Israel Keyes was one of the most calculated serial killers in modern history yet he was overlooked by many people. He had zero victim profile and he usually killed so far from home .He was very different from other serial killers, Keyes planned murders long ahead of time and took extraordinary action to avoid detection. As weird as it may sound, he had his own hunting and killing style.
Personal life and upbringing:
Israel Keyes was born in Utah on January 7, 1978 to a large Mormon family. Israel and his siblings were homeschooled. When Keyes was between the ages of three and five years old, his family moved to the Colville, Washington area, where they lived in an off-the-grid building with no electricity or running water. In Colville, Keye’s family became neighbors and friends with the family of Chevie Kehoe (convicted of three 1996 murders, and a well-known racist ). When he was a child Keyes and his family attended The Ark, a Christian Identity church which is known for racist and anti Semitic views. At some point during his young adult years, he rejected religion completely and proclaimed he was an atheist. It was also said he became interested in Satanism.
Keyes' former friends talk about Keyes hunting and he told them one time that he loved to kill anything with a heartbeat," .. "And he would shoot an animal like a deer and not kill it with the bullet, and he enjoyed coming up and he would tell stories of opening the animal up and holding it’s beating heart.”
His time in the Military service:
Keyes served in the US army from 1998 through 2001 .According to his military records, Keyes entered the Army on July 9, 1998, and was discharged from on July 8, 2001, at the rank of specialist. Records indicated Keyes was awarded the military decorations, service medals and awards
Former Army friends of Keyes have noted his quiet demeanor and that he typically kept to himself. On weekends, he was reported to drink heavily. He was also heavily into the music group Insane clown posse and had several large posters hanging in his room.
By 2007, Keyes established Keyes Construction in Alaska and began working as a construction contractor.
A journey of his brutal crimes:
Keyes life of crime had begun before he joined the military, however. He admitted to raping a young girl in Oregon sometime between 1996 and 1998 when he would have been 18 to 20 years old. He told FBI agents that he separated a girl from her friends and raped, but not killed her. He told investigators that he planned to kill her, but decided not to. When asked what was the reason, he told them she kept talking to me and she was nice. He also said that every time he remembers he regrets that he didn’t kill her.
On March 16, 2012, Israel Keyes was arrested in Lufkin, Texas after he used a debit card that belonged to an 18-year-old Alaska woman that he killed and dismembered in February. Keyes' last known victim was 18-year-old Samantha Koenig, a coffee booth employee in Alaska. Keyes kidnapped her from her workplace on February 1, 2012, took her debit card and other property, sexually assaulted her, then killed her the following day. He left her body in a shed and went to New Orleans where he departed on a two-week cruise with his family in the Gulf of Mexico. During her time of being missing, her boyfriend received a message from her phone saying that she was tired of things and wanted to be away for some time, which he didn’t believe was right. Her boyfriend and her dad reported her missing. When Israel returned to Alaska, he removed her body from the shed, applied makeup to the corpse’s face, sewed her eyes open with fishing line ,braided her hair and snapped a picture posed to appear that she was still alive. Her boyfriend received another text message from Samantha indicating a specific location,When they went to this location they found a plastic bag that has the picture and the ransom note.After demanding $30,000 in ransom, Keyes dismembered Koenig's body and disposed of it in a lake.He told the investigators that he caught some fish from the same lake, took it home cooked it and ate it with his family.
During the following months, while awaiting trial for the murder of Samantha Koenig, Keyes confessed to other murders during more than 40 hours of interviews with the FBI
When he sat down in the interrogation, he had a very arrogant way of talking as if he was not scared. He didn’t really want to talk and when investigators asked him what is it gonna take for him to talk he said an Americana, snickers bar and a cigar so they brought him all these things. He usually laughed during describing his murders.
Keyes admitted to investigators that he killed four people in Washington, he confessed to at least one murder in New York Authorities have not determined the identity, age, or gender of the victim. Keyes claimed to have killed a woman in April 2009 in New Jersey and buried her ,He also admitted to killing Bill and Lorraine Currier of Vermont. Keyes broke into the Curriers' home on the night of June 8, 2011 and tied them up before driving them to an abandoned farmhouse, where he shot Bill after sexually assaulting and strangling Lorraine. Their bodies have never been found. Two years prior to the Curriers' deaths, Keyes hid a "murder kit", which he later used to kill them, near their home. After the murders, he moved most of the contents to a new hiding place in New York, where they remained until after his arrest.
