Please exercise caution while reading this my take it can be upsetting and graphic for some.
Our story begins on February 1st, 2012, in Anchorage, Alaska with a young woman named Samantha Koenig. Samantha worked at a drive through coffee stand that only holds one employee. Her boyfriend arrived to pick her up after a shift since she didn't have a car and he's shocked that she isn't there.
Her boyfriend did have a text from her saying she'll be staying at a friends house and to let her dad know. Her boyfriend knows this is out of character and immediately calls her dad. Samantha isn't with her dad and her dad reports her missing that night.
Police think this will be a slam dunk case because of security footage. On the security footage Samantha is seen making coffee for a customer. She gives him the coffee and for a second appears to be caught off guard by something off camera. When she turns back, she's clearly scared and startled. She raises her hands and with her hands in the air, turns off all the lights in this little coffee stand. After a few minutes, you see Samantha handing over all the cash in the register. She then gets on the floor and stays there. Perhaps she is talking to him but we aren't sure of the interaction going on.
Feel free to watch the video footage below of her abduction but exercise caution.
But the person who we are assuming held her at gun point, crawls through the window, and into the stand with Samantha. It doesn't take long for him to remove her from the stand. They can be seen for a brief moment on the outside surveillance before they disappear.
The FBI is brought in to assist and they're combing through every detail in her life to see who would want to harm her. Two and a half weeks go by before there's a break. Samantha's boyfriend gets a text from Samantha's phone. The text says "Conner park sign under pic of albert ain't she purty" This is posted below.
Police and FBI go to Conner Park. Pinned to a bulletin board is a ransom note. The ransom note has a picture of Samantha holding that days paper. Whoever this person is, is asking for $30,000 be deposited in Samantha's bank account. The money is quickly pulled together and police decide they will immediately arrest whoever withdraws money from her account. Slowly a bunch of ATM withdraws start happening from her account. The only problem was that whoever is withdrawing money is being extremely cautious and always has a black ski mask on. Of course, police dispatch someone to that location immediately every time but they're still a step behind because by the time they get there, this person is long gone.
However what police do notice is a white Ford Focus car and is present in all the video footage. Eventually someone is making withdrawals in Texas. An All Points Bulletin or APB is put out in Texas. God Bless the Highway patrol man who showed up to work that day, ready to do his job. He was on his usual route when he sees a white Ford Focus. He follows him and is eventually able to pull him over a traffic violation. He asks for his license and registration, and sees he is from Anchorage, Alaska. The name on the card was Israel Keyes. The officer does a search of the vehicle and finds plenty of proof to link him to Samantha's abduction. He has clothing of the man seen on the ATM videos, a gun, Samantha's debit card, and Samantha's cell phone in his possession. Police are able to hold him for fraud.
Israel Keyes doesn’t look like the menacing murderer most people expect. At this point, police still don’t know they should’ve been looking for a serial killer this entire time. Israel even has a long-time girlfriend and young daughter. He also told police that nobody in his life knows the true him.
When Israel finally cooperates, he tells investigators to not get hopeful about Samantha coming home and that she is already dead. Israel says he picked the coffee stop at random. Israel says he ordered his coffee and when she turned around to give it to him, he pulled a gun on her, and forced his way in. He then tied her with zip ties and forced her out the back door. What we don’t see is that Samantha broke free and ran. Unfortunately he was too quick and tackled her. He then forced her into his truck and gun point. They drove away without anyone noticing. Israel told Samantha he was abducting her for ransom money to calm her down, all while knowing that his plan was to kill her.
Sure he was planning to exploit her for money but he wasn’t going to keep her alive long enough for that to happen. Samantha didn’t have her phone or debit card on her so that was a flaw in his plan. She left her phone in the coffee stand and her debit card in her boyfriends truck. In order to carry out his plan, he went back to the coffee stand, risking being caught to get that. The debit card was trickier. He actually went to her house to get the card from her boyfriends truck to get it. While he’s doing that, Samantha’s boyfriend catches him in the act. He is then confronted by Samantha’s boyfriend and her boyfriend runs back in the house for help. But by the time her boyfriend gets help, Israel is gone.
Israel forces Samantha to give him her pin number. At this point, he has no use for her. He sexually assaults her and then kills her in his backyard shed. Now mind you, his girlfriend and daughter are inside the house behind it. He goes back in the house, pretends everything is fine, and packs for a cruise that he and his girlfriend are going on.
