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So due to the nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is definitely advised. This episode includes discussions of animal abuse, rape, torture, kidnapping, and murder. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. There is no one who knows me or who has ever known me who knows anything about me, really.
They know they're going to tell you something that does not line up with anything I tell you because I'm two different people, basically. And the only person who knows about what I'm telling you, the kind of things I'm telling you, is me. How long have you been two different people? A long time. 14 years. That's Israel Keys. And this is the story he never wanted to get out.
I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. You can find us here every Monday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. If you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up to share your thoughts.
This is part one of our three-part series on Israel Keyes, the serial killer who may have murdered upwards of 11 people across the United States. His spree lasted for over a decade before he was finally apprehended. Over the next three episodes, we'll be welcoming Josh Hallmark, an expert in this case, to lend us his insight. And we'll also be hearing Israel Keyes' chilling interrogation by the FBI. Stay with us.
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Before we get into this story, amongst the many sources we used, we found the book American Predator by Maureen Callahan and our interview with Josh Hallmark, host of True Crime Bullshit, extremely helpful to our research. The audiobook edition of American Predator is available for Spotify Premium subscribers in our audiobook catalog, where you can check it out after listening to this episode.
We all change how we act, compartmentalize, hide pieces of ourselves as we move through different spaces. In that sense, Israel Keyes was no different than the rest of us. But none of us are born examining our actions in real time, guessing what others are thinking about us. That's learned. When Israel was 14, his sister had a cat.
and he took a bunch of his friends out into the woods. This is... Hi, I'm Josh Hallmark, the host and executive producer of True Crime Bullshit: The Investigation into Israel Keyes. I've been researching Keyes for 10 years now and producing the show for five. He's spoken to many of Israel's friends and loved ones, as well as eyewitnesses, FBI agents who've worked Israel's case, and some of the world's most prominent criminal psychologists.
He's talking about a turning point in Israel's childhood. So when Israel was 14, at the time his sister had a cat and he took a bunch of his friends out into the woods and tied a rope around the cat and then tied it to a tree and shot the cat and watch it tangle itself up around this tree as it tried to flee him. He watched as the cat died.
And to Keyes, this was the funniest thing in the world. But as he looked around, he saw that his friends were horrified by it. Those friends never talked to Israel again, which taught him two lessons. A, that he was different from others, but B, that he had to conceal these things that entertained him or amused him or that he perceived as different or other because people would judge him and respond poorly to it. And I think
that really fundamentally set up his criminal behavior for the future and how he, in public, would take on one identity that was separate and different from his true identity.
So for the next 20 years, the world only knew the side of Israel he curated. He grew up as the second oldest of 10 siblings in a family who lived off-grid. No heat or electricity, no access to public schooling or modern medicine. They didn't trust government oversight and hunted for their own food. Israel in particular developed a love of hunting.
The family moved often, first from Utah to Washington, then Oregon, New York, Maine, usually relocating for their faith. His mother changed religions like most people change their underwear.
At some point, the family attended a church affiliated with a racist, anti-Semitic version of Christian identity theology. According to the book American Predator by Maureen Callahan, the family's evolving religious beliefs caused problems for Israel. Socially and romantically, he felt shame over his crushes, hid his relationships with girls. In his late teens, he rejected religion.
which created a lot of tension between him and his parents. Israel and his family essentially severed ties, though he stayed in contact with his mother and sister over the years. Left to his own devices, Israel was resourceful. He had already built his own cabin and fixed an old pickup truck,
He branched off on his own. And you could say he flourished. He enlisted in the army at 20, traveled the country, was stationed in Egypt for a bit. He was generally liked and respected as a soldier. He held down jobs and relationships.
He spent three years in the military before being honorably discharged, then moved to the Macaw Reservation in Washington to live with a girlfriend he'd met online. And in 2002, the couple welcomed a daughter. He was one of the only white men in town, and when he first got there, people would call him "white boy," and they didn't respect him much because he was an outsider.
But pretty quickly he was able to endear himself to that community who were quite insular. And he was hired by the tribe and started beautifying the town and people really loved him and respected him and thought of him as a stand-up guy. Despite some incidents that occurred there that probably would have otherwise raised some eyebrows.
