Israel Keyes, a serial killer, is believed to have killed 11 people between 2001 and 2012, yet investigators have only officially linked him to three deaths. Keyes, as cunning as he was vicious, frequently traveled to numerous locales to choose victims of opportunity rather than targeting a specific demographic.
He stashed firearms and other supplies ahead of time and funded his operations by working as a contractor and robbing banks. His atypical behavior after killing 18-year-old Samantha Koenig in Alaska resulted in his arrest in March 2012. Law enforcement had more questions than answers concerning his crimes when he committed suicide in December 2012, before he could face prosecution.
Early Life
Israel Keyes was born on January 7, 1978, in Cove, Utah, as the second of Heidi and John Jeffrey Keyes’ ten children. The pair did not believe in government intervention, public education, or contemporary medicine.
When Israel was five years old, his family moved from Utah to Colville, Washington. They lived alone in the woods, and Keyes grew up without heat or electricity. While in Washington, Keyes’ parents abandoned the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and became conservative Christians, eventually joining the Ark, a white supremacist church.
In the late 1990s, the family moved to Maupin, Oregon. Keyes stated that he attacked his first victim, but did not kill her. His family relocated again, this time across the nation to live near an Amish settlement in Maine.
Growing up, Keyes snuck into neighbors’ homes to steal guns, enjoyed hunting, pursued “anything with a heartbeat,” and tormented animals, which has been related to psychopathy. While in detention, Keyes stated, “I’ve known since I was 14 that…there were things that—that I thought were normal and that were OK that nobody else seemed to think were normal and OK.”
After a teen Keyes informed his family that he no longer shared their beliefs, he was ejected from the family home, and his younger siblings were warned never to talk to him again.
Military Service
On July 9, 1998, Keyes traveled to New York and enlisted in the United States Army. He served as a Specialist in Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment, before completing a rigorous U.S. Army Rangers training program. He was stationed in Fort Hood, Texas, Fort Lewis, Washington, and Sinai, Egypt. Although no crimes were registered during his service in Egypt, he allegedly told a fellow soldier that he would “like to kill him.”
While at Fort Lewis, Keyes was known to keep to himself and binge drink on weekends. He was a mortar team member in the 1st Battalion, 5th Infantry, 25th Infantry Division, and his only run-in with the law occurred in February 2001, when he was arrested for DUI.
Keyes won the Army Achievement Medal for his service as a gunner and assisting gunner from December 1998 to July 2001. Following that, he was honorably discharged and resided on the Makah Reservation in Neah Bay, Washington.
Daughter
In 2000, Keyes became acquainted with a woman from the Washington Makah Reservation. The following year, their daughter, whose name has not been revealed, was born. Following his honorable release from the Army in July 2001, Keyes moved in with his child’s mother. He worked for the Makah Tribal Council in Neah Bay from 2001 to 2007.
In 2007, Keyes relocated to Alaska to live with a nurse practitioner he had been dating, bringing his daughter with him. That same year, he established his own company, Keyes Construction, and worked as a handyman, contractor, and construction worker.
After his arrest, Keyes voiced his intention to protect his daughter from the consequences of his actions: “I want my kid to have a chance to grow up… you know, she’s in a safe place now, she’s not going to see any of this.” I want her to have the opportunity to grow up without all of this hanging over her head.”
Murder of Samantha Koenig
On February 1, 2012, Keyes abducted 18-year-old barista Samantha Koenig from her coffee shop in Anchorage, Alaska. He stole Koenig’s debit card and cell phone, sexually assaulted her, and then killed her the next day. Keyes then hid her body in a shed while he went on a two-week family vacation to the Gulf of Mexico.
When Keyes returned, he put cosmetics to Koenig’s face, stitched her eyes open with a fishing thread, and photographed her with a four-day-old issue of the Anchorage Daily News to make her appear as if she was still alive. Keyes texted SMS from her cell phone, including a demand for a $30,000 ransom. Her relatives, believing Koenig was still alive, deposited funds into her account.
Then Keyes dissected her body and dumped the fragments in a lake north of Anchorage. Koenig’s remains were found on April 2, 2012. Although Koenig was not Keyes’ first victim, his crimes against her eventually led to his downfall.
Other Victims
Keyes is alleged to have killed 11 individuals, only Samantha Koenig and two others have been positively identified. He also sexually molested a female aged 14 to 18.
According to Keyes, his first planned attack occurred in Oregon in 1997 or 1998. He kidnapped a teenage girl and then raped her. He wanted to murder her, but she persuaded him to let her go. “I wasn’t violent enough,” Keyes subsequently told detectives about the incident. “I made up my mind I was never going to let that happen again.”
As a serial murderer, Keyes chose victims who occurred to cross his path rather than keeping to a set profile. He frequently lurked in parks, cemeteries, and campers, waiting to approach people. He admitted to police enforcement that his methods have limited options, but there are no witnesses. “There’s no one else around.”
Keyes also traveled to kill. In June 2011, he went to Chicago and drove to Essex, Vermont, where he murdered Bill and Lorraine Currier. The couple was chosen at random because they met Keyes’ requirements of having no children, no dogs, and a property with an attached garage. He broke into their home, restrained them, and then took them to an abandoned farmhouse. Keyes murdered Bill, then raped Lorraine before killing her.
