Ghosts and Letters

29m

Melissa is conflicted by how her father’s crimes have shaped her life and her career. She’s also conflicted about the paranormal ‘gift’ they both share-- seeing and feeling ghosts. Does this bolster Sam’s psychopath argument? And has she passed this trait to her son as well? 

Melissa G. Moore: IG @melissag.moore; Tik Tok @melissa.g.moore

Lauren Bright Pacheco: www.LaurenBrightPacheco.com

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Runtime: 29m

Transcript

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Speaker 18 Previously on Happy Face.

Speaker 19 There was some dark force that was trying to get rid of us, and I felt that that force was your dad.

Speaker 19 The first year with Melissa, I had gone 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.

Speaker 19 The moment I walked in that house, I felt like I wasn't alone.

Speaker 22 That there were spirits there.

Speaker 19 that I was being watched.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 And so I laid on the hallway floor with the light on curled up in a ball hoping that the night would just go away fast.

Speaker 19 And in the morning my dad stepped over me and he said why did you fall asleep in the hallway?

Speaker 19 And I said, I was being touched, dad.

Speaker 19 And he said, oh, don't pay any attention to them. They bother me all the time at night.

Speaker 19 Don't pay them any mind.

Speaker 21 In the vines,

Speaker 21 in the vines,

Speaker 20 where the sun don't ever shine,

Speaker 20 I would shiver

Speaker 21 the whole

Speaker 21 night through.

Speaker 19 A bond Melissa and her father share involves the spirits they both claim to encounter, even to this day.

Speaker 23 It's not a fearful feeling. It's almost a peaceful feeling that I have these I have company with me.

Speaker 23 It's like they're all watching me, so I'm not like they're waiting for something to happen. Like, who am I going to do next? Or something, but it's almost like they're my company.

Speaker 23 I can't get rid of them.

Speaker 23 So

Speaker 23 I have my own little party in my own cell, and I'm all by myself, but I've got all these eight spirits with me.

Speaker 19 Perhaps these are her father's victims, or perhaps something else.

Speaker 19 Could they be the manifestation of the psychopathy she fears her father has passed on to her?

Speaker 19 To quote Edgar Allan Poe, the boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague.

Speaker 19 Who shall say where one ends and where the other begins? I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco, and this is Happy Face.

Speaker 19 As we drove through her hometown, Melissa recalled her first real encounter.

Speaker 19 My first experience with a spirit was when we lived in Trailer Park in Celo, Washington.

Speaker 19 A neighbor man was watching me. I was laying on the couch

Speaker 19 and I remember looking up over the couch

Speaker 19 and seeing this white being

Speaker 19 and it was protecting me.

Speaker 19 So in a weird way it was kind of normal in your family. What did your dad

Speaker 19 talk to you about?

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 It was just once in a while he would talk about a supernatural event in his life.

Speaker 19 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 said he saw spirits that were around him.

Speaker 19 But my first

Speaker 19 remember of seeing anything was that was when I was probably about four years old, seeing a white being and it was hovering.

Speaker 19 I wonder if I would have been harmed by the man that was watching me and maybe that being was protecting me, but I don't know.

Speaker 20 I don't know how that works.

Speaker 19 But ever since, I've seen them.

Speaker 24 Your dad...

Speaker 19 talked a lot in his first book with Jack Olson about the ghosts in Roberta's house.

Speaker 25 Oh, really? Yeah.

Speaker 19 What did he say? That they tormented him.

Speaker 19 After Keith left Melissa's mom, he moved in with his then-girlfriend, Roberta, but he claims they shared her home with spirits.

Speaker 19 In one of his conversations with Al Carlisle, Keith even seems to confirm the theory that perhaps these are his victims and describes what he felt with Tanya Bennett.

Speaker 23 While I killed her,

Speaker 23 I felt like she just absorbed into me.

Speaker 23 I felt like she just came right up into me, like I could feel she was right there, like asking me why and all this.

Speaker 23 I mean, it was like she's just right there, and she just like over and surrounded me.

Speaker 19 Was that frightening at all?

Speaker 23 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 it. I heard someone hung themselves in the house.

