ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) —
Investigators who spent hours interviewing an Alaska serial killer say
he may have murdered close to a dozen people, and that he killed for
pleasure and was only conflicted about how his notoriety would affect
his loved ones.
Israel Keyes confessed to killing eight people
across the country before he committed suicide last weekend in an
Anchorage jail, but
FBI and Anchorage police investigators said Friday they think he may have had up to three additional victims.
"Based
on some of the things he told us, and some of the conversations we had
with him, we believe the number is less than 12," FBI Special Agent
Jolene Goeden said. "We don't know for sure. He's the only who could
have ultimately answered that."
Keyes slit his wrist and
strangled himself with bedding Sunday at the Anchorage Correctional
Facility. He was facing federal murder charges in the kidnapping and
death of an 18-year-old Samantha Koenig, who was abducted from an
Anchorage coffee stand Feb. 1.
Goeden and Anchorage Police officer
Jeff Bell conducted up to 40 hours of interviews with Keyes after his
March arrest in Texas. During that time, Keyes confessed to killing
Koenig, along with Bill and Lorraine Currier in Vermont, and five other
people — although details for those victims were scarce.
The interviews also revealed Keyes' motivation, which was simple, Goeden and Bell told The Associated Press.
"He
enjoyed it. He liked what he was doing," Goeden said. "He talked about
getting a rush out of it, the adrenalin, the excitement out of it."
Keyes
also liked seeing coverage of his crimes in the media, and he appeared
to get a thrill out of talking about some of them with investigators,
Goeden and Bell said.
His crimes started small with burglaries and thefts — until the urge escalated to murder.
Bell
said Keyes told investigators the first violent crime he committed was a
sexual assault in Oregon, in which he let the victim go.
"He planned on killing her but didn't," Bell said.
Keyes
said the rape occurred sometime between 1996 and 1998 along the
Deshutes River near Maupin, Ore., after he got the girl away from her
friends. The girl was between the ages of 14 and 18, and would be in her
late 20s or 30s now. No police reports were filed, and the FBI is
seeking more information on the crime.
Of the five other murders
Keyes confessed to, four were in Washington state and one occurred on
the East Coast, with the body disposed of in New York.
In the case
of the Curriers, authorities say Keyes flew from Alaska to Chicago on
June 2, 2011, rented a car and drove almost 1,000 miles to Essex, Vt.
There,
he carried out a "blitz" style attack on the Curriers' home, bound the
couple and took them to an abandoned house. Bill Currier was shot, and
his wife was sexually assaulted and strangled.
Keyes immediately
returned to Alaska, and followed the case on his computer by monitoring
Vermont media. The couple's bodies were never found after the house was
demolished and taken to a landfill.
Leaving the area shortly after
a murder was a familiar tactic for Keyes. After he abducted Koenig, he
took her to a shed at his Anchorage home, sexually assaulted her and
strangled her.
Keyes then left the next day for a two-week cruise,
storing Koenig's body in the shed. Upon his return, he dismembered the
body and disposed of it in a lake north of Anchorage. He was later
arrested in Texas after using Koenig's debit card.
Koenig was his
only known victim in Alaska. Goeden and Bell said he never explained why
his broke his own rule of never killing anyone in the town where he
lived because it's easier to be connected to such a killing.
The only mistake Keyes said he made was letting his rental car be photographed by an ATM when withdrawing money in Texas.
Unlike his earlier killings, the deaths of the Curriers and Koenig received a lot of news coverage.
"He was feeding off the media attention in the end," Bell said.
That wasn't the only change. His time between murders was growing shorter.
"He talked about that time period in between crimes, that over the last few years, that became quicker," Goeden said.
During
their interviews, Keyes was willing to talk about the Koenig and
Currier killings since he knew authorities had evidence against him.
"It
was chilling to listen to him. He was clearly reliving it to a degree,
and I think he enjoyed talking about it," Bell said of the Koenig and
Currier deaths. But in the other cases, Keyes wasn't as forthcoming
because he knew investigators had little on them.
Keyes, a
construction contractor, told investigators that they knew him better
than anyone, and that this was the first time he'd ever spoken about
what he called his double life.
"A couple of times, he would kind of chuckle, tell us how weird it was to be talking about this," Bell said.
Even
though he was talking to investigators, Keyes didn't want his name made
public in any of the other investigations, especially the Curriers,
because of the fallout of publicity. He threatened to withhold
information if his name got out
"If there was nobody else that he
was concerned about, I think he wanted his story out there. He wanted
people to know what he did," Goeden said. "What he was worried about is
the impact that was going to have on the people that cared about him and
were close to him."
Keyes will be buried Sunday in Washington
state. His mother and four of his nine siblings were traveling to the
funeral, his mother's pastor, Jacob Gardner, told the Anchorage Daily
News.
Clay Logan has been doing the drop for years. He says he's considering using a stuffed animal or maybe road kill this year. Some animal lovers urged that Logan drop himself instead.
