Israel Keyes

Israel Keyes was born in Cove, Utah, on January 7, 1978, to a large Mormon family. He was the second of 10 children born to Heidi Keyes and John Jeffrey Keyes, they were a couple who didn’t believe in government interference, public schools or modern medicine. Israel and his siblings were home schooled. When Keyes was five, the family rejected Mormonism and moved to an area near Colville, Washington. They lived in a one-room cabin without electricity or running water. In Colville, the family attended services at two churches the Ark and the Christian Israel Covenant Church which practiced white supremacist Christian Identity ideology. Keyes later described this community as militia-like and “Amish”. In this era, the Keyes befriended the neighbouring family of Chevie Kehoe, later convicted for a 1996 triple murder, and his brother Cheyne Kehoe.

As a youth, Keyes admitted to shooting at neighbors' houses with his BB gun, starting fires in the woods, and breaking into houses for fun. He also occasionally broke into houses with another youth, who subsequently avoided him after witnessing Keyes shoot an animal. On one occasion, Keyes stole several guns from his neighbor's residence, and was forced to apologize by his parents after their discovery of the cache. On occasion, Keyes–who stood 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) tall by age 14–would also sell stolen guns to local adults. Around this time, Keyes's parents provided shelter to personal friends; in the presence of their son and daughter and Keyes's sister, Keyes tied a cat to a tree with a parachute cord and gored it with a .22 revolver. The cat then began circling the tree before crashing into it and vomiting; Keyes allegedly chuckled before noting that the boy who later informed his father had vomited in response to the incident. Keyes had an epiphany in which he felt that he was different from his peers, who ran away from him. Upon this realization, he kept his increasingly antisocial behavior to himself, withdrawing socially due to being ostracized. In addition, Keyes's mother began to notice "some troubling signs" in Keyes during this period, when he began tuning into various "radio stations and different things."

On one occasion, Keyes declared his atheism to his parents both of whom he had previously made tireless and constant efforts to please after an intense argument. This led his parents to evict their eldest son from their residence, shunning him for apparent blasphemy; they then instructed his younger siblings, who looked up to Keyes, to never have contact with him again. Keyes then developed an inordinate interest in Satanism, with plans of committing a ritualistic murder. In the summer of 1997 or 1998, Keyes allegedly committed a sexual assault on a teenage girl who had been tubing with her friends down the Deschutes River in Maupin, Oregon. Although this was not his first sexual assault, Keyes admitted that he stalked her from a tree line before "very violently sexually assaulting" the girl whom he estimated to be between 14 and 18 years of age by knifepoint. Originally planning to murder her as part of a Satanic ritual, Keyes let her go in the river tube he had abducted her from.

On July 9, 1998, Keyes relocated and enlisted in the United States Army in the state of New Jersey, where he served as a Specialist in Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment. He passed a rigorous month-long preliminary course for United States Army Rangers training. He was stationed at Fort Lewis and Fort Hood. He also spent time abroad. While stationed in Sinai Egypt, Keyes befriended several soldiers, informing one of them that he would "like to kill" him.

While at Fort Lewis, he served on a mortar team in the 1st Battalion, 5th Infantry, 25th Infantry Division. Former Army friends of Keyes have noted his quiet demeanor and habit of keeping to himself. On weekends, he was reported to drink heavily, consuming entire bottles of his favorite drink, Wild Turkey bourbon. Keyes was also a fan of the hip hop duo Insane Clown Posse and displayed posters of the musical act in the barracks.

In February 2001, Keyes was arrested for driving under the influence in Thurston County. Pursuant to a plea agreement, he was fined $350. Keyes was awarded an Army Achievement Medal for his meritorious service as a gunner and assistant gunner from December 1998 to July 2001. Keyes was then honorably discharged and he relocated to Neah Bay, Washington. Keyes lived in the Makah Reservation community of Neah Bay, on the Olympic Peninsula.

In 2007, Keyes started a construction business in Alaska, called Keyes Construction while working as a handyman, contractor, and construction worker.

