Melissa Moore, also known as @lifeafterhappyface, posted a TikTok about the letters that received more than 5.8 million views and 4,200 comments. The video can be found here.
‘My Serial Killer Father’
Moore told Newsweek that she was only 15 years old when her father was arrested and charged with murdering at least eight women in 1995.
“My dad is known as the Happy Face serial killer but he’s known as Dad to me,” Moore said. “He’s serving multiple life sentences in Oregon State Penitentiary.”
She said she has dozens of letters from her father but that she wanted to share the most recent one she received after her wedding in July.
“My serial killer father from prison sends me letters like this,” Moore said in the now-viral TikTok.
She explained that her father sent a letter to her home address including a printed image of a picture she posted on Instagram of her wedding in July.
“He’s somehow able to see my Instagram from prison,” she said in the video. “In the letter he says I’m fat and my husband is fat and we don’t run. He then tells me maybe this marriage will work and ends with ‘why wasn’t I invited?’”
Over the phone, Moore told Newsweek that she thought this particular letter was “funny.”
“Mind you, it’s probably not funny to other people,” she said, “but this has been years of narcissistic ramblings, and so they don’t hurt my feelings at all because it’s not personal to me; it’s just the ramblings of a psychopath.”
Moore said decided to share the letter online after recently stumbling upon it while cleaning out her office.
In the TikTok video, she says at the end of the letter, her father wrote, “remember most of all daughter, I never stopped loving you.”
She also shared a package her father sent her for Christmas last year which was a brown leather purse.
“I was very terrified to open it but here were its contents: a purse that his inmate friend from prison made me,” she said.
‘I’m Your Dad’s Last Victim’
Moore told Newsweek that although she did not reply to those letters, she did reply to one that she received shortly after her mother died last year.
“Why I wrote to him was because as my mom was passing away in hospice she said, ‘I’m your dad’s last victim, it just took him longer to kill me,’” Moore recalled. “I get a letter from my dad and he says ‘oh you weren’t going to tell me that your mom passed away on my birthday?’” She did not disclose her response.
Moore said she is unsure how her father gets this information, including the picture from her wedding but that she believes he has outside sources who give him information. That, she said, or he has a cell phone and keeps up with her personal Instagram account.
Although the Contraband Cell Phone Act prohibits the possession of cell phones within prisons, they are one of the most commonly smuggled items.
“I don’t know what he has access to, but what I intuitively feel is that he has people on the outside that are fans and support him,” she told Newsweek.
Viewer Reactions
More than 4,200 users commented on Moore’s video, many offering advice and support to Moore.
“He is probably watching this TikTok over and over again within his cell, absolutely fuming,” one user commented.
“‘Why wasn’t I invited’ hits hard,” another user said.
“I worked in a prison for 9 years. You need to contact someone in the administration office and let them know it sounds to me like he has a cell phone,” another user said.
“They have kiosks in prison they can see social media with,” another said.
“You’d be surprised how much access to social media prisoners have,” another user said.
“By the way, don’t you ever feel you should apologize for him, it was his fault, you are an awesome person,” another user said.
