Israel Keyes did not fit neatly into the patterns investigators had come to expect from serial killers.
He traveled thousands of miles. He targeted people with whom he had no obvious connection. He sometimes paid in cash and turned off his phone while traveling. Most disturbing of all, he buried caches of weapons, tools, money, and other supplies around the United States—sometimes years before returning to use them.
These caches became known as Israel Keyes' kill kits.
For years, his crimes remained disconnected. A disappearance in one state might appear to have nothing whatsoever to do with a murder thousands of miles away.
That began to change in 2012.
The kidnapping of 18-year-old Alaska barista Samantha Koenig eventually led investigators to Keyes. What initially appeared to be one horrific murder soon developed into something much larger.
Keyes confessed to killing Koenig and Vermont couple Bill and Lorraine Currier, while also describing additional murders whose victims he refused to fully identify. The FBI ultimately said investigators believed Keyes had killed 11 people, although only three identified victims have been conclusively connected to him.
Then Keyes died in jail before investigators could get all the answers they wanted.
More than a decade later, one question continues to surround the case:
How many people did Israel Keyes actually kill?
Who Was Israel Keyes?
Israel Keyes was an American serial killer, kidnapper, bank robber, burglar, and arsonist whose known criminal activity stretched across multiple states.
He was born on January 7, 1978, in Utah and spent portions of his childhood in Washington.
As an adult, Keyes served in the United States Army before eventually settling in Alaska, where he operated a construction business.
To many of the people around him, there was little to suggest the scope of his secret life.
Behind that ordinary appearance, however, Keyes was planning crimes far from home.
Following his arrest, investigators learned that he had traveled extensively throughout the United States. The FBI eventually reconstructed years of flights, rental cars, financial transactions, phone records, and other movements in an attempt to determine where Keyes had been—and whether unsolved disappearances or murders coincided with his travels.
The result was a case far larger than the murder that had originally led police to him.
Israel Keyes' Early Life
Keyes grew up in an unusually isolated environment.
His large family spent part of his childhood living in rural Washington, where the children were homeschooled and the family lived largely separated from mainstream society.
Keyes later described violent behavior beginning well before his known murders.
According to information investigators gathered after his arrest, he had engaged in animal cruelty when he was young. More importantly, Keyes admitted to abducting and sexually assaulting a teenage girl near Oregon's Deschutes River in the late 1990s.
He released the girl.
The FBI later included the attack in its reconstruction of Keyes' criminal history, placing it in either the summer of 1997 or 1998.
It is one of the earliest known indications that the violence associated with Keyes began years before the murders for which he became infamous.
Israel Keyes' Military Service
Keyes entered the U.S. Army in 1998.
He served until 2001 and was stationed at locations that included Fort Lewis in Washington and Fort Hood in Texas.
There is no evidence that his military service somehow caused his later crimes, and attributing his methods simply to military training would oversimplify the case.
What investigators were eventually able to establish was that Keyes' known or suspected killing period began around the time his military career ended.
According to the FBI's reconstructed timeline, Keyes said he committed his first homicide sometime between July and October 2001, while living in Washington.
The identity of that victim remains unknown.
It was only the beginning.
The Israel Keyes Murders
One reason the Israel Keyes case remains so difficult to fully understand is that there is no complete list of his victims.
Investigators were able to identify three:
Bill Currier
Lorraine Currier
Samantha Koenig
Keyes described other murders during his interrogations, but he often withheld names, locations, or other information investigators needed to conclusively identify the victims.
The FBI eventually concluded that there were probably 11 victims in total, based largely on statements Keyes made during his interviews.
That does not mean investigators have identified 11 murders committed by him.
They haven't.
Only three identified victims are conclusively associated with Keyes, leaving the remaining suspected victims at the center of one of the case's biggest mysteries.
Bill and Lorraine Currier
On June 8, 2011, Bill and Lorraine Currier disappeared from their home in Essex, Vermont.
Their disappearance remained mysterious until Keyes was arrested the following year.
During his interrogations, Keyes confessed to their murders.