In 2009, after making travels to California, Washington, and New England, Keyes decided to rob a bank in order to fund his crimes. On April 10, allegedly after abducting and murdering a man, he walked into the Community Bank in Tupper Lake, New York, donning sunglasses, a jacket, jeans, grey sneakers, two-tone gloves, and a fake moustache and goatee, and armed with a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol. Successfully robbing the bank,

Keyes fled and buried a toolbox about a half-mile down a path in the Woodside Natural Area in Essex, Vermont; the toolbox contained desiccant, the Smith & Wesson, and the Ruger Charger. Four days later, he returned home by airplane. He then spent the next two years repeatedly traveling through the country for a variety of undisclosed reasons.

At the time between April and May 2011, he constructed a homemade silencer for the Ruger Charger pistol, and decides to test it out during his next crime. After flying to Indiana and then driving over to New York to attach and test his silencer, Keyes drove to Vermont, where he recovered the toolbox he buried earlier, to which he decided to randomly target and murder someone before going on a bank-robbing and arson spree.

After selecting a location to take a victim, Keyes readied his weapons and began inspecting motorists from the safety of nearby woods. Initially targeting a motorist driving a yellow Volkswagen Beetle, Keyes found the plan impractical and switched his focus to a couple instead. Wandering around the suburban neighbourhoods on the late hours of July 8, 2011, he set his sights on 8 Colbert Street, occupied by the Curriers, Bill and Lorraine; the home was less than a half-mile away from the Handy Suites hotel he was staying at.

Bill and Lorraine Curriers

Keyes told investigators he traveled widely. Until the Koenig abduction, he said, he followed a rule about never killing too close to home. He chose the Essex, Vermont, couple to kill for no reason beyond the design of their home, he said.

They lived in a house with an attached garage that would be easy to enter. He cut phone lines before bursting into the bedroom where the animal hospital technician and medical practice worker slept. He let them put on slippers rather than walk across broken glass as he led them to their car, which he would use to take them to an abandoned farmhouse.

Calmly, he told investigators that he bound the woman. He bludgeoned her husband in the basement. The man called out "Where's my wife?" Keyes shot him. The woman was "feisty," he said. She tried to fight him. He described pouring Drano on the bodies before packing them into garbage bags. He stopped in the middle of the crime to smoke a cigar in the backyard, wet from a rainstorm.

A piece of a .22 rifle and a plastic stock for the weapon were some of the items found in his buried 'kill cache'

He noted that when he was in Vermont on the trip to kill the Curriers, he had gone fishing. He'd made sure to buy a legal fishing license.

Beyond this confession, Keyes didn't describe any other killings in detail.

Keyes then buried the bodies of the Curriers in debris and left them in the farmhouse basement, intending to return later to burn down the farmhouse. His plan to go on a bank-robbing spree soon proved to be impractical when the Curriers’ car experienced some “serious mechanical issues”, and he abandoned it the next day in the parking lot of an apartment complex at 203 Pearl Street.

Digging for clues: In this April 12, 2012 photo, state police investigators sift through dirt and debris at a dig site off Vermont 15 near Lang Farm in Essex, Vermont

During his trip back home, he went into the White National Monument Forest in New Hampshire and disposed of the items that he took from the Curriers in a suitcase that he set ablaze; he then abandoned his tools and the Curriers’ revolver in New York before returning home in Anchorage. Unbeknownst to him, from October 25 to October 27, the farmhouse was demolished, and the debris (including bags that contained the Curriers’ corpses) was transported to a local landfill. Their bodies have never been found. In October or November of the same year, he purchased a police scanner.

"The things I've done … I don't feel bad about them," Keyes told the investigators. "I did them for myself. … It's better for me to keep them to myself. They're mine."

Marilynn Chates, mother of Bill Currier who had been missing since June 8, 2011, along with his wife Lorraine, addressed the media at a news conference in Essex, Vermont, to announce a reward for information leading to the missing Essex couple.

As the hours piled up in the interrogation room, Keyes grew more at ease discussing how he fantasized and planned killings in the midst of an otherwise ordinary seeming life in Anchorage.

He talked about the public Israel Keyes, who lived with a nurse practitioner girlfriend and his school-aged daughter on a street in the Turnagain neighborhood where the neighbors included a Superior Court judge.

Having read Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit from his youth and continuing to meticulously study serial killers, Keyes idolized Ted Bundy and felt that he shared many similarities with him: both were methodical and felt as though they possessed their victims despite their difference in victim choice and modus operandi.

He even went as far as to imitate Bundy's court escape, before being seized by guards immediately. Keyes also admired and studied other serial killers, but actively shunned media attention for his crimes as he was fearful for his family and being labelled a "copycat" for his admiration of Bundy and other murderers. Keyes also called Dennis Rader a "wimp" for apologizing in court and showing remorse for his crimes, in addition to expressing admiration for serial killers "that haven't been caught."

When asked in an interview about Robert Hansen, Keyes replied enthusiastically, stating, "Yeah, I know all about him," before continuing, "I probably know every single serial killer that's ever been written about. It's kind of a hobby of mine." When FBI agents informed him of the Aurora Theater Shooting, Keyes had also expressed mild interest in the mass murder's perpetrator, James Holmes.

When FBI agents searched the house, they found the couple's well-behaved pugs and the little ramp Keyes had built for them to get into the backyard. He talked about hobbies: fishing, boats, hiking, camping, kayaking at Eklutna Lake. Regular things Alaskans do. But Keyes' motivation wasn't regular.

"You go fishing, or out hunting. Stalking through the woods. You see somebody through the woods," he said. "They don't see you. Sit there and watch them for a while."

He wasn't picky about his victims, he said. He liked them to be "lightweight" because they were easier to dispose. After he became a father he "tried to avoid situations" that might end with him hurting a child. Keyes said his "retirement plan" was to build a dungeon in his home. He told investigators about a cache of potential body disposal tools he had secreted along a bank of Eagle River. They found it, based on Keyes' directions.

"I only left that stuff there because I was planning on using it eventually," he said. "I don't like to litter."

As the interviews went on, Keyes was spending 23 hours a day in a cell. The guards were "watching him like a hawk," he complained. He wanted the death penalty and told investigators he had no "long-term interest in survival" in prison.

On February 1, 2012, Keyes decided to kill again, driving around aimlessly through Anchorage in search of a potential victim.

Setting his sights on an 18-year-old barista named Samantha Koenig, he approached her coffee kiosk, held her at gunpoint, and demanded the money from the register. After his demands were met, he tied her up and waited for her boyfriend, Duane Tortolani, intending to abduct him too, but changed his mind and dragged Koenig outside. She attempted to escape, but he quickly recaptures her, forces her into his truck, and keeps her captive in his home. The next day, Keyes went to Koenig’s home, broke into Tortolani’s truck, and stole the debit card he shared with Koenig, but Tortolani and Koenig’s father James witness him commit the act.

After successfully testing out the debit card, Keyes returned home and murdered Koenig, leaving her body in a shed on his property. He then travelled to New Orleans, Louisiana, to embark on a ship cruise. Upon returning from the cruise, Keyes, increasingly worried by the large amount of publicity brought by Koenig’s abduction, decided to commit a crime spree. Exploring around the west of Dallas, Texas, he encountered a 3,500 sq. ft., one-story, red-brick house in Aledo on February 16, which he robbed before burning it and a nearby barn down.

He then drove to the nearby town of Azle, where he, donned with a hardhat, sunglasses, gloves, and a breathing mask, robbed the National Bank of Texas within two minutes before escaping; he later buried the money around the Post Oak Cemetery in Glen Rose. South of Cleburne, he tries to abduct a woman walking a dog, but he quickly abandons the plan.

Part of the ransom text sent to Samantha Koenig's boyfriend.

Returning to Anchorage, Keyes enacts a ransom plan for Koenig, whose death was still not known to authorities.

Texting a ransom note demanding $30,000 he had removed Koenig’s body from the shed, applied makeup to the corpse’s face, sewed her eyes open with fishing line, and snapped a picture of a four-day-old issue of the Anchorage Daily News alongside her body, posed to appear that she was still alive. He then dismembered Koenig’s corpse with a chainsaw, disposing the body parts in Matanuska Lake.

Divers at Matanuska Lake in Alaska recovered Samantha Koenig's body on April 2, 2012.

Flowers are left at an overlook of Matanuska Lake on April 26, 2012. FBI divers found the body of Samantha Koenig under the ice there in April 2012. Police say she was abducted from an Anchorage coffee stand in February and killed by Israel Keyes.

On February 29, he began withdrawing the ransom money. Starting on March 6, he began making withdrawals from Koenig’s account, alerting the Alaskan authorities and the FBI who were investigating the case.

Blue 2011 Kia Soul (Texas license plate CN8 M857) rented by Keyes February 2-7, 2012. He drove the vehicle 2,847 miles. They notified Texan authorities to alert officers in the state, as well as Louisiana and Arkansas, to be on a lookout for a 2012 Ford Focus, the rental car Keyes was currently using.

(ironically enough, Keyes obtained a replacement vehicle in the form of another 2012 Ford Focus, an occurrence that would lead to his capture).

In March 13, Texas Highway Patrol Corporal Bryan Henry noticed Keyes’ Ford Focus, alerted authorities, and followed it onto Highway 59. Noticing that the car was speeding, Henry pulled it over alongside the road, to which many unmarked vehicles, federal agents, and Texas Rangers surrounded it. Searching Keyes’ car, they found Koenig’s debit card and phone, with the battery removed; a ski-mask; a gun; cash taken from the National Bank of Texas; and highlighted maps of California, Arizona, and New Mexico.

Keyes was subsequently arrested, charged with access device fraud, and indicted in a Beaumont, Texas federal facility.

On March 26, Keyes was taken back to Anchorage, where he confessed to murdering Koenig, whose body would later be discovered on April 1. During interviews, Keyes was shown to be calm and patient, yet frustrated at the rules he and his attorneys were told to abide. He willingly gave terms to confess to any crimes he committed and plead guilty to all of the charges brought against him, as long as he was executed and the trial took less than a year. Investigators later struck a deal with him about finding the bodies of any potential prior victims in exchange for the media not knowing any details Keyes didn’t want to make public. As a result, authorities found and excavated the farmhouse where Keyes left the Curriers’ corpses at, only finding indications of human decomposition. Not wanting his name to be released to the media, he threatened to stop speaking to investigators.

On June, a routine court hearing debating on calling the case “complex” turned violent when Keyes managed to escape and tried to attack spectators, presumably in a suicide attempt. He was subdued with a taser and taken back into custody. The following day, he stressed his perception of dishonesty from the prosecutors, and that the escape attempt was unplanned and merely a reaction to stress.

The FBI has released never-before-seen chilling pictures Alaska serial killer Israel Keyes, 34, drew of 11 skulls allegedly using his own blood. They say this indicates he had 11 total murder victims. The eerie images, including one that bears the caption 'We Are One', pictured above.

Because of the escape attempt, security measures were increased on him, which included full restraints, a two-officer escort every time he left his cell, restrictions on razor and pencil possession, and daily strip and cell searches.

On July 20, WCAX broke the story on Keyes’ connection to the disappearances of the Curriers; as a result, Keyes refused to speak to investigators for a two-month period.

The last recording unsealed this year by the court ends on Oct. 30, 2012. Keyes talked again to interviewers on Nov. 29. Video of interview down.

A few days later, he was dead.

Israel Keyes never provided another name.

