Inside the mind of Alaska’s serial killer
After Israel Keyes' prison suicide, the FBI has found new links tying him to Christian white supremacists
Topics: Southern Poverty Law Center, Israel Keyes, FBI, Texas, Alaska, Christian Identity, News
Confessed serial killer Israel Keyes committed suicide in an Alaska jail cell last weekend by slitting his wrist with a disposable razor and strangling himself with a sheet tied between his neck and extended foot, authorities say.
Before killing himself, the 34-year-old man, who was exposed to Christian Identity white supremacy beliefs and a survivalist lifestyle as a teenager, confessed to killing an Anchorage barista, a Vermont couple and five others he coyly didn’t identify.
The 18-year-old barista was abducted at gunpoint last February, raped and strangled by Keyes, who later dismembered her body and disposed of it in a frozen Alaska lake. Those remains were recovered after Keyes’ arrest in Texas in March.
Now, with some urgency, the FBI is piecing together a timeline of Keyes’ life while various law enforcement investigators throughout the United States are dusting off old homicide cases to see if Keyes, who traveled extensively over the past decade, may be responsible. Those cold cases which have foreign DNA evidence could be the key to identifying Keyes’ as the killer.
Four of the murders occurred in the state of Washington, along with one in New York, before he randomly killed a Vermont couple in 2011, authorities say.
Keyes knew the names of his other victims, but never divulged their identities to investigators, Jeff Bell, an Anchorage police officer who interviewed the killer, told the Anchorage Daily News.
The weekend suicide is frustrating, Bell told the newspaper, because Keyes gave few clues to help locate his other victims’ remains or their families. While Keyes admitted to killing eight people, he indicated there are “a lot more” yet to be discovered, the newspaper reported.
Keyes was born in Utah to fundamentalist Mormon parents who later moved to Stevens County in a remote corner of Washington state, reportedly living “off the grid” in a cabin with wood heat and no electricity, various sources have told Hatewatch.
The undersheriff in Stevens County says her department has no links between Keyes and unsolved homicides there.
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