The crime demonstrated just how extensively he could prepare before attacking.
Keyes had previously traveled to the area and buried a cache containing supplies that could later be used in a crime. He returned approximately two years later.
According to investigators, Keyes entered the Curriers' home, abducted them and transported them to another location.
Both were killed.
Their bodies have never been recovered.
The Currier murders became critically important to the investigation because they provided evidence that Samantha Koenig was not an isolated victim.
Keyes had been killing before he ever encountered her.
And the cache he prepared for the Vermont crime revealed one of the most unusual aspects of his methods.
What Were Israel Keyes' Kill Kits?
The so-called Israel Keyes kill kits were caches of weapons, tools, money, and other supplies hidden in advance for possible future crimes.
Rather than necessarily carrying everything he needed directly from home, Keyes could bury supplies near an area he might return to later.
The FBI recovered caches in Alaska and New York.
Keyes told investigators that other caches had existed elsewhere.
Some were apparently buried long before they were used.
The cache associated with the Currier murders, for example, had been hidden roughly two years before Keyes returned to Vermont.
This separation between preparation and attack made reconstructing his movements considerably more complicated.
A trip made years before a murder could potentially have been part of the preparation for it.
The kill kits have consequently become one of the defining features of the Israel Keyes case.
But they were only one part of his efforts to make his crimes difficult to connect.
How Israel Keyes Tried to Avoid Detection
Keyes attempted to create distance between himself and his crimes.
He traveled extensively.
He sometimes flew into one location before renting a vehicle and driving hundreds of miles elsewhere.
He used cash.
He sometimes kept his phone turned off.
And unlike killers who repeatedly operated in one recognizable hunting ground, Keyes could commit crimes far from the place where he lived.
He also claimed that he did not restrict himself to one narrow type of victim.
That unpredictability created a serious investigative problem.
If two victims lived thousands of miles apart, had different backgrounds, disappeared under different circumstances, and had no apparent connection to the same suspect, investigators would have little immediate reason to connect the cases.
Keyes appears to have understood that.
For years, it worked.
Then he abducted Samantha Koenig.
The Murder of Samantha Koenig
Samantha Koenig was an 18-year-old barista working at a coffee stand in Anchorage, Alaska.
On February 1, 2012, Keyes abducted her from the business.
He later killed her.
Unlike many of the crimes Keyes described to investigators, the Koenig murder occurred close to his home and generated evidence that ultimately made it possible for authorities to track him.
Keyes attempted to obtain ransom money after the murder and used Koenig's debit card.
That decision proved disastrous for him.
Investigators tracked ATM withdrawals connected to the card as Keyes traveled through several states.
The movements eventually helped lead authorities to Texas.
How Was Israel Keyes Caught?
Israel Keyes was arrested in Lufkin, Texas, on March 13, 2012.
By then, investigators had been following activity involving Samantha Koenig's debit card.
The FBI's published timeline records withdrawals involving the card in Alaska, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas before Keyes' arrest.
Once authorities had Keyes in custody, the investigation quickly expanded beyond Koenig.
He eventually admitted responsibility for her murder.
Then investigators began learning about the others.
The man arrested in connection with the disappearance of one young woman in Anchorage was about to become the focus of a nationwide serial murder investigation.
The Israel Keyes Confessions
Keyes participated in more than 40 hours of interviews with investigators following his arrest.
Those conversations provided extraordinary amounts of information—but they also created new mysteries.
Keyes admitted to crimes while withholding crucial details about others.
He identified Bill and Lorraine Currier.
He discussed unidentified victims.
He described murders in different parts of the country.
He talked about bank robberies, burglaries, kidnappings and arson.
Yet he never provided investigators with the complete account they wanted.
At times, the interviews effectively became negotiations over information.
FBI Special Agent Jolene Goeden later explained that Keyes appeared very deliberate about what he revealed. Investigators did not get the impression that he accidentally disclosed information he intended to keep secret.
Even while imprisoned, Keyes was attempting to control the story.
How Many People Did Israel Keyes Kill?
