Israel Keyes Victims

Case background and investigation

Samantha Koenig, 18, disappeared at about 8 p.m. on February 1, 2012 from the Common Grounds Espresso stand in Anchorage, Alaska, where she was working, according to a timeline published by the Anchorage Daily News. A security camera recorded her abduction, CBS News reported. In the following weeks her debit card was used and, on February 24, a text message demanding ransom was sent from her phone.

Card activity led investigators to Israel Keyes, an Anchorage resident who was by then travelling in the southern United States. He was arrested on March 13, 2012 in Lufkin, Texas. On April 2, FBI divers recovered Koenig's body from Matanuska Lake, north of Anchorage. A federal indictment made public on April 18 charged Keyes with kidnapping resulting in death, possession of ransom money and use of a stolen debit card, the Anchorage Daily News reported.

While in custody Keyes spoke repeatedly with investigators. According to the U.S. attorney for Alaska, as quoted by the Anchorage Daily News, he said he had killed Koenig, a Vermont couple and five other people. The couple were Bill and Lorraine Currier, who were last seen at their home in Essex, Vermont, on the evening of June 8, 2011. Vermont State Police say the evidence indicated they had not left voluntarily. Authorities said they were able to corroborate enough of Keyes's account to be convinced he was responsible. He was never charged in their deaths, and their bodies have not been located.

Keyes was found dead in his cell at the Anchorage jail on the morning of December 2, 2012, in what authorities described as a suicide. He had not been tried for any killing. At a briefing that day, officials said publicly for the first time that they believed he was a serial killer whose victims were strangers chosen at random, and that he had described four killings in Washington state and one in New York state.

In August 2013 the FBI released a timeline of Keyes's travels and said it believed he had committed 11 murders across the United States between 2001 and 2012, according to KTRE's report on the release. The bureau said he flew to distant cities, rented cars and drove long distances, and that he had buried caches of weapons and other items around the country in advance. CBS News reported in 2021 that the FBI believes Debra Feldman, 49, last seen in Hackensack, New Jersey, on April 8, 2009, was also a victim, although agents said they had no forensic evidence and her body has not been found.

The remaining victims have not been identified. The FBI has asked anyone with information about Keyes's movements to come forward.