Cross Country Serial Killer, Israel Keyes, Targets Victims at Random

Chilling Four-page Note Found Underneath Israel Keyes' Body After Committing Suicide

In 2012, Samantha Koenig, an 18-year-old barista, vanished from an Anchorage, Alaska coffee stand. Security footage captured her serving a customer, then vanishing with a man.

Later, a ransom note demanded $30,000 for her return, including a photo of her with tape over her mouth. Despite negotiations, she was already dead, left in a shed for weeks by her killer, Israel Keyes. A methodical murderer, Keyes confessed to multiple killings, hid kill kits, and evaded capture across the United States.

Israel Keyes, like Jeremy Jones, raped and murdered victims at random after stashing murder kits around the country — until he died by suicide in December 2012 before even facing trial.

Israel Keyes confessed that he committed his first crime in 1998, shortly after he enlisted in the U.S. Army. The details of that first crime are unclear, but people who served with Keyes remembered him as often drunk and withdrawn throughout his service.

After deciding in his teenage years that he could get away with raping and killing a woman, Keyes went on to kill as few as three and as many as 11 people between 2001 and 2012.

To learn more about Israel Keyes and to read the ransom note, click here.

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