CASE STUDY

Israel Keyes: The True Story of the Murder Kits, the Eleven Skulls, and the Victims Still Missing

By Domonique Luchin · Published November 5, 2026 · 12 min read

Watch: He Confessed. 11-Week Search. Nothing. Israel Keyes Part 2: Vermont #shorts

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On the morning of March 13, 2012, Texas Highway Patrol and a Texas Ranger stopped a rented car in a parking lot in Lufkin, Texas. Inside they found cash stained with dye from a bank robbery, an ATM card that belonged to an 18-year-old coffee-stand worker from Anchorage, Alaska, and a cell phone that belonged to her too. The driver was a quiet 34-year-old contractor named Israel Keyes. Within weeks he would confess to her murder. Within months he would confess to at least two more. By the end of the year he would be dead in a jail cell, leaving investigators with a map of buried weapons caches, a drawing of eleven skulls in his own blood, and a list of questions that still has not been closed.

This is the true story of Israel Keyes: who he was, how he planned, who he admitted killing, and why the FBI is still asking the public for help more than a decade later.

On The Sealed Docket, host Domonique Luchin works from the record: real names, real documents, real footage. This write-up draws on the FBI's public releases on the case, reporting from the Anchorage Daily News, ABC News, the Associated Press, Alaska Public Media, Vermont State Police summaries as reported in the press, and the public record summarized on Wikipedia (which in turn relies heavily on Maureen Callahan's American Predator and J. T. Hunter's Devil in the Darkness). A note before you read on: this is a case about murder, sexual assault and the disposal of bodies. The details here are kept to what the record supports and what you need to understand the investigation.

Who Was Israel Keyes?

Childhood on the edge of Colville

Israel Keyes was born on January 7, 1978, in Richmond, Utah, the second of ten children of Heidi Keyes and John Jeffrey "Jeff" Keyes. The family moved around Protestant churches and, for a time, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1983 they settled on a remote plot north of Colville, Washington, in a one-room cabin without electricity or running water. The children were homeschooled. Some slept in a tent. They hunted for food, chopped wood and worked local farms.

In Colville the family attended a church called The Ark, which, according to later reporting and the Southern Poverty Law Center's account of the case, subscribed to white-supremacist and Christian Identity ideology. The Keyes family later moved on to another church with similar leanings. Neighbors of that period included the family of Chevie Kehoe, later convicted in a 1996 triple murder. Keyes would later describe parts of that world as Amish-like in its rejection of modern conveniences, and militia-like in tone.

By adolescence Keyes was already known for cruelty to animals and for theft. He admitted shooting neighbors' houses with a BB gun and starting fires in the woods. His parents once forced him to return a cache of stolen guns and apologize. In 1994 he was arrested for shoplifting. Accounts from peers and from Keyes himself, later given to investigators and reported by the Anchorage Daily News, describe a teenager who was isolating himself and who already understood that some of what he thought about was not "normal."

The Deschutes River assault

In the summer of 1997 or 1998, according to Keyes's later confession to investigators, he sexually assaulted a teenage girl who had been tubing with friends on the Deschutes River near Maupin, Oregon. He said he had stalked her from the tree line, threatened her with a knife and "very violently sexually assaulted" her. He originally planned to kill her as part of a Satanic ritual. Her pleas and her promise not to tell anyone stopped him. He put her back in the river tube and let her go. He later told investigators, in words reported by the Anchorage Daily News from unsealed interview transcripts, that he had been "too timid" and "wasn't violent enough," and that he decided he would not "let that happen again."

Army years and Alaska

On April 22, 1998, Keyes enlisted in the U.S. Army. He served as a Specialist in Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Infantry, 25th Infantry Division, including time at Fort Lewis and Fort Hood and a deployment that took him to the Sinai. He completed a preliminary course for Ranger training but did not attend Ranger School. Former soldiers described him as quiet and heavy-drinking on weekends. He was honorably discharged in July 2001 with an Army Achievement Medal for his work as a gunner and assistant gunner.

After the Army he lived for a time in Neah Bay on the Makah Reservation in Washington, had a daughter with a girlfriend he met online, and later moved to Alaska. In 2007 he started a construction business, Keyes Construction, and worked as a contractor and handyman around Anchorage. To neighbors and clients he looked ordinary. That was the point.

How He Operated

What set Keyes apart from many serial killers in the public record was not a signature victim type. Investigators said he did not appear to follow a consistent profile. He told authorities he chose victims at random. What he did follow was a method of travel and preparation that made his crimes unusually hard to connect.