Keyes was suspected of burglarizing one of the tribal offices at one point, and he got into some heated disputes with his partner. Nothing violent, Josh says. Nothing that couldn't be excused. He had endeared such great respect from folks that they overlooked a lot of his bad behaviors. People really just were proud of him and the work he had done. And by 2012, Israel's criminal record included one DUI from when he was in the military, and that's it.
But with stories like this, one question always comes up. How did no one notice? Israel wasn't perfect. There were warning signs besides the incidents on the reservation. - He would disappear for periods of time, turn off his phone, not tell anyone where he was. He would occasionally get drunk and brand himself with like hangers. He would poke them in the fire and brand various things onto his body.
But he was really good at picking partners and picking people in his life. Most of his friends were coworkers, so they knew him first as this great employee. And then that would, I suspect, define how they saw him outside of that role. His first partner had some drug addiction issues. He was the one who was supporting her. She, you know,
didn't have the frame of mind to really be worried about what he was doing. His later partner wasn't around often. She traveled for work. From what I've heard, she considered him her boy toy. And I think there was this perceived power imbalance on her end. And when you're the one with more power, you aren't as concerned about the other people in your life. Still, that question, how did no one notice,
It might cross your mind from time to time the further we get into this story, especially as it relates to the women in Israel's life. His girlfriends, his mother and sisters, his daughter. We asked Josh what he thinks about that. I would say that there's a cultural problem with Americans or maybe just people holding women accountable for the misdeeds done by the men in their lives.
To Josh, it's easy for us to see the forest from the trees, especially with the advantage of hindsight. But... We know people how we know them. And we're also living our own lives. A lot of us aren't.
looking into the minutia of the weird things that our partners do because we're just wrapped up in our own stuff and just trying to get through the day. - For that reason and many more, no one noticed that Israel Keys had been killing for more than a decade and studying how to get away with it for longer. - She studied other serial killers.
He loved H.H. Holmes, idolized Ted Bundy. We suspect he may have alluded to the Golden State Killer several times. Obviously, he didn't know who he was, but he talked about his favorite serial killer being one who hadn't been caught yet. He was a consumer of true crime. He wanted to learn. From his predecessors, from his contemporaries, and he said that, you know, he learned from their mistakes.
He read a lot of really terrible Dean Kuntz books and he learned from those or picked up tips from those. So he was very knowledgeable and actively consuming true crime like the rest of us, just for very different reasons, hopefully. - Hopefully indeed.
If you believe Israel, the beginning of his downfall started as all his killings did, with a whim. A chance encounter with an 18-year-old woman named Samantha Koenig. Samantha was, she was kind of overcoming, I think, a fairly normal, troubled teenage period in her life and kind of getting her life back on track. She was saving money. She had big plans.
She had just gotten a job at a drive-thru coffee stand. Before that, she'd been working at a sports bar, which is important and strangely never makes it into the media surrounding Keys. Josh is right. That does become important. But for now, what you need to know is when Samantha and Israel cross paths, they're both living in Anchorage, Alaska. Israel with a new girlfriend and his daughter. Samantha with her single father, James, and boyfriend, Dwayne.
Samantha's working shifts at that coffee stand. And then one night, as she was getting ready to close up the coffee stand... A man approaches the window wearing a ski mask. It's winter in Alaska, so it's not that unusual. The man orders a coffee. And while she was making it, climbed through the window and abducted her from the coffee stand. The man, of course, is Israel. He carries a gun and zip ties.
It's February, about 8:00 PM, the sunset hours before. The coffee stand, it's essentially a big shed in a parking lot across the street from a Home Depot and several fast food restaurants. It's tiny but on a pretty major intersection. In fact, I went out to Alaska last year and was surprised by like how
public this coffee stand was. You could see it from everywhere. There were tons of cars passing by, even at 8 o'clock at night. Israel tells Samantha he's robbing the place. He points the gun in her direction and tells her to turn off the lights, empty the cash register. Then he zip ties her hands, shoves napkins in her mouth so she can't speak, and pushes her out the door. This happens at around 8:15 p.m.
Now, as we walk through what happens next, I want you to imagine how much time is passing. Keep a mental clock in your head. She's parked across this very busy street. Now, it is winter, so it's dark out already and there's snow banks everywhere, but there are still cars driving by. None stop. They don't see anything unusual. Neither do the people out walking. He stops.
