Why So Serial?
A Former Police Detective and His Son Discuss Cases of Serial Killers with a Fresh and Entertaining Perspective.
Why So Serial?
Buried Secrets (Israel Keyes)
Lurking beneath the surface of an ordinary construction worker's life was a methodical predator who spent years perfecting the art of murder without detection. Israel Keyes represents a terrifying evolution in serial killing—one who broke all the rules about patterns and predictability that investigators typically rely on.
Born in Utah to a Mormon family before living off-grid in Washington State, nothing about Keyes' background immediately signaled his future path. After military service and establishing a construction business in Alaska, he appeared to everyone as a normal family man. But this carefully constructed façade concealed his true nature: a calculating killer who buried "murder kits" in orange Home Depot buckets across at least seven states years before needing them.
What makes Keyes uniquely chilling is his approach to evading detection. He would fly to one city, rent a car, drive thousands of miles to commit murders, and pay for everything in cash. He chose victims completely at random, with no connecting factors, and studied where other serial killers had failed. This methodical planning allowed him to operate undetected until his capture following the abduction and murder of 18-year-old Samantha Koenig from an Anchorage coffee stand in 2012.
The most haunting aspect of Keyes' case is how much remains unknown. During FBI interviews—which he treated as performances rather than confessions—he admitted to at least 11 murders, but investigators believe the true number is higher. He detailed only a few cases, including the Vermont murders of Bill and Lorraine Currier, before committing suicide in his jail cell on December 2, 2012, leaving behind a blood-soaked poem rather than answers.
Despite his death, the search continues for more victims and undiscovered murder kits. Join us as we explore the disturbing case of a killer who operated like a ghost, studying the landscape of murder to create a nearly perfect system—until he seemingly wanted to be caught. What drove this change? Why did someone so careful become so careless? These questions may never be fully answered.
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Check, check. Hey man, turn me up. I got something to say. There we go, oh yeah, oh yeah, that's it. Welcome back to the greatest podcast on the planet. Why so Serial? Oh, my goodness, it's about to be crazy y'all. This is episode two. Buried Secrets, let's go.
Speaker 3:Hello and welcome back to why so Serial? My name is Corey and this is Soren over here. Say hello, soren. Hello, we are taking over the show today because the previous podcasters that were previously hired to fill these positions were just a bit, you say, lackluster. Do you think that was pretty good? Should I keep it full time?
Speaker 4:no, because I would be laughing literally the whole time.
Speaker 5:I wouldn't stop oh shoot yeah, well, we had to throw a little bit of uh, we're trying to change it up a little bit, but but, in all seriousness, welcome back to your favorite podcast, probably, maybe, why so? Serial. And today this is episode two Buried Secrets. Now, most serial killers have patterns victim types, methods, trophies. They want credit, right. But what happens when they avoid those patterns on purpose? Bury murder kits, yes, murder kits all across the country, like they're planning, like the little scavenger hunt of murder. Tonight we're going to be talking about Israel, keith. He was a guy who didn't want the spotlight, he just wanted control.
Speaker 4:Insane. Yeah, Wait. So what was all in those murder kits?
Speaker 5:So these murder kits, he put them in little like those orange Home Depot buckets. You know what I'm talking about yeah little like those orange Home Depot buckets.
Speaker 5:You know what I'm talking about. So he would fill those buckets with things like cash, guns, tape, drano. Drano is like a drain cleaning chemical that you pour down your drains to like unclog them and stuff. He would use that to help dispose of evidence and bodies and stuff. So it was basically everything he would need to carry out these murders and the cover-up in little kits in all these different states. So when he would travel to places to to carry out his unaliving, he would uh, he would have access to all these things already and he would know where to go to dig it up and he didn't have to go to home depot and and the hardware store or whatever and generate a paper trail of receipts and camera and stuff like that yeah, wait, so he just had like multiple across different states I think the number is like seven different states that they confirmed that they had him in.
Speaker 5:But as you'll see when we talk more about them that to this day there is way more unanswered stuff than there is answered stuff. We have way more questions when it comes to israel keys and answers, that's for sure. But let's talk about what we do know. So israel keys was born in utah in 1978 and he was uh part of a born into a mormon family and I don't know if you know much about mormon, but it's a type of religion yeah, where they don't drink alcohol, they drink soda yeah, they don't.
Speaker 5:They have a lot of rules. It's pretty, pretty strict. But later they ended up moving to washington, like Washington State, not Washington DC. So out there in the Pacific Northwest it's kind of crazy, because they grew up like off the grid. They didn't have any electricity, no contact with any outsiders or anything like that. And an interesting fact about that part of it is he actually built his family a cabin when he was like 16 years old. There's a picture of him standing in front of it.
