Israel Keyes is one of the most horrific and widely known serial killers of the 21st century. Although Keyes has been proven to have killed three people, he admitted that he had killed several others too. The FBI suggests that he has killed 11 people, which are a few of the many crimes he committed. Keyes was 34 when he confessed to the murders and died by suicide before going through with the trial.
Keyes’ gravitation towards crime is known to have begun early in his childhood. He was homeschooled and his family moved away from the Mormon church into a remote space in Washington where electricity and water supply were both infrequent. A secondborn with nine siblings, he reportedly broke into neighbours’ homes, stole guns, and tortured animals as a child. This pattern of psychopathy bled into adulthood early and in an apparent fashion.
His very first crime occurred in Alaska between 1996 and 1998, soon after he was enlisted in the US Army. Israel Keyes raped a young girl between 14 and 18 years of age but did not kill her. While it is unclear whether the crime was reported by the victim, the incident set a pattern for Keyes, who decided to travel to far-off places away from home to commit crimes. FBI reports establish that he “liked to find his victims along hiking trails, at campgrounds, and in other remote areas.”
Early murders and patterns of killing
Between 2001 and 2012, Keyes is known to have killed as many as 11 randomly chosen victims. Amidst the randomness that he mobilised to avoid attention, he had just one rule: never harm children or anyone with children because he had a daughter too. He carried around ‘murder kits’ that contained tools to help him execute each of the crimes he committed. He would bury these in the place of the crime before committing the crime itself.
Based on his confession, Israel Keyes committed his first murder in 2001, followed by a double homicide and two more murders between 2001 and 2005. However, the identities and whereabouts of these victims are unknown. In 2007, after Keyes moved to Alaska with his family and started a construction company, he began travelling to Washington and other states to commit murders.
In 2009, he reportedly abducted a girl from the East Coast and murdered her. He disposed of her body in Upstate New York. His first well-verified murders involved victims identified as Bill, 49, and Lorraine Currier, 55. He broke into their home in Vermont, where he had previously stashed one of his kits, and abducted the couple. He drove them to a farmhouse and shot Bill before he sexually assaulted Lorraine and strangled her. The FBI found the weapons disposed of at the Blakes River Reservoir.
Serial killer Israel Keyes: How did Samantha Koeing’s disappearance lead to his arrest?
Keyes committed his final murder in 2012. He kidnapped Samantha Koenig from a coffee shop in Alaska, where she worked, on February 1, 2012. He stole her debit card, held her hostage, raped her, and killed her the very next day. Keyes then left her corpse in a shed and reportedly went off on a cruise with his family. After returning, he applied makeup to her body, sewed her eyes open, and clicked a picture to demand a ransom. He then disposed of the body in a lake.
The reason Samantha Koenig’s case led to his downfall is that he stepped away from his usual pattern in multiple ways. Firstly, he chose a victim near his home in Alaska. Additionally, Keyes used her stolen card at an ATM, where his visual and car details were caught on CCTV. As soon as a match for the car was found, the police asked him to pull over and found Koenig’s belongings, including her ID, debit card, and cell phone, along with a gun. Israel Keyes was arrested.
After his arrest, Keyes agreed to answer the authorities’ questions but was very selective about the information he revealed. This allowed the investigators to only partially reconstruct Keyes’ history with crime. Subsequently, during his time at the Anchorage Correctional Complex in Alaska, he managed to procure a razor blade and used it to end his own life. Investigators then found a series of drawings and writings that included 11 skull illustrations, perhaps referring to the alleged 11 lives that he took.
Method of a Serial Killer is a true-crime documentary that explores the life and crimes of Israel Keyes. The film premiered on Oxygen in 2018.