There's video footage taken by a surveillance camera across the street at Home Depot. You see Israel and Samantha waiting to cross the street to the parking lot where Israel's truck is parked, a white Chevy.
As the light for the crosswalk changes, Samantha breaks free. She runs, but her arms are bound. Israel quickly tackles her and pulls her to her feet. He whispers something in her ear. Whatever he says gets Samantha to cooperate. They walk to his truck and stop for a second, just outside. There are strangers hovering around the car directly next to his, just a few feet away.
He waits for them to leave. And he gets her in the car, zip ties her to the seat. And because it's still early enough that his girlfriend and his child are still awake, he drives around with her in his car for hours waiting for them to go to bed. Stop the clock. What time would you say they pulled out of that Home Depot parking lot? Well, Samantha's boyfriend, Duane, arrives outside the coffee stand at about 8.23 to pick her up from work.
Meaning, if Duane had arrived just a few minutes earlier, he might have run into Samantha and Israel on the street. And there's a chance he drove right by them. The lights inside are turned off. He looks in the window. He sees napkins strewn about the floor, a rag still laying out on the counter. He figures Samantha got a ride home with a friend, maybe left in a rush.
Hours later, he receives a text from Samantha's number. It reads: "F you asshole. I know what you did. I am going to spend a couple of days with friends. Need time to think, plan, acting weird. Let my dad know." The text doesn't sound like Samantha wrote it. It comes in around 11:30 p.m., about the same time as Israel and Samantha arrive at Israel's home.
He had a shed in his driveway, so he pulled up and put her into the shed and then zip-tied her to various pieces of pipes and furniture in the shed. The shed is 12 feet away from where Israel's 9-year-old daughter is sleeping. Israel tells Samantha he wants her to be comfortable. He gives her a bucket so she can go to the bathroom. They talk for a bit.
At some point, Israel asks for Samantha's ATM card and she tells him her boyfriend has it. It's back at home in their truck. So he leaves her in the shed alone and drives away.
Meanwhile, Duane and Samantha's father James are up late waiting to see if she'll come home. Sometime before 3:00 AM, Duane becomes inexplicably called to open the front door and look outside. When he does, he sees a masked man standing about six feet away, rifling through Samantha and Duane's pickup truck.
The two men stand there for a second. Then the masked man closes the door and just walks away. Duane goes inside to tell James. When they return, the masked man's gone. They check the truck. Samantha's driver's license is missing, which is all they notice at the time.
Her father...
had kind of a rough history with law enforcement because of his own stuff. And I think they also were just hopeful that these texts were from Samantha and they would hear from her. So I think they were just waiting it out. Duane later says he didn't think police would do anything unless Samantha was missing for 24 hours. The police are notified later that day. One of her co-workers goes to open up the coffee stand.
They noticed that it hadn't been shut down properly and they alert the owner who had surveillance and pulled up the surveillance and saw Samantha abducted from the coffee stand and he alerted the police immediately. And as is often the case, started looking into her boyfriend and her father right away.
Pretty early on, they were focused on her father. He was associated with some sketchy people. And so they were looking at a few different angles there. One was that perhaps this was a scheme for money. The other that perhaps he had upset the wrong person. So they are pretty squarely looking at James Koenig
And for weeks until Israel gets really sloppy and connects himself to the case. At 7.56 p.m. on February 24th, Duane gets a text from Samantha's number. It's been more than three weeks since the last correspondence. The text reads, Connor Park sign, under pick of Albert. Ain't she purdy.
Connors Bog is a popular park in the area. Duane and James notify police before racing there themselves. They find a missing poster for a dog named Albert and, underneath it, a folded piece of paper in a Ziploc bag. On one side is a ransom note asking for $30,000 to be deposited in the bank account attached to the ATM card Israel stole. On the other is a black and white Xeroxed Polaroid of Samantha.
Her eyes are wide open, facing the camera with heavy eyeliner. There's silver duct tape around her mouth and chin, and you can see a forearm enter the frame from the left. It's holding Samantha's hair at the back of her head and wearing a light-colored latex glove. Her hair was worn down at the coffee shop, but sections now appear to be braided.
Perhaps most importantly, prominently featured in the foreground is a copy of the Anchorage Daily News, and it's dated February 13th, 12 days after Samantha's abduction. All this time later, Samantha might still be alive, and if the ransom note is to be believed, so long as $30,000 gets deposited in that account immediately and all other demands are met, Samantha will be freed in six months.
Two things happen as a result of the ransom note. First, the money is immediately deposited in Samantha's account. Officials want her abductor to start withdrawing money. It'll make it easier to find him. And second, since the case can officially be classified as a kidnapping, a federal crime, the FBI gets involved. Keys returned to Texas about a month after Samantha was abducted and
As he's wont to do, he didn't fly directly to Dallas or Houston. He flew into Las Vegas and then drove. And he was using her debit card to pull out money from random ATMs across the United States Southwest. So they started pinging and the cops were obviously watching for activity and walking.
They would send someone out to the bank and they'd have just missed him. They'd pull surveillance, he was wearing ski masks or nylon. And then finally, I think it was one of the last ATMs he used in New Mexico, they actually got his rental car's plate on surveillance. And so they were able to track that pretty quickly.
It was a white Ford Focus. They find Israel at a motel room in Lufkin, Texas. After surveilling him for a bit, a patrol officer stops his car for a routine traffic violation. Their radar clocked him going two miles over the speed limit. When the officer pulls up to the side of the car and asks where Israel is from, he doesn't lie. He says, "Alaska." The officer asks for a license and for Israel to step out of the car.
He does. The officer notices he's carrying two knives, one in his front pocket, another in his back pocket. He instructs Israel to place them on the trunk of the car.
Before long, officers will find a lot more in Israel's vehicle. Highlighted maps, rolls of cash, porn, alcohol, sunglasses, binoculars, a handgun, a ski mask, and a headlamp. They also find a wallet on his person. And inside the wallet is Samantha Koenig's driver's license.
So if you believe Israel, had he had his handgun on him the day of his arrest and it wasn't in the trunk of his car, he would have gone down in a blaze of gunfire. That's what he tells the FBI. But I've seen the video and like he basically throws like a little hissy fit, lets them cuff him, gets into the car and just looks like a disgruntled toddler.
Officers drive Israel to the Lufkin police station. They find the ATM card Israel stole from Samantha's truck in his wallet. Keyes tells detectives that he doesn't want to talk, but he never asks for a lawyer. From Lufkin, he's transported in handcuffs and leg irons to a federal penitentiary in Beaumont, Texas.
Meanwhile, detectives in Alaska tell James Koenig about the man in custody, the one they suspect had a hand in his daughter's disappearance. For James, the name Israel Keys doesn't ring any bells. If there is a connection between Israel and his daughter, he's unaware of it. For the sake of their investigation, authorities ask James to keep Israel's name private for now.
It takes two weeks for officials to extradite Israel from Texas to Alaska. In that time, the FBI digs up everything they can on him. They speak to his girlfriend and mother. His mother doesn't speak to his guilt, but his girlfriend insists he's innocent. They run background checks, raid his home, confiscate his computers.
The evidence will take a while to sort through, but in the meantime they learn Israel is finally willing to talk, so long as his demands are met.
He wants the death penalty taken off the table and his name to stay out of the press as much as possible. But more than anything, Josh believes... He wanted control. ...over his fate, over the narrative. And in a way, he's given control. Officials accept his demands because more than anything, they want to find Samantha. And Israel may be the only person who knows where she is.
On March 30th, they sit him down for an interview with an unconventional setting at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Alaska. FBI agents are in the room, but the interview is led by the state district attorney and his team. Many believe it's unorthodox and not in the best interest of the case. For starters, the FBI can lie to Israel and make false promises. The DA and his team cannot.
Israel starts the interview by explaining why he's cooperating. He thinks it'll make the process easier in the long run for himself and his family. He adds that down the line, he'll probably have more requests for officials, demands he expects to be met.
Then he talks. He leads detectives through the evening of Samantha's abduction. How he planned to rob the coffee stand after staking it out in advance. How he stopped at a grocery store for candy and cigars ahead of time. How he wore a tiny police scanner in his ear so he could track their movements. He knew most officers would be stationed at a festival across town. It's why he chose that night.
Importantly, he tells investigators he didn't know Samantha, never met her before that night. He says he only chose that coffee stand because it was open late. Samantha was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The district attorney asks Israel where he'd like to start the story of what happened after Samantha's abduction. He says he doesn't want to go through everything beat for beat. So someone suggests they start at the end. What happened to Samantha Koenig? He had, over a period of days, dismembered her and submerged her while he was ice fishing.