This remains one of the biggest unanswered questions in the case.
Three identified victims are conclusively connected to Israel Keyes: Samantha Koenig, Bill Currier, and Lorraine Currier.
But investigators believe there were more.
The FBI has publicly stated that investigators believed Keyes had 11 victims in total.
That estimate came primarily from Keyes himself.
During interviews, he told investigators his victim count was fewer than 12. Agents noticed that he corrected them when they got details wrong, but did not correct references to his "11 victims."
Combined with other statements, investigators concluded that 11 was probably the number Keyes was indicating.
The problem is that the identities of most of those possible victims remain unknown.
That leaves an enormous gap between the number of murders investigators believe occurred and the number they have actually been able to identify.
The Unknown Victims of Israel Keyes
After Keyes' arrest, investigators faced a daunting task.
They needed to reconstruct more than a decade of his movements.
The FBI examined travel records, rental vehicles, financial activity, phone information, known addresses and other evidence in an attempt to determine where Keyes had been.
Investigators then had to compare those movements against missing-person cases and unsolved homicides.
Keyes complicated the process by describing some crimes without identifying the victims.
According to the FBI's timeline, he claimed responsibility for murders in Washington and elsewhere while providing only limited information about who the victims were.
He also traveled internationally.
The FBI has said it was unknown whether Keyes committed homicides outside the United States.
As a result, numerous missing-person cases have been discussed publicly as possible Keyes cases over the years.
But proximity to Keyes' travels does not prove that he was responsible.
Unless law enforcement establishes a connection, these cases should be treated as possibilities rather than additions to his confirmed victim list.
That distinction is essential when examining the Israel Keyes case.
Why Israel Keyes Was So Difficult to Track
Keyes has sometimes been portrayed as a criminal mastermind who developed an almost flawless method of murder.
Reality is more complicated.
He did take unusual precautions.
His long-distance travel, buried caches, cash transactions, lack of an obvious victim profile, and attempts to separate his normal movements from his crimes made retrospective investigation extremely difficult.
But he was not untouchable.
The Koenig murder demonstrated that clearly.
Keyes took risks. He left evidence. He used his victim's debit card. Those decisions allowed investigators to follow his movements and ultimately arrest him.
The more accurate lesson from the case is not that Keyes developed the "perfect crime."
It is that crimes committed across multiple jurisdictions with little obvious connection between victims can be extremely difficult to recognize as the work of one offender.
Israel Keyes and the FBI Investigation
Following Keyes' arrest, the FBI and other agencies attempted to reconstruct his movements across the United States.
The investigation continued after his death.
In 2013, the FBI publicly released a detailed timeline of his travels and activities, hoping members of the public might recognize encounters with Keyes or provide information that could identify additional victims.
The timeline stretches back to the 1990s and includes flights, vehicle rentals, border crossings, financial transactions and locations where investigators believed Keyes may have committed crimes.
It remains one of the most important resources for understanding the scope of the case.
The FBI also released recordings and transcripts from several interviews conducted with Keyes.
Those records allow the public to see something unusual in a serial murder investigation: investigators trying to assemble a nationwide collection of crimes while the suspected killer deliberately reveals only pieces of the puzzle.
Israel Keyes' Other Crimes
Murder was not the only serious crime associated with Keyes.
During the investigation, he admitted involvement in numerous other offenses.
These included:
bank robberies
burglaries
kidnappings
sexual assault
arson
Some crimes may have helped finance his extensive travel.
Others may have been connected to preparations for murder or attempts to conceal evidence.
Keyes told investigators that he had burglarized numerous homes around the country, and the FBI investigated his involvement in other crimes occurring during periods when he was traveling.
This further complicated attempts to reconstruct his movements.
A trip could have involved a robbery.
It could have involved preparations for a later crime.
It could have involved murder.
Or it could have had nothing to do with criminal activity at all.
Investigators had to determine which was which.
Israel Keyes' Death
Israel Keyes never stood trial for Samantha Koenig's murder.
In December 2012, while being held at the Anchorage Correctional Complex, Keyes died by suicide.