According to the FBI, Keyes often flew into a city, rented a car, and drove long distances before committing a crime, then returned to Alaska. On those trips he kept his phone off and paid in cash. He buried "murder kits" — caches of weapons, zip ties, cash and other gear — years in advance near places he intended to return to. For the Vermont murders, he flew to Chicago, rented a car and drove roughly a thousand miles to Essex, Vermont, then recovered a kit he had buried two years earlier.

He preferred strangulation when he could. He robbed banks to fund travel. The FBI later confirmed he robbed the Community Bank branch in Tupper Lake, New York, in April 2009, and he admitted other robberies and burglaries across multiple states between 2001 and 2012. He studied other serial killers closely — Ted Bundy among them — and told investigators he did not want media attention because of his daughter and because he did not want to be labeled a copycat.

Confirmed Victims

Keyes confessed to three murders in which the victims' identities were confirmed. Investigators believe the true number is higher. The FBI has publicly said evidence from his jail cell led them to believe he may have killed as many as eleven people.

Bill and Lorraine Currier (Essex, Vermont — June 8, 2011)

William "Bill" Scott Currier, 49, and Lorraine Simonne Currier, 55, lived in Essex, Vermont. On the night of June 8, 2011, Keyes broke into their home, tied them up and drove them to an abandoned farmhouse. According to his confession, as later summarized by Vermont investigators and reported by the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Dispatch, he shot Bill after Bill repeatedly called out for his wife, then sexually assaulted and strangled Lorraine. Their bodies have never been found.

Two years before the murders, Keyes had buried a murder kit near the Currier home. After the killings he moved most of the kit's contents to a new hiding place near Parishville, New York, by Blake Falls Reservoir in Adirondack Park, where agents later recovered weapons and other materials. Vermont State Police and federal investigators have continued to treat the Curriers as confirmed victims of Keyes. The farmhouse search and the years that followed never produced their remains.

Samantha Koenig (Anchorage, Alaska — February 1, 2012)

Keyes's last confirmed victim was Samantha Tessla Koenig, 18, who worked at a coffee kiosk called Common Grounds in Anchorage. On the night of February 1, 2012, Keyes abducted her from her workplace, took her debit card and other property, raped and sodomized her, and strangled her with a cable tie. He left her body in a shed on his property and left Anchorage for a pre-booked cruise with his family in the Gulf of Mexico.

When he returned on February 18, according to the detailed account later released by Anchorage police and reported by Alaska Public Media, he sexually assaulted her body again. He applied makeup to her face and sewed her eyes open with fishing line so she would appear alive in a photograph taken next to a four-day-old issue of the Anchorage Daily News. He then demanded a ransom of about $30,000. Some of the money was paid into her bank account. Keyes dismembered her body and disposed of it in Matanuska Lake, north of Anchorage. The FBI's Underwater Search and Evidence Response Team later recovered her remains from the lake.

That ransom trail is what ended him. Investigators tracked ATM withdrawals from Koenig's account as Keyes moved through the Southwest. A lookout went out for the rental car. On March 13 in Lufkin, officers watching hotel lots for matching out-of-state rentals stopped him after a minor speed violation. Dye-stained cash from a bank robbery, Koenig's ATM card and her phone were in the car. He was extradited to Alaska.

Debra Feldman and the unnamed East Coast victim

Keyes also confessed to abducting a woman on April 9, 2009, from a state on the East Coast, transporting her across state lines, and burying her in New York near Tupper Lake. Investigators later identified the likely victim as Debra J. Feldman, 48, who disappeared from her apartment in Hackensack, New Jersey, on April 8, 2009. The FBI has publicly sought information connecting Feldman to Keyes. When shown her photograph, Keyes paused and said he did not want to talk about her yet. Her case remains among the strongest suspected links that have not been fully closed in public.

Arrest, Confession, and the Silence That Followed

In Alaska, Keyes was first charged with fraud tied to Koenig's accounts. He eventually confessed to her murder and, over more than forty hours of interviews with FBI agents and Alaska investigators, began describing other crimes. Early on he was, by agents' accounts, conversational. He said he wanted to be executed within a year. He asked for assurances about sentencing before he would give full details on every alleged killing.

Then the media named him. Keyes largely stopped cooperating. On May 23, 2012, during a routine court hearing, he tried to escape using wood shavings from a pencil to pick his handcuffs, imitating Ted Bundy's courtroom escape. U.S. Marshals tased him and took him down.

What he did give investigators was still enough to reopen cold cases across the country. He described bodies in lakes near Neah Bay and Lake Crescent in Washington. He admitted bank robberies and burglaries. He pointed toward caches. Agents recovered one cache in Eagle River, Alaska, and the New York cache at Blake Falls Reservoir. He indicated others might exist near Green River, Wyoming, and Port Angeles, Washington.