It was said that he told the police he doesn’t want his name to be known as a serial killer, unlike most serial killers. Mainly cause he had a kid and he wanted the kid to have a shot in life. Eventually his story made it to the media and he was absolutely furious about it.
During his interrogation, Keyes asked the police for a date for his execution if they want to get information from him. He didn't know that would not be that easy. Keyes was starting to give less and less info , and even was refusing offers of coffee and cigars.He was slipping away from helping authorities.They had an idea that they would show him a google map and he would show them the places of his murder kits.He agreed.
Modus Operandi
According to Keyes, his usual routine would be to fly to some area of the country, rent a vehicle and then drive sometimes hundreds of miles to find victims. He would set up and bury murder kits somewhere in the targeted area - items like shovels, plastic bags, money, weapons and bottles of Drano, to help dispose of the bodies.
He would look for victims in remote areas like parks, campgrounds, walking trials, or boating areas. If he was targeting a home he looked for a house with an attached garage, no car in the driveway, no children or dogs, he told investigators.
His trips, he told the FBI, were not financed with money from his construction business, but from the money he got from robbing banks. Investigators are trying to determine how many bank robberies that he may have been responsible for during his many trips across the country.
Influences:
Keyes admired Ted Bundy and shared many similarities with him: both were methodical and felt a possession over their victims. However Bundy's murders were spread throughout the country, mainly because he lived in many different areas and not as an intentional effort to avoid detection like with Keyes. Bundy targeted only attractive young women, while Keyes had no particular type of victim.
He also said that he learned a lot by reading books written by criminal profilers in the Bureau. He read John Douglas' Mind Hunter first, as a teenager, and he said he suddenly realized he wasn’t alone. He also read Dark Dreams by Roy Hazel, who wrote in great detail about lust-driven serial killers. He took notes from that book.
The end of the Alaska slayer:
Keyes would never make it to trial.While being held in jail in Alaska on suspicion of murder, Keyes died by suicide on December 2, 2012, via self-inflicted wrist cuts and strangulation. A suicide note, found under his body, consisted of an "ode to murder" but offered no clues about other possible victims.
In 2020 the FBI released the drawings of eleven skulls and one pentagram, which had been drawn in his own blood and found underneath Keyes' jail-cell bed. The FBI believes that 11 is the total number of victims
Modus Operandi
According to Keyes, his usual routine would be to fly to some area of the country, rent a vehicle and then drive sometimes hundreds of miles to find victims. He would set up and bury murder kits somewhere in the targeted area - items like shovels, plastic bags, money, weapons and bottles of Drano, to help dispose of the bodies.
He would look for victims in remote areas like parks, campgrounds, walking trials, or boating areas. If he was targeting a home he looked for a house with an attached garage, no car in the driveway, no children or dogs, he told investigators.
His trips, he told the FBI, were not financed with money from his construction business, but from the money he got from robbing banks. Investigators are trying to determine how many bank robberies that he may have been responsible for during his many trips across the country.
Influences:
Keyes admired Ted Bundy and shared many similarities with him: both were methodical and felt a possession over their victims. However Bundy's murders were spread throughout the country, mainly because he lived in many different areas and not as an intentional effort to avoid detection like with Keyes. Bundy targeted only attractive young women, while Keyes had no particular type of victim.
He also said that he learned a lot by reading books written by criminal profilers in the Bureau. He read John Douglas' Mind Hunter first, as a teenager, and he said he suddenly realized he wasn’t alone. He also read Dark Dreams by Roy Hazel, who wrote in great detail about lust-driven serial killers. He took notes from that book.
The end of the Alaska slayer:
Keyes would never make it to trial.While being held in jail in Alaska on suspicion of murder, Keyes died by suicide on December 2, 2012, via self-inflicted wrist cuts and strangulation. A suicide note, found under his body, consisted of an "ode to murder" but offered no clues about other possible victims.
In 2020 the FBI released the drawings of eleven skulls and one pentagram, which had been drawn in his own blood and found underneath Keyes' jail-cell bed. The FBI believes that 11 is the total number of victims
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