American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

by Maureen Callahan

Finally, complaints about the federal prosecutor were made through the proper channels, and these went all the way through chain of command to Washington, DC. Word came back to Feldis: Your behavior is unacceptable. And yet, incredibly, Kevin Feldis remained in the interrogation room, often leading the charge. To this day, no one will say why that was allowed to happen.

There was one guy in particular who Keyes worshipped. In fact, some of the guys often joked that they were more like a couple than army buddies. This was probably the same individual who took Keyes to his first concert, at the KeyArena on September 22, 2000, and from that night on, “Keyes liked what [the other soldier] liked.” This transparent and somewhat desperate desire Keyes had to belong, to have someone help him become something he hadn’t known existed—cool—explained so much: the bingeing on alcohol and drugs, the secrecy about his childhood, even the brandings.

No one thought the brandings were about anything more than rebellion. But they were. This was something Keyes would share with agents. His brandings, at first, represented his rejection of God and his interest in Satanism. Initially, Keyes thought, there had to be a higher reason he was like this—why it was he liked hurting animals and people and never felt guilt or even shame. Ultimately that logic didn’t hold, because Keyes realized he couldn’t believe in the devil without believing in God. Evil was something else entirely.

Now that Keyes had almost escaped, there was no reason he wouldn’t try again. — Payne and Bell talked to Keyes the next day. In a less official capacity, Payne would deal with Feldis and Bell would deal with the jail. In typical Alaskan fashion, all involved knew best: Let’s not leave a paper trail.

And surprise, surprise: Bell’s warnings still went unheeded. Whether it was haplessness or stupidity or laziness, nothing had changed at ACC. Even when Chandler learned that Keyes was still shaving with disposable razors—against express orders—he did nothing more than tape a handwritten sign to Keyes’s cell. DO NOT GIVE THIS MAN A RAZOR BLADE.

Any one of us could have been a victim of Israel Keyes. After the FBI went public with the case, sightings and encounters involving Keyes were reported everywhere from the Appalachian Trail to California to Montague, Massachusetts, to San Padre Island, Texas, to New York City’s Union Square.

It’s worth asking: In a post-9/11 world, how did a self-employed construction worker with below-average income purchase so many one-way plane tickets and never get flagged by Homeland Security? Was Keyes a beneficiary of racial profiling? He sometimes traveled with guns, breaking them apart and stashing them in carry-ons, yet was never once questioned by the TSA.

Multiple people told the FBI they believed Keyes had approached them on beaches, in national parks, on trailheads, and in campgrounds—even at their homes, walking right up to their doors or porches or driveways. He would try to make conversation or offer help. If he knocked on your door he was an insurance salesman. Several people reported the same scene, having witnessed Keyes, sometimes w...

A woman in Texas believes she was followed by Keyes while driving. Another believes she was followed and nearly kidnapped by him on a dark, deserted stretch of Highway 112 in Port Angeles in 2001 or 2002. In a lengthy email to the FBI, she recounted what happened after filling up h...

Other victims may yet be recovered and identified, and that work may come together sooner than later. If Keyes was telling the truth about the body in Lake Crescent, Washington, and investigators believe he was, it’s still there. An expert at the Bureau told Goeden that the conditions of that lake, pristine freshwater with very little marine life, would preserve the remains considerably. That they were weighted down would make them easier to find. Halla and Sanders requested a search, but the Bureau told them they didn’t want to spend the money.

The Anchorage Correctional Complex, the Alaska Department of Corrections, and state attorneys are so corrupt that in 2016 these attorneys advised prisons not to keep records and not to document causes or circumstances of inmate deaths. In January 2018, the Anchorage Daily News reported that ACC had secretly wired visitation rooms Keyes used, and that these rooms remained wired ever since, illegally recording attorney-client conversations.

This book is based on hundreds of hours of original interviews, as well as thousands of previously unreleased documents. These include the Samantha Koenig confession, provided to me by an anonymous source; Lieutenant George Murtie’s personal diary of the Currier investigation and his own interrogation of Keyes via phone; the FBI’s internal timeline based in part on Keyes’s journals, FBI witness statements, lab reports, affidavits and search warrants, emails, court documents, contemporaneous news reports, Keyes’s arrest records and military records, and portions of the original Anchorage Police Department case file. Though names had been largely redacted, it was easy to identify sources based on information I had obtained through investigators.