Was Israel Keyes the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of Modern Times?
On Sunday, serial killer Israel Keyes was eulogized in a small funeral ceremony attended by his mother, four sisters, and a flamboyant evangelical preacher who, in his sermon, asserted that Keyes was now “in a place of eternal torment.” Keyes committed suicide on Dec. 2 in the Alaska jail where he was being held after his arrest for the abduction and murder of 18-year-old Samantha Koenig last February. The 34-year-old contractor had admitted to at least eight murders, and investigators suspect he was responsible for more. Now, police departments in the United States and Canada are combing their cold cases to see if Keyes might be linked to any of those crimes.
The only other murder about which Keyes is known to have provided details is the 2011 killing of 60-something Vermont residents Bill and Lorraine Currier. In that exceptionally methodical crime, he flew from the West Coast to Chicago, rented a car, drove 1,000 miles to Vermont, murdered the Curriers after selecting them at random, and then disappeared. For the next year, Vermont police pursued a series of dead-end leads, while Keyes monitored coverage from afar.
Keyes is a horror-movie villain come to life: a killer who haunts remote areas in search of random prey, and who kills for no reason other than the fun of it. An Alaska Dispatch story last week noted that an expert on serial killing called Keyes “among the top three organizers, thinkers and planners he'd studied.” Indeed, aspiring stranglers would do well to study Keyes’ methods. He killed far away from home, in different police jurisdictions. He had no personal connection to his victims, and acted from no evident motives. During his trips, he would turn off his cell phone and pay with cash in order to avoid leaving a trail. He stashed “murder kits” around the country. (The one found in Alaska included a shovel and Drano, to accelerate the decomposition of a dead body.) He spaced out most of his murders, and left the scenes of the crimes soon after he was finished—after killing Samantha Koenig, he hid her body in a shed and took off on a two-week cruise.
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That same Alaska Dispatch story I mentioned earlier noted that Keyes “felt a connection with serial killer Ted Bundy because Bundy led a double life, too.” At first glance, Bundy is the serial killer whom Keyes most closely resembles. Both men were intelligent, meticulous, and confident. Both spoke about the feeling of power and possession they felt over their victims. Bundy talked about how drinking lowered his inhibitions. For most people, alcohol makes it easier to talk in potentially awkward social situations. But Bundy’s inhibitions were different—as he explained it, drinking made it easier for him to kill.
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http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2012/12/10/israel_keyes_suicide_is_he_the_most_meticulous_serial_killer_of_modern_times.html
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