On December 2, Keyes wrote a two-page (front-and-back) suicide note before he managed to conceal a razor blade in his cell. He was not allowed razor blades, being under security restrictions of using an electric razor under supervision. He died by suicide, cutting his wrists and attempted strangulation.

Because of the odd method he employed in his suicide, the medical examiner was unable to tell the primary cause of death. He was 34.

The suicide note read:

“Where will you go, you clever little worm, if you bleed your host dry?

Back in your ride, the night is still young, streetlights push back the black I neat rows. Off to the right a graveyard appears, lines of stones, bodies molder below. Turn away quick, bob your head to the seat, as straight through that stop sign you roll loaded truck with lights off slams into you broadside, your flesh smashed as metal explodes.

You may have been free, you loved living your lie, fate had its own scheme crushed like a bug you still die.

Soon, now, you’ll join those ranks of dead or your ashes the wind will soon blow. Family and friends will shed a few tears, pretend it’s off to heaven you go. But the reality is you were just bones and meat, and with your brain died also your soul.

Send the dying to wait for their death in the comfort of retirement homes, quietly/quickly say “it’s for the best” it’s best for you so their fate you’ll not know. Turn a blind eye back to the screen, soak in your reality shows. Stand in front of your mirror and you preen, in a plastic castle you call home.

Land of the free, land of the lie, land of scheme Americanize! Consume what you don’t need, stars you idolize, pursue what you admit is a dream, then it’s American die.

Get in your big car, so you can get to work fast, on roads made of dinosaur bones. Punch in on the clock and sit on your ass, playing stupid ass games on your phone. Paper on your wall, says you got smarts. The test that you took told you so, but you would still crawl like the vermin you are, once your precious power grids blown.

Land of the free, land of the lie, land of the scheme, Americanize.

Now that I have you held tight I will tell you a story, speak soft in your ear so you know that it’s true. You’re my love at first sight and though you’re scared to be near me, my words penetrate your thoughts now in an intimate prelude.

I looked in your eyes, they were so dark, warm and trusting, as though you had not a worry or care. The more guiless the game the better potential to fill up those pools with your fear.

Your face framed in dark curls like a portrait, the sun shone through highlights of red. What color I wonder, and how straight will it turn plastered back with the sweat of your blood.

Your wet lips were a promise of a secret unspoken, nervous laugh as it burst like a pulse of blood from your throat. There will be no more laughter here.

I feel your body tense up, my hand now on your shoulder, your eyes…Forget the lady called luck she does not abide near me for her powers don’t extend to those who are dead.

[illegible words] would that I could keep you, let you be the master of your own fate…knowing full well what’s at stake? My pretty captive butterfly colorful wings my hand smears…I somehow repaint them with punishment and tears.

Violent metamorphosis, emerge my dark moth princess, I would come often and worship on the altar of your flesh…You shudder with revulstion and try to shrink far from me. I’ll have you tied down and begging to become my Stockholm sweetie.

Okay, talk is over, words are placid and weak. Back it with action or it all comes off cheap. Watch close while I work now, feel the electric shock of my touch, open my trembling flower, or your petals I’ll crush.”

Dr. Phil Resnick, director of forensic psychiatry at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, told ABCNews.com that Keyes’ suicide note was far from “ordinary,” explaining, “He doesn’t talk much about his own dilemmas of being in prison or why he’s taking his own life. … It’s more of a final statement of contempt for the American style of life and I think the other thing he emphasizes is his own superiority, that he has guile and can take advantage of people who are naïve and trusting of him.” Resnick continued, “He’s writing this so that people will find it and talk about it and further magnify his own self worth. … And, of course, it has no remorse, no regard for human life or the victims and that fits with that type of psychopathic personality.”

In some of the interviews, Keyes seemed relieved to be talking about his hidden life. He had developed a certain intimacy with his interrogators.

"You guys know more about me now than anyone," he said.

On August 12, 2013, federal authorities released new information on Keyes, revealing that they suspect him to have a final death toll of eleven victims, all killed from 2001 to 2012, and that there are possibly other victims in Canada (where he sought out prostitutes) and other countries. Additionally, he was confirmed to have also burglarized 20 to 30 homes and robbed several other banks in addition to the Community Bank and National Bank of Texas robberies.

More than five years later, "some aspects of the case are still considered open," according to Anchorage FBI spokeswoman Staci Feger-Pellessier.

None of the law enforcement agents or attorneys who talked to Keyes were willing to be interviewed for this story. Investigators say no other homicides have been definitively linked to Keyes aside from Koenig and the Curriers.

His suicide leaves investigators and Koenig's family disappointed, angry and frustrated.

‘We deserved our day in court and we didn't get it,’ says James Koenig, Samantha's father.

Months before Keyes' past was disclosed, Koenig believed his daughter was not his only victim.

He and volunteers set up a Facebook page called, ‘Have You Ever met Israel Keyes? Possible Serial Killer.’ It includes photos of Keyes and maps.

Investigators have used Keyes' financial and travel records to piece together a timeline of his whereabouts from October 4, 2004, to March 13, 2012. He traveled throughout the United States and made short trips into Canada and Mexico.

Unsolved homicides are being checked, too, to determine if Keyes was in the area at the time.

But definitive evidence? That'll be hard to come by.

Feldis, the prosecutor who heard Keyes' first confession, says it's likely the true scope of his crimes will never be known.

‘There's a lot more out there that only Israel Keyes knows,’ he says, ‘and he took that to his grave.’

Sherri Odegaard says her daughter Julie, a Special Olympics athlete with prosthetic feet, vanished from Colville while waiting for a ride to church.

Julie Harris was 12 years old when she disappeared from Colville, Washington, on March 3, 1996. She was a double amputee whose prosthetic feet were found by the Colville River a month after her disappearance. Israel Keyes, then 18, lived in the area at the time. Julie's murder is still unsolved.

Israel Keyes, then 18-years-old, lived in the area at the time. Julie's prosthetic feet were discovered at the mouth of the Colville River. The next year, her skeletal remains were found. "A witness had seen her walking down Main street with a tall guy in a trench coat," she said.

"It was 2012...someone called me...I don't remember who," she said. "Maybe a reporter and said, 'do you think Isreal Keyes killed Julie?' And I said I don't know who that is."

That's when Sherri says she started doing some digging and was sent photos of Keyes in his younger years. She learned when Keyes was about 18, he lived in Stevens County near them.

"Now that I saw the picture of that guy, Israel Keyes, now that I saw the picture of him while he was younger, I remember him at a house Julie used to go to," she said. "I had just an Just an icky feeling about him.”

They confronted Keyes with photos, one in particular rattled him: it was a photo of a woman named Debra Feldman.

Frank Russo, "Given the way he looked at it and he started shaking a little bit, I would say she is definitely one of his victims."

The FBI believes Debra Feldman, 49, is the fourth known victim of Israel Keyes. Feldman was last seen alive on April 8, 2009 at her residence in Hackensack, New Jersey.

Debra Feldman is a woman who went missing from New Jersey it was in 2009. Her body has never been recovered. We're relatively confident about Debra Feldman. However, we do not have any forensic evidence to make that connection.

During his lengthy interviews with the FBI, Keyes cryptically said he had abducted a woman from the East Coast on April 9, 2009 and transported her across state lines before killing her in New York State, ABC News reports. Feldman was last seen April 8.

According to the FBI, that would make Debra Feldman Keyes' fourth known victim, along with Samantha Koenig and Bill and Lorraine Currier. Agents are now determined to identify the remaining seven. And there are clues that point to at least two other states.

Keyes planned murders long ahead of time and took extraordinary action to avoid detection. Unlike most serial killers, he did not have a victim profile, saying he chose a victim randomly. He usually killed far from home, and never in the same area twice. On his murder trips, he kept his mobile phone turned off and paid for items with cash. He had no connection to any of his victims.

“This is entertainment for me” – Israel Keyes

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