Israel Keyes killed 8 times, maybe more. The confessed serial killer was found dead in his jail cell Sunday in Anchorage, Alaska, apparently by suicide.
Few details of Keyes’ suicide have been released, pending autopsy results and an investigation by the Alaska Bureau of Investigation.
Nonetheless, with Israel Keyes death it may be difficult to determine how many people he killed, when and where he did them, and what led him down this spooky path of carefully planned, random serial killings.
I was most surprised to encounter an article on CNN (Suspect in Alaska murder tied to other killings) about Israel Keyes’ suicide, as well as a slipshod sketch of his misdeeds, as confessed to Alaskan police, but given only in bits and pieces, whereas at times, clamming up and refusing to confess to his crimes. However, three of them have been fully defined, perhaps since Keyes had noticed their significant promulgation in the news. This, without knowing for sure, is the reason I can discern for why Israel came completely clean with curious detectives.
I’m referring, of course, to barista Samantha Koenig, a case I’m very familiar with (I wrote two stories on her abduction from a small coffee stand), and to a June 2011 kidnapping and murder of a couple from Essex, Vermont, Bill and Lorraine Currier. It would seem as if Keyes (while in custody) spilled the beans entirely on this double homicide; the Anchorage Daily News has published a harrowing account of how this crazy man stalked this couple and chose them as his victims, since they had an attached garage, no children, and no dog (a finicky, eccentric serial killer indeed)!
If you have the guts for it, you’ll want to read this report, Serial-murder suspect Israel Keyes called ‘a force of pure evil acting at random,’ by Michelle Theriault and Lisa Demer. That power phrase of a U.S. attorney for Vermont, Tristram Coffin, caught my eye! How does an individual turn into a completely evil person? What was Israel Keyes’ childhood days like? What were his experiences like in the army, for example? What motivated him to kill people he never knew in the first place, and had no reason to hold any grudge towards? Such as poor Bill and Lorraine Currier?
Perhaps his DNA is not right? Is EVIL only learned, or could it be inherited from our parents? That is, is it sociological or is biological? Could it, possibly be a combination of both aberrations? Where and when did Israel learn to be so cold, and more importantly, why did he end up this way? We know he was disciplined and well-organized, but why go to so much trouble just so you can kill a bunch of people? Just for the thrill of it? Just to get away with it? Conceivably, just to fool the cops?
With this theory in mind, once he was nabbed and once he realized they’d convict him for Samantha Koenig’s murder, it was all over with (in his mind), he commits suicide. And then there were 5 other killings which we can’t yet attach a face to, one in New York state and four in Washington state; it looks like two of those in Washington were another couple. And then we know of at least two bank robberies and of this elaborate scheme, hiding caches of weapons, cash, and supplies who knows where, such as Eagle River, Alaska and in New York state (near Blakes Falls Reservoir in Parishville).
I wonder if Israel ever worked in military intelligence of some kind? All these plans he had are totally crazy, unless he may have some background in some type of undercover work. Well, he may have been simply deluded and imagined he worked for the CIA or something. I wonder also, if his military record is classified or whether it will eventually surface in the news. Did he ever undertake any psychological analysis, or did he remain under the radar of detection his entire 34 years on our planet? Many of us would like to know what made this man tick, so we can be on the look out for other arbitrary killing machines that are running loose in society.
Source: LA Times