Keyes said he killed at least five other people but never named them. According to his story, he killed four people in Washington state: a couple between 2001 and 2005, and two separate victims in 2005 and 2006. Keyes also claimed to have murdered someone on the East Coast in 2009 and then abandoned the body in New York State. The FBI is “relatively confident” that the victim is Debra Feldman, a New Jersey resident who went missing in April 2009.
Other probable Keyes victims have included Julie Harris, a girl who went missing in Colville, Washington, in 1996. Her prosthetic feet were found a month after she disappeared, and her remains were discovered in 1997. Keyes was in the vicinity when Harris disappeared, but he denied any participation. Keyes has also been blamed for other unsolved crimes, including the deaths of 56-year-old Mary Cooper and her 27-year-old daughter Susanna Stodden, who were shot while hiking in Washington State in 2006.
After being apprehended, Keyes admitted to killing “less than a dozen.”While in jail, Keyes drew 12 skulls with his own blood, maybe representing 11 victims and himself. In 2020, an FBI agent told 48 Hours, “We believe that 11 is the total number of victims.” The murderer allegedly stated that he planned to depart Alaska and go across storm-ravaged areas to find more victims while working as a contractor. He envisioned erecting a house to jail his victims, akin to H.H. Holmes.
Keyes’ serial murders involved meticulous preparation. He crisscrossed the country hiding caches of murder equipment, including firearms, ammunition, and chemicals used to destroy bodies. When Keyes wanted to kill, he dug out a stockpile.
Keyes had a history of making extensive excursions throughout the United States, giving him numerous opportunities to search out victims. Visits to Canada, Mexico, and Belize may have further contributed to Keyes’ murdering spree. To reduce his chances of being followed, Keyes paid in cash while on the road and removed the batteries from his cell phone. In addition to the money he earned as a contractor, he claimed to have funded his travel by committing bank robberies. Police confirmed that he stole banks in Tupper Lake, New York, and Azle, Texas, in April 2009 and February 2012, respectively.
Keyes researched FBI profilers and learned about serial killers, including Ted Bundy. According to Maureen Callahan’s 2019 book, American Predator, Keyes underwent gastric band surgery and attended a plastic surgery clinic in Mexico. Keyes may have attempted to improve his killing skills by wearing a lap band, changing his fingerprints, or removing body hair to reduce evidence.
Arrest and Trial
Samantha Koenig’s family paid a ransom that Keyes orchestrated, and the killer used her ATM card to withdraw money in Alaska. He continued these transactions while moving through New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. During a visit to Texas with his mother and siblings, one of Keyes’ sisters attempted to persuade him to reconsider his atheism. A preacher at the time stated that Keyes responded, “You don’t know the depths of darkness that I’ve gone to.” “You have no idea what I have done.”
Keyes disguised himself when stealing Koenig’s ransom money, but a security camera captured an image of his rental automobile in Arizona. Texas law police was contacted and stopped Keyes in March 2012. A search of his vehicle discovered Koenig’s license and other damning items.
Keyes was arrested and eventually returned to Alaska. When confronted with evidence linking him to Koenig’s disappearance, he admitted to the crime. Despite his customary meticulous planning, the perpetrator admitted to feeling out of control and stated, “Back when I was smart, I would let them come to me.”
While in detention, Keyes gave some facts about his crimes with investigators, but he seemed to relish withholding information. He used knowledge about the Currier killings as a negotiating tool with law enforcement, but he mostly stopped collaborating after his identity was revealed and discussed in the media. He had stated that he did not want his mother or daughter to suffer as a result of his criminal actions. Despite the fact that he had not been condemned or tried, Keyes voiced a desire for a swift execution, stating that he dreaded spending years in prison.
In May 2012, Keyes attempted to flee the courthouse after breaking his leg irons during a routine hearing. However, officers were able to subdue him with a stun gun before restraining him. His final interrogation took place a few days before he died. Some of his questioning recordings have since been released to the public.
Keyes had been appointed a public lawyer in Alaska while awaiting his March 2013 trial. His trial would have most certainly been postponed because federal prosecutors were considering pursuing the death sentence.
Death
Keyes’ death was discovered in his Anchorage, Alaska, jail cell on the morning of December 2, 2012. His death was a result of suicide. Despite cautions not to give him a razor blade, 34-year-old Keyes received one. He cut his wrist and strangled himself with a sheet while laying in bed.
Authorities discovered a four-page suicide note beneath Keyes’ body, in addition to the skulls he had drawn with his blood. Throughout the sometimes rhyming message, Keyes attacked American consumerism and the boredom of daily life while appearing to celebrate his murders. “You may have been free, you loved living your lie, fate had its own scheme, crushed like a bug you still die,” Keyes wrote in a single sentence.
The handwritten message was delivered to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, for processing. FBI Special Agent Mary Rook later stated that “the writings do not offer any investigative clues or leads as to the identity of other possible victims.”
On December 8, 2012, Keyes’ funeral was attended by only his mother, four sisters, and three brothers-in-law.