in a while he would talk about a supernatural event in his life. There was a time where he was in a massive car accident where his truck went off a cliff. Totaled the semi truck and fell off the cliff, and he

Your dad talked a lot in his first book with Jack Oltson about the ghosts in Roberta's house. Oh really, Yeah? What did he say that they tormented him? After Keith left Melissa's mom. He moved in with his then girlfriend Roberta, but he claims they shared her home with spirits. In one of his conversations with al Carlyle, Keith even seems to confirm the theory that perhaps these are his victims and describes what he felt with Tanya Bennett Well.

I killed her. I felt like I felt like she just absorbed into me.

I felt like he just came right up in somebody, Like I could feel she was right there, like asking.

Me why and all this. I mean, it was like she's just right there and she just like over surrounded me.

And you know, I don't think it frightened me because I've been in a haunted house for two years almost I felt this stuff before. I felt that I heard someone hung themselves in the house. But I do feel the spirit. I feel her when I think of her. Well, I'm at night or something like that. I'm laying there and I think they're all sitting around watching ma'm and my cell.

I think they're all sitting there waiting for me to go.

When I was at my dad's house at night, I would feel like I was being watched and it was multiple. There's multiple female spirits that I couldn't see them. I just felt their presence. Not bad spirits, but they were uneasy spirits.

They were.

Like trying to get my attention. Nobody else would talk to me about the spirits about my dad. I'm embarrassed actually telling you about this because I'm thinking you guys are going to think I'm crazy. But I truly I actually hear them too. They talk sometimes and they don't talk like audible. I'll just have an understanding of what they're trying to convey and they don't need words for that.

The house is haunted, and that's from my understanding. I actually felt it was too, because Roberta said it was. It's sort of a mother and some strange things happen in that house while I was laying there, and I feel cold.

You'd see all this and that.

And so when after I killed Tanya, I kind of like looked up and I yelled at the office and now, you evil son of a bitch is now I'm the most evil person in here. And not shut the fuck up, leave me Alone's what I said.

And I have no problem with to goes after that.

From Melissa's perspective, her father's acceptance of spirits almost made her feel like seeing them was normal.

This is making me feel validated because it's something that I'm afraid that people would think coming crazy.

After he murdered Tanya in that home, he told Roberta that maybe the ghosts now would leave him alone because they'd know what he's capable of.

It's weird. I know some serial killers collect souvenirs like driver's licenses.

Or panties, or jewelry or hair.

Yeah, maybe my dad collected spirits.

As we gathered interviews for this story, a pretty distinct theme began to appear, the appearance of ghosts. It was a twist that honestly split our team for a variety of reasons, but it was an undeniable one. People we spoke to spoke of sensing ghosts. Whether these encounters were something sparked by psychosis, the manifestation of trauma, or spirituality remains a question, but they were a shared experience for Keith, Melissa and Julie's son Don. Here's Don with your mom.

Did you ever do refueler with you? Oh?

Yeah, I drive taxi now. I felt my mom in the back of my cab. Even when it first happened, and I had a girlfriend at the time. She didn't believe in it, but she felt empties on the edge of the bed. My mom called me.

She called you.

They say, when the other side contacts you, they have made peace. Shortly after the first set of trials, I went back to San Diego. No one had my phone number. I was living in a rental room with a bunch of Mexicans that were legal workers doing tar roofing. One night, I decided to answer the phone, Hello, sweetie. No one ever called me sweetie, and I know my mom's voice.

Mom.

Mom.

I dropped the phone, curled up in a corner till daylight. She's okay, Okay, my mother is at peace. Her and my grandmother have come to see me in my dreams. They came to see me, and I cried and they left. They weren't there to make me cry. They were letting me know they're at peace. Okay.

For all of Keith's talk about the ghosts of his victims, somewhere inside he feared them for what they really could be a manifestation of his own evil. Even in jail, he couldn't escape Tanya or the rest of his victims.

Did that seem real to you, Yeah, yeah, it does seem real.

Did you feel her presences?

Yeah, I felt I feel it myself. I feel it all the time though. I feel everyone, everyone i've killed, I feel.

I've heard that from others talk about it. It's just a feeling there.

It's like I feel if I turn around fast enough, I can see him right behind me. Now they're guiding me right now, I think is that they're They're just there. I mean, everywhere I go, they're there.

They're waiting for me to die so that I can be in their world. That's what I think they're gonna get even.

Yeah, they're going to rule my rules because by that time, Yeah, I think they're going to have control of where they're at and I'm just a new guy in the blockdown.

