Josh Hallmark
Appearances
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
In November 2011, Eugene, who goes by Jean, and Cami are staying on the Oregon coast. They're teenagers, 18 and 16. Jean's family rented an oceanfront condo for Thanksgiving and invited Cami to stay with them. One morning, while Jean's father is in the shower, they tell Jean's grandparents that they're going out for a walk, heading down to Boiler Bay State Park to look at the tide pools.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
But that hasn't stopped investigators from trying to connect more cold cases and bring closure to victims' families. Today, with the help of Josh Hallmark, we're discussing three missing person cases that he believes could be connected to Israel Keyes. I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. You can find us here every Monday.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
It wouldn't have been the only time something like that happened in the area Gene and Cammy were in. But Josh has since called the rogue wave theory into question.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
When Josh looked into Gene and Cammie's disappearance, he started to take note of possible connections to Keys.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
In statements to the FBI, Israel spoke about driving long distances. He drove from Chicago to Vermont in the abduction of the Curriers, and once mentioned driving more than 300 miles with a victim alive in his car.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
Israel appeared to have a thing for couples and told authorities he often chose smaller victims to make the abduction and disposal process easier.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
Jean was between 5'6 and 5'8, 140 to 150 pounds. Cammy was 5'7 and weighed around 130. And when Josh visited Depot Bay, he noticed something about the route Jean and Cammy likely would have taken.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
After Jean and Cammy disappeared, investigators and volunteers performed thorough searches of the area. The Coast Guard got involved. No evidence is found.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
Stranger still, a few days later, a friend of Cammie's family is on the beach helping another search party.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
Be sure to check us out on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast. And we'd love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. This is the final part of our series on Israel Keys. In our last two episodes, we discussed Israel's confessions to the murders of Samantha Koenig and Lorraine and Bill Currier.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
Unlike Susie Lyall, Jean and Cammy weren't found on Israel's computer, but Josh says he'd been looking into a young woman named Brooke Wilberger who disappeared in the same area as Jean and Cammy. Israel didn't have a hand in Brooke's disappearance.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
The man who murdered her later confessed, but Josh notes that the same newspapers that were covering Brooke's disappearance at the time were also covering Jean and Cammy's case.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
All these years later, there's no more certainty. There's still work to be done, more evidence that needs to be found, and there's no telling which direction it will point.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
Josh has spoken with some of Cami's loved ones. He says he's gotten to know her cousin and best friend well. They both lived with Cami when she disappeared.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
What they've heard is mostly what law enforcement believes. Jean and Cami were washed out to sea by a rogue wave during a storm that hit around the time they departed.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
The FBI believes Israel may be responsible for more murders, but Israel's death in prison put an end to the confessions. Now, Josh Hallmark walks us through the unsolved murders he believes have the strongest links to Israel Keys. Stay with us. It's March 1998. Suzanne Susie Lyall is a 19-year-old college sophomore.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
If you have information about Jean or Cami's disappearance, contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-843-5678 or the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office in Oregon at 541-265-4231. Israel Keyes abducts Samantha Koenig on February 1st, 2012, and murders her later that night.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
The next morning, he travels with his girlfriend and daughter to Houston before driving to New Orleans to go on a cruise. He's weeks away from getting caught, from his house of cards coming crashing down. When the cruise finishes, Israel's girlfriend decides to go on a road trip with some friends. So Israel and his daughter drive to the Dallas area to visit his mother and sisters.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
But shortly after he arrives, Israel goes on a solo trip.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
During that time, a 58-year-old Texas man goes missing, named James, aka Jimmy Tidwell.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
It's believed that Jimmy was last seen on February 15th, 2012, but he's not reported missing until February 28th, 13 days later. Over the course of their investigation, officials questioned Jimmy's wife, Carol. She's unable to give investigators a date and time she last saw her husband.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
Despite suspicions originally cast on her, Carol has been cleared by law enforcement, and Jimmy's case remains unsolved.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