After the cruise, he puts together a ransom note with a photo of Samantha. In the photo, Samantha is seen alive and holding that days newspaper. I bet you’re wondering why this timeline is screwed up because I just said Samantha was dead but now she's alive in the ransom and she has that days paper in her hands. This is super creepy. Samantha was actually dead at this time but due to the frigidly cold temperatures in Alaska, Samantha’s body didn’t decompose much. He propped her up to make her look alive. He then uses needle and thread to force her eyes open and sewed the days paper in her hands.
I'll post the picture but mind you, it's graphic because she is dead in this picture.
Israel says he dismembered her body and disposed of her in a lake. Her body was recovered where Israel says she will be and she is finally laid to rest.
Israel admits this wasn’t his first crime. He makes a deal with police that he will tell them everything with the conditions that they can't nationalize his story because he doesn’t want his daughter to find out the horrific things he’s done and that he wants to be executed within the year. I'm not in the business of pleasing serial killers hence why I'm posting this.
Still Israel controlled every conversation. He hints at there being other murders but rambles about how he wants assurances that they won't release anything and he’ll be put to death. Like a lake in Vermont he spent a lot of time at or a house he owned in New York.
Israel traveled a lot and he was a meticulous planner. He would travel just to hide a "kill set" which includes restraints, a weapon of some kind, and cash. He would leave it there for his next victim of opportunity. Some of these "kill sets" have been found internationally. He didn’t have a type. He would kill whoever and whenever. He would usually sexual assault them first. It didn’t matter what gender they where. He would sexually assault men and women and likely engaged in acts of necrophilia. Engaging in necrophilia was information he especially didn’t like sharing or wanting out there. After hours of talking with authorities, he eventually starts talking about a double homicide of Bill and Lorraine Curriers that took place in Vermont.
When Keyes was visiting his brother in Vermont he made a deadly detour. He was passing through Burlington when he decided to dig up a "kill set" he’d buried several years earlier that held zip ties, ammunition, guns, silencers, Drano, and duct-tape and began his search for potential victims.
Keyes came upon the house of Bill and Lorraine Currier a little after midnight, after walking on foot from his nearby hotel. They are pictured just above here. He cut the couple’s phone line and broke into the garage. Keyes made his way to the couple’s bedroom where he found Bill and Lorraine asleep. The couple woke up to see a man dressed in all black wearing a headlamp, armed with a gun. He tied the couple up with zip ties and quizzed them on details of their home, including whether they had a safe, where their ATM cards were and whether or not they had a gun. Keyes took the handgun Lorraine had kept for protection, along with their cell phones, and then forced the couple to get into their own vehicle before driving them to an abandoned home he’d scouted out earlier.
Once there, he tied Bill to a stool in the basement of the abandoned property, while he left Lorraine behind in the car. When he returned he found Lorraine had escaped from the front seat of the car and was trying to run to the main road, he tackled her and dragged her into a bedroom of the home, tying her arms and legs to the bed.
Bill began to shout, asking “Where’s my wife? Where’s my wife?” When Keyes went down to check on him, he discovered he had worked himself part of the way free.
“That pissed me off,” Keyes would later tell investigators during his confession. “Because there’s a very specific way I want things done, and I have the whole thing planned out. I have everything I need to do it.”
After discovering Bill had altered his plans, Keyes told investigators he “lost control" and struck him with a shovel repeatedly before taking out a gun and fatally shooting him multiple times.
Keyes returned to the bedroom where he cut Lorraine’s clothes with a knife and raped her twice. During this sexual assault, Keyes strangled Lorraine to the point where she lost consciousness. Then he brought her to the basement to see her husband’s bloody corpse. After sitting her down on a bench, he strangled her from behind with a rope, ending her life. Keyes doused the bodies with Drano, tossed them into a corner in the basement, covering them with debris before he left.
Unfortunately when they get this confession from Keyes, the building was demolished. Obviously this building would’ve smelled horribly from the decomposition but the demolishing crew didn’t think much of it. They went ahead and demolished the building, taking their bodies and all the evidence with the demolished building. The bodies haven’t been found. He has dropped hints about other murders. People believe he is one of the most prolific serial killers the US has known. However as close as investigators were to answers, we will never know everything. In December of 2012 he was found dead in his cell due to suicide with a long rambling note that basically says how much he loves murder. Police believe he began killing in 2001 but he likely started sooner.
These cases are so recent and it sounds so scary to think about interacting with a serial killer. As tragic and senseless as Samantha’s death truly was, at least her death put a stop to him.
Mugshot of Israel Keyes
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