WEBVTT
1
00:00:16.120 --> 00:00:25.480
I walk a straight line, shackled chain. Oh, gruesome Gertie
2
00:00:26.239 --> 00:00:34.850
is calling my name. There is no mercy in this penitentiary.
3
00:00:36.289 --> 00:00:40.990
Just ask the hill string gang, a wrangle of three.
4
00:00:41.109 --> 00:00:41.789
I'm here.
5
00:00:43.149 --> 00:01:32.159
For life. We'll be right back. Hey everyone, welcome back
6
00:01:32.219 --> 00:01:37.519
to Bloody Angola and let's go to Anchorage, Alaska on
7
00:01:37.680 --> 00:01:42.450
February 1st of 2012. Now on that day, the sun
8
00:01:42.629 --> 00:01:46.030
had been down for hours. That's what it looks like
9
00:01:46.090 --> 00:01:49.870
during the day in Anchorage, Alaska, and it was snowing.
10
00:01:50.030 --> 00:01:52.790
As a matter of fact, The snow was coming down
11
00:01:52.909 --> 00:01:56.030
hard enough to soften the edges of the parking lot.
12
00:01:56.250 --> 00:01:59.280
And at the edge of that lot sat a drive-thru
13
00:01:59.500 --> 00:02:05.400
coffee stand called Common Grounds Espresso. Now inside was an 18-year-old.
14
00:02:05.439 --> 00:02:09.180
Her name was Samantha Koenig. And she was working toward
15
00:02:09.219 --> 00:02:11.919
the end of her shift. Now people who knew her
16
00:02:12.240 --> 00:02:15.379
would later say she was the kind of kid who
17
00:02:15.460 --> 00:02:19.969
remembered regulars. She wanted to be a hairstylist. and still
18
00:02:20.009 --> 00:02:24.680
had a bright future that all 18-year-olds are supposed to have.
19
00:02:24.819 --> 00:02:28.699
The stand was scheduled to close at 8 that evening.
20
00:02:28.840 --> 00:02:32.560
And across the street, a man is waiting. He was
21
00:02:32.560 --> 00:02:36.030
34 years old, and he's not what you would expect.
22
00:02:36.270 --> 00:02:40.090
He's not frantic. He's not scary looking. Not some figure
23
00:02:40.590 --> 00:02:44.229
out of a murder movie. He's a contractor. A father.
24
00:02:44.689 --> 00:02:47.789
an Army veteran. And he lived in a two-story house
25
00:02:47.909 --> 00:02:51.740
on a cul-de-sac in a neighborhood where people had barbecues
26
00:02:51.860 --> 00:02:55.840
and walked their dogs. Just a regular guy. But tonight,
27
00:02:56.379 --> 00:02:59.580
he's wearing a hoodie and a mask, and he's already
28
00:02:59.639 --> 00:03:05.419
decided how this night His name is Israel Keys, and
29
00:03:05.479 --> 00:03:08.259
today I'm going to take you into the details of
30
00:03:08.360 --> 00:03:12.969
what led to this seemingly ordinary guy becoming a bank robber,
31
00:03:13.150 --> 00:03:17.949
a burglar, an arsonist, a rapist, and a killer of
32
00:03:18.090 --> 00:03:21.699
multiple people. So let's get into it with this week's
33
00:03:21.699 --> 00:03:26.039
50 Shades of Evil. Now, this story doesn't start off
34
00:03:26.189 --> 00:03:31.909
in Alaska in 2012. It starts in 1978 in northern
35
00:03:32.430 --> 00:03:36.129
Utah with a second child in a large family of
36
00:03:36.129 --> 00:03:40.169
10 people. Now, his parents, Jeff and Heidi, they were
37
00:03:41.009 --> 00:03:44.650
a little different, you might say. They struggled with trust.