Jimmy lived in a town called Mount Enterprise. Josh says Israel's mother and sisters, the ones he was visiting, were in the process of moving from the Dallas area to the town of Wells.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
We know that Keyes visited Wells during his trip, but what's interesting is Mount Enterprise is only about a 40-minute drive from there, and Jimmy lived in a remote cabin in the woods, the kind of area Israel told the FBI he liked to stake out.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
In conversations with the FBI, Israel denied killing anyone in Texas. But later, he seemingly walked back that statement without giving any specifics. He said something to the effect of, I haven't been truthful about Texas. Josh brings the conversation back to the fire Israel set the day after Jimmy disappeared.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
If you have any information about the disappearance of Jimmy Tidwell, you're asked to call the Rusk County Sheriff's Office at 903-657-3581. With his death, Israel Keyes robbed so many people of closure. But experts are still trying to better understand his M.O. and victimology. Forensic psychologist Catherine Ramsland has suggested Israel Keyes may have had a fetish for missing persons.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
And investigators and researchers are still piecing together his crimes and making what could be breakthroughs. For example, Josh now believes Israel's murders were not as random or disconnected as officials once believed.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
Josh covers this revelation in season two of his podcast, True Crime Bullshit, in an episode called Hotspots. And it's proof that our understanding of Israel's crimes is still evolving. Recently, Josh says, a woman came forward who says she had a run-in with Israel sometime between Samantha Koenig's murder and Jimmy Tidwell's disappearance.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
Due to the nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of rape, kidnapping, murder and suicide. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. To get help on mental health and suicide, visit Spotify.com slash resources.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
She apparently knew information about Israel that hasn't been made publicly available.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
Another strange coincidence in a long history of others. There's a plaque on a gazebo at Matanuska Lake in Alaska, the place where the FBI found Samantha Koenig's remains, the only remains ever recovered from any of Israel Key's victims. It reads, with remembrance and respect, this space is dedicated to the cherished loved ones who were violently taken from their lives and ours.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
We can only hope that one day more will be found. Thanks for listening to Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. We'll be back with a new episode on Monday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast. And we'd love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
To report tips about the Israel Keys case, call 1-800-CALL-FBI or visit fbi.gov slash tips. Once again, we'd like to give a special thanks to Josh Hallmark for lending his expertise to today's story.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
You can check out True Crime Bullshit, Josh's investigation into Israel Keyes, which is going into its sixth season, as well as Josh's other podcasts from Studio Both And on Spotify or wherever else you listen. Stay safe out there. Serial Killers is a Spotify podcast. This episode was written by Connor Sampson, researched, edited, and produced by Connor Sampson and Chelsea Wood.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
Fact-checked by Laurie Siegel and sound designed by Alex Button. Our head of programming is Julian Boirot. Our head of production is Nick Johnson and Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor. I'm your host, Vanessa Richardson.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
She works part-time at a video game and software store called Babbage's, located at the Crossgates Mall in Albany. On March 2nd, she takes a bus from campus to work, finishes her shift, and Josh says this is where the timeline gets confusing. According to the New York State Police, she catches a bus back to campus and arrives at the Collins Circle stop at SUNY Albany around 9.25 p.m.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
She's less than a thousand feet from the campus's towering dorm buildings, and no one knows what happens to her from there. She's never seen again. But Josh isn't so sure that Susie got on the bus after work.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
Over the course of six months in 2012, Israel Keyes gave FBI agents the names of three of his murder victims, Samantha Koenig and Bill and Lorraine Currier. He recounted the events of one of his first ever victims, a teenage girl he says he abducted and raped along the Deschutes River in Oregon sometime between 1996 and 1998. He claimed he intended to kill her, but didn't go through with it.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
But Josh wonders whether they actually did see Susie that night.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
Christopher Kunkel is a forensic psychologist and criminal investigative consultant who's been involved in Susie's case.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
What's indisputable is that Susie never makes it back to her dorm that night.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
Not technically a suspect, a person of interest. Others are considered over the course of the investigation, including Susie's boyfriend.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
You'll remember the NamUs 45 from our first episode. NamUs is a national database for missing people. The FBI found photos of people of all ages, races, and backgrounds on Israel's computer, some alongside missing person flyers and news articles about disappearances. When they ran the photos and names through the NamUs database and found 45 matches, Susie was one of those matches.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
The FBI has since tried to identify this survivor. If they've succeeded, they haven't released any additional information to the public. And beyond that, investigators have only ever linked one other case to Israel Keyes, the 2009 disappearance of a New Jersey woman named Deborah Feldman. Deborah's remains still haven't been found, but the FBI believes she's the fourth victim of Israel Keyes.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
Israel, it seemed, had taken an interest in her case.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
The woman says the man stared at her as she put an item she purchased in her car. In an otherwise empty parking lot, he stood uncomfortably close and he asked her strange questions.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
As the coincidences piled up, Josh found he wasn't alone in his thinking.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
The circumstances of her disappearance match statements Israel made about a victim he buried in New York. And like Samantha Koenig, her name was also found on Israel's computer. How many more victims did he have? There's only one person who knows for sure, and he ended his life in his prison cell back in December 2012.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
And Josh says that something happens on the 15th anniversary of Susie's disappearance. Her name trends on Google, which isn't necessarily strange. The anniversary could explain the spike in press coverage. But of all places, Susie's name trends in Houston, Texas, at a time we know Israel was in Texas.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
Working against the theory that Israel had a hand in Susie's disappearance is the fact that he once told the FBI that he didn't kill anyone until after he joined the military. And as Josh mentioned, Susie disappeared beforehand.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
implying he had in fact killed before and stopped after he registered, at an enlistment office located just one mile away from Susie's campus. If you have information related to Suzanne Lyle's disappearance, contact the New York State Police at 518-783-3212 or submit an anonymous tip to your local FBI office.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
In earlier episodes, we spoke about how Israel Keyes only named three victims, Samantha Koenig and Bill and Lorraine Currier. But in interviews with the FBI, he made references to many others.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 3
Nothing specific, apart from a general location. He said he committed the murders in Washington and buried the remains near a valley. But the FBI believes he might have abducted the couple from a neighboring state.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
It's tricky to add up the total number of trips because sometimes the trips are compounded, like you'll go from one to another and you're like, is that one or two? So I would say there are approximately 34 trips between 2001 when he left the military and 2012 when he was arrested. For like mileage on each trip, I've never done a full account, but it's a lot.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
I think Texas alone, he could have driven across the country three different times.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
We believe there are trophies from his abductions and kills in these kits. Samantha's hair was braided and then the braid was cut off and never recovered. There are items from a few cases that we believe are keys related that disappeared with the victim and so we believe they are likely in kill kits.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
People who knew him talked about his butchering skills, that he could butcher a goat in minutes.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
He could go to Home Depot and buy, a thousand zip ties and duct tape, and it's not going to look strange.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
According to Keyes, he only ever shot Bill Currier. He said occasionally the guns were used for intimidation, but I think they were also just insurance for him in case someone did get out of line, he had a gun.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
My opinion on the bank robberies is that he is using the bank robbery to sustain the high of committing the murder.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
Lorraine and Bill Currier were a middle-aged couple.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
They just were regular people. They didn't have kids. They were described as quiet. They didn't have a huge social network or a lot of friends. Bill spent a lot of time online. Lorraine had some pretty strong political views. But by all accounts, they were just pretty quiet people who were great employees who lived a mundane, unexciting life.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
The through line for those three crimes, the couriers and Samantha, is there is very strong evidence, if not absolute proof, that Keyes had encountered all three of those victims prior to their abductions.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
She'd been working at a sports bar, which is important and strangely never makes it into the media surrounding Keyes.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
And... the bar that Samantha worked at was Anchorage's premier Minnesota Vikings bar. It's the only place in town where you could go watch Vikings games. And we don't know that Keys frequented that bar, but Army friends of his in the Seattle area said that he, while he was there, sought out the one Vikings bar in Seattle so he could go watch games live.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