For Melissa and perhaps for Dawn, the ghosts serve as a way to process their trauma or alleviate the magnitude of their loss. But for Keith, he's become their prey. They both haunt and hunt him, and to exercise his demons, he attempted to purge them on paper.

Letters have definitely been a theme, you know, with my dad on the road before he was arrested, he would send us letters. He would send us postcards, and that's his way of communicating with me and my siblings while he was on the road as a truck driver. So I'd have all these postcards and letters from all these different destinations and I would look forward to them. Then my father was caught by writing a letter, a confessional

When speaking about his letter to the Oregonian, Jessperson almost makes it seem altruistic to free two innocent people, but he's unable to con heal his narcissism.

The gut feeling I had when I wrote that smiley faced letter and send it to him that I shouldn't do it, but I said, I'm gonna do it because I'm trying to get those two people out, or I'm trying to stir up a horner sense to get these people out out turning myself in.

That's when I why did you care?

I didn't think it was right that two people could take the blame be prosecuted for my murder. I figured that I was responsible for that. Nobody should be able to take that responsibility from me. And then I it's it's kind of funny in a way that here mccldblood and murdered they had I'm worried about two people in president during my time.

It it makes sense.

Uh hm when you say I didn't want them to take that responsibility away, what do.

You mean, Well, it was my murder, Yeah, my body count. It was like my victim, she hangs around me. She's not hanging around them. She's hanging around me, and they're like, we're inter wound.

We were kind of like.

And the fact that I did eight at the end there towards the end, when I said I did it, I did it, And it became also important on credibility that they believed.

That was mine.

He wrote a confession letter to his brother after Julie's murder, which he later claimed meant to serve a dual purpose as both confession and suicide note.

Why take a chance by confessing to him the notes, the letters. Well, I had to.

When I left to go up in the mountains, I wrote my letter to my brother, feeling I wasn't going to come back.

That was my suicide note. I was going to let my brother know. March Yeah, March twenty fourth, ninety five, I sent a letter.

I said I'd killed Julie in the truck, then tried to explain that I had killed seven others. Here I let the cat out of the bag, even though I just instead of just being down for one murder and a suicide, I was trying to explain to my brother why I turned out this way. And I couldn't you know, in a short letter, how can I explain it? I felt lost at that time. I was not feeling myself.

I was like, I have to end it. I can't let the cops get me and let the others go so your family wouldn't know that.

Well, when I was arrested, when I turned myself in, I thought I could just call my brother up and say, just ignore.

The letter, destroy the letter, and that way I'll just confess to the one murder. And I told him all the phone, there's nothing to the letter. It's all bullshit, right, so just leave it at that. And I figured I'd just confess to the one murder and then I'd be punished for the one murder period and I'd be the end of that and I'd get out in fifteen twenty years after doing Manjuan or Man two?

Or were you clearing your conscience when you put the other homicide?

I'd be good a good aspect to it.

Keith's letter to his brother led to his confession to the other murders.

I come to the realization that I was going to be convicted anyway. Like I wanted to kill myself though the truth wouldn't come out. But now that I was in custody, I knew the truth would come out. One of the reasons why I turned myself in. I thought, well, you know, I said I should face my problem. The worst thing I did was I called a cop up and I said I did it. I confessed to it.

Keith also waged a nearly year long letter war with Less, his now sober and dying father, that ranged from back and forth, blame to declarations of love.

From I the creation of a serial killer by Jack Olsen.

The letter from Less, the last letter you sent me was full of bitterness and resentment. It left me with a feeling that it was not my son that was writing that letter. I have never reprimanded you for your terrible crimes. I have forgiven you and have asked the Lord to forgive you. Also, you have to admit you put your family through one hell of a mess.

Letter from Keith.

Dad, I do two hours in the morning of classes, so if I get out of prison, I won't do this again. The class is called anger Management, deals with the way I was raised and the punishment dished out to me as a child. We talk openly about the belt and the wooden spoon, and the fist and the backhand and the verbal abuse. Under the program, we have the prison pointing into your corner on why I'm here and why I turned out.

To be a serial killer.

But that's all right, Dad, I still love you anyway.

Melissa wrote her father after his arrest, and he wrote her back. He was hurtful and planted seeds in her mind that would fester and make her wonder for decades if she was like him, that his evil could also be inside of her somewhere. Her husband Sam would often read Keith's letters to act as a filter to protect Melissa from their worst content.