The Eleven Skulls

On the night of December 1, 2012, while held at the Anchorage Correctional Complex, Keyes killed himself. Alaska troopers later said he cut his left wrist with a razor blade he had managed to conceal and strangled himself with a rolled-up bedsheet. He was 34. A four-page suicide note found under his body was later described by ABC News as a "creepy ode to murder." It did not name other victims.

In 2020 the FBI released photographs of drawings found in his cell on July 24, 2012 — made in his own blood. They depicted Baphomet in an inverted pentagram and eleven skulls, each with an inverted cross on its forehead, and the phrase "WE ARE ONE." The FBI said the eleven skulls were believed to represent the total number of people Keyes had killed, several of whom have never been identified.

What the FBI Still Wants the Public to Know

In August 2013 the FBI released a public timeline of Keyes's known travel and financial transactions and asked for tips about periods when investigators believed he may have committed crimes. The Bureau has also released selected records through the FBI Vault and has sought information specifically about his Houston-area travels and about Debra Feldman. International travel on the public timeline includes British Columbia, Belize and Mexico. Whether he killed anyone outside the United States remains unknown.

Cases that have been publicly discussed in connection with Keyes — without a definitive public link — have included missing and murdered people in Washington State, suggested Florida mall-parking-lot cases from 2007, and others. Some leads have been ruled out. In December 2024, for example, a man named Charles Tatom was arrested in connection with the 1997 Colville deaths of Marlene and Cassie Emerson, a case in which Keyes had once been considered. The FBI's public posture has stayed the same: Keyes planned carefully, traveled widely, and left gaps that only someone who saw him in the right place at the right time may be able to fill.

Why Israel Keyes Was So Hard to Catch

The record points to a handful of reasons that stacked on each other:

Israel Keyes Timeline

Watch the Israel Keyes Case File on The Sealed Docket

Domonique Luchin breaks down the confession, the Vermont search and what never turned up in "He Confessed. 11-Week Search. Nothing. Israel Keyes Part 2: Vermont", and the interrogation moment that still freezes people in "He Asked the FBI How Long a Body Lasts in a Lake (REAL TAPE)". For another case built on FBI tape and a contested identity, read the true story of Patty Hearst. For another prolific killer who confessed after years of missed chances, read the true story of Samuel Little. Then browse the full Sealed Docket case index, every episode, and more about the host.

Follow for more case files. New real-case files drop every week on the @TheSealedDocket YouTube channel. Subscribe so the next one finds you.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Israel Keyes?

Israel Keyes (January 7, 1978 – December 1, 2012) was an American serial killer, rapist, bank robber and contractor from Alaska. He confessed to three murders with confirmed victims and is suspected by the FBI of killing as many as eleven people across multiple states between the late 1990s and 2012.

How many people did Israel Keyes kill?

He confessed to three murders with confirmed identities: Bill and Lorraine Currier of Essex, Vermont, and Samantha Koenig of Anchorage, Alaska. The FBI has said evidence from his jail cell, including drawings of eleven skulls in his blood, led investigators to believe he may have killed eleven people in total.

Who were Israel Keyes's confirmed victims?

William "Bill" Scott Currier, 49, and Lorraine Simonne Currier, 55, murdered in Essex, Vermont, on June 8, 2011 (bodies never found), and Samantha Tessla Koenig, 18, abducted from an Anchorage coffee stand on February 1, 2012 and later recovered from Matanuska Lake.

How was Israel Keyes caught?

After Koenig's murder he demanded ransom money be deposited to her bank account. Investigators tracked ATM withdrawals as he moved through the Southwest. Texas officers stopped his rental car in Lufkin on March 13, 2012, and found dye-stained cash, Koenig's ATM card and her phone.

What were Israel Keyes's murder kits?

Caches of weapons, zip ties, cash and other gear that he buried years in advance near places he planned to return to. The FBI recovered caches in Eagle River, Alaska, and near Blake Falls Reservoir in Parishville, New York. He indicated others may exist near Green River, Wyoming, and Port Angeles, Washington.

Did Israel Keyes kill Debra Feldman?

Keyes confessed to abducting a woman from the East Coast around April 9, 2009, and burying her near Tupper Lake, New York. Investigators identified Debra J. Feldman, 48, of Hackensack, New Jersey, who disappeared April 8, 2009, as the likely victim. The FBI has publicly sought information linking them; the case has not been fully closed in public.

How did Israel Keyes die?

He died by suicide on December 1, 2012, at the Anchorage Correctional Complex, by cutting his left wrist and strangling himself with a bedsheet while awaiting trial.

Sources

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