Not to mention... He was going to the Home Depot across from her coffee stand the whole time she worked there. He was an avid coffee drinker, so it's very hard to believe that he had not gone through that coffee stand once or twice. So there's enough circumstantial evidence in multiple locations that would make it quite clear they had crossed paths.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
He had to meet with a psychologist to basically assess that he was capable of going to trial. And in that interview, he called himself bisexual. You know, he talked about his girlfriend finding him sending suggestive messages to men.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
Every criminal psychologist I've talked to have described him as a sexually motivated serial killer. So if you're someone who's trying to conceal your MO or conceal victimology, it would make sense that you would target both men and women. In terms of age, I think there's a lot to hypothesize about why he targeted different people.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
One psychologist I talked to suspected that there were four archetypes of his victims, one that represented his father, one that represented his mother. one that represented his younger self and one who represented his first female love.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
I've only heard one psychologist say that, and I tend to look for a little more resonance amongst the experts I talk to, but it's something we've been keeping our eyes on, and we do see a pattern in known and potential victims for that.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
The necrophilia only comes up once when he's talking about the murder of Samantha Koenig. It also comes up once in the files, often when they're asking him to account for his crimes. He'll be very detailed and specific until it comes to the rape itself. He won't even use the word rape more often than not. He'll just get very clumsy and shy suddenly and try to move on quickly.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
There's very clearly a large amount of shame around whatever took place during these sexual assaults. You talked about Bill Currier, how he had big plans for him, and then they say, can you elaborate? And he shuts down.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
While a lot of that could be motivated by ego or narcissism, I think to him, they were pure, real feelings. It's both and. He both is capable of love and it's not anything most typical people would define as love.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
It's a small bedroom community. You know, there's some big box stores. It's just off several major highways, I guess in Vermont speak. But yeah, it's like a wooded area on the outskirts of the Burlington suburbs.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
He was a meticulous planner, but in execution, he was often quite sloppy.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
You know, he got caught on camera multiple times, but he was wearing pretty good disguises. He almost got caught, according to him, during one bank robbery, but he hid out in the woods. I think it's just by chance that he was able to get away from many, many mistakes.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
He talked about a few different plans he had for his future. He talked about moving down to Houston and chasing the hurricanes. The subtext being that if someone goes missing during a hurricane, no one's going to assume it's anything other than a hurricane. He talked about creating some sort of H.H. Holmes bunker where he could keep someone for a longer amount of time.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
And then the third thing he talked about was what seemed to be a mass shooting. He had set up targets out in the woods in the Chugash Mountains where he was trying to shoot as many targets as possible while running away from the scene. So I think he had a few different thoughts for how he was going to evolve.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
And fortunately for all of us, he was arrested before any of those could come to fruition.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
This is where the FBI take their theory that he killed 11 people and solidify it as fact. My perception is that he's being a dick and trolling them based on the fact that they kind of decided he killed 11 people and kept telling him that, even though he never told. said that was true.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
And then that begs the question, like, well, if we knew he was capable of accessing enough of his own blood to do finger painting, then certainly they should have done a better job thereafter of facilitating the tools he was getting access to.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
So much of it is just like weird emo poetry, which is very generous. You know, everyone I've talked to, all the psychologists and the FBI agents are like, It could be something, but it's probably not. It's just the ramblings of a messed up man who was at his wit's end. He had no more cards to play and he had no more control.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
He broke into their garage, and then when he felt it was safe, he broke through the glass that connected the garage to their house and ran in.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
And he pretty quickly subdued them, zip-tied them, and started ransacking their house.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
Says that he starts going through their stuff to get an idea of who they are, you know, where they worked, would anyone be looking for them?