I think periodically she would get a letter from him, and instead of reading it, she would ask me to read it because she didn't want to be impacted by his words because he was so cruel. I would read them and then I would kind of decipher what I thought would be helpful and then filter out the things that weren't needed. So it's not like I read things verbatim.

Back to her.

I literally just kind of filter through and then go, this is what he said, or this is what I think might matter why. I don't think she really wanted to hear from him, but she also maybe wanted to still stay connected to him because.

It was her dad.

And what was your take on the personality behind those letters?

You said cruel?

Yeah, he was strange, weird, like inappropriate. He made some of the most inappropriate comments to your daughter he just was always out of touch with what was appropriate.

For sure.

He was always kind of condescending too, and always trying to tell Melissa that she was I don't think he thinks she's that smart, or he feels like it's his job to make her feel not smart. He was never very kind, never loving by any means.

Over the years, Melissa received many letters from Keith, and many of them remained unready.

They just collect. As you can see, they're old. And now I'm wondering if these are more honest than actually meeting him in person, that if these are the true his true confessions, like a diary versus what he would say to my face. I don't know why I collect them. Sometimes I throw them away when they come in the mail, and sometimes I just save them, maybe because I'm not ready to read them when I receive them, but maybe I think that I'll be ready to read them another time.

Neither are you.

I know you think you can say anything you want and it will be published because you are the victim here. You are a killer, yourself called so because you killed your baby. But you had a reason, right, It was still murder, killing a baby that could have lived and not had one thing to do with why she was born? Are you caring what I did and holding it high to tell the world, Hey, look at me. I'm the daughter of the happy face killer. I'm a victim here.

He's insane and that.

This is why I don't read these fucky letters. This is why I don't read them.

Don't you understand This is why I don't read them.

Just what he says it doesn't make it true. Just because he writes it doesn't make it true. It's not true. You know I have him. The letters had undoubtedly opened old wounds that had never fully healed. It also seems that having read the letters that he sends you, that this is an incarcerated man who is still inflicting violence with words.

Absolutely, it's just emotional abuse. It's verbal abuse through the written form. So words are his weapon of choice now I would say words are his weapon instead of his hands now, he writes.

Judging from Melissa's reaction, Keith appears to have known exactly what he was doing. What has always been your greatest fear with your father?

That I'm just like him? He said, I'm just like him. He has told me for years growing up, and then after his arrest, you're just like me, and.

I believed it. And what would that have meant in terms of who you are?

It means I'm a horrible person. It means I'm a murderer, I'm a monster. I am not human, I am I am nothing.

And what's your greatest fear about? Your mind?

Genetically, that I am wired to be like my dad, that I'm genetically created.

A clone of my father. I look like my father, I smile like my father. My eyes are my father, my nose is my father. I look in the mirror and I see my dad. I want to know, did my insides match my dad too? Everything that I am is it my dad.

I thought I was choosing to live against my nature and that was delusional, and that people could see through that that my nature was a psychopath and my nature was my father, and that I was going against the grain of my DNA to be a good person.

And then you look in your children's faces, and what do you say, my dad?

I see my dad's hair, my son. I see my daughter's work, ethic, you know, and that's similar to my dad. There's so much, you know that's ruda to my dad, and I see him everywhere.

Though Melissa hadn't heard her father's voice person in nearly two decades, she still felt as though he were right there with her, speaking through his letters.

And he knew everything. He knows all my fears, and he put all my insecurities on two pages of paper. And I wasn't prepared to read his words and it felt a little prophetic in some ways when he said you need a doctor, and tomorrow I'm going to go see a doctor that only a doctor could really tell me, what.

Can tell me the truth.

In the next Happy Face, Melissa's Petscan brings her face to face with a neuroscientist who understands psychopathy on a very personal level.

There's a whole other part of psychopathy, which are these positive or pro social, pro social traits. It makes sound like you're really nice to be around everything. It just means that you can navigate through society and everybody thinks you're okay. So it makes you more dangerous than one says. So you have these pro social traits. People with just negative traits, everybody stays away from them.

Happy Faces of Production of How Stuff Works. Executive producers are Melissa Moore, Lauren Brde Pacheco, Mangesha Ticketur, and Will Pearson. Supervising producer is Noel Brown. Music by Claire Campbell, Paige Campbell and Hope for a Golden Summer. Story editor is Matt Riddle. Audio editing by Chandler Mays and Noel Brown. Assistant editor is Taylor Chicoigne. Special thanks to Phil Stanford, the publishers of the Oregonian newspaper, and the Carlisle family.