38
00:03:45.189 --> 00:03:48.469
And when it came to their kids, they really struggled
39
00:03:48.590 --> 00:03:52.439
with trust. They didn't trust public schools. They didn't trust
40
00:03:52.500 --> 00:03:56.419
the government. They didn't trust doctors. And they were the
41
00:03:56.580 --> 00:04:00.689
members at that point in time of Jesus Christ of
42
00:04:00.789 --> 00:04:05.169
Latter-day Saints. And you may have thought initially, wow, 10 kids.
43
00:04:05.349 --> 00:04:10.210
But there were plenty of LDS families in Utah in
44
00:04:10.210 --> 00:04:14.400
1978 raising 10 kids. And it's common in the Mormon
45
00:04:14.780 --> 00:04:21.199
religion to have just very large families. And Utah specifically...
46
00:04:20.769 --> 00:04:25.360
having the largest population of those who are Mormon. So
47
00:04:25.399 --> 00:04:28.980
when Israel was five, the family left, they went north
48
00:04:29.240 --> 00:04:34.680
and west to a remote property outside of Colville, Washington,
49
00:04:34.759 --> 00:04:38.550
which all Colville is in the northeastern corner of the
50
00:04:38.610 --> 00:04:43.949
state of Washington. It's a small timber mining community and
51
00:04:44.069 --> 00:04:47.610
farm town. And the property they chose was in the
52
00:04:47.730 --> 00:04:51.310
sticks of of even a smaller town like that. Just
53
00:04:51.379 --> 00:04:57.149
picture a cabin, periods without heat, periods without electricity, children
54
00:04:57.310 --> 00:05:01.589
sleeping in a tent, homeschooling and getting money from cutting
55
00:05:01.709 --> 00:05:06.810
firewood and working other people's farms. That was the Keys family.
56
00:05:07.129 --> 00:05:10.689
That's how they rolled. It was the life they wanted
57
00:05:10.870 --> 00:05:15.769
and they enjoyed the isolation. Now, Israel's parents, Jeff and Heidi,
58
00:05:15.829 --> 00:05:20.019
would eventually leave the LDS church, and they would become
59
00:05:20.199 --> 00:05:24.079
what is known as fundamentalist Christians, which is a very
60
00:05:24.160 --> 00:05:28.240
strict religion. It doesn't recognize government at all. And for
61
00:05:28.300 --> 00:05:31.930
a time, the family was tied to a congregation in
62
00:05:32.019 --> 00:05:35.050
their town known as the Ark. It was a church
63
00:05:35.209 --> 00:05:39.930
that investigators and later reporting described as a white supremacist
64
00:05:40.350 --> 00:05:44.949
anti-Semitic church. Now, the Keys children were not the only
65
00:05:45.029 --> 00:05:48.689
young people exposed to at a young age to this
66
00:05:48.949 --> 00:05:52.509
area in these types of beliefs. As a matter of fact,
67
00:05:52.649 --> 00:05:57.810
their neighbors included the Keough family. Chevy and Cheyenne Keough
68
00:05:58.170 --> 00:06:01.540
would later become notorious in their own right. So you
69
00:06:01.569 --> 00:06:04.579
can look them up. That is a whole nother podcast,
70
00:06:04.740 --> 00:06:09.079
not for today. Now, the signs that Israel was a
71
00:06:09.139 --> 00:06:13.699
bit off were showing early in his childhood years into
72
00:06:13.759 --> 00:06:17.750
his formative years. He would shoot at houses with BB guns.
73
00:06:18.120 --> 00:06:22.230
He would break into houses. He started fires in the woods.
74
00:06:22.680 --> 00:06:27.079
He even slipped into neighbors' cabins and stole firearms at
75
00:06:27.120 --> 00:06:30.800
a young age and hid them in a box at home.
76
00:06:30.959 --> 00:06:33.500
And Israel had other problems that you see with a
77
00:06:33.540 --> 00:06:36.060
lot of people who would later turn out to be
78
00:06:36.189 --> 00:06:40.769
serial killers. He tortured animals. He would admit this way
79
00:06:40.850 --> 00:06:45.149
later on to police that he killed neighborhood pets. He
80
00:06:45.230 --> 00:06:47.449
said he would even hurt some when he found them
81
00:06:47.490 --> 00:06:51.209
in the woods. And then he would torture the animals
82
00:06:51.449 --> 00:06:56.290
to death. So by his mid-teens, he renounced Christianity completely.
83
00:06:56.350 --> 00:06:59.850
He actually took an interest in Satanism. He would later
84
00:06:59.949 --> 00:07:03.629
say that by his late teens, he had decided he
85
00:07:03.689 --> 00:07:07.189
could rape or kill and get away with it. And
86
00:07:07.360 --> 00:07:10.360
in his head, he was so twisted by this point,
87
00:07:10.759 --> 00:07:16.689
he would start having desires of satanic ritual killings. involving
88
00:07:17.009 --> 00:07:21.129
a young woman. So in 1998, the family moved again,
89
00:07:21.250 --> 00:07:25.370
this time to Maupin, Oregon. And Israel and his brothers,
90
00:07:25.470 --> 00:07:28.240
they would help their father build a home. And if
91
00:07:28.399 --> 00:07:31.379
you didn't know any better, this just seemed like a
92
00:07:31.500 --> 00:07:35.120
normal large family with a lot of kids. and they
93
00:07:35.180 --> 00:07:38.560
all seemed to chip in around the house. Nothing seemed
94
00:07:39.100 --> 00:07:41.550
off at this point in his life. Then in the
95
00:07:41.649 --> 00:07:46.569
summer of 1998, when Keyes turned 18, he spotted a
96
00:07:46.629 --> 00:07:50.500
group of young people tubing on a river near his home. Now,
97
00:07:50.860 --> 00:07:53.980
He would tell this story much later on, but he
98
00:07:54.060 --> 00:07:57.879
said one of the group was a girl and Keyes
99
00:07:58.040 --> 00:08:02.339
put her age between 14 and 18 years old. He
100
00:08:02.399 --> 00:08:06.139
said he was able to separate her from her friends somehow.
101
00:08:06.519 --> 00:08:10.300
He drags her to a nearby bathroom and he sexually
102
00:08:10.399 --> 00:08:14.079
assaulted her, but he stopped short of killing her. Now,
103
00:08:14.639 --> 00:08:19.660
that is the first violent crime Israel Keyes ever committed
104
00:08:20.189 --> 00:08:23.709
according to his later interviews. The girl had never been
105
00:08:23.829 --> 00:08:29.350
identified and the assault apparently was never reported. No one
106
00:08:29.389 --> 00:08:33.409
has ever come forward. So after Oregon, the Keys household,
107
00:08:33.470 --> 00:08:36.950
they move again. This time they went east all the
108
00:08:36.990 --> 00:08:41.149
way to Maine and they settled near an Amish community. Now,
109
00:08:41.590 --> 00:08:46.049
at this point, Israel seemingly was tired of living this
110
00:08:46.129 --> 00:08:51.980
secluded life And he starts looking into something else for himself.
111
00:08:52.519 --> 00:08:55.440
And he thought, why not join the U.S. Army? I
112
00:08:55.480 --> 00:08:58.610
can travel around the world and I won't have to
113
00:08:58.639 --> 00:09:01.870
pay for it. And I can learn survival skills that
114
00:09:01.889 --> 00:09:04.269
I don't already have because he did grow up kind
115
00:09:04.289 --> 00:09:09.169
of in the wilderness. And on April 22nd of 1998,
116
00:09:09.169 --> 00:09:14.590
he does sign up in Albany, New York with the U.S. Army. Now,
117
00:09:15.269 --> 00:09:19.049
The army will give him structure, it will allow him
118
00:09:19.090 --> 00:09:23.720
to travel, but it will also, by his own later account,
119
00:09:24.240 --> 00:09:29.100
give his fantasies more shape. He would later say that
120
00:09:29.120 --> 00:09:32.360
he liked the survival training and that he felt more
121
00:09:32.539 --> 00:09:36.879
confident about killing strangers afterwards. when he was in uniform.
122
00:09:37.059 --> 00:09:41.480
So it was on July 9th of 1998 that Israel
123
00:09:41.559 --> 00:09:46.159
Keyes reports for basic training. Now at this point, he's
124
00:09:46.159 --> 00:09:50.409
20 years old, he has his GED, and the army
125
00:09:50.509 --> 00:09:54.009
sees a kid who he's pretty good at being a soldier, right?
126
00:09:54.129 --> 00:09:57.309
He's really good with working with his hands, and that
127
00:09:57.350 --> 00:09:59.929
can be an asset in the army. He serves as
128
00:10:00.019 --> 00:10:04.539
as a specialist in alpha company first battalion fifth infantry
129
00:10:04.700 --> 00:10:09.460
regiment in the 25th infantry division he's on a mortar
130
00:10:09.500 --> 00:10:13.259
team first as an assistant gunner before becoming a gunner
131
00:10:13.559 --> 00:10:17.669
and his work's pretty clean on paper So clean, in fact,
132
00:10:17.759 --> 00:10:21.720
he receives an Army Achievement Medal, and he completes a
133
00:10:21.879 --> 00:10:27.419
month-long preliminary process tied to Ranger training, but he never
134
00:10:27.480 --> 00:10:31.879
goes to U.S. Army Ranger school. He's also placed on
135
00:10:31.940 --> 00:10:36.500
a temporary duty assignment in Egypt. That's from January 15th
136
00:10:36.580 --> 00:10:39.750
to June 1st of 2000. I want to cover with
137
00:10:39.779 --> 00:10:44.370
you quickly the soldier that other soldiers saw, because later
138
00:10:44.389 --> 00:10:47.480
in A lot of them did interviews after you find
139
00:10:47.600 --> 00:10:49.299
out what I'm going to tell you about as we
140
00:10:49.340 --> 00:10:54.220
go along. But they said what they thought about Israel Keyes.
141
00:10:54.700 --> 00:10:58.169
They said he was quiet. He kept to himself more
142
00:10:58.590 --> 00:11:02.649
often than not. And on weekends at Fort Lewis, he
143
00:11:02.690 --> 00:11:05.809
would drink alcohol. And they said his drink of choice
144
00:11:06.070 --> 00:11:10.029
was wild turkey, of all things. Men who served with
145
00:11:10.090 --> 00:11:13.169
him described a guy who could be a friend in
146
00:11:13.269 --> 00:11:17.870
the field of training. And then without much warning at all,
147
00:11:18.250 --> 00:11:22.429
he would change into this completely different person. A guy
148
00:11:22.470 --> 00:11:25.450
by the name of Sean McGuire, he said that he
149
00:11:25.529 --> 00:11:29.480
shared a barracks with Israel Keys and went through some
150
00:11:29.509 --> 00:11:32.600
of the Egypt training beside him. And he said they
151
00:11:32.639 --> 00:11:36.919
were friendly. but that if Keyes took offense to joking
152
00:11:36.980 --> 00:11:40.419
around with him, he said that would offend him very easily,
153
00:11:40.840 --> 00:11:43.820
that he would nearly come to blows just to have
154
00:11:43.860 --> 00:11:48.250
a very short fuse. In interviews with other soldiers from
155
00:11:48.279 --> 00:11:51.250
that company, they all pretty much said the same thing.
156
00:11:51.490 --> 00:11:54.029
The other guys in the platoon were trained to kill
157
00:11:54.110 --> 00:11:57.490
just like Israel Keyes was, but they said Keyes was
158
00:11:57.610 --> 00:12:02.720
on a different level. Many describing him as just terrifying.
159
00:12:02.980 --> 00:12:05.720
And he wasn't a little guy either. He was six
160
00:12:05.779 --> 00:12:10.610
foot two and he was he wasn't built like a bodybuilder,
161
00:12:10.710 --> 00:12:13.470
but he had some muscle to him. Now, another friend
162
00:12:13.529 --> 00:12:18.110
named Matthew Perkins, he remembered the outdoors side of Keyes.
