29: Israel Keyes: Inside the FBI Investigation

Summary

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UNMARKED: A True Crime Podcast

Episode 29: Israel Keyes: Inside the FBI Investigation

Host: James Buddy Day
Guests: Retired Special Agent Mary Rook, Maureen Callahan (Author of "American Predator")
Release Date: July 1, 2026

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode offers a comprehensive exploration into the life and crimes of Israel Keyes, one of America's most mystifying and methodical serial killers. Drawing on FBI interrogation tapes, exclusive interviews (notably with retired Special Agent Mary Rook), years of investigative research, and the work of journalist Maureen Callahan, host James Buddy Day delves into the enigma of Keyes’s crimes, the profound challenges he posed to law enforcement, and the unanswered questions that persist. The central tension explored: Was Keyes truly a criminal mastermind, a compulsive liar, or have we fundamentally misunderstood him?

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Myth and Mystery of Israel Keyes (01:15–03:23)

• The Enigma: Despite years of investigation and hours of interviews, much about Keyes remains unknown, especially the total number and identities of his victims.
• Modus Operandi: Keyes acted methodically, burying "kill kits" with weapons and supplies years in advance; he took pains to avoid detection.
• Purpose of the Episode: To reconstruct both the known facts and explore the psychological voids left behind, ultimately asking listeners to draw their own conclusions about Keyes.

“We know how he did it… and still, the FBI can’t account for most of the people Keyes claimed to have killed. How is that possible?” — James Buddy Day (03:10)

2. Inside the Investigation

The FBI’s View (06:04–07:32)

• Mary Rook’s Role: As Special Agent in charge in Alaska, she led the early interviews, encountering a suspect who compartmentalized his life, separating his ‘normal’ Anchorage persona from his criminal activities.
• Keyes’s Secrecy: He was “very tight with the information that he would release,” primarily to shield his daughter from the truth (07:32).

3. The Origins & Upbringing of Israel Keyes (09:14–17:23)

• Childhood Isolation: Keyes grew up in a deeply religious, isolationist family, frequently moving, avoiding societal institutions (school, doctors), and often living off-grid.
• Maternal Insight: Keyes's mother believed his crimes served a spiritual, almost Biblical, warning to non-believers (12:37).

“She believed that Israel was put on this earth to warn those who do not believe…basically Israel was kind of an avatar of Satan.” — Maureen Callahan (12:37)

• Early Violence: As a child, Keyes was already hunting, skinning game, and later breaking into neighbors’ homes to cause psychological distress, not theft (19:58).

4. Escalation & Developing Fantasy (17:23–23:20)

• Predatory Practice: From a young age, Keyes trained himself in wilderness survival, learning to move undetected.
• Relationship with Other Serial Killers: Keyes studied the likes of Ted Bundy, shaping his own behaviors after theirs and idolizing the “invisible predator” archetype (22:54).

“He, I think, believed himself to be in the pantheon [of serial killers] and wanted to be in the pantheon.” — Maureen Callahan (23:20)

5. Early Crimes, Army Life, and Modus Operandi Foundation (25:15–29:12)

• First Assault: As a teen, Keyes claims to have abducted and assaulted a young girl in Oregon, but released her—an event known only from his own accounts.
• Army Years: Despite lacking any official record (birth certificate, social security number), Keyes joined the U.S. Army at 18, raising further questions about his early development.
• Peers’ Fear: Fellow soldiers found Keyes unsettling and “on another level” (29:12).

6. The Murders—Patterns and Victimology (29:51–35:59)

• Random Victim Selection: No clear pattern links Keyes to his victims, making detection exceedingly difficult.
• Kill Kits: Keyes hid supply caches (guns, duct tape, Drano, makeup, etc.) across the U.S. years before using them for murders, displaying chilling foresight (36:14–38:05).
• Victim Unknowns: Many victims were likely chosen as stragglers or isolated individuals, with little or no direct connection to Keyes such that identification remains nearly impossible.

“I don’t know if he even knew who his victims were… because of the nature of the way he chose them.” — Mary Rook (39:00)

7. The Methods of Avoiding Detection (35:20–41:55)

• Travel & Anonymity: Keyes would fly into major airports, disable cell phones, and drive hundreds of miles to commit crimes using his kill kits.
• Confession as Bargaining Chip: During hours of FBI interviews, Keyes only provided enough information to prove other victims existed, while refusing to reveal their identities (40:02–41:55).

8. Later Murders & Psychological Deterioration (42:16–51:43)

• Anchorage Life: Keyes integrated into Alaskan society as an ordinary handyman and father, further cloaking his criminal activity.
• Known Victims: The only confirmed murders include the double homicide of Bill and Lorraine Currier (Essex, Vermont) and Samantha Koenig (Anchorage, Alaska). Debra Feldman is another likely victim.
• Compartmentalization: The case of Samantha Koenig, where Keyes abducted, murdered, and then posed her body for ransom photos before going on a family cruise, demonstrates a terrifying ability to switch persona at will (51:21).

“How do you do that within 24 hours? …But he did. And he does it repeatedly.” — Mary Rook (51:21)

9. Capture, Confession, and Death (54:04–57:56)

• Mistakes Creep In: At the end, Keyes made uncharacteristically sloppy decisions—traveling with the victim’s phone and ATM card, using them, and getting caught in Texas.
• Suicide & Aftermath: After giving investigators a partial confession over 40 hours, Keyes took his own life in jail, preempting further disclosures or judicial process.

“I think that was why ultimately he took his own life, was because he realized he could not control the outcome.” — Mary Rook (57:25)

10. Legacy, Unanswered Questions, and the State of the Case (57:56–59:45)

• FBI Case Status: The active Anchorage investigation is closed, but many cases in other districts remain unsolved, with limited new leads.
• Justice Denied: Victims’ families remain in limbo; some cold cases could be closed but law enforcement displays limited interest.

“There are cold cases that I believe can be closed...The FBI has no interest in revisiting them. I don’t know why.” — Maureen Callahan (59:33)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We've got a really evil person here.” — Mary Rook (03:23, 43:55)
• “The greatest power is not being feared, it's being unknown.” — Paraphrased by James Buddy Day (21:18)
• “The reward comes from believing you possess a secret knowledge, a hidden superiority that no one else can see.” — James Buddy Day (24:07)
• “These weren't people that if you looked at the victims, you could tie them back to Israel Keyes. It was a chance encounter.” — Mary Rook (32:42)
• “He was going to get caught. He was sort of losing control...like any addiction, you build a tolerance and then you need to ratchet up the risk…” — Maureen Callahan (48:33)

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Key Timestamps

• 03:23: Mary Rook on the evil nature of Keyes
• 12:37: Maureen Callahan reveals Keyes’s mother’s extraordinary religious beliefs regarding his crimes
• 22:54: Keyes’s fascination with other serial killers, especially Ted Bundy
• 29:12: Fellow soldiers recount their fear of Keyes
• 36:14–38:05: "Kill kits" and their role in Keyes’s methodology
• 39:00: Mary Rook on the anonymity of most Keyes victims
• 41:29: Keyes’s chilling negotiation with FBI, withholding victims’ identities
• 51:21: Mary Rook on Keyes’s psychological compartmentalization
• 54:04: Disposal of Samantha Koenig's body and necrophilia revelation
• 56:03: Capture and change in Keyes’s behavior around his final crime
• 57:25: Mary Rook speculates about Keyes’s suicide motives
• 59:33: Maureen Callahan addresses the inertia of cold case investigations

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Tone & Language

• The host maintains a tone of respectful curiosity, driven by a desire for truth and justice for the unknown victims.
• Both experts, Rook and Callahan, balance clinical detachment with emotional impact, particularly when discussing victim and family suffering.
• Keyes’s own words during interrogations often oscillate between deception, bargaining, and chilling coldness.

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Final Reflections

Despite years of investigation and a mountain of evidence, Israel Keyes remains frustratingly elusive—a killer obsessed not with infamy but with invisibility. While law enforcement painstakingly connects dots, many lines remain incomplete. The victims’ families, and the true scope of evil Keyes perpetrated, deserve clearer answers. By laying out facts and exploring psychological shadows, this episode honors the lost and insists their stories must not remain unmarked.

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Transcript

[Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

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[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

He's traveling all over the country, you know, and very methodically, very, you know, with a lot of planning and foresight, you know, going out with the simple goal of murdering people.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

This case has been requested more than endeavor. And I understand why. Because on the surface, Israel Keyes looks like a criminal mastermind. A man who spends years preparing to murder. But the deeper I dig, the less convinced I become that we understand this man at all.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

Very organized, very premeditated, very calculating.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

We don't know how many people Israel Keyes killed. Not exactly.

[FBI Agent]

We.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

What we do know is terrifying. Multiple victims across multiple states. Bodies moved across jurisdictions. Caches of weapons and disposal supplies buried years in advance. A man who appears to have dedicated his life to becoming undetected. And that's despite the fact that Keyes spent eight months talking to the FBI after his arrest.

[FBI Agent]

He was working to happen today. You give me the name, I write it down. I don't ask any more questions. We all have some lunch. Talk about whatever you want to talk about.

[Israel Keyes (Interrogation Voice)]

Well, I mean, it sounds stinky, but no, I'm not your Bernie.

[FBI Agent]

I'm not your favorite names.

[Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

Why?

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

Why tell investigators just enough to prove that there are other victims while refusing to identify them? To understand, I've conducted an exclusive interview with retired Special Agent Mary Rookie, the investigator in charge of Alaska who helped expose Keyes for the first time.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

As you understand the enormity of it and how engaged he had been and how long it had gone on, drawing

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

on Mary Rooks insight, the FBI interviews, investigative files, years of research, and Keyes own words. We're going to reconstruct the life of one of America's most perplexing serial killers. And in the end, you'll have to decide for yourself. Was Israel Keyes a mastermind, A compulsive liar? Or have we misunderstood him entirely?

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

It just really makes you sit back and think, wow, you know, we've got a really evil person here.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

I'm James Buddy Day. This is unmarked. When the book American Predator came out in 2019, I was hooked. Like many people, I'd been following the complicated case of Israel Keys since his arrest in 2012. The emerging story was unlike anything I had encountered before. A serial killer slowly confessing to what appeared to be a lifelong project, targeting victims with such forethought that he was invisible to authorities. After reading the book, I got in touch with the author, Maureen Callahan, and we discussed the possibility of turning it into a documentary. Now, that never came to fruition. But I continued following the case as the FBI began releasing Keyes writings, his drawings, and excerpts from the many hours of interviews conducted before his death. What hooked me wasn't just the crimes. It was the paradox at the center of them. We know how he did it. We know where he traveled to. We have insight into how he selected his victims. We know how he exploited those gaps between police jurisdictions and the assumptions that investigators make when they search for a serial killer. And yet, even with all that knowledge, the FBI still can't account for for most of the people Keyes claimed to have killed. How is that possible? How can we understand the method, know the blueprint, and still be left staring at empty spaces where the answers should be? Before we get too deep into those questions, let me catch you up. Israel Keyes was 34 years old when he was arrested in Texas in 2012 in connection to a series of crimes, including the murder of an Anchorage barista. What followed shocked investigators. According to the FBI, Keyes had spent years traveling across the United States committing murders, kidnappings, and bank robberies while leaving almost no trail. After speaking with Keyes for more than 40 hours over a period of 88 months, investigators announced they believed him to be responsible for a multitude of crimes. This included 11 homicides carried out in secret over 14 years.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

Well, at the time this all happened, I was the Special Agent in charge of the FBI in Anchorage, Alaska.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

That's retired Special Agent Mary Rook, who was the Special Agent in charge of Alaska at the time of Israel Key's arrest. Her perspective is Remarkable. Mary led the team that interviewed Israel Keyes for the first time in Anchorage. Few people have spent more time trying to understand him. Few people have seen more of the man behind the mythology. But when Mary and her team first sat across from Israel Keys over what would prove to be the last year of his life, they had no idea who they were dealing with.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

He came across to me as someone who was very compartmentalized because his life in Anchorage was completely different from the Israel Keys who was committing these crimes throughout the country.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

The FBI has released only a small fraction of the interviews they conducted, footage we'll return to throughout this episode.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

We had two agents from the Anchorage division and an investigator from the Anchorage Police Department. The three of them were the core group that dealt with him routinely.

[Israel Keyes (Interrogation Voice)]

You know, I did say, you know, I wanted to just get this all cleared up. And that way you're not digging for windows how many years down road, you know, trying to connect the dots and just make it all go away.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

He was very tight with the information that he would release. I think he was very concerned about what information would be public and what his daughter would learn about his activities. That seemed to be his primary concern.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

In speaking with Mary Rook. I want to gain more insight into the only footage of Keys that's known to exist. I want to know not just what he did, but who this man was, what drove him, where did he come from? If we can continue to work together

[Israel Keyes (Interrogation Voice)]

in and make stuff happen, great. If not, you know, if it's not going the way you want it to, or you're not getting your information fast enough, then do what you gotta do.

[Interviewer / FBI Agent]

Now.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

Mary Rooke is not the only person I'm speaking with today. Like I said, Maureen Callahan's American Predator is the definitive book on Keys. And she spent years examining the thousands of investigative files left behind. Now she's the host of the Nerve with Maureen Callahan. How many years, how much time did you spend with Israel Keys? And I don't mean literally with Israel Keys, but with this case, with, with this, with these documents, with these interviews.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

Six years. It took six years to research, report and write American Predator.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

Mary Rook and her team sat across from Keyes. Marine Callahan reconstructed him. And there's no question that whatever Keyes eventually became, the story begins early.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

The things that shaped Keyes are astounding. But, you know, from a very young age, he was feeding that family by hunting, killing, skinning and cooking game.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

I want to know everything there is to know about Israel Keyes, but I also want to know what we don't know because in cases like this, the omissions are often as revealing as the facts. That's often where the real story lives. And to find it, we have to go all the way back to the beginning. A quick pause before we continue. Cravings aren't just about nicotine. They're about the habit. The hand to mouth motion, oral fixation, momentary pause. When that loop is broken, cravings spike. Fume replaces your habit with a flavored air fidget device that gives your hands and mouth something to do. And this thing, it's ridiculously fidgety. The wooden barrel has this great texture to it and it rotates to adjust the flow with a satisfying click. And there are no batteries. It's a natural water based vapor with no chemical taste. The flavors are lighter than vaping. Think of it like flavored water is to soda. I'm really enjoying sparkling grapefruit. But they have a lot of form, familiar flavors like crisp mint and maple pepper. Even though Fume is designed to help quit smoking and vaping, I spend a lot of time writing and doing deep research. And when you're sitting there for hours trying to stay locked in, there's this constant need to fidget. That restless energy can pull you out of the work. This scratches that itch. Fume is designed as a smoking cessation device. But don't just try and quit. Upgrade the habit loop. Fume has already helped over 700,000 people take steps toward better habits. And now it's your turn. Use code unmarked to get a free gift with your journey pack head to try fume.com that's T R Y F U-M dot com and use code unmarked to claim your free gift today. And now back to the story. In 1978, the mountains rise above northern Utah. New subdivisions are spreading across the landscape. Mormon families are raising children in growing communities. And few people can imagine that one of the most elusive serial killers in American history has just been born. Israel Keys begins here, the son of Jeffrey Keys and Heidi Hackinson. Though piecing together his childhood is difficult, and that's by design, Keyes's parents took great pains to ensure there would be little record of their children, little documentation, few outsiders who could really describe what life was actually like inside the family. There are no teachers to interview, no report cards, no guidance counselors, few neighbors. And that absence becomes one of the defining challenges of the case. One of the few to gain insight is Maureen Callahan. She told me about her experience as one of the only journalists to ever interview Keys mother, Heidi, was very interesting.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

I asked her how it was she could accept, like, she could vocally admit this, my son did these things, right? This was my son. I gave birth to him, I raised him, and he did these things. And she said some in substance, that she believed that Israel was put on this earth to warn those who do not believe, believe in God, that there is true evil in the world, that basically Israel was kind of an avatar of Satan and that his role was a contributory one, that it was meant to drive non believers to God.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

That tells us something important about the environment in which Keys is raised. This is a deeply religious family with roots in Mormonism, but beliefs that increasingly drift towards separatism, survivalism, and the distrust of modern society. Government institutions are viewed with suspicion. Modern medicine is viewed with suspicion. Outsiders are viewed with suspicion.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

My supposition is, you know, she met her husband when she was very young and married him, began having children one after another after another. I had the feeling that she was leaving a home life that she was really desperate to get out of in 1978.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

Keys is one of two children. He has an older sister. The children are both born at home. They're homeschooled. Their parents avoid many of the institutions that most families take for granted.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

The neighbors were like, what is with that family? Why don't those kids. Why aren't they in preschool? Why is nobody ever over at the house? Why don't they. Why they don't go to doctors? Those. Those babies are born at home. Like, they were weird. They were weird, and they were. And. And Heidi and her husband were worried that CPS was going to get called. It was a matter of time. And so they absconded forevermore. You know, the Keys family became itinerant. They would all. They would move state to state to state, but they would always stay pretty close to the Canadian border.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

By 1983, the Keyes family has settled near Colville, Washington, and isolated is an understatement. Picture a growing family on a remote plot of land where Heidi will eventually give birth to eight more children.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

They grew up in real poverty, self sufficiency, paranoid thoughts and ideas, a deep, deep hatred of America and the federal government, and a kind of religiosity that dictated everything that they did for years.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

The family lives at the edge of the wilderness. They hunt, they forage and build a life largely disconnected from the outside world. We're talking about no electricity, no running water.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

For a time, she and the children were living outdoors while her husband John, was building them a Cabin from scratch. So they were living in tents. And then there were, when it got really, really cold in the winter, they would go down to California where Heidi's parents were and like live in a trailer, you know, in her parents driveway. Those kids never went to school. They never saw a doctor. They did not exist on paper. They were all home births. The parents were paranoid religious fundamentalists who thought that a race war was coming.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

For someone like Israel Keys, the question isn't whether the isolation is creating a killer. The question is how isolation and paranoia shape this child's ability to relate to other people. Researchers consistently find that isolation can make it more difficult for children to form relationships, develop social skills, and construct that sense of identity through interaction with others. When children have limited opportunities to engage with the outside world, they often turn inward. Now that doesn't create violent offenders. Most isolated children never become violent, but it can encourage fantasy. Studies have noted that children who feel disconnected from the people that are around them, they often begin to construct a sense of self in private. Rather than learning who they are through relationships, they learn who they are through imagination. Especially when this behavior is modeled by a parent.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

The father would go off for days on end out into the wilderness to like, commune with God. And so everything that Heidi did in terms of raising her family was in deference to her husband. Now Israel hated his father, hated his father.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

From an early age. Keyes carries deep resentment towards his father, but that resentment doesn't extend to the rest of his family. Throughout his life, he remains closely attached to his siblings and his mother. This suggests that Keyes wasn't incapable of forming emotional bonds. He wasn't completely detached from other people. Instead, he seems to have drawn a distinction between, between those he considers to be part of his world and everybody else. And I found a moment in the interrogation tapes where that side of him unexpectedly surfaces.

[Israel Keyes (Interrogation Voice)]

Well, yeah. And the only other thing is on a more personal note, like I was saying earlier when my brothers were visiting this week and I would prefer to just trample think about any of this stuff.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

This will be the other here.

[Interviewer / FBI Agent]

So David Miles the whole week?

[Israel Keyes (Interrogation Voice)]

Yeah, I think they leave on Sunday or Monday. So yeah, so that and I, the, the main is it's not so much that I wouldn't want to, you know,

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

if it's like a short, I don't

[Israel Keyes (Interrogation Voice)]

have a problem, you know, where I'm talking. I, I just don't want to miss the time that they go for there to visit me or whatever.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

So remember the context of this moment. Keys is sitting in an FBI interrogation room, he's telling investigators that he's been hunting people across the United States for more than a decade. The bureau believes he's responsible for at least 11 murders at this point. But his concern is not for the victims. It isn't for the investigation. It's whether he'll miss a visit with his brothers. It shows how insular Keyes inner world is. Something that we can see during his adolescence. By this time, Keys is living a life very different from most teenagers. He spends long periods of time alone, hunting and field dressing animals to feed his family. And it's during these excursions when he develops a fascination with voyeurism. What appears in the record isn't an adolescent looking for connection. It's an adolescent becoming increasingly interested in crossing boundaries into other people's lives.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

He loved to do things like break into his neighbor's homes when they were out and rearrange their furniture and then leave the home and watch them come home and see the terror and confusion.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

Research on juvenile burglary suggests that for some offenders, the attraction isn't even the theft. It's intrusion, the excitement of entering another person's private world without their knowledge. Long before he murders anyone, Keyes is discovering something that will remain central to his life. That he can enter another person's world, alter it, and leave again without consequence. And as adolescence gives way to adulthood, that lesson appears to merge with something that's already growing inside him.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

He would take himself out into the woods and see how long. I mean, I'm talking like 10, 11, 12. See how long he could sit there deep in the woods, still not making a sound or a move. To be undetected by animals, any other human, because he was training himself to be a predator.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

We know from his later actions that becoming a killer was in many ways Keyes lifelong project. But where does that project begin? Long before Keyes is traveling across the country committing crimes, he's teaching himself to disappear, to sit silently in the woods, to observe without being observed. That's the framework of Israel's fantasy that the greatest power is not being feared, it's being unknown. And as Keyes enters adulthood, his sexuality becomes part of this emerging inner world.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

They had reason to believe that Keyes had been very active internationally. He was very active in Canada as well, where he frequented sex workers.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

Keyes would later admit to crossing into Canada and engaging with sex workers in Montreal. By itself, that tells us very little. What interests me, though, is the broader pattern. Keyes forms remarkably few enduring relationships outside his Family throughout his life. Whether that's the result of his upbringing, his personality, or some combination of the two is impossible to know. But over and over again we see him turning inward. And when investigators finally begin interviewing him, years later, they uncover another serial killers. This again is retired special agent Mary Rook.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

He admitted during the interviews to, you know, following several. I think his favorite was Ted Bundy. But he was aware of several serial killers over you know, the past 10, 20 years. And he did read up on those. He did kind of pattern his activities, I think, based upon what they'd done.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

At this point. Keys is a young man increasingly detached from the people around him. He finds imagination more rewarding than relationships.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

He was a student not only of true crime and other serial killers, but of pop culture and serial killers in film, in fiction, in novels. He, I think, believed himself to be in the pantheon and wanted to be in the pantheon. You can see, see this in some of the video that the FBI has made public, which is kind of.

[Israel Keyes (Interrogation Voice)]

Yeah, right. My concern, the problem is 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 prick with TV special or, you know, you know how it is nowadays. Like all this true crime.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

That reaction tells us something important. Most serial killers fantasize about being remembered. Some write letters, some call reporters. Nearly all are convinced that the world will understand that they're special. But Keyes is different. Something psychologists often describe as a form of COVID narcissism. The need isn't public admiration. The reward comes from believing that you possess a secret knowledge, a hidden superiority that no one else can see. This is the pattern we see in Israel Keyes, and evident in the first time that he seeks out a victim. As far as we know, Keyes targets his first victim when he's 16 or 17 years old, possibly in the summer of 1996, 97 or 98. The details come entirely from Keyes himself. Years later, he would recount the incident to a court appointed psychiatrist evaluating him after his arrest. This is how Maureen Callahan describes it.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

He said when he was 16, he was in Oregon. He was working there for the summer in the contracting business. Hired gun, so to speak. And he took himself to a river that was popular with kids who would like, tube down the river in the summer. He was out there one day hunting and he saw a group of kids, teenagers, tubing down the river. And one girl was far behind them. She got separated from them and he grabbed her.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

According to Keys, he abducts the girl at knife point and assaults her in a nearby outhouse. Then something unexpected happens. He lets her go. The victim convinces him that she won't tell anyone. She appeals to him, reassures him. And for reasons we can only speculate about, he listens.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

He let her go. And she got back on that tube and down the river. And he told the FBI, that was a mistake. I should have killed her.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

Now, we have to be careful here. Everything about this incident comes from Israel Keys. There's no known police report, no identified victim, no corroborating witness. Just general details. According to the FBI, investigators believe the victim was between 14 and 18 years old. But they were never able to identify her and do not believe the assault has ever been reported. Which leaves us with troubling questions. What exactly happened? Did the assault occur as Keyes described it? Did he embellish parts of the story, or was there more than he admitted to? The honest answer is that we don't know. What we do know is that Keyes tells the story in a very particular way. In his version, the victim persuades him to let her live. And psychologically, that's interesting. Because this isn't the story of a confident predator describing a carefully planned crime. If anything, it sounds like someone's still struggling with the reality of what they're doing. The fantasy is there, but the identity is not fully formed yet. That's what makes what happens next so remarkable. At home, Keyes is still living within a world defined by religious fundamentalism, self sufficiency, that deep suspicion of the federal government. But he does something almost no one expects. He rejects everything his family values, and joins the U.S. army.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

This person, as Keyes was, had never prior existed on paper. Did not have a birth certificate, did not have medical records, did not have school records, did not have a Social Security number. Did not have any proof that he was who he said he was. This guy at like 18, 19 rolls into a recruitment office in New Jersey and says, sign me up. And they sign him up. Why? Why? I think they saw something unique in Israel Keys. I think they saw a very highly trainable, competent killer. Like a 1% of the 1%.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

What they saw remains unclear. We know he enlisted on July 9, 1998. But according to both the FBI and the US military, many of Keyes military records are missing or unavailable. Though we know he graduated from Air assault School at Fort Lewis in 1999. And we have some accounts from the soldiers who served alongside him. In one account, fellow soldiers reportedly intervened when Keyes attempted to assault a Woman in Egypt. Whether that story is entirely accurate is difficult to determine. But viewed alongside the Oregon incident, it establishes a troubling pattern.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

All the guys he served with, they're all trained to kill too. You know what they told the FBI 201? That guy terrified me. That guy was on another level.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

In July 2001, Israel Keyes receives an honorable discharge from the United States Army. Now this is where things become very murky. According to the FBI, they believe that Keyes commits his first murder shortly after leaving the military. But the details are thin outside of the fact that he's living in Neah Bay, Washington at the time. This again is retired Special Agent Mary Rook.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

I think what was frustrating was that he picked his victims at random. So there's no connection there. Right. So there's nothing that if you did it like a victim profile, there's nothing that would naturally lead you to Israel Keyes.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

And then there's Maureen Callahan's research to consider. When she interviewed Keyes mother, she encountered a very different timeline.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

The FBI, they date his first kill I think to around 99. But I spoke with Keys's mother for the book and she's an interesting one because she's never spoken before since. And she told me that she believes Israel Keez's first kill was was much earlier than that.

[Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

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[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

Personally, I think it's reasonable to believe Keys may have killed someone before 2001. By this point, the fantasies are there, the boundary violations are there, the sexual violence is already there. The question is when he crossed the line further. Some reports have speculated that Keyes may have been responsible for the disappearance of Julie Harris, a 12 year old girl who vanished from Colville, Washington on March 3, 1996. Julie was a double amputee whose prosthetic feet were found near the Colville River a month after her disappearance. Israel Keyes lived in that area at that time. Now, law enforcement has never officially declared Keyes a suspect in this case, but it raises an uncomfortable question. If Keyes was involved, it tells us about the type of victim that he sought. Because one pattern emerges against again and again throughout his crimes. This again is retired special agent Mary Rook.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

These weren't people that if you looked at the victims, you could tie them back to Israel Keys. It was a chance encounter. I mean, I remember he told the investigators once that he would, you know, set up on like hiking trails or along rivers and try to pick off people that were straggling, you know, the last person in the group or the person who was hiking alone.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

Psychologically, that tells us something important. The mythology surrounding Keyes often portrays him as a hunter, a predator. But those kind of people seek game. Again and again. Keyes positions himself where the outcome is already decided before the crime begins. But 2001 is also significant for other reasons. Around this time, Keyes becomes a father. He has a daughter with a woman named Tammy Hawkins, who he meets while stationed at Fort Lewis. And just weeks after the birth of that child, another major figure in his life disappears. His father, now officially Jeffrey Keyes, dies after becoming ill during a train trip. But there are few records, little documentation that like most things in the Israel Keys case, that may not be the whole story.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

One of the lead FBI agents on this case told me, you know, his father died in very mysterious circumstances and there's no documentation of it. They don't know where he, his remains were disposed of. But he said to me, listen, I don't have any proof of this whatsoever, but I, I think, I think Israel easily could have been responsible for his father's death.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

So what can we actually say? The FBI has publicly stated that they believe Keyes committed 11 murders beginning around 2001. Now, part of that conclusion comes from something investigators discovered after his death in 2012. Hidden beneath his jail cell bed were drawings that he made that appeared to depict 11 skulls painted in his own blood. It's something I asked retired special agent Mary Rook to elaborate on.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

We thought it was either 11 or 13 based on what he had told us, and he was never really definite about that. I know in his suicide note he had the 11 skulls, which made us think that maybe it was 11. But he, we, he was very difficult to pin down, you know, because he was so tight with the information, because that was the only bargaining chip he had

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

to try and pin down the victim count. Beginning in 2001, the FBI built an extensive timeline, tracking receipts, flights, rental cars, witness statements, anything that could place keys in a particular location at a particular time.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

Once we got the fact that he had identified, you know, that he had other victims out there, we put together a timeline of where he had been, where he had traveled, and then something set something out to our other field offices to say, hey, look for any unsolved murders that fit this time frame that might, you know, might fall into the, to the realm of Israel Keyes.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

But the timeline struggles to identify victims. And that's because by this point, Keyes has developed a method specifically designed to leave investigators chasing shadows. This again is journalist Maureen Callahan.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

When the urge struck, what he would do is book a flight into a major hub and go dark. So he would not only power his cell phone down, but he would remove the SIM card and the battery. He would fly into this hub, and then he would rent a car and he would drive to retrieve one of multiple kill kits, what he called kill kits that he had buried all over the United States of America.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

These kill kits that Maureen is referring to were caches that Israel Keyes began planting in the early 2000s and later described to the FBI. Israel Keyes is traveling at this time, and he stops at hardware stores purchasing large plastic buckets, filling them with supplies, firearms, ammunition, zip ties, tape, cash, Drano, lye, anything he believes he might need at some unknown point in the future to commit a homicide. He then buries the bucket, sometimes years before its intended use. The FBI eventually recovered two of these caches. One near Eagle River, Alaska, Alaska. Another near Blake's Falls Reservoir in New York. This again is retired Special Agent Mary Rook.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

I dealt with several serial killers during my career, and he's right up there as one of the, the most evil. Again, because of the cold blooded nature of it, fact that no emotion and the planning. I still can't get over the, you know, the caches that he had buried around the country. That foresight, that idea that I'm going to continue doing this for years because some of that stuff had been buried for years.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

There are locations known only to him in his mind.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

Think about what it means to bury one of these kits, to stand alone in a forest somewhere in New York digging a hole for a crime that may not happen for years. The time it takes to cover it over, to walk away and to carry that secret with you, that's not just planning. That's fantasy. The cache becomes a promise from Israel Keyes to his future self. We know that he begins to access these caches sometime before 2005, when Keyes abducts and murders a still unidentified couple in Washington state. It's one of four murders in Washington state. State that he later admits to. Yet even in the confession, he withholds just enough information to prevent investigators from identifying the victims. This again, is retired Special Agent Mary Rook.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

I don't know if he even knew who his victims were. You know, I don't know if he could identify them by name or where they resided. I don't know if he could do that because of the nature of the way he chose them.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

And that's one of the most unsettling aspects of the Keyes case. By this point, the victims themselves seem almost secondary to his fantasy. What appears to matter most is the role they play inside of it. Because beneath all the mythology surrounding Israel Keyes, there's a surprisingly simple fantasy. He's no longer the isolated kid wandering the forests of Washington. He's the invisible man, an anonymous predator moving through people's lives unseen. And nowhere is that more apparent than in the way he speaks to investigators. I want you to listen to this exchange from his interrogation where Keyes describes his confession, talking about the murder of 11 to 13 people as though it were a negotiation between business partners.

[Interviewer / FBI Agent]

It's a business deal. It's kind of strange because, you know, obviously we all have different interests, but that's usually the case. And anyhow, to business deal is you have stuff that really want, and we have, you know, things that we can assure you of that, you know, is

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

of value to you, I think.

[Interviewer / FBI Agent]

And so in any kind of business deal, like I said, negotiations, any good negotiations, everybody walks away from the table, you know, not getting exactly what they want. So, yeah, we're not getting exactly what we want, and you're probably not getting exactly what you want. You probably like to not give us any of them, but, you know, it's a business deal.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

Once again, keep the context of this moment in mind. Keyes is sitting across from the FBI discussing the deaths of more than a dozen people. And Keyes talks about it as though he's negotiating a contract. The murders themselves don't register with him. The story he tells himself about the murders is what's important. Keyes later tells the FBI that in 2005 or 2006, he uses his boat to dispose of two victims, even claiming that one body was dumped in Crescent Lake in Washington, using anchors to keep it submerged. But Crescent Lake is enormous, and Keyes remains deliberately vague about the exact locations. In reviewing the interrogation tapes, I found another exchange where investigators placed. Plead with him for identifying details.

[FBI Agent]

Here's what can happen today. You give me the name, I write it down. I don't ask you any more questions. We all have some lunch, talk about whatever you want to talk about. You have a cigar, you know, you can talk about the weather, what's going on in Anchorage, you know, whatever. I'll just write down the name. We have blinds. You have to see block.

[Israel Keyes (Interrogation Voice)]

Well, I mean, it sounds stinky, but no, I'm not.

[FBI Agent]

I'm not good or anything. I'm not your family names.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

By 2007, Israel Keyes is certainly responsible for multiple murders. How many? We don't know. But 2007 is also the year that he moves to Alaska with his daughter and a travel nurse named Kimberly Anderson. This again is retired Special Agent Mary Rook in Anchorage.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

He had a good reputation. He worked in construction. He was a handyman. And I remember one of his clients, after he was arrested, you know, horrified that she had given him a key to her house because she trusted him that much.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

And that's really the fantasy, isn't it? Not becoming famous, not becoming feared, Becoming trusted and ordinary so as to make himself more undetectable. At this time, Keyes is traveling extensively along the Alaska highway, making known stops in British Columbia and the Yukon. Do women go missing along these routes? Absolutely. Long before investigators ever consider Israel Keyes a suspect, Western Canada is already confronting a national crisis. Indigenous women and girls are disappearing and being murdered at rates wildly disproportionate to their share of the population. Between 1980 and 2012, indigenous women account for roughly 16% of all female homicide victims in Canada, while representing only about 4% of the female population. That doesn't mean Israel Keyes is responsible for any of those disappearances. There's no evidence to support that claim directly, but it does mean that he's moving through a landscape where vulnerable women are already disappearing, often with little public attention. Attention and limited investigative resources. For a predator obsessed with anonymity like Israel Keyes, these are exactly the kind of environments that demand scrutiny from local authorities.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

As you understand the. The enormity of it and how engaged he had been and how long it had gone on, you really think about how could he have operated from for so long without anybody, you know, tumbling to him. And then you think about the victims and the families of the victims that have years in some cases, not knowing what happened to their loved ones. And it just really makes you sit back and think, wow, you know, we've got a really evil person here.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

On April 9, 2009, Keys abducts and murders a female victim from, from an unknown state on the east coast before transporting her remains into New York. Years later, he provides the FBI with just enough information to suggest they're looking at a real victim, but not enough to identify her with certainty. The FBI later comes to the conclusion that this woman is 49 year old Debra Feldman, who disappears from her apartment in Hackensack, New Jersey on April 8, 2009. In his interviews, Keys tacitly acknowledges this is the case.

[Israel Keyes (Interrogation Voice)]

I mean, especially on the New York case because they were given so much information on it. Can't really stop on that one now.

[Interviewer / FBI Agent]

So you just always, the body is in New York. We want to start striking up relationships with. Whenever a criminal chief, he needs the top tick or bully to talk to about the New York thing. Because you've already said committed.

[Israel Keyes (Interrogation Voice)]

Yeah, but I mean, I don't want to talk, I don't want your any more information on. I mean, I understand his point of

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

view, but it's, you know, like you

[Israel Keyes (Interrogation Voice)]

say, it's still, frankly, that's gonna be too much at this point.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

And what's particularly troubling about this victim is that Debra Feldman was living on the margins. She struggled with addiction, poverty, and engaged in sex work. Which raises an uncomfortable possibility that Keyes was very familiar with a vulnerable population of women in New Jersey. Insight that demands further investigation because there's a gap in this timeline. The next incident we know of doesn't begin until June 2, 2011, when Keyes fled, flies from Anchorage to Chicago. From there, he rents a car and drives nearly 1,000 miles east to Essex, Vermont. Why Vermont? We don't know other than Keys is searching for an opportunity. This again is retired special agent Mary Rook.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

He flew to Chicago, rented a car and drove to Vermont. That makes it very difficult when you're trying to piece together, you know, how do these people come into the same sphere, you know, where, where did their lives overlap? Where did they meet each other?

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

On the night of June 8, 2011, Keys breaks into the home of Bill and Lorraine Courier, ages 49 and 55, respectively. The couple are asleep in their home in Essex. Keyes later tells investigators he selected the house because it appears Vulnerable, Keyes restrains the couple and forces them into their own green Saturn sedan before driving them to an abandoned farmhouse. What happens next comes largely from Keyes confession. According to the FBI, he separates the couple, sexually assaults and murders both. It's one of the few homicides investigators can independently corroborate. But even here, Ken Keyes obsession with control creates problems. After the murders, he burns the abandoned farmhouse, believing he may have left behind evidence that could identify him. And years later, when investigators return to the property, they discover another obstacle. The remains of the farmhouse have already been destroyed and removed. The debris has been transported to a landfill in Coventry, Vermont, and a massive search follows. This again is retired special agent Mary Rook.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

Our office in Albany searched the landfill for weeks and was never able to find those bodies.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

For 11 weeks, investigators searched through tons of refuse looking for Bill and Lorraine career. But once again Keyes is successful in withholding information and families are left without answers.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

He was going to get caught. He was sort of losing control. The best way I can describe it is it's like any addiction, right? You build a tolerance and then your dopamine hits. They're not as intense and, and you need to ratchet up the risk and the danger and the violence. And so the time between his killings was getting smaller and smaller.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

This sentiment from Maureen Callahan seems. Apartment By 2011, something appears to be changing. Israel Keys's fantasy has become so all encompassing that he's developed perceived omniscience.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

He told us during one of his interviews that he was actually going to murder two people in Anchorage who were parked in a car at a a local park. And the only thing that dissuaded him was the Anchorage police car drove by.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

Think about that. For years, Keys goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid risk. He flies across the country, he buries weapons years in advance. He chooses victims with no obvious connection to himself. And now he's considering murdering strangers a few miles from his own home. The fantasy is demanding more and more. And on February 1, 2012, a Israel Keyes commits the most reckless crime of his life. His victim is 18 year old Samantha Koenig, a barista working alone at a coffee kiosk in Anchorage. The abduction is even captured on surveillance cameras. Keyes approaches the stand and orders an Americano. Take from that what you will. He then produces a handgun. You can see Samantha raising her hands. Keyes demands money, orders her to turn off the lights and forces her to climb out through the service window. In the final image, Samantha Koenig can be seen being led towards Keys pickup truck. This again is retired Special Agent Mary Rook.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

I had a habit of watching the 11 o' clock news, and I remember seeing the story of a woman who had gone missing from a coffee stand in Anchorage. And if you've ever been to Anchorage, those coffee stands are ubiquitous. They're everywhere. And this one was one that I knew. I hadn't frequented it, but I knew exactly where it was. And they said that she had been taken, possibly kidnapped, from the coffee stale.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

Keys takes Samantha back to his property, where he restrains her in one of several outbuildings. There, he sexually assaults her. Investigative notes list the cause of death as strangulation.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

The night he kidnapped Samantha, basically stuffed her in a closet in a cabinet in an outdoor building, and then took his family, flew down to New Orleans to go on a cruise. I mean, how do you do that within 24 hours? I think the average person would say, I can't do that. I can't make that shift mentally. But he did. And he does it repeatedly.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

Psychologically, that may be one of the most revealing moments in this entire case. It speaks to a level of compartmentalization that borders on the unimaginable. Most people think of compartmentalization as hiding one part of your life from another. But what Keys demonstrates is something far more extreme. The ability to move seamlessly between identities. And when Keyes returns to Alaska, the case takes an even darker turn. He returns to Samantha's body and uses makeup and fishing line to make it appear as if she's alive. He then photographs her for ransom notes he then sends to investigators.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

You know, if you look at it, the way he handled her abduction and then the ransom notes, it almost. I'm not a psychologist, I don't pretend to be, but it seemed to me like he was unraveling because what he did in that case made it easier to. To identify him. My memory was that there was women's makeup in the cash in Texas. And that made me think, because in the Alaska case with Samantha, he had made her up after she was dead. He'd made up her body to make it look like she was still alive. And that made me wonder if he had a similar plan in Texas, you know, just in case he would have the makeup, he would have everything he would need for another victim.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

Afterwards, Keyes disposes of Samantha's remains in a lake near Palmer, Alaska.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

This is February in Alaska. Samantha's body is in an outbuilding. So she's frozen. The body is frozen stiff. He comes back, thaws her out, and then to you know, dispose of her body in pieces in the lake, and at the same time, catching fish that he brings home for his family's dinner. How do you do that? How do you throw body pieces off your boat and then, you know, just mildly, you know, continue fishing and take your catch home for the. For the family for dinner?

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

And there's one final detail that may help explain what we're looking at. Keyes admits to an act of necrophilia, which is perplexing because sexual interests don't simply bring overnight. Research on paraphilic disorders consistently find that these interests typically emerge in adolescence or early adulthood and often persist for decades. They may evolve, they may expand, but they don't appear suddenly in a person's mid-30s, which raises an uncomfortable possibility. How much of Keys's fantasy life are we missing? After the Samantha Koenig homicide, Keyes travels to Texas for a family wedding. Although he later denies committing any additional murders during this period, investigators believe he may be responsible for another homicide in Texas or a neighboring state. We know that in the early morning hours of February 16, 2012, Keyes sets a house on fire in Alito, Texas. Afterwards, he robs the national bank of Texas in azl. At this point, something is changing. The man who spent years minimizing risk now appears increasingly willing to create it. On March 13, 2012, just days after the wedding, a highway patrol officer in Lufkin, Texas, pulls over Key Keyes rental car, a white Ford Focus that had been captured on surveillance footage near a withdrawal made using Samantha Koenig's debit card. Inside the vehicle, the officer finds rolls of cash, Samantha Koenig's debit card, and her cell phone. And just like that, the game is over. Keyes is arrested and extradited to Alaska. This, again, is retired Special Agent Barry Rook.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

The fact that he was traveling with her phone and the ATM card and was actually using it, that, to me, was very, very much a departure from his previous behavior, where he was so precise and so organized and so disciplined.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

Why would a man spend a decade killing in the most methodical way imaginable, only to become so careless at the end? Why keep the phone? Why keep the debit card? Why keep using them? And perhaps most importantly, why start talking? Because that's exactly what happens next. The man who has spent years ensuring nobody knows what he's been doing suddenly begins telling the FBI. Over the next eight months, Keyes spends more than 40 hours speaking with investigators before ultimately taking his own life in an Anchorage jail cell, something he appears to Foreshadow during the interviews themselves.

[FBI Agent]

Well, what do you want to talk about?

[Israel Keyes (Interrogation Voice)]

Dust, drought, granule. Give you all the information you need. Might be here. Kind of like a last minute then thing. So I'm not around for the aftermath.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

His goal was he wanted the death penalty, right? And, you know, the more crimes we could pin on him, the better the chances that he would get the death penalty. But at the same time, the more victims he identified in different locations. Those locations have a stake in the outcome. And I think that was why ultimately he took his own life, was because he realized he could not control the outcome.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

So where does that leave us? An isolated child raised by deeply religious parents whose worldview he ultimately rejects. A young man showing early signs of callousness, exploitation, sexual violence, and antisocial behavior. A life spent ensuring nobody knew what he was doing. And a death seemingly designed to ensure nobody ever would. For years, Israel Keyes has been portrayed as a criminal mastermind, the predator who could strike anywhere. But the closer I look at this case, the less convincing that image becomes. The mythology of Israel Keyes is built around the idea that he was fake, fearless. But the reality may be the opposite. A man so ashamed of who he was that he spent his entire life trying to become invisible. How active is the FBI on the case these days? It's been a number of years.

[Retired Special Agent Mary Rook]

I don't know. I still see things occasionally, but I. I think it's. I think the. The leads and stuff that were sent out to. To other field offices, those are still probably open. The Anchorage case is closed. But like I said, you know, based upon the information we had, like in Seattle, in Vermont, I think those cases are probably open. But without any new evidence, without any. Any more leads to follow up on, they're probably. There's probably no active investigation.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

This, again, is Maureen Callahan.

[Maureen Callahan (Author and Journalist)]

My main thing, too, is there are cold cases that I believe can be closed pretty. Or you could get to, like, 99%. You could say it was Keys. It was Keys. The FBI has no interest in revisiting them. I don't know why.

[Narrator / Podcast Host (James Buddy Day)]

And perhaps that's where the story ends. Not with certainty, not with answers. For all the attention this case has received, Israel Keys remains, in many ways, exactly what he always wanted to be. Unknown. But the people he harmed deserve better than that. And that's why we need to keep coming back to this case. Not because of Israel Keys, but because somewhere in those empty spaces, there are still people waiting to be found. Before we wrap a few show notes, my thanks to Mary Rook. Who is so gracious with her time and insight, and I will post the expanded version of that interview inside Unmarked Case Files on Patreon. And if you're watching on YouTube, know that we are working on opening a members portal very soon in which you'll be able to watch early ad free episodes among many more perks. Next, you can find Maureen Callahan on her podcast the Nerve with Maureen Callahan and her book American Predator is available now wherever books are sold. I'm still hopeful that a documentary series based on her work is produced. It's long overdue. Next this summer, Unmarked is returning to Spawn Ranch with new content across multiple platforms surrounding the Manson murders. So now is a good time to pick up my book, Charles Manson the Last Words, available exclusively on Kindle, Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. More on all those plans will be coming very soon. Stay tuned to our channel and if you want to see what I'm working on and thinking about for future episodes, you can follow me on Instagram amesbuddyday. This episode of Unmarked was produced by John Nadeau. Our associate producer is Jesse Demaray and our editor is Dave Alderson. Until next week, this is Unmarked.

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[Israel Keyes (Interrogation Voice)]

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