Speaker 23 But I do feel the spirit. I feel her.
When I think of her,

Speaker 23 well, I'm at night or something like that. I'm laying there and I think they're all sitting around watching me.
I'm in my cell and I think they're all sitting there waiting for me to go.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 Not bad spirits, but they were uneasy spirits. They were

Speaker 19 like trying to get my attention.

Speaker 19 Nobody else would talk to me about the spirits, but my dad. I'm embarrassed actually telling you about this, like, because I'm thinking you guys are going to think I'm crazy, but I truly

Speaker 19 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 you don't need words for that.

Speaker 23 The house is haunted and that's my understanding. I actually felt it was too because Roberta said it was and so did her mother.

Speaker 23 And some strange things happened in that house while I was laying there like you'd feel coldness and you'd feel this and that and so when after I killed Tanya, I kind of like looked up and I yelled into the house.

Speaker 23 I said, now you evil son of a bitches. Now I'm the most evil person in here.
Now shut the fuck up, leave me alone. Based on what I said, and I have no problem with the ghosts after that.

Speaker 19 From Melissa's perspective, her father's acceptance of spirits almost made her feel like seeing them was normal.

Speaker 19 This is making me feel validated because it's something that I'm afraid that people would think I'm crazy.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 It's weird. I know some serial killers collect souvenirs like driver's licenses or panties or jewelry or hair, yeah.

Speaker 19 Maybe my dad collected spirits.

Speaker 19 As we gathered interviews for this story, a pretty distinct theme began to appear: the appearance of ghosts.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 Here's Don.

Speaker 25 With your mom, did you ever

Speaker 19 feel her with you? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 26 I drive taxi now. I felt my mom in the back of my cab, even when it first happened.

Speaker 26 And I had a girlfriend at the time. She didn't believe in it, but she felt entities on the edge of the bed.
My mom called me.

Speaker 25 She called you?

Speaker 26 They say when the other side contacts you, they have made peace.

Speaker 26 Shortly after the first set of trials, I went back to San Diego.

Speaker 26 No one had my phone number. I was living in a rental room with a bunch of Mexicans that were illegal workers doing tar roofing.

Speaker 26 One night I decided to answer the phone.

Speaker 24 Hello, sweetie.

Speaker 26 No one ever called me, sweetie, and I know my mom's voice.

Speaker 19 Mom?

Speaker 26 Mom.

Speaker 26 I dropped the phone, curled up in a corner till daylight.

Speaker 26 She's okay.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 They were letting me know they're at peace.

Speaker 19 Okay?

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 Even in jail, he couldn't escape Tanya or the rest of his victims.

Speaker 23 Did that seem real to you? Yeah,

Speaker 23 yeah, yeah. It did seem real.
Did you feel her presence?

Speaker 23 Yeah, I felt it. I feel it myself.
I feel it all the time now. I feel

Speaker 23 everyone. Everyone I've killed.
I feel.

Speaker 23 Okay, I've heard that from others.

Speaker 23 Talk about that.

Speaker 23 It's just a feeling that there. It's like I feel if I turn around fast enough, I can see them.
They're right behind me.

Speaker 23 They're guiding me right now, I think, because they're just there. I mean, everywhere I go, they're there.

Speaker 23 They're waiting for me to die so that I can be in their world. That's what I think.
And what are they going to do? I think they're going to get even.

Speaker 23 They're going to rule my roots because by that time, I think they're going to have control of where they're at. And I'm just a new guy in the the block now.

Speaker 4 Are your AI agents helping users or just creating more work?

Speaker 6 If you can't compare your users' workflows before and after adding AI, how do you know it's even paying off?

Speaker 11 Pendo Agent Analytics is the first tool to connect agent prompts and conversations to downstream outcomes like time saved, so you you know what's working and what to fix.

Speaker 13 Start improving agent performance at pendo.io slash podcast.

Speaker 14 That's pendo.io slash podcast.

Speaker 15 Black Friday is happening now at the Home Depot, which means it's time to get your home ready for all your holiday moments and traditions. Hi!

Speaker 15 Right now you can bring home holiday magic with our wide assortment of dazzling pre-lit trees under $99.

Speaker 15 Spend more time creating memories and less time assembling with quick connect technology that makes it easy to set up your new tree in a few clicks. Wow.

Speaker 15 Hurry in for Black Friday happening now at the Home Depot.