Speaker 5:I'll have to find it and show it to you, but it's actually really impressive so they were like amish yes and yeah, I mean kind of because they didn have they grew up off the grid no electricity, kind of just, I mean they went to. I mean yeah, I guess Amish do go to the store and stuff like that. So yeah, very similar to that, yeah.
Speaker 4:I see them riding their horses to the grocery store.
Speaker 5:Yeehaw so funny fact about yeehaw. What are they? Amish cowboys so fun fact about sword and I, our hometown in maryland. We actually were kind of nestled in a large amish community and um, so it was often where we would be driving down the road and get stuck in a like on a sunday when they were going to church service, be stuck in like a little traffic jam of horse and buggies and it was like a normal thing for us to see a horse and buggy, you know, tied up outside the grocery store or something like that. But it was a cool community to be a part of. I don't know if you remember cause you were so young, but you remember we used to get eggs and pigs and all kinds of stuff from them.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Like alive pigs. Well, they would uh, slaughter it for you right then and there, and you take it home and cook it, yeah, but anyway, it's, it's real keith. Um, yeah, you didn't know that did you? No, I didn't yeah, yeah, fun fact. Now you learned something about yourself too.
Speaker 4:I don't know if I learned that yeah, um no, it was. I mean, it's just like we get meat from the grocery store all the.
Speaker 5:I don't know if I went to learn that. Yeah, I mean, it's just like we get meat from the grocery store all the time. It was just we were getting it fresh from the Amish and supporting the Amish community while we were doing it.
Speaker 4:They just cut the head off right in front of you.
Speaker 5:I won't go into details about how they did it, but no, it wasn't that brutal no.
Speaker 5:Oh okay, they were humane about it. So, yeah, he was nothing really crazy about his childhood. The one thing that did stand out to me was he had from a pretty early age as a kid he had this fascination with death and with serial killers. And there was a point where he actually got in trouble because I guess him and the neighborhood kid he was playing with, israel, tied a cat up to a tree and just like, brutalized his cat and I won't go into detail about it because it's kind of horrible, but it was so bad that the kid ended up throwing up and going home and telling his parents about what had happened and I guess he couldn't hang out with israel anymore.
Speaker 4:But um, well, I guess back then there were so many serial killers, especially like, because, like, utah is not far from california, is it?
Speaker 5:I don't think so because, like I want to say, it's close, there's like the night stalker, the hillside Strangler, Rodney Alcala they were all in the same time frame.
Speaker 4:This was what, 80?.
Speaker 5:No, this was actually. Let's see, when was he born? He was born in 78, and these killings happened in like 2010 or 2012.
Speaker 4:But like 70s is when some of those like the like the night stalker. That's when most of them started 70, 80 that's a good point.
Speaker 5:He was probably looking at those cases and and that's a really good segue into what I wanted to talk about too with him is, um, he studied these serial killers and kind of where they went wrong and what they did well and when. When I say well, nothing about murder is good, but how they were successful at carrying out their….
Speaker 4:Yeah, like how they didn't get caught.
Speaker 5:Correct, yeah, or how they did get caught. Yeah. Because he was studying, he went into the military, the US Army 1998. He was stationed in Egypt and he was just, according to the military. He seemed quiet, polite, a little odd, but nothing outstanding about him.
Speaker 4:Everyone's a little odd. Huh, everyone's a little odd.
Speaker 5:You're dang right man we odd, you're right man. After his discharge from the military, he started a construction business in Anchorage, alaska. He had a girlfriend, he had a daughter, he had a whole family. And he was a family man, working construction by day, coming home to his girlfriend and his daughter in the evening, just like any other man, a lot of men in America. Nothing crazy about him, but um, and that's what's kind of really stood out to me when I first started looking into israel keys.
Speaker 5:Um, and just a little side note, I want to stop here for a second to everyone that does listen to this podcast. Something that we thought would be fun um is, I look into all these cases and I pick who we're going to be talking about and I don't tell Soren who we're talking about. I don't give him any information. I tell him specifically don't look up anything about anyone named Israel, keith or HH Holmes before we talk about it. Because I thought it would be an interesting thing to get Soren's honest and raw opinion, as it's happening, you know. So I just want to throw that out there to be honest, I didn't know.
Speaker 4:His name was Israel Keyes. The only thing I knew was he was burying a murder kit yeah, um.
Speaker 5:So, yeah, that was. Uh, that's a little bit of back about his background, um, just to get a little bit of a a picture of who he was. But you know, it's, it's really interesting and I think I started to say there what really stood out is he's not like other serial killers that you've read about or or seen a documentary about, like he was normal.
Speaker 4:Yeah, um, he wasn't this social outcast or, uh, some kind of deranged loner, you know yeah, which is usually weird, like in hh homes, like when he like had the skeleton, like that makes more sense. But like this. It's like besides the cat, but like yeah, he just um.