His death abruptly ended investigators' best opportunity to identify his remaining victims.
Material discovered in his cell afterward attracted significant attention, including drawings of skulls and writings that have sometimes been described as containing hidden clues.
The FBI, however, has been more cautious.
The Bureau reported that writings recovered from the cell were examined by the FBI Laboratory and did not contain a hidden code or provide investigative clues identifying additional victims.
That matters because mythology has increasingly become mixed with fact in retellings of the Keyes story.
There is already enough mystery in the actual evidence.
It does not need embellishment.
Why the Israel Keyes Case Still Matters
The most disturbing aspect of the Israel Keyes case may not be what investigators know.
It is what they don't.
Three identified people are known victims.
Investigators believed there were 11.
That potentially leaves multiple people whose disappearances or deaths have never been conclusively connected to their killer.
Some may still be classified as missing.
Others may have died in cases believed to be accidents.
Some could be victims in unsolved homicide investigations.
And it remains possible that investigators will never identify all of them.
Keyes deliberately created geographic distance between himself, his victims, and the evidence associated with his crimes. His death eliminated the one person capable of providing a complete explanation.
That has transformed his case from a solved murder investigation into a collection of lingering mysteries.
Frequently Asked Questions About Israel Keyes
Who was Israel Keyes?
Israel Keyes was an American serial killer and career criminal who committed crimes across multiple U.S. states. He was arrested in 2012 following the kidnapping and murder of Samantha Koenig in Anchorage, Alaska.
How many people did Israel Keyes kill?
Three identified victims are conclusively connected to Keyes: Samantha Koenig and Bill and Lorraine Currier. The FBI has said investigators believed Keyes killed 11 people in total, largely based on statements he made during interrogations.
Who were Israel Keyes' confirmed victims?
The three identified victims conclusively linked to Keyes are Bill Currier, Lorraine Currier, and Samantha Koenig. Investigators believe additional unidentified victims exist.
What were Israel Keyes' kill kits?
Keyes buried caches containing weapons, tools, money, and other supplies that could later be retrieved during criminal trips. Some were hidden long before he returned to the area.
Where did Israel Keyes bury his kill kits?
The FBI recovered caches associated with Keyes in Alaska and New York. Keyes indicated that additional caches had existed elsewhere around the country.
Why did Israel Keyes travel so much?
Some of Keyes' travel was legitimate, but investigators determined that certain trips were connected to crimes or preparations for crimes. His habit of traveling long distances also made it more difficult to associate him with victims.
How was Israel Keyes caught?
Keyes was caught after the murder of Samantha Koenig. His use of Koenig's debit card produced a trail of ATM transactions across several states. Authorities arrested him in Lufkin, Texas, on March 13, 2012.
Did Israel Keyes choose random victims?
Keyes told investigators that he targeted victims of opportunity rather than consistently pursuing one specific demographic. However, because many suspected victims remain unidentified, it is impossible to independently establish a complete victim pattern.
Are there still unidentified Israel Keyes victims?
Yes. Investigators believe Keyes killed more people than the three identified victims conclusively connected to him. The FBI released information about his travels specifically in an effort to identify additional victims.
The Mystery Israel Keyes Left Behind
Israel Keyes spent years attempting to keep his crimes disconnected.
He traveled far from home. He prepared in advance. He buried supplies. He targeted people with no obvious relationship to him and operated across jurisdictional boundaries that made seemingly unrelated crimes even harder to connect.
Eventually, one murder exposed him.
Samantha Koenig's disappearance led investigators to Keyes, and Keyes led them to Bill and Lorraine Currier.
Then the trail became much less certain.
His interrogations suggested a far larger series of crimes than authorities could prove. Investigators reconstructed years of travel and searched for unidentified victims, but Keyes died before providing the answers they needed.
That is ultimately what makes the Israel Keyes case so unsettling.
The question is no longer whether he killed beyond the three identified victims.
Investigators believed he did.
The question is who those other victims were—and whether their families will ever learn what happened to them.
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