Speaker 27 High Key. Looking for your next obsession?

Speaker 29 Listen to High Key, a bold, joyful, unfiltered culture podcast coming at you every Friday.

Speaker 31 Now, my question is, in this game of mafia that we're going to play, are you going to do better than me?

Speaker 32 Say it now.

Speaker 5 Duh. Period.

Speaker 30 I'm going to eat. You're going to do better than me? I'm going to eat.
Yes.

Speaker 28 I literally will.

Speaker 5 Ryan will.

Speaker 33 I cannot wait till we both team up and get you out, and then one of us gets the other out because we didn't realize they were a traitor the whole time and you were actually an innocent.

Speaker 30 Y'all won't even know that I'm a trainer.

Speaker 34 This is going to be delicious.

Speaker 29 Well, thank you for coming to our show.

Speaker 21 And on that note, thank you for coming to my show.

Speaker 28 Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 11 No interest. I used it to get this portable spa with jets.

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Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 And to exercise his demons, he attempted to purge them on paper.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 And that's his way of communicating with me and my siblings while he was on the road as a truck driver.

Speaker 19 So I'd have all these postcards and letters from all these different destinations, and I would look forward to them. Then

Speaker 19 my father was caught by writing a letter, a confessional letter to my uncle and grandfather. Then when he was arrested, he starts writing to the Oregonian.

Speaker 19 And then after that, he continues to write letters to me and tries to stay in communication with me. And he writes letters to media outlets and he writes letters to wannabe writers and biographers.

Speaker 19 He keeps using letters to be his

Speaker 19 medium to the world.

Speaker 19 When speaking about his letter to the Oregonian, Jesperson almost makes it seem altruistic to free two innocent people. But he's unable to conceal his narcissism.

Speaker 23 The gut feeling I had when I wrote that smiley face letter and sent it to him that I shouldn't do it,

Speaker 23 but I said I'm going to do it because I'm trying to get those two people out.

Speaker 23 Or I'm trying to stir up a horner's nest to get these people out without turning myself in. That's when I...

Speaker 23 Why did you care?

Speaker 23 I didn't think it was right that two people could take the blame,

Speaker 23 be prosecuted for my murder. I figured that I was responsible for it, that nobody should be able to take that responsibility from me.

Speaker 23 And then

Speaker 23 it's kind of funny in a way that here I'm a cold-blooded murderer and yet I'm worried about two people in prison during my time. It makes sense.

Speaker 23 When you say I didn't want them to take that responsibility away,

Speaker 23 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 interwound.

Speaker 23 We're kind of like...

Speaker 23 And the fact that I did eight

Speaker 23 at the end there, toward the end, when I said I did it, I did it. And it became also important on credibility that they believed that was mine.

Speaker 19 Keith 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.

Speaker 23 Why take a chance by confessing to him the notes, the letters, those things? Well, I had to,

Speaker 23 when I left to go up in the mountains, I wrote my letter to my brother feeling I wasn't going to come back.

Speaker 23 That was my suicide note. I was going to let my brother know.
March 95. Yeah.
March 24th, 95. I sent him a letter.
I said I'd killed Julie in the truck.

Speaker 23 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

Speaker 23 why I turned out this way and I couldn't, you know, in a short letter, how can I explain it? Why did you have to?

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 And let the others go so your family wouldn't know that they were. 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.

Speaker 23 Destroy the letter, and that way I'll just confess to the one murder. And then I told him over the phone there's nothing to the letter.
It's all bullshit, right? So just leave it at that.

Speaker 23 And I figured I'd just confess to the one murder, and then I'd be punished for the one murder period, and that'd be the end of that. And I'd get out in 15, 20 years after doing man one or man two.

Speaker 23 Were you clearing your conscience when you put the other homicides? Yeah, I'd be a good aspect to it.

Speaker 19 Keith's letter to his brother led to his confession to the other murders.

Speaker 23 I come to the realization that I was going to be convicted anyway.

Speaker 23 One of the reasons why I turned myself in was I thought, well, you know, I said I should face my problem. The first thing I did was I called the cop up and I said, I did it.
I confessed to it.

Speaker 23 I confessed to the one murder. I never said I confessed to all of them.
Only after my attorney came over and he showed me the letter that my brother didn't destroy.

