Israel Keyes: Where did Alaska serial killer travel?

Israel Keyes, Alaska serial killer: The FBI released a detailed map and timeline of Israel Keyes' travels and confessed killings of 11 people. But are there other deaths in Canada, Mexico and Belize?

|
(AP Photo/FBI, File)
Israel Keyes confessed to authorities in Alaska that he killed at least 11 people. Keyes committed suicide in his jail cell in December 2012 while awaiting trial.

The FBI on Monday released an updated timeline of travels and crimes by Israel Keyes, a confessed Alaska serial killer who is believed to have killed 11 people before committing suicide in his jail cell last year.

The timeline sheds some new light on a mysterious case that left a trail of unsolved killings around the country. FBI spokesman Eric Gonzalez said the goal of releasing the information is to identify victims who remain unknown, and provide some closure to their families.

"We've exhausted all our investigative leads," Gonzalez said.

The FBI statement said that "Keyes traveled internationally and it is unknown if he committed any homicides while outside of the United States," the FBI statement said. Keyes was known to have traveled to Canada, Mexico and Belize between 2001 and 2008.

The FBI also set up an interactive map of Keyes' travel from 1997-2012.

The FBI documents said Keyes frequented prostitutes during his travels and killed an unidentified couple in Washington state sometime between July 2001 and 2005. Keyes also told investigators he committed two separate murders between 2005 and 2006, disposing of at least one of the bodies in Lake Crescent, near Port Angeles, Wash.

When he killed himself in jail, the 34-year-old Keyes was awaiting a federal trial in the rape and strangulation murder of 18-year-old Samantha Koenig, who was abducted February 2012 from the Anchorage coffee stand where she worked.

Keyes confessed to killing Koenig and at least seven others around the country, including Bill and Lorraine Currier of Essex, Vt., in 2011. The FBI said Monday that Keyes is believed to actually have killed 11 people, all strangers. Keyes told investigators his victims were male and female, and that the murders occurred in fewer than 10 states, but he did not reveal all locations.

Koenig and the Curriers were the only victims named by Keyes because he knew authorities had tied him to their deaths. Keyes told investigators only one other victim's body besides Koenig's was ever recovered, but that victim's death was ruled as accidental. The bodies of the Curriers were never found.

The FBI said Keyes admitted frequenting prostitutes, but it's unknown if Keyes met any of his victims this way.

Keyes said he robbed several banks to fund his travels along with money he made as a general contractor, according to the FBI. Keyes also told authorities he broke into as many as 30 homes throughout the country, and he talked about covering up a homicide through arson.

The timeline begins in summer of 1997 or 1998, when Keyes abducted a teenage girl while she and friends were tubing on the Deschutes River, he told investigators. The FBI said Keyes was living in Maupin, Ore., at the time, and the abduction is believed to have occurred near that area.

The FBI said Keyes lived in Neah Bay, Wash., in 2001 after he was discharged from the Army. When he lived in Neah Bay, Keyes committed his first homicide, according to the timeline. The identity of the victim is not known, and neither is the location of the murder.

Keyes moved to Anchorage in 2007, but continued to travel extensively outside the state.

After killing Koenig, Keyes flew to New Orleans where he went on a cruise. He left Koenig's body in a shed outside his Anchorage home for two weeks, according to the FBI. After the cruise, Keyes drove to Texas. The FBI said that during this time, Keyes may have been responsible for a homicide in Texas or a nearby state — a crime Keyes denied.

Keyes was arrested in Lufkin, Texas, about six weeks after Koenig's disappearance. He had sought a ransom and used Koenig's debit card. Three weeks after the arrest, Koenig's dismembered body was found in a frozen lake north of Anchorage.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Israel Keyes: Where did Alaska serial killer travel?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0813/Israel-Keyes-Where-did-Alaska-serial-killer-travel
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe