American Predator

by Maureen Callahan

  It was early in the recovery, but Bart and Allen were both surprised by how hard this was. Weightless in water—that’s a myth. The torso alone, coupled with the anchors, made the body bag incredibly heavy.

  Allen left Bart with the bag to retrieve Samantha’s arms, which were wired together nearby. While walking them back to Bart, one of Allen’s gloves snagged on the wire and exposed part of his hand to the freezing water. They still had to recover Samantha’s legs and head.

  Chacon talked to Allen from above.

  “Can you gut it out?”

  “Yes,” Allen said.

  A few minutes later, all of Samantha’s remains, found in close proximity, were in their possession. Allen and Bart dragged the body bag directly under the hole they’d dived through, where it lay in a shaft of nighttime sunlight.

  They waited while a white pop-up shelter was pitched above the hole, blocking the media’s view.

  Once they got the signal, Bart and Allen attached three small nylon lift bags to the body bag and watched it rise. At the surface, Chacon knelt down and looked inside. The first thing he saw was Samantha’s face. Her eyes were wide open.

  Bart and Allen spent another thirty minutes underwater, waiting for all the necessary procedures to be completed, for the waterproof chain of custody forms to be filled out for the FBI.

  Steve Payne and Jeff Bell stayed at the site, helping to break down all the equipment until the last tent was folded. It was the only way they could help. Bell finally drove home around 9:00 P.M. Now, each time he drove by Samantha’s kiosk, there would be no more questions. He knew exactly what happened to her, in such minute detail that part of him wished he’d never heard it. He knew exactly the route Keyes took that night. He knew every opportunity Samantha had to escape. Bell was a father, too, and now he had more sorrowful sites in his personal constellation of landmarks: an arrest, a shooting, a body.

  He called his wife and told her he’d be home soon, weeping on the way.

  * * *

  —

  After wrapping up at the lake, Chacon and his team, exhausted and starving, went in search of dinner. It was a little after 10:00 P.M. Showered and shaved now, they all looked the same: buzz cuts, khaki pants, black jackets. Chacon joked that it was as close as they could get to wearing “FBI” across their chests.

  They found a quiet, low-key spot, only about four people in the place. But the nightly news was on, the recovery of Samantha’s remains the big story. Chacon and his guys quietly took two booths in the back.

  The manager came over and bought them their first round of drinks. “We know you can’t tell us who you are,” he said, “but we know what you did. Thank you.”

  When the team flew out the next night, Anchorage felt different. Chacon always felt it, this palpable shift from communal hope to grief. Driving in, he’d seen that sign at the kiosk, the city praying for Samantha. Driving out less than thirty-six hours later, he saw the sign had changed.

  OUR WARMEST CONDOLENCES TO THE KOENIG FAMILY

  When Chacon returned to the team’s LA warehouse, he put photos he’d taken of both signs on his wall, next to artwork other divers had drawn and painted over the years. These images are striking in their similarity: the divers, anonymous under their helmets, kneeling over small children or babies, their tiny arms outstretched for help. One member of Samantha’s Dive Team drew Samantha as an angel cradling a dove while a diver lifted her out of the water.

  Chacon retired in July 2014, and at his going-away party said the one thing he’d never miss was pulling another dead child out of the water. He meant it as a joke, but it left his colleagues stunned. To this day, he suffers from post-traumatic stress. He will probably have it the rest of his life. He sometimes thinks that the reason he and his wife were never able to have children despite years of trying, specialist after specialist offering no solution, was so he’d never have to know a parent’s grief.

  * * *

  —

  James Koenig had been calling Steve Payne all day, and Payne’s thoughts were mostly with him now. James had wanted to know everything that happened to his daughter, and Payne really wanted him to think that through. Those pop-up tents on the ice were really so that James wouldn’t have to see Samantha’s recovery in the paper or on the evening news or forever on the internet.

  But there was no dissuading him. Payne would remember this as the longest conversation of his life and one of the most crucial yet gentle arguments he’d ever lost. But to James, the least he could do for his daughter was bear witness to those last hours of her life. All Samantha’s hard-won hope and promise, her essential sweetness, taken at random. His little girl had fought to the end. The world had been better with her in it. James so badly wanted to say good-bye to his daughter, to see her one last time. It had been left to Bell and Goeden to tell James that he really didn’t want to see his daughter that way.

  PART III

  SIXTEEN

  Now that Samantha’s body had been recovered, her family and friends—and Anchorage, to a smaller but no less heartfelt degree—could begin to mourn. Now was the time to honor Sam, to focus the community’s emotion and attention on comforting James and Duane and memorializing her all too short life. This story, for them, was coming to an end.

  For investigators, it was just beginning. As Keyes himself had told them, “I’ve got lots more stories to tell.”

  * * *

  —

  That statement left Payne and his team with three big questions. What were those stories? How many were there?

  And just who was Israel Keyes?

  * * *

  —

  The FBI would now have full control of this case. Miki Doll was lobbying to stay on board, but that could go either way. Payne wanted her off the case for good, but Keyes liked talking to her.

  The core four were still in place: Payne, Bell, Goeden, and Nelson. This was the team Payne thoughtfully built from the outset, and now he felt vindicated. He knew how rare it was to work with a group of investigators who got along and how valuable that was to solving a case.

  Payne had a new directive. Run down everything you can on Israel Keyes as fast as possible.

  * * *

  —

  There was no shortage of data. Payne had the hard drives from the two computers seized from Kimberly’s house copied bit by bit. Nelson was seeking financial and travel records for Keyes and Kimberly. They had to comb through cell phone records for both, and they needed to know if Keyes’s own cell had been on the night he took Samantha. Meanwhile, Payne was calling car rental companies throughout the Southwest, looking for any evidence of Keyes in other states they didn’t yet know about.

  This, Payne thought, was the laborious stuff that CSI turns into a cybertrick: punch in a code and get your coordinates in seconds, cell phone records in a flash. If only. This stuff would take weeks to sift through and sort out.

  Yet there was real movement. On March 15, two days after Keyes was arrested in Texas, the FBI had set up a tip line, producing several tangible leads.

  Seventeen calls came in from locals who had hired Keyes to work on their homes, and these were overwhelmingly positive. Keyes did great work. He was reliable and friendly. One caller said Keyes had access to her money and her lockbox and nothing ever went missing. Another said Keyes had the run of his house while working and still had full access. One couple, both attorneys with multiple homes, hired Keyes often and let him work without supervision. They hoped his arrest was a misunderstanding, because they had never seen or heard Keyes do anything remotely inappropriate.

  Heather Andrews, who had also hired Keyes repeatedly, said that she and her husband knew Keyes and Kimberly through mutual friends. When he worked in the summer, he’d bring his daughter along every day, and was “adorable” with her. She didn’t know much about him, only that he had mentioned growing up in a
kind of commune and saying something like, “Religion poisons people.” He also said his daughter’s mother had serious substance abuse issues and he had taken full custody. He worked alone and never seemed to need help.

  “He was as strong as a bull,” Andrews said. “He could carry a beam over his shoulder without apparent effort. He had strength that had elegance. It seemed superhuman.”

  But, Andrews said, two recent incidents disturbed her. There was one day—she couldn’t quite recall when—that she caught Keyes giving her a look that leveled her. Andrews felt real fear, but when she put it in context with the Izzy she knew, she convinced herself it was nothing. Then, about a week before Samantha went missing, Keyes didn’t show up to work and wouldn’t return her calls. Alarmed, she went over to his house and knocked on the door for minutes.

  Keyes finally answered around 9:00 A.M. Andrews could smell the alcohol. He was disheveled and hollow-eyed. She had never seen him anything other than composed and asked if she could help.

  No, I’m okay, Keyes replied. It’s just the Alaska winters. They’ve got me down.

  Andrews believed him.

  Another caller had a similar experience. This one was a woman who had hired Keyes in February 2011. He had been very nice, she said, bringing his daughter along to do the estimate, so she hired him. Once the work was done, however, she felt relief. She never hired him again.

  Several other tips were of value. One caller, an online sleuth, found Keyes had a Facebook page under an alias. Posted was a military photo of a man resembling Keyes. And someone named Israel had posted a five-page-long response on KTVA’s CBS News website under a video report on Samantha’s case. Another caller had come across someone identified only as Israel on a local news site in Utah, selling a Glock 27 for $350, well under value. The ad was dated March 11, 2012, when Keyes would have been—or should have been—in Texas, just two days before his arrest.

  Both tips would be worth checking out, the gun especially.

  The next noteworthy tip came from an anonymous caller who said Keyes had a sister in Smyrna, Maine, who belonged to the Amish community. This caller also said that when Keyes was a young man, his sister and parents lived in Idaho with a Christian identity group that preached white supremacy.

  Two other tips had to do with Heidi’s church. The first caller was from Wells, Texas, who said the town had recently been taken over by a cult. Israel Keyes, the tipster said, was a member.

  The next, another caller from Wells, provided far more detail.

  “About three months ago, the pastor of this group drove into Wells, Texas, in a Winnebago and began buying up homes. The group now owns approximately fifteen homes in Wells, many of them located next to or near the elementary school. [REDACTED] believes the group are Koreshian, followers of David Koresh. They have interrupted other church services, yelling, ‘You are all going to hell!’ They clean guns in their front yards and have talked about explosives. Men from the group have multiple wives who are young and often teenagers or preteens. Men from the group walk into people’s front yards. [REDACTED] witnessed one man about six feet tall force-march a woman and three young girls (ages five to eleven) up and down her street from 7 A.M. to 7 P.M. [REDACTED] and her neighbors are scared to death for their safety and their children’s safety, not letting them play in the front yard or walk to school alone.” The caller said the police were doing nothing at all, and at one point she asked an officer if she should buy a gun. The answer? It wouldn’t make a bit of difference.