Speaker 23 And then I was faced with having to deal with all of them.

Speaker 23 That was the clincher.

Speaker 19 Keith also waged a nearly year-long letter war with Les, his now sober and dying father, that ranged from back-and-forth blame to declarations of love.

Speaker 18 From I, the creation of a serial killer by Jack Olson.

Speaker 18 A letter from Les.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 I have forgiven you and have asked the Lord to forgive you also.

Speaker 19 You have to admit, you put your family through one hell of a mess.

Speaker 18 Letter from Keith.

Speaker 5 Dad,

Speaker 18 I do two hours in the morning of classes, so if I get out of prison, I won't do this again.

Speaker 18 The class is called Anger Management, deals with the way I was raised and the punishment dished out to me as a child.

Speaker 18 We talk openly about the belt and the wooden spoon and the fist and the backhand and the verbal abuse.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 5 But that's all right, Dad.

Speaker 18 I still love you anyway.

Speaker 4 Are your AI agents helping users or just creating more work?

Speaker 6 If you can't compare your users' workflows before and after adding AI, how do you know it's even paying off?

Speaker 11 Pendo Agent Analytics Analytics is the first tool to connect agent prompts and conversations to downstream outcomes like time saved, so you know what's working and what to fix.

Speaker 13 Start improving agent performance at pendo.io/slash podcast.

Speaker 14 That's pendo.io/slash podcast.

Speaker 15 Black Friday is happening now at the Home Depot, which means it's time to get your home ready for all your holiday moments and traditions. Hi!

Speaker 15 Right now, you can bring home holiday magic with our wide assortment of dazzling pre-lit trees under $99.

Speaker 15 Spend more time creating memories and less time assembling with Quick Connect technology that makes it easy to set up your new tree in a few clicks. Wow.

Speaker 15 Hurry in for Black Friday happening now at the Home Depot.

Speaker 27 High Key. Looking for your next obsession?

Speaker 29 Listen to High Key, a bold, joyful, unfiltered culture podcast coming at you every Friday.

Speaker 31 Now, my question is, in this game of mafia that we're going to play, are you gonna do better than me?

Speaker 32 Say it now.

Speaker 5 Duh. Period.

Speaker 30 I'm gonna eat. You're gonna do better than me? I'm gonna eat.
Yes.

Speaker 5 I literally will. Ryan will.

Speaker 33 I cannot wait till we both team up and get you out, and then one of us gets the other out because we didn't realize they were a traitor the whole time and you were actually an innocent.

Speaker 30 Y'all won't even know that I'm a trainer.

Speaker 34 This is going to be delicious.

Speaker 29 Well, thank you for coming to our show.

Speaker 21 And on that note, thank you for coming to my show.

Speaker 28 Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 36 Greetings from my bath, festive friends. The holidays are overwhelming, but I'm tackling this season with PayPal and making the most of my money, getting 5% cash back when I pay in four.

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Speaker 11 I used it to get this portable spa with jets.

Speaker 24 Now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body. Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal.

Speaker 38 Save the offer in the app. N1231, see paypal.com/slash promo terms.
Points, give your renee for cash and more paying for subject to terms and approval. PayPal Inc.
and MLS 910-457.

Speaker 19 Melissa wrote her father after his arrest, and he wrote her back.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 Her husband, Sam, would often read Keith's letters to act as a filter to protect Melissa from their worst content.

Speaker 39 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.

Speaker 39 I would read them and then I would kind of decipher what I thought would be helpful and then like filter out the things that weren't needed. So it's not like I read things verbatim back to her.

Speaker 39 I literally just kind of filter through and then go, this is what he said or this is what I think might matter.

Speaker 5 Why?

Speaker 39 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.

Speaker 19 And what was your take on the personality behind those letters? You said cruel.

Speaker 39 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 like what was appropriate, for sure.

Speaker 39 He was always kind of condescending, too,

Speaker 39 and always trying to tell Melissa that she was.

Speaker 39 I don't think he thinks she's that smart, or he feels like it's his job to make her feel not smart.

Speaker 39 He was never very kind, never loving by any means.

Speaker 19 Over the years, Melissa received many letters from Keith, and many of them remained unread.

