Israel Keyes, a serial killer who murdered at least 11 people across the US and abroad, sexually assaulted victims and stitched one dead woman's eyes open to stage a ransom photograph. A true crime obsessive, he buried "kill kits" across the country.
Kill kits and a ransom demand
Keyes hid "kill kits" throughout the nation, later retrieving them to torture his victims. In one attack, he abducted a young woman from her workplace, strangled her, and sexually violated her before and after death. He then stitched her eyes open to make her appear alive in a photograph sent with a $30,000 ransom demand to her family.
Raised in a Christian white supremacist household, Keyes lived in an isolated cabin without modern conveniences. He mastered hunting and loved killing animals. A childhood acquaintance recalled that being in his company "made my skin crawl."
Army service and early crimes
In the late 1990s, Keyes sexually assaulted a teenage girl but released her, telling detectives: "I was too timid. I wasn't violent enough." He added: "I made up my mind I was never going to let that happen again."
In July 1998, Keyes enlisted in the US Army, serving as a Specialist in Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Infantry, 25th Infantry Division. Content creator Kris Collins described him as "an extremely capable soldier" with "all the horrifying traits of a devastating serial killer." He earned an honourable discharge in July 2001.
Murder spree and final victim
Keyes later entered a relationship with a woman on the Neah Bay reservation in Washington state, where investigators believe his murders began. Asked if he had killed there, he replied: "Yeah, Neah Bay's a boring town." He robbed banks to fund his obsession, assembling "kill kits" hidden across the US. One recovered by the FBI contained a 22-caliber Ruger pistol, empty magazines, ammunition, and a silencer.
Keyes' final verified victim was 18-year-old Samantha Tessla Koenig, abducted from a coffee booth in Anchorage, Alaska, on February 1, 2012. He sexually assaulted and strangled her with a rope. After a two-week family cruise, he returned on February 18, raped her corpse, applied cosmetics, and stitched her eyes open with fishing line. He photographed her holding a recent Anchorage Daily News and demanded $30,000 (about £19,000 at the time). After collecting the ransom, he dismembered her body and dumped it in Matanuska Lake.
Arrest and suicide
Investigators tracked Keyes through cash withdrawals from Samantha's bank account. After arrest, he attempted a courtroom escape like Ted Bundy's but was tasered. He initially cooperated, then stopped once the case drew media attention, fearing distress to his daughter. He told an FBI interrogator: "The problem is that nowadays, the more stuff my name is attached to the more likely it is that somebody's gonna try to do some kind of stupid freaking TV special ... with all this true crime bulls**t that people are obsessed with."
On December 1, 2012, Keyes used a razor blade to take his own life in his cell. A blood-soaked suicide note was described as an "ode to murder" but gave no clues to other victims. He had also drawn eleven skulls in his own blood on paper hidden under his bed, thought to represent his true victim count.