Speaker 5:The only thing I could really find was he was part of his parents, joined some church and it was like uh, I guess like some kind of white supremacist tie to it.
Speaker 5:Um, so I guess he was exposed to some kind of like extreme behavior at some point, but nothing really really stood out to me as like okay, that's where it went wrong, you know yeah but yeah, so that's a little bit about him, um, and a little bit of his background, just so we have an idea, or you have an idea, and everybody listening has an idea of who he was and where he came from now.
Speaker 5:Like I told you before, israel keys didn't have a pattern, but he did study those serial killers, yeah, from the past, and kind of formulated his best way of of doing things. So, um, he actually, even when he was later on, during his interviews and stuff, he like criticized these other serial killers and just talked about how bad they were at serial killing. Yeah, um, israel didn't just decide like, oh, today I'm gonna go commit a murder. He was, he was planning out his crimes years ahead of time. So we talked about those kill kits, remember, yeah, so just to elaborate a little bit more on that, those were those.
Speaker 5:Like I told you, he had those five gallon buckets and he put weapons in them zip ties, cash, gerano for body disposal and other tools. He might need binoculars on this. Dude was like, uh, with his military background, he learned a lot, yeah, um, and and planning and execution and just, uh, having a plan B and having a contingency plan. He learned about surveillance and counter surveillance and all these things he used when he was planning to murder. They found some of these kits in Vermont, new York, texas, florida, louisiana and there's probably still kits out there right now.
Speaker 4:So was he just trying to place it in almost every region, if you think about it? I think so I think Vermont and New York are northeast, louisiana Florida southeast, and then Texas is what Middle East. And then there's one other Middle Eastern one.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I think so. I think he's just putting these kits around. So if he decided there was a certain area he wanted to go, he would have a kit there.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it makes a lot of sense when you think about it like that.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, it does. So what was interesting is he would fly to a city from Alaska. So I saw this interview when I was watching a documentary about, about Keys. And you know, he worked, he owned his construction business and was like pretty well respected in the community. One guy actually that had hired him for a while to do a lot of work at his house said you know, israel was respectful, always on time, always clean, always respectful, all these things and always did a good job. But every once in a while he'd be like, hey, I'm going on a trip, I'll be back in like a week, but nothing out of the ordinary. He would come back and pick up business as usual, just like if you and I were to go on a vacation, nobody would think anything of it yeah, but on vacation we don't murder people true, I have not.
Speaker 5:Um, but yeah, man, so he would. He would fly to a city like Chicago. I'll give you a real example. He would fly from Anchorage, alaska, or wherever the hell an airport is in Alaska. He would fly to Chicago, rent a car in Chicago and then drive thousands of miles to Vermont, to where he was actually going to carry out his murder.
Speaker 4:Why wouldn't he just fly to Vermont, to where he was actually going to carry out his murder?
Speaker 5:Why wouldn't he just fly to Vermont, because then there's a record that he flew from Alaska to Vermont. A murder happened in Vermont. He was trying not to be linked. He was thinking about everything that could go wrong.
Speaker 4:Dude, that's insane. Like you have to put in a ton of thinking to think of that, Like I didn't even think of that, but it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it does. I mean, it was smart if you don't want to get caught, um, so, like I said he would, he would drive thousands of miles from wherever he flew to to carry out his murder. He would go to his kill kit, gather his kill kit, um, and then carry out his. The rest of his plan, um, what he would do once he got to the city that he wanted to carry out on a living in, he paid for everything in cash.
Speaker 5:He didn't use any electronics, he turned his phone off, got rid of the battery and you know, from an investigative standpoint, if a murder were to occur right here right now and you don't have anything to go off of, those are the things you're looking for, especially if he was linked in any kind of way. You're looking at cell phone records, you're looking at locations. You're looking at travel records you're looking at did they go and buy duct tape and a knife from the store? Those are the kind of things you're looking at. So he was checking off the list of things that could go wrong for him and things that could get him caught, and he didn't get caught. So he actually even said that he would use Google Earth. Are you familiar with Google Earth at all. Yeah, have you been on there? Yeah, have you actually.
Speaker 5:Yeah, you can see a lot.
Speaker 4:Yeah, like you can literally zoom in to the point you can like see people walking on the sidewalk.
Speaker 5:Right, so that's what he did. You can pull up a house in Vermont right now and walk down the street and look around.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you get all angles.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so that's what he did. He would look at these rural areas on Google Earth and start his surveillance there. He would look for people that didn't have any kids, didn't have any dogs and lived alone Like an older couple We'll talk about a specific older couple in Vermont later that he murdered but he would look for people that nobody was going to miss right away, because his plan was to go in, find who he was going to kill, kill him, be hundreds of miles away before anybody even knew anything was wrong.