163
00:12:18.519 --> 00:12:21.240
He said he was a great hunter, a great fisherman,
164
00:12:21.679 --> 00:12:25.370
a great backpacker, and he said he loved Washington State
165
00:12:25.809 --> 00:12:29.830
and would disappear in any forest near Fort Lewis. And
166
00:12:29.889 --> 00:12:32.409
even another soldier came out and said he was more
167
00:12:32.590 --> 00:12:36.559
of a follower than a leader. He was easy to goat,
168
00:12:36.799 --> 00:12:39.480
if you will, and he was bad at picking up
169
00:12:39.500 --> 00:12:43.340
women easily. As a matter of fact, he wrote letters
170
00:12:43.379 --> 00:12:46.779
home to a girl he had been interested in back
171
00:12:46.870 --> 00:12:50.629
in Washington, and she later told the FBI that one
172
00:12:50.710 --> 00:12:54.509
letter from Egypt read like he was very depressed and
173
00:12:54.529 --> 00:12:56.990
the letter was very, very dark and it kind of
174
00:12:57.029 --> 00:13:00.529
freaked her out. And she totally lost interest in him
175
00:13:00.909 --> 00:13:04.409
after that. An army specialist that was talked to later
176
00:13:04.549 --> 00:13:07.769
on by the FBI said he would cut wood with
177
00:13:07.889 --> 00:13:10.750
keys often. And the keys the whole time would talk
178
00:13:10.789 --> 00:13:15.250
about crimes like bank robberies and killings and just was
179
00:13:15.429 --> 00:13:18.320
really interested in this stuff. And he said, it totally
180
00:13:18.360 --> 00:13:22.139
freaked me out, man. Like he would actually want to
181
00:13:22.220 --> 00:13:26.990
be these people. In February of 2001, while still in service,
182
00:13:27.269 --> 00:13:30.450
still at Fort Lewis, he did get in some trouble
183
00:13:30.950 --> 00:13:34.429
and he gets a DUI to which he negotiates a
184
00:13:34.529 --> 00:13:38.509
plea agreement and a fine in the neighborhood of $ 350.
185
00:13:38.090 --> 00:13:42.379
And it's really the only official mark on him that
186
00:13:42.399 --> 00:13:44.580
he had while he was in the Army. And in
187
00:13:44.639 --> 00:13:50.000
July of 2001, he walks out with an honorable discharge. Now,
188
00:13:50.019 --> 00:13:51.960
I'm going to tell you about something that was learned
189
00:13:52.259 --> 00:13:56.440
after his arrest way later on. He didn't confess to
190
00:13:56.580 --> 00:13:59.269
any kind of murders during the three years he was
191
00:13:59.350 --> 00:14:01.870
in the army, but he did tell investigators that he
192
00:14:01.909 --> 00:14:06.149
and other soldiers would take trips to Egypt and Tel Aviv.
193
00:14:06.799 --> 00:14:09.840
And Keyes told the FBI that he once met a
194
00:14:09.899 --> 00:14:13.320
girl there. He said she was pretty young. He said
195
00:14:13.360 --> 00:14:17.360
he thought she was a Norwegian exchange student. And he
196
00:14:17.419 --> 00:14:20.039
said they had been hanging out. He told her where
197
00:14:20.090 --> 00:14:23.250
her room was. And the FBI kind of pressed him
198
00:14:23.289 --> 00:14:25.789
and said, did you rape this girl? And he said,
199
00:14:25.929 --> 00:14:29.519
I wouldn't say it was like an outright rape. because
200
00:14:29.740 --> 00:14:33.330
we were hanging out and she allowed herself to be there.