  “They won’t just kill you,” the officer said. “They will kill lots of people.”

  Just what was the Church of Wells?

  One of the last tipsters, an Anchorage local, reported seeing a white Ford pickup truck in Wasilla and Anchorage with KEYES CONSTRUCTION painted on the doors. Affixed to the truck were three signs, all the same, just like the ones James had posted around town.

  KIDNAPPED, $41,000 REWARD: SAMANTHA KOENIG.

  * * *

  —

  APD found several metal filing cabinets in Kimberly’s basement, but these were a mess, stuffed with travel records and receipts and tax filings. Keyes told investigators he had used both computers; the laptop was his and the tower was Kimberly’s. There had been a third, another laptop, but he’d smashed that with a hammer and taken it to the landfill, right around the time he took Samantha.

  That laptop, investigators thought, must have been the most valuable. They had low hopes for Kimberly’s computer. Keyes was too careful; chances were there was nothing on it.

  But when Nelson started looking at what was hidden inside, she was stunned.

  One by one they popped up. Faces. And there were hundreds of them. Children, women, men. Middle-aged and old. White, black, mixed race. Slim and overweight. Some looked polished and well off. Others looked like drug addicts or sex workers.

  These photos, in many cases, were attached to news articles reporting each disappearance. Some were attached to “Missing Person” flyers. Others were pulled off Facebook or other websites.

  Among them were photos of Samantha Koenig. So many, Nelson thought, it looked as though Keyes had stalked her.

  No way, she thought. No fucking way.

  * * *

  —

  Payne got in touch with Armin Showalter, one of the Bureau’s top criminal profilers. Serial killers were Showalter’s area of expertise, and Payne needed his help. All these images on one computer. What did it mean? What could the FBI do here?

  Showalter told Payne he didn’t know what to say. He’d never heard of a kidnapping and murder like this before. None of the BAU specialists on this case had.

  He suggested that Payne send those images to FBI headquarters. Digital experts there would run each one through facial recognition.

  Payne’s stomach dropped. That would be only so much help. There was no national database for missing persons. There was no law that required missing adults be reported to police. And there was no way to tell so far whether Keyes just liked reading about missing persons or was cataloging his victims.

  Showalter would do his best to work up a profile. But right now, all he could advise was to keep Keyes talking.

  * * *

  —

  At 11:00 A.M. on April 2, before the Dive Team’s recovery operation was fully under way, Payne and Doll had talked to Keyes at the Anchorage Correctional Complex. They reassured him that the media would have extremely limited information about what happened to Samantha.

  “The intended press release upon finding the body,” Doll said, “is that: ‘We have found the remains of Samantha Koenig. We believe that the person who is responsible for it is in custody.’”

  Keyes said nothing.

  “That’s as much as we can control it,” Doll said. “I figure that, you know, it’s going to just take a matter of hours before the press puts two and two together and figures out there’s only one reason why dive teams are out on Matanuska Lake.”

  Doll reiterated that law enforcement would not release any details.

  Keyes understood. He was good with that. It seemed like a fair trade for what was to come.

  “Like I said, there are going to be more conversations,” Keyes said. Right now, though, was not the time. He was already trying to fire Rich Curtner and represent himself. He didn’t say why but did say that anything else he had to tell them, stuff that had nothing to do with Samantha, would be on his terms.

  “There are very specific things that I want,” Keyes said, “and I’m not going to talk about anything until I know whether or not those things are possible.”

  Doll told him that was smart. “I don’t blame you,” she said. “I would do the same in your position.” She underscored how hard everyone, up the entire chain of command, was working to keep Keyes out of the news.

  This resonated.

  “Well, I will say
, um . . . there are more things that I am going to talk to you, or someone, about,” Keyes said. But he wanted assurances that things would move quickly.

  “This case is not the end,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” Doll said.

  “It doesn’t matter, in my mind, whether I talk or not,” Keyes said. “I’m not just going to do it for the heck of it. There’s not anything they can threaten me with or say to me or take away from me or give to me except for what I want.”

  He still wouldn’t say what that was. He knew how to deliver a cliffhanger.

  “Like I say, I’m happy to help,” Keyes said. “But it’s on my terms.”

  Payne thought Keyes was still most concerned about media coverage. Keyes swatted that away. “I know it’s inevitable,” he said. “I’m not in this for the glory. I’m not trying to be on TV.”

  When Bell heard the tape of this interview, the word “glory” struck him. It was another tell. Who calls the rape and murder of an eighteen-year-old a thing to be glorified for?

  Payne and his team had come to believe they were dealing with a serial killer. And Keyes had just told Doll and Payne: You’re right. And you’ll never find another body without me.

  * * *

  —

  They needed a second confession.

  On the morning of April 5, Payne and Doll paid Keyes a visit at the Anchorage Correctional Complex, hoping to shake something loose. To their surprise, Keyes gave them a bit of leverage. He needed their help. He still hadn’t been able to fire his attorney.

  I have time-sensitive information to give you, Keyes said. What can you do for me?