Speaker 4:So was he killing him with a gun? Yeah.
Speaker 5:Did he have a?
Speaker 4:silencer, I don't know because, I mean is this?
Speaker 5:like you said, rural vermont, though, right. Yes, I'll tell you more about how that went down.
Speaker 4:All right, but he didn't use a gun in that case okay, because I I just didn't know if like, because you said it was like rifles and stuff, right?
Speaker 5:no, it was like a handgun.
Speaker 4:Yeah, from what I understand was just handguns handguns have a decent noise that you would hear yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 5:Yeah, um. No, he was smart man, um, and you know, sometimes he didn't always commit murders. A lot of the times he would go in and take money and stuff like that and he robbed banks to get cash to fund his little operations and stuff like that. But same theory whenever he would do any kind of crime it was hard to to find him because there was nothing to link him exactly and nobody knew him there, nope. So I mean, he lived off the grid in washington state, was in the military and then went and lived in anchorage alaska, so nobody knew him in these places. So it was very easy for him to go undetected, especially with his very normal, um, outward appearance and and demeanor, yeah. So, yeah, man, it was, uh, he was. He was very well thought out, um, the guy operated like a ghost, uh. So I can only imagine, from an investigative standpoint, how difficult it must have been to work these cases where it was truly a whodunit. Yep.
Speaker 5:But I want to kind of take an interesting route here and I want to talk about the case that got him caught first. The case I want to talk about first. Her name is Samantha Koenig. The case I want to talk about first. Her name is Samantha Koenig. She was 18 years old at the time of her death and she was working the night shift at a coffee stand in Anchorage, alaska. So just to give you a little bit of a visual, it's just like a little shed-type building, a little small coffee shop in a parking lot. She was working there that night and Israel Keys walked up to the window and he was in a ski mask. But that's not super out of the ordinary in Alaska because it's like negative 8,000 degrees there. So wearing a ski mask is like everybody's wearing one, so their face doesn't freeze off their body. He walks up to the window orders an.
Speaker 5:Americano, which is the type of coffee, um, and then you do know. Okay, excuse me, how dare I insult your coffee knowledge? I do, like an americano, it's, it's basic. You know what an Americano is. Nope. It's just coffee. It's hard to fit. It's just coffee with, like water, just black coffee Iced.
Speaker 4:I don't know how y'all drink. That, though, sounds disgusting.
Speaker 5:It's good, it's an acquired taste, but he anyway he orders this coffee eventually presents a gun and she kind of thinks it's like a robbery. But it's not he. He takes her at gunpoint, um, and there's like actually a video you can go back and watch of this whole thing oh for real, yeah, um, and he took her to a shed.
Speaker 5:Um, this is after he. Kind of a few weird things happened with this. He asked her for atm card and she said that her and her boyfriend actually shared a bank account and he had the atm card in his truck. So they had to, like, go to the house and get the ATM card and she eventually gave him her PIN number and all that stuff and then he took her to this shed where he eventually kills her. He then this is where it's like really crazy. I told you he was a family man. Yeah.
Speaker 5:He had a family vacation planned to the Caribbean on a little cruise. So I don't know if he had planned to just originally get money from Samantha for this vacation or what I don't know, but the man had the job and money, so I don't know.
Speaker 4:But I mean it's smart Because, like especially when he lives in Anchorage, alaska, I don't believe that there's that many people that live in it because I've never heard of it, but there could be.
Speaker 5:I have no idea about the population.
Speaker 4:I would suspect immediately. I would think, if it's like a small town, yeah, and then, dude, he's going out to the Caribbean.
Speaker 5:Dude, I have a… Is that in America the. Caribbean? No, it's in the.
Speaker 3:Caribbean.
Speaker 4:I didn't think it was, but like then he's off the grid, it's a whole different place and it's going to be harder to get him.
Speaker 5:He was just going on vacation.
Speaker 4:But like I feel like there's something more to it though.
Speaker 5:I don't know and I don't think we ever will, but I have a theory on this location and stuff I'm going to get to later and I want to get your thoughts on it too. But anyway, he leaves her body in the shed and goes on vacation with his family.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 5:Yeah, comes back a week later, does some pretty horrible things to her body that I'm not going to go into detail about because I'm just not going to do that on this show.
Speaker 5:It's not super important, but then he realized when he got back that it was a pretty big news story that she was missing. So what he does then is really creepy. What he does then is really creepy. So he decides he's going to try to get ransom money for her and turn this into a kidnapping. So he props her body up, does her makeup, braids her hair and then actually ties her eyes open with fishing line and takes a picture of her with the newspaper from that day.
Speaker 4:That's insane.
Speaker 5:And then tries to get ransom money from her family. I'm going to show you the picture of her From what I'm talking about, after he posed her.
