Israel Keyes

What the record shows

Israel Keyes was an Anchorage contractor and Army veteran indicted in federal court in April 2012 for the kidnapping and killing of 18-year-old Samantha Koenig. In custody he confessed to killing William and Lorraine Currier of Essex, Vermont, in June 2011. He was never convicted: he died by suicide in the Anchorage Correctional Complex in December 2012, about three months before trial. According to U.S. Attorney Karen Loeffler, quoted by the Anchorage Daily News, Keyes said he had killed Koenig, the Curriers and five others. In August 2013 the FBI said it had linked 11 killings to him based on his statements, most unnamed and unverified.

The Vermont State Police record that Bill Currier, 50, and Lorraine Currier, 55, were last seen at their Essex home on the evening of June 8, 2011, and that evidence at the house suggested they had not left voluntarily. According to the Anchorage Daily News, Keyes later said he had flown to Chicago, driven to Vermont, taken the couple in their own car to an abandoned farmhouse, shot Bill Currier and strangled Lorraine Currier. The farmhouse had been demolished before investigators arrived, and the bodies have not been located. Keyes was never charged in Vermont.

Samantha Koenig was abducted from the Common Grounds coffee stand in Anchorage on February 1, 2012. According to the account released by Anchorage police and the FBI in December 2012, reported by Alaska Public Media, Keyes approached in a ski mask near closing, bound her with zip ties and drove her to a shed at his home, where he sexually assaulted and strangled her. The next day he left on a pre-planned cruise from New Orleans. After returning on February 17 he photographed the body with a dated newspaper and left a typed $30,000 ransom demand in a city park. The remains were placed under the ice of Matanuska Lake; FBI divers recovered them in early April.

The ransom led to his arrest. The U.S. Attorney's Office stated that Koenig's family deposited reward money into the account linked to her stolen debit card so withdrawals could be tracked, and that Keyes withdrew money from ATMs in Alaska, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. On March 13, 2012, a Texas Highway Patrol corporal stopped a white Ford Focus matching a bulletin near Lufkin, Texas; officers found Koenig's phone and ATM card. Returned to Alaska on a federal access-device fraud charge, the Anchorage Daily News reported, he soon confessed and told investigators where to find her body.

On April 18, 2012, the U.S. Attorney announced a federal grand jury indictment on three counts: kidnapping resulting in death, receiving and possessing ransom money, and access device fraud. The kidnapping count carried a maximum penalty of death or life imprisonment. Keyes pleaded not guilty to all three counts before U.S. District Judge Michael Thompson. In May 2012 he tried to escape by vaulting the courtroom rail and was subdued with a Taser. Trial was set for March 2013.

In FBI interviews Keyes described other killings. According to the Anchorage Daily News, he admitted to four murders in Washington state, where he lived from about 2001 to 2007, and one on the East Coast in 2009, with the body left in New York. He named none of those victims, and none has been identified. The FBI said he buried caches of weapons and body-disposal items, two of which were recovered in Alaska and New York, and that he financed his travel partly through bank robberies.

Keyes was found dead in his cell on the morning of December 2, 2012; Alaska State Troopers called it an apparent suicide, and Wikipedia gives the date of death as December 1. Because he died before trial, no court ever ruled on the Koenig charges or any other killing. In August 2013 the FBI released a timeline of his travels and said three further killings had been added based on his statements.

Keyes was born on January 7, 1978, in Richmond, Utah, according to Wikipedia. He served in the U.S. Army from 1998 to 2001, lived in Neah Bay, Washington, and moved to Anchorage in March 2007, where he ran a construction business and lived with his partner and daughter.