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
And he pretty quickly gets them into their car and starts driving them to a farmhouse about two miles away, which he had staked out the day before, an abandoned farmhouse.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
They kept saying, like, you have the wrong people. We don't have any money. Like, we don't know anyone. There's no reason we should be abducted for a ransom.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
He took Bill in first and led him down into the farmhouse's basement where he... zip-tied him to a chair. When he came out, Lorraine had freed herself and was running down the street screaming. Israel sprints after her.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
He had laid out a mattress upstairs in the farmhouse and tied her up. When he went back downstairs, Bill had freed himself.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
And this was kind of the pattern for that whole night. He would go back up and begin sexually assaulting Lorraine and then hear Bill free himself again, go back downstairs, tie Bill up. And this went on and on until eventually he went down and had been so frustrated by Bill that he shot him.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
He shot him, I think, five times with a silencer so he doesn't think Lorraine knew it had happened. And then he went back upstairs and raped Lorraine repeatedly before killing her.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
like he's reading the newspaper or probably not even that much emotion. Like he's reading like a West Elm catalog as though it was just like some mundane task in a litany of tasks that he had to do that weekend. He laughs a few times. He talks about how he was really good to Lorraine and he wanted to make sure she was comfortable.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
They talked to the demolition team. They said, you know, they didn't take anything out of the house, but when they started the demoing process, they said it smelled like decay.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
So then the FBI tracked all the rubble to a landfill and they spent, I believe, eight weeks going through the landfill looking for evidence. They found a few bones and some hair. And in where the farmhouse was, they found glasses that they are fairly certain are bill couriers.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 2
Keys knew enough information about them, about items in their home, items in their garage, Bill's glasses at the site, that it is without a shadow of a doubt Keys who abducted and killed them. But the couriers themselves have never been recovered.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
Her father... had kind of a rough history with law enforcement because of his own stuff. And I think they also were just hopeful that these texts were from Samantha and they would hear from her. So I think they were just waiting it out.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
One of her coworkers goes to open up the coffee stand They noticed that it hadn't been shut down properly and they alert the owner who had surveillance and pulled up the surveillance and saw Samantha abducted from the coffee stand and he alerted the police immediately. And as is often the case, started looking into her boyfriend and her father right away.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
Pretty early on, they were focused on her father. He was associated with some sketchy people, and so they were looking at a few different angles there. One was that perhaps this was a scheme for money, the other that perhaps he had upset the wrong person. So they are pretty squarely looking at James Koenig for weeks until Israel gets really sloppy and connects himself to the case.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
Keys returned to Texas about a month after Samantha was abducted. And as he's wont to do, he didn't fly directly to Dallas or Houston. He flew into Las Vegas and then drove. And he was using her debit card to pull out money from random ATMs across the United States Southwest.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
So they started pinging and the cops were obviously watching for activity and they would send someone out to the bank and they'd have just missed him. They'd pull surveillance. He was wearing ski masks or nylon. And then finally, I think it was one of the last ATMs he used in New Mexico, they actually got his rental car's plate on surveillance. And so they were able to track that pretty quickly.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
But I've seen the video and like he basically throws like a little hissy fit, lets him cuff him, gets into the car and just looks like a disgruntled toddler.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
He had, over a period of days, dismembered her and submerged her while he was ice fishing. And he genuinely was ice fishing while he was doing this. He talked about catching fish and bringing them home and cooking them up for his ex-girlfriend kid.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
When Israel was 14, his sister had a cat and he took a bunch of his friends out into the woods. This is... Hi, I'm Josh Hallmark, the host and executive producer of True Crime Bullshit, the investigation into Israel Keyes. I've been researching Keyes for 10 years now and producing the show for five.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
Officials run the photos through a national database for missing and unidentified people called NamUs, and... There were 45 matches, and it's worth noting that there were thousands of images, and NamUs is not holistic, so many of those images could have been missing persons who just aren't on NamUs.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
He broke into their garage, had been hiding in it for hours.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
When asked where he got the hair from, he said, human hair is very easy to find.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
So when Israel was 14, at the time his sister had a cat and he took a bunch of his friends out into the woods and tied a rope around the cat and then tied it to a tree. and shot the cat and watch it tangle itself up around this tree as it tried to flee him.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
And to Keyes, this was the funniest thing in the world, but as he looked around, he saw that his friends were horrified by it.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
A, that he was different from others, but B, that he had to conceal these things that entertained him or amused him or that he perceived as different or other because people would judge him and respond poorly to it.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
And I think that really fundamentally set up his criminal behavior for the future and how he in public would take on one identity that was separate and different from his true identity.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
His mother changed religions like most people change their underwear.