Speaker 4:What Dude that shows me again.
Speaker 5:If I can get my phone to unlock. That's the picture of her.
Speaker 4:Dude, that's dude. It looks like some Marvel movie.
Speaker 5:It's creepy, isn't it? Especially knowing that you can tell it's not.
Speaker 4:I mean I would think, I mean I wouldn't think that's a live person.
Speaker 5:Yeah, if you see other pictures of her you can definitely tell something's wrong. But yeah, but he eventually travels to. After that he travels to Lufkin Texas and he's got her. He's in a white Ford Focus, her car, mm-hmm and and has been using was using her ATM card. Aww, so this is where and he yeah, like I said, he's using her ATM card gets arrested. In long story short, gets arrested in Lufkin Texas after he gets pulled over, after he gets pulled over, um, and then this is where he he gets interviewed by the, the local police and then the fbi, once they realize that there's more to it than just samantha koenig's murder. It's a lot more to it. Wait, they have a serial killer on their hands did her parents ever respond to the ransom?
Speaker 5:I'm not sure. I'm not sure what ended up happening with that, because I didn't dig deep enough into that, but my theory, man, is look, Israel Keys was, like I said in the very beginning of the show. He was not the guy that was out here doing it for fame or notoriety or anything like that. I think he wanted to get caught. He spent years making sure he wouldn't get caught and he got very good at it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and then? He just goes using another person's ATM card.
Speaker 5:And I don't know if this is just where his arrogance cracked. Was he arrogant? I don't. I don't know, but I think he wanted to get caught. He did something in his, in the town he lived in, which he never did before no he used her atm card.
Speaker 5:She never did before and it was like he was leaving a trail of breadcrumbs to get caught. It's like he wanted to get caught. I think he wanted to get caught because he then gets interviewed, like I said, by the fbi and it is a performance, to say the least. He is having the time of his life in this interview. It is like it's less of an interview and more of just a performance by israel keeks. I mean, the guy is you hear him talking? And it's just like he's talking about murder and taking people's lives, like it was a fishing trip that him and the detective had gone on or something. What.
Speaker 5:He's just very nonchalant about everything. I want to actually play you a clip of him from his interview with the police. Who knows me, who has ever known me, who knows anything about me?
Speaker 3:really, Let me start that over.
Speaker 5: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 there is no one who knows so what he's saying. There is, you know. Nobody knows who I am.
Speaker 4:No one did.
Speaker 5:Correct. We talked about how good he was at living this dual life of construction worker, father, boyfriend by day, and then he's actually this very calculated arguably the most terrifying, most methodical and calculated serial killer ever. And what he's saying is people don't know me. They're going to tell you all these great things about me and it's not going to line up with anything I tell you. And what I hear from that is a lot of his interview is he is just giving these detectives a little bit of information and just baiting them in, and then he reels back a little bit and he gives them a little bit more info just to keep them going. They interview him for hours and hours on different days and everything. It's just a game for him. It's all about being in control. I'm the guy. I'm in control. You're here to talk to me. You know what I mean. Yeah.
Speaker 5:He was just always in control. After he was arrested during these interviews, he confessed to at least 11 murders, but he wouldn't name the victims. I think a big part of that and he even mentioned it in the interview a couple times is he asked them not to take anything that he said to the media. He didn't want his daughter to know. So he actually said that I don't know if he was only sharing a little bit of information so that his daughter wouldn't find out and people wouldn't know the the actual like, uh, everything that he did, yeah or what, but um, he uh did give details about a couple in vermont that he killed, um, and it was Bill and Lorraine Currier in 2011. So this is where he had one of his kill kits buried. He kind of tracked them down at random, studied them, figured out how their life worked and then broke into their home in the middle of the night one night he sees that they're in bed.
Speaker 5:He actually walks around the house and sees if there's any money that he can take, and he's like you know what, maybe I'll uh, I'll hold on to them for a little while, um, and see if I can get some money out of them. He takes them because I guess he thought it seemed like they had some money. So he took them to this abandoned farmhouse, Um, and he had bill tied up in one room. He took Lorraine upstairs, um, did some awful things to her up there while she was still alive and then, um, I guess at some point he went to go check on bill and she had broken free and started running.
Speaker 5:But he was Israel, was very fit, he was in the military, he was. He caught her she was 50 something years old and he was athletic. Big um chased her down, brought her back in, but this by this time Bill had broken free of his little zip ties or whatever. Israel did a crappy job of tying them up, apparently. So he hits Bill with a shovel, kills Bill in front of Lorraine and then eventually kills her as well. Their bodies to this day have never been found.
Speaker 4:Did he say if he had buried them? I'm not sure. He played a lot of games never been found what?