Speaker 22 They just collect. As you can see, they're old.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 38 When's this one thing?

Speaker 5 So nine.

Speaker 22 Dear Melissa, I'll let you in on a secret you should be well aware of by now, but haven't come to understand just yet. It matters little what the real truth is when telling stories in the press.

Speaker 22 You see,

Speaker 22 Most people reading those press reports don't know the true facts, and they're relying on the reporter to get them the story.

Speaker 22 Therefore, they read it and believe they are getting the truth, or as close to it as they can get.

Speaker 19 It is of entertainment value.

Speaker 22 People read it to pass the time. People write to throw across to the public recording it a message.
What is the message?

Speaker 22 It's to sell. It's to get enough to believe them and not the other guy.

Speaker 22 Does it matter that Angela Sabrize

Speaker 22 was alive when I dragged her body down the freeway?

Speaker 22 Does it matter that I planned to kill Laura Ann Pentland hours before I drove her to Wilsonville just to see her?

Speaker 22 Does it matter that when I drove into the rest area at Turnlock that I was going to kill someone, the first one I saw?

Speaker 22 Does it matter that every victim to come to me after Claudia was going to die?

Speaker 22 because I fulfilled a plan once I decided to kill them.

Speaker 22 My story is the story I wanted to tell.

Speaker 22 The truth according to Keith.

Speaker 22 The story to sell to the public.

Speaker 22 But apparently it won't sell because people such as sick, perverted, bloodthirsty monsters like publishers and true crime writers and victims and their people want to read about it.

Speaker 22 The gore, the thought process to why I killed. They want to tell a morbid tale to put me in a certain light of darkness in order to sell their books.
But dad, you're not telling the truth.

Speaker 22 I'll tell you a story, Miss Know-it-all.

Speaker 22 Neither are you.

Speaker 22 I know you think you can say anything you want and it will be published because you are the victim here.

Speaker 22 You are a killer yourself.

Speaker 22 Called so because you killed your baby. But you had a reason, right?

Speaker 22 It was still murder killing a baby that could have lived and not had one thing to do with why she was born.

Speaker 22 Are you carrying 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.

Speaker 22 But it seems now that you want the world to know who you are. Not Melissa Moore, but the daughter of the happy face killer.

Speaker 22 I've created a monster in you.

Speaker 22 Because you are telling them you are a victim, they wrote what you say and believe it, even though it isn't true.

Speaker 19 You know this.

Speaker 21 I don't know.

Speaker 38 He's insane.

Speaker 19 And that's not him.

Speaker 22 This is why I don't read these fucking letters.

Speaker 41 This is why I don't read them. Don't you understand? This is why I don't read them.

Speaker 19 Just because he says it doesn't make it true. Just because he writes it doesn't make it true.
It's not true.

Speaker 41 I don't even know I have him. I don't even know.
I didn't bring him. I didn't even.

Speaker 19 The letters had undoubtedly opened old wounds that had never fully healed.

Speaker 19 It also seems that, having read the letters that he sends you,

Speaker 19 that this is an incarcerated man who is still inflicting violence with words. Absolutely.
It's just emotional abuse.

Speaker 19 It's verbal abuse through written form.

Speaker 19 So words are his weapon of choice now?

Speaker 19 I would say words are his weapon.

Speaker 19 Instead of his hands, now he writes.

Speaker 19 Judging from Melissa's reaction, Keith appears to have known exactly what he was doing.

Speaker 19 What has always been your greatest fear with your father? That I'm just like him. He said I'm just like him.

Speaker 19 He has told me for years, growing up, and then after his arrest, you're just like me.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 19 I believed it.

Speaker 19 And what would that have meant in terms of who you are?

Speaker 20 It means I'm a horrible person.

Speaker 19 It means I'm a murderer. I'm a monster.
I am

Speaker 19 not human. I am.

Speaker 19 I am nothing.

Speaker 19 And what's your greatest fear

Speaker 19 about your mind?

Speaker 19 Genetically, that I am wired to be like my dad. That I'm genetically created, a clone of my father.

Speaker 19 I look like my father. I smile like my father.

Speaker 19 My eyes are my father. My nose is my father.
I look in the mirror and I see my dad. I want to know,

Speaker 19 did my insides match my dad too? Everything that I am, is it my dad?