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Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
which created a lot of tension between him and his parents.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
He was one of the only white men in town. And when he first got there, people would call him white boy and they didn't respect him much because he was an outsider. But pretty quickly, he was able to endear himself to that community who were quite insular. And he was hired by the tribe and started beautifying the town.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
And people really loved him and respected him and thought of him as a stand-up guy. Despite some incidents that occurred there, that probably would have otherwise raised some eyebrows.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
He had endeared such great respect from folks that they overlooked a lot of his bad behaviors. People really just were proud of him and the work he had done.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
He would disappear for periods of time, turn off his phone, not tell anyone where he was. He would occasionally get drunk and brand himself with, like, hangers. He would poke them in the fire and brand various things onto his body. But he was really good at picking partners and picking people in his life.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
Most of his friends were coworkers, so they knew him first as this great employee, and then that would, I suspect, define how they saw him outside of that role. His first partner had some drug addiction issues. He was the one who was supporting her. She didn't have the frame of mind to really be worried about what he was doing. His later partner wasn't around often. She traveled for work.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
From what I've heard, she considered him her boy toy. And I think there was this perceived power imbalance on her end. And when you are the one with more power, you aren't as concerned about the other people in your life.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
I would say that there's a cultural problem with Americans, or maybe just people holding women accountable for the misdeeds done by the men in their lives.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
A lot of us aren't looking into the minutia of the weird things that our partners do because we're just wrapped up in our own stuff and just trying to get through the day.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
She studied other serial killers. He loved H.H. Holmes, idolized Ted Bundy. We suspect he may have alluded to the Golden State Killer several times. Obviously, he didn't know who he was, but he talked about his favorite serial killer being one who hadn't been caught yet.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
From his predecessors, from his contemporaries, and he said that, you know, he learned from their mistakes. He read a lot of really terrible Dean Kuntz books and he learned from those or picked up tips from those. So he was very knowledgeable and actively consuming true crime like the rest of us, just for very different reasons, hopefully.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
Samantha was, she was kind of overcoming, I think, a fairly normal troubled teenage period in her life and kind of getting her life back on track. She was saving money, she had big plans, She had just gotten a job at a drive-through coffee stand. Before that, she'd been working at a sports bar, which is important and strangely never makes it into the media surrounding Keys.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
And then one night, as she was getting ready to close up the coffee stand... A man approaches the window wearing a ski mask.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
And while she was making it, climbed through the window and abducted her from the coffee stand.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
The coffee stand, it's essentially a big shed in a parking lot across the street from a Home Depot and several fast food restaurants. It's tiny but on a pretty major intersection. In fact, I went out to Alaska last year and was surprised by how public this coffee stand was. You could see it from everywhere. There were tons of cars passing by, even at 8 o'clock at night.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
He's parked across this very busy street. Now, it is winter, so it's dark out already and there's snow banks everywhere, but there are still cars driving by.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
They don't see anything unusual. Neither do the people out walking. He... holds a gun up to her and puts his arm around her so it looks like they're a couple. He tells her to act like she's drunk and he's helping her to her car.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
And he gets her in the car, zip ties her to the seat, and because it's still early enough that his girlfriend and his child are still awake, he drives around with her in his car for hours, waiting for them to go to bed. Stop the clock.
Serial Killers
Best of 2024: Israel Keyes Pt. 1
He had a shed in his driveway. So he pulled up and put her into the shed and then zip-tied her to various pieces of pipes and furniture in the shed.