Speaker 5:Yeah, did he say, if he had buried them? Um, I'm not sure he. He played a lot of games when it came to the bodies, for whatever reason. Um, but still have no idea. Hmm. Um, the only information that I think the police had about that case was um, somebody saw a man driving their car and gave a description, and they made a composite sketch of it, but it was never linked to Keith. He did confess to that one.
Speaker 4:But did the sketch look like Keith?
Speaker 5:It did somewhat. It did somewhat, but it was very basic, but he was also a pretty basic looking dude. So, um, yeah, man, this, this interview was uh, was quite entertaining and he was really enjoying himself. Um, he drew maps of his kill kit locations and that's kind of where we have an idea of uh, where these kits were, um. But, like I said, he maintained total control in these interviews. He only talked when he thought it was going to suit him. Uh, and one thing that really stood out to me in the interview is he was like all right, here's what we're gonna do. I'll give you a couple bodies, but you're going to give me an Americano and a cigar and then just burst out in a laughter.
Speaker 4:Did he really say that?
Speaker 5:He did say that he was like I'll give you a couple, but for a cigar and Americano.
Speaker 3:Dude, what yeah?
Speaker 5:It was a performance man. He was in there rambling on, he he at one point he requested, he was like y'all need to just give me the death penalty. Um, and they were, active police were acting like they weren't gonna do that and he was like well, you know what, I don't really need your help, I'll just do it, you know dude's crazy.
Speaker 5:This was all a show for him. We do end up finding out what happened with Samantha's body, though. He had actually taken it to a lake there in Alaska, and ice fishing is very popular there. So it was not unordinary for someone to have a little shelter out on the ice with a chainsaw where they're cutting into the ice, yeah, so if somebody saw that they wouldn't think anything of it. So that's what he did. He built one of those little ice fishing, fishing, fishing ice fishing.
Speaker 5:He built a structure and, uh, he ended up. He cut the ice open and and threw her body down to the bottom of the lake because he had dismembered it. So, um yeah, the the interview is fascinating. It's just. You see him just strutting his stuff. He's smug, he's very nonchalant. Like I said, it's like he's talking about a fishing trip he took um wait it was all a game to him. He just he remained in control the entire time so did they find the bodies?
Speaker 4:or was he just saying this in the interview, or did they actually find the body?
Speaker 5:I know they went to the lake where he said he put samantha, but I don't know if they ever found her or not. I'm pretty sure like it's like hundreds of feet deep and it would have been a very. It was a daunting task for them to find it. He was like joking around in these interviews because they were like out looking for all these kill kits and he was like laughing. He was like the taxpayers are paying all this money and you got people and resources everywhere looking for this stuff.
Speaker 4:That's insane, he's insane. Dude, it's like he was confessing Like he wasn't confessing at the same time, exactly.
Speaker 5:He wasn't confessing because he felt guilty. This was he's reliving the thrill of murder. He was walking through enough and one detective even said that at one point Keys was going through his account of I don't know if it was Bill and Lorraine or someone else, but he was going through an account of from like his perspective of the murder and he said he could see goosebumps on israel's arms, like he got a thrill out. This was him reliving the thrill of murder without giving away too much information to the investigators because he didn't want his daughter to know what he did. He said he never killed any kids and stuff like that because of his daughter. But it was also thought that he killed a 13-year-old Special Olympian.
Speaker 4:But did they?
Speaker 5:I don't know if they could ever prove that one or not.
Speaker 2:I don't know if he fully confessed. It was just thought. It was just thought that.
Speaker 5:But I don't think they ever proved that or if he ever fully confessed to that one. But there's a lot of speculation on it, but he was just playing cat and mouse with the FBI and just toying with these boys. Yeah.
Speaker 5:So it was quite entertaining but also sad because, like I said, he's at least 11 that he said he did. Okay, but I wonder how many there actually are. I know people have gone back and tried to retrace his steps and tried to figure it out, but it's really unknown. Yeah, he was good at it. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 5:And he got away with it for a long time. But that's why I'm saying like he did all this careful planning for years and had everything set up and very meticulous, but then gets so sloppy in the Samantha Koenig case. Yeah. I think you will never be able to convince me he didn't want to get caught. Yeah, what do you think?
Speaker 4:I think he was just like he didn't enjoy the thrill of it anymore, or maybe he did, but there there's just so much we don't know we can't really put how, even how many people we kill, or why he stopped and that's not the word started being sloppy yeah, it's a lot of unknown for sure, but I do know this on December 2nd 2012, he committed suicide in his jail cell so anything he did know gone.
Speaker 5:He slid his wrist with a razor and then strangled himself with a bed sheet, but he he did leave behind a blood-soaked suicide note. It was very poetic, violent, but really didn't offer much closure wait.
Speaker 4:So so did he have a trial or anything, or did he kill himself before trial?