And he genuinely was ice fishing while he was doing this. He talked about catching fish and bringing them home and cooking them up for his ex-girlfriend and kid. After returning to the shed with Samantha's ATM card, it was late. Israel raped Samantha twice, strangled her with gloves on, and at some point stabbed her below her right shoulder blade.
He then went into the house, took a shower, and woke up his daughter for the cruise. Detectives now have a much clearer picture of the man sitting before them, but it's just the beginning of their education. After that initial interview, two different stories emerge. The first is an ending.
Authorities now believe that she was killed that night, and Israel Keys was charged with kidnapping that led to her death. Authorities say that he dumped her body in a frozen lake north of Anchorage after using a chainsaw to drill through the ice. Israel leads the FBI to Samantha's body, submerged in the vastness of a frozen Alaskan lake.
Even with Israel's precise location, it takes teams of divers hours to recover her remains. Her loved ones learned the real origin of that ransom photo, the one that gave them the hope she might still be alive,
Israel staged the photograph 11 days after he killed Samantha. Winter temperatures had slowed the decomposition process. Israel had sewn her eyelids open to make her look alive, added makeup and braided her hair as well. After so many weeks spent missing, after all the suspicion cast on her father and boyfriend, the ransom note and close calls, no one could have predicted this.
The city of Anchorage hosts a memorial for Samantha. Hundreds attend to honor a life cut unimaginably short. Many come wearing lime green, Samantha's favorite color. They match the balloons released into the sky and the embroidered wings on the back of James Koenig's vest.
It's not the ending anyone wanted. The pain and grief from losing someone so young, amplified by knowing what a stranger put them through in their final hours, trying to not let their last chapter of life overshadow everything before it. And on top of it all, to be told it was just a random act of violence, a whim, bad luck.
On another day, it could have been someone else. Samantha's boyfriend, Dwayne, learns he was the lucky one. Israel almost abducted him and Samantha together as a pair. At least, that's what Israel tells the FBI. The second story that emerges after that first interview is only just beginning.
They say they think he's been operating for more than a decade and that they believe there could be victims in other states as well.
By the time the FBI finishes going through Israel's two computers, yet already destroyed a third with a hammer, they find hundreds of photos of people, some alongside missing person flyers and news articles about disappearances. Nothing obvious connects them. There are photos of women and men of all races, body types, and backgrounds, ranging in age from the elderly down to children.
Samantha Koenig is one of them, but just one. Officials run the photos through a national database for missing and unidentified people called NamUs, and... There were 45 matches, and it's worth noting that there were thousands of images, and NamUs is not holistic, so...
Many of those images could have been missing persons who just aren't on NamUs. And so the FBI and Israel Keys begin a long, tedious game of cat and mouse to find out how deep his well really went.
He didn't kidnap and kill people because he was crazy. He didn't kidnap and kill people because his deity told him to or because he had a bad childhood. Israel Keyes did this because he got an immense amount of enjoyment out of it. I mean, "disturbed" is kind of the easy adjective. Four homicides in the state of Washington and one in New York.
He's just very meticulous. His crimes were very well thought out. There was nothing that was spur of the moment. He broke into their garage, had been hiding in it for hours. No remorse at all. He's set a house on fire and then robbed a bank. We believe there are 11 victims total. When asked where he got the hair from, he said, human hair is very easy to find. It was, I mean, chilling to listen to him. If I can't get an execution date within a year...
You know, I'll tell you about everything. I'll give you plead guilty to whatever. I'll give you every single gory detail you want. But that's what I want. Thanks for listening to Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. We're here with a new episode every Monday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast. And we'd love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts.
Once again, we'd like to give a special thanks to Josh Hallmark for lending his expertise to today's story. You can check out True Crime Bullshit, Josh's investigation into Israel Keyes, which is going into its sixth season, as well as Josh's other podcasts from Studio Both And on Spotify or wherever else you listen. Stay safe out there.
Serial Killers is a Spotify podcast. This episode was written by Connor Sampson, researched, edited, and produced by Connor Sampson and Chelsea Wood. Fact-checked by Laurie Siegel and sound designed by Alex Button. Our head of programming is Julian Boirot. Our head of production is Nick Johnson, and Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor. I'm your host, Vanessa Richardson. ♪