201
00:14:33.610 --> 00:14:36.490
He said it happened in her room and he said
202
00:14:36.529 --> 00:14:40.809
he lost control a little bit as things progressed and
203
00:14:40.850 --> 00:14:44.389
he almost went further than he went, meaning he almost
204
00:14:44.450 --> 00:14:47.870
killed her. So that's some signs, early signs when he's
205
00:14:48.009 --> 00:14:50.090
in the army that this guy is going to be
206
00:14:50.129 --> 00:14:53.669
a problem when he's released and there's no one that
207
00:14:53.710 --> 00:14:56.659
has any control over him at that point, right? So
208
00:14:56.700 --> 00:15:02.110
let's go to July 8th of 2001. Israel Keyes, he
209
00:15:02.139 --> 00:15:06.350
gets out of the army, honorably discharged, and he's 23
210
00:15:06.350 --> 00:15:09.409
years old. And if you look over his discharge records,
211
00:15:09.470 --> 00:15:12.009
you're going to think this is a regular veteran heading
212
00:15:12.070 --> 00:15:16.919
into civilian life. But you would be wrong. Because this
213
00:15:17.019 --> 00:15:19.740
is the same young man who had already told us
214
00:15:19.879 --> 00:15:23.440
years later, sitting in a jail in Alaska, that he
215
00:15:23.590 --> 00:15:26.830
raped a teenage girl in Oregon. So he gets out
216
00:15:27.350 --> 00:15:31.250
and he does not go back to Oregon. He goes
217
00:15:31.309 --> 00:15:34.909
about as far as you can drive on the west
218
00:15:35.029 --> 00:15:39.740
coast of the country before you run into the Pacific Ocean.
219
00:15:39.789 --> 00:15:43.659
And that is Neah Bay, Washington. This is on the
220
00:15:43.940 --> 00:15:49.639
Makah Reservation in the northwest tip of the Olympic Peninsula.
221
00:15:49.820 --> 00:15:54.820
And this is a small, wet, isolated place. And the
222
00:15:54.879 --> 00:16:00.000
reason he's there is a woman... named Tammy Hawkins. So
223
00:16:00.039 --> 00:16:04.299
he met Tammy online in late 2000 while he was
224
00:16:04.360 --> 00:16:07.539
still stationed at Fort Lewis. Now, by the time he
225
00:16:07.559 --> 00:16:11.580
gets out of the army, she's already pregnant with their daughter,
226
00:16:11.740 --> 00:16:15.000
and that baby is born right around the time that
227
00:16:15.159 --> 00:16:18.919
Israel Keyes gets discharged. Now, July of 2001 to October
228
00:16:18.960 --> 00:16:20.820
of 2001, Keyes is living in the Neah Bay area,
229
00:16:25.740 --> 00:16:28.470
And he tells investigators that this is when he kills
230
00:16:28.669 --> 00:16:31.169
for the first time. Now, he does not give them
231
00:16:31.210 --> 00:16:34.029
a name. He doesn't even walk them out to a
232
00:16:34.129 --> 00:16:38.129
spot in the woods and say, dig here, right? He
233
00:16:38.210 --> 00:16:41.830
just says that's when it started. Some people who have
234
00:16:41.870 --> 00:16:45.500
gone deep into this case, they think he may have
235
00:16:45.529 --> 00:16:49.220
started killing earlier than that. The FBI, at least on
236
00:16:49.259 --> 00:16:52.309
the timeline they put out to the public, They kept
237
00:16:52.370 --> 00:16:57.299
that first homicide in that first three-month window after he
238
00:16:57.340 --> 00:16:59.840
gets out of the Army. He later tells them he
239
00:16:59.899 --> 00:17:04.279
murdered a couple in Washington sometime between 2001 and 2005
240
00:17:04.279 --> 00:17:08.809
and buried them in a valley. And let me tell you,
241
00:17:08.849 --> 00:17:12.490
that's about as specific as he got. And he puts
242
00:17:12.589 --> 00:17:19.339
two more killings in that 2005-2006 time frame stretch. So
243
00:17:19.380 --> 00:17:22.740
if you're counting the way prosecutors were counting later on