Speaker 5:He killed himself before any of that. So we have no final meal. We have no nothing. He killed himself and we're just left with this note. But he did leave under his bed a series of I guess you'd call them drawings, and there was 11 skulls that he drew in his blood. What. So I think that's where the number 11 comes from.
Speaker 4:As far as his victims.
Speaker 5:So I don't know if he left us with that, but it's still cryptic, it's still like maybe, maybe not, not one of those kind of deals. Um, the fbi continues to release new details about the keys case but, like I said before, they believe there's likely dozens more victims and not just 11.
Speaker 5:Yeah, um but, we're never gonna know. Like I said, he didn't do this for the fame. He didn't do this to be um, for everyone to know everything. He did it because he liked the thrill of it. He did it in a way that he wasn't going to get caught, I think, until he wanted to, and anybody can argue that theory with me if they want to. I would love to have that discussion with somebody, if somebody wants to reach out to me directly. But, um, we're never gonna know. We never are. He died with secrets, no names, no answers, just questions and maybe some buckets. So if, uh, you're ever out there fishing or something soaring in the woods and you see a bucket, just leave it, bro, especially if it's a home depot, just leave it, bro, especially if it's a Home Depot.
Speaker 5:Just leave it, or maybe pick it up. It could be worth something.
Speaker 4:There might be some cash.
Speaker 5:There probably is cash in it. Ooh. Yeah, you never know, but I did want to. I do have his note here. I did want to read that to you.
Speaker 5:Alright. But I will add this isn't a confession, it's not an apology that you might expect to hear. This is his final act. I told you this interview and all this was like a show for him. This is the final act. This was not an apology. He didn't do it because he felt bad. This was his final act. So here's the note go hide. Your body is a ball of snakes writhing, writhing. The blood is the ink that spills from the pen of a poet. Dreams die young and hearts are broken by the billions. The void is waiting, patient and silent. A yawning black mouth. Dream of old flames, Dream of children torn apart. You'll never understand me. You're not expected to, You're not capable. I am a god, I am a monster. I am the thing you fear when you close your eyes. And that's the note.
Speaker 4:Dude, that's weird.
Speaker 5:Yeah, but like I said, that wasn't remorse, it was ego.
Speaker 4:Exactly.
Speaker 5:It was arrogance wrapped in a poem is what that was. I mean very full of himself. Yeah. I mean part I'm a god, I'm a monster, I'm the thing you fear when you close your eyes, reminds me of that. Uh, we're talking about breaking bad last. And it reminds me of that iconic walter white scene. When he is, I am the one who knocks, yeah, but um, that's, that's israel keys.
Speaker 4:That's the the case of israel keys dude, he might be the monster when I close my eyes.
Speaker 5:To be honest, now it's insane, it's creepy I mean, but I think that's that's what he was, dude. I mean, you think about it. It's like one of those things you think's to happen to you that you're laying in your house with your family one night or your wife or whatever and some random man comes in. He didn't know these people, it was completely at random. There was no pattern. Like I said at the beginning, there was no victim profile. It wasn't like he had a specific thing he was looking for. He was looking for people to kill.
Speaker 4:That is terrifying. Yeah, or maybe it wasn't random. Like I know it seems random. There's no patterns, but you never know what he's aiming for because it's unanswered. Like maybe there was like a pattern, but like a pattern no one besides him would see if that makes sense?
Speaker 5:yeah, no, it does. That's. That's really interesting, because maybe there's just something we're not seeing that he knows. Like, like you said, I think you hit it there, we don't know. So who am I to assume? Who's anybody anybody to assume? Maybe there was a profile, maybe this wasn't as narrow, you know, or as small.
Speaker 4:Nobody knows.
Speaker 5:But I'll close on everything by just saying you know, this is a man who wanted to die in control. Like I said, he gave no names, no maps, no justice in the case. Nope, these victims didn't get justice, we just got this blood-soaked poem Yep, it wasn't even that good. No.
Speaker 5:But you know, it's just. It makes you want to know more and I think a lot of people like true crime folks and I've watched a lot of videos where it looks like people are still active in trying to figure out more about Israel Keys and, more importantly, the victims. We do this show and we talk about these serial killers, but you know, it's's not about them, it's more about the victims. Yeah, um, and it's really unfortunate in this case that these victims didn't get justice. Um, this is a guy. He didn't want to be understood. He, he wanted to be remembered, but on his terms, not anybody else's, um. But that's where it gets interesting, because now, um, you and I get to talk about how he should be remembered yep um, and in my opinion he's kind of a punk for this yeah like he gave me.
Speaker 5:He's a punk for it. That's all I can say.
Speaker 4:But that's his real keys, man uh, is there any info on any other um murders besides them too?