Speaker 5 I thought

Speaker 19 I was choosing to live against my nature and that I was delusional and that people could see through that, that my nature was a psychopath, my nature was my father,

Speaker 19 and that I was going against the grain of my DNA to be a good person.

Speaker 19 And then you look in your children's faces, and what do you say?

Speaker 19 My dad.

Speaker 19 I see my dad's hair, my son. I see my daughter's work ethic, you know, and that's similar to my dad.

Speaker 19 There's so much, you know, that's rooted in my dad, and

Speaker 19 I see him everywhere.

Speaker 19 Though Melissa hadn't heard her father's voice in person in nearly two decades, she still felt as though he were right there with her, speaking through his letters.

Speaker 20 And he knew

Speaker 19 everything.

Speaker 22 He knows all my fears. And he put

Speaker 22 all my insecurities on two pages of paper.

Speaker 22 And

Speaker 22 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's

Speaker 19 can tell me the truth

Speaker 19 In the next happy face, Melissa's PET scan brings her face to face with a neuroscientist who understands psychopathy on a very personal level.

Speaker 42 There's a whole other part of psychopathy, which are these positive or pro-social, pro-social traits. It makes it sound like you're really nice to be around everything.

Speaker 42 It just means that you can navigate through society and everybody thinks you're okay. So it makes you more dangerous in one sense.
So you have these pro-social traits.

Speaker 42 People with just negative traits, everybody stays away from them.

Speaker 18 Happy Face is a production of How Stuff Works. Executive producers are Melissa Moore, Lauren Bright-Pacheco, Mangesh Hatikador, and Will Pearson.
Supervising producer is Noel Brown.

Speaker 18 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 Shacoyne.

Speaker 18 Special thanks to Phil Stanford, the publishers of the Oregonian newspaper, and the Carlisle family.

Speaker 4 Are your AI agents helping users or just creating more work?

Speaker 6 If you can't compare your users' workflows before and after adding AI, how do you know it's even paying off?

Speaker 11 Pendo Agent Analytics is the first tool to connect agent prompts and conversations to downstream outcomes like time saved so you know what's working and what to fix.

Speaker 13 Start improving agent performance at pendo.io slash podcast.

Speaker 14 That's pendo.io slash podcast.

Speaker 43 Fall is the perfect time to explore California in a brand new Toyota hybrid with 17 fuel-efficient options like the stylish all-hybrid Camry, the adventure-ready RAV4 hybrid, or the spacious Grand Highlander hybrid.

Speaker 43 Toyota has the perfect ride for any adventure. Every new Toyota comes with Toyota Care, a two-year complementary scheduled maintenance plan, and an exclusive hybrid battery warranty.

Speaker 43 Visit your local Toyota dealer and test drive one today. Toyota, let's go places.
See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.

Speaker 1 Hey guys, it's Aaron Andrews from Calm Down with Erin and Carissa. So as a sideline reporter, game day is extra busy for me, but I know it can be busy for parents everywhere.

Speaker 1 You're juggling snacks, nap time, and everything else.

Speaker 1 Well, Gerber can help create a more parent-friendly game day because they have the most clean label project certifications of any baby food brand.

Speaker 1 So you can feel good about what you're feeding your little ones. I mean, Mac loves them.
You can't go wrong with the little crunchies.

Speaker 1 You just put him in a little bag or you put him in a little container and he's good to go. Make sure to pick up your little ones' favorite Gerber products at a store near you.

Speaker 35 This is Matt Rogers from Lost Cultural Eastas with Matt Rogers and Boen Yang.

Speaker 40 This is Bowen Yang from Los Culture Eastas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 35 Hey, Boen, it's gift season.

Speaker 40 Ugh, stressing me out. Why are the people I love so hard to shop for?

Speaker 35 Probably because they only make boring gift guides that are totally uninspired. Except for the guide we made.

Speaker 35 In partnership with Marshalls, where premium gifts meet incredible value, it's giving gifts.

Speaker 37 With categories like best gifts for the mom whose idea of a sensible walking shoe is a stiletto.

Speaker 40 Or best gifts for me that were so thoughtful I really shouldn't have. Check out the guide on marshalls.com and gift the good stuff at Marshalls.

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.