Speaker 5:the only one that I've heard much about is the 13 year old special olympian um, and I think I did see there was a podcast. I think they're called like true crime bs or something. I think they found somebody that found a kill kit in louisiana or something. What? Yeah, I don't I doubt they're listening to our podcast, but I'd love to find out more about that. Yeah, um, and there was some rumors like somebody called into the howard stern show. Howard stern's a radio host. I was really popular when I was your age. Somebody called in and was claiming that they were a serial killer and talked to Howard Stern for like 17 minutes and claimed to have killed all these prostitutes and stuff. And I saw a girl on Tik TOK had actually theorized that it may be Israel. Maybe it was. I mean, it's an interesting theory, but that would confuse me a little bit because he didn't want the fame and didn't want to be known. So why would he call the radio?
Speaker 4:show. Does anyone have a recording of that?
Speaker 5:Yeah, it's on YouTube, you can still see it.
Speaker 4:I'll have to look it up and then I'll have to listen to his voice again. Yeah, I don't think it. You can still see it.
Speaker 5:I'll have to look it up and then I'll have to listen to his words again. Yeah, I don't think it is, but it's an interesting theory she brought up. I mean, I'm here for it. I'm here for a theory man yeah. So let's rate them. You ready to rate them?
Speaker 4:Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 5:All right. Brutality is the first category in which you will score Ten, so brutality is the first category in which you will score Ten, ten. Yeah. What makes it a ten on the brutality scale for?
Speaker 4:you. He opened the lady's eyes with a fishing line.
Speaker 5:Yes, okay, yep, I've got no argument.
Speaker 4:And then he hit an old man in the head with a shovel. Yes, yes, he did he was bearing kill kits yep there's nothing unbrutal about that you're absolutely right.
Speaker 5:I just like to hear your explanation about it. I think it's a good one. Your next category is creativeness 10.
Speaker 4:I'd agree with it is creativeness Ten.
Speaker 5:I'd agree with it.
Speaker 4:Again with the kill kit.
Speaker 5:It's the kill kit. Yeah, yeah, intelligence.
Speaker 4:Ten.
Speaker 5:Guy was smart.
Speaker 4:Yeah, Dude, the fact. Wait. What were his years of killing?
Speaker 5:It was like gosh. That's another unknown. This all happened in 2012. He died in 2012. I think Samantha Koenig was. Let's see. I want to say yeah, he did the Samantha Koenig kidnapping and then ultimate murder on February 1st 2012.
Speaker 4:When was.
Speaker 5:Bill and Lorraine was in 2011. But he was burying these kill kids for years and when they went and looked at his travel records, he had been traveling the country for a very long time, for like a decade, so likely it was for a decade or more, a decade's 10 years, I know. Just making sure, babe, I'm not trying to insult your intelligence. I think you're a 10 on the intelligence scale. Thank you, you're welcome. Execution.
Speaker 4:It's a 10.
Speaker 5:I think it's a 10. I think it's a straight 10 for Israel Keys. But I can't disagree with you. I can't disagree with you. Like I said before, I think he was the most horrifying and calculated serial killer to date.
Speaker 4:Yeah, even compared to Holmes.
Speaker 5:Yeah, ha's Holmes was kind of a ding-dong.
Speaker 4:Yeah, can we change Holmes' intelligence?
Speaker 5:Yeah, you have him at a 10.
Speaker 4:I'm looking at it right now. Can we put it down to?
Speaker 5:an 8? Yeah, we can do that. Oh so you heard Israel Keys and you were like man Holmes ain't really that intelligent.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's like, since we're rating them at the beginning, it's like I'm basing them off of all.
Speaker 5:Yeah, now you have a good.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. Israel Keyes is a flat 10.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and no one would disagree with you on these categories, no, so yeah, that's Israel Keyes. I think it's a very interesting case altogether that we don't really have much closure on Speaking of closure, do?
Speaker 4:you have any parting words there?
Speaker 5:Soren. No, I don't All right. Well, thank you everybody for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed that very condensed version of Israel Keys. Please reach out to us. We have Instagram now we have TikTok. Please follow us on both or one of those things. Let us know who you want us to do next, who we're going to cover next. We're going to put these episodes out randomly whenever we feel like it, because that's how we roll. We also have full-time jobs and school and stuff. We're just going to try to fit it in whenever we can, but we're going to try to get you as much content as we can and something that entertains you. If you do enjoy the podcast, please rate it on apple or spotify or whatever you're listening on and reach out to us and just let us know. Um, we appreciate all the support and we will see you next time.
Speaker 1:Oh man, that was good y'all. I really enjoyed that. I'm going to tell you one thing that is the most entertained I have ever been in my entire life, and I live in entertaining life. Believe me, believe you me, I do. Let me tell y'all something. I hope y'all was entertained as I do. Now, let me tell y'all something. I hope y'all wasn't entertained as I was.
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