'Serial Psyche': Army man and killer Israel Keyes raped, killed and chopped his victims up with no remorse
Israel Keyes was known in his neighborhood as an ordinary man who lived with his loving wife and 10-year-old daughter. He ran a construction business and seemed to be a happy man who enjoyed family life. However, behind that friendly smile was a killer that no one was aware of. Keyes enrolled himself in the army when he was 19. He acquired many skills during his time there but little did anyone know that one day he would use the same skills to kill rather than save people. Keyes had been committing crimes for more than 14 years but it wasn't until he kidnapped and murdered Samantha Koenig in March 2012 that his true colors came to light.
Keyes decided to stop by at a small cafe where Koenig was the working staff. He ordered for an Americano and waited. As Koenig prepared the coffee, she was surprised to find Keyes standing there holding a gun when she turned back. Even though Keyes had just hoped to rob the cafe, he decided to change his plans when he lay eyes on Koenig.
Keyes took Koenig with him and tried to calm her down by saying it was just a kidnapping and she would be free to go once he got the ransom. Keyes then took Koenig to a shed in his house where he bound and gagged her. He got all the information from her and even went to the house to make sure he got her ATM card, money, cell phone, and others. Keyes then raped her and strangled her to death. While one might think the killer would then try to flee the place, Keyes was unlike others. He enjoyed seeing fear on the face of his victims and instead of making a run, he decided to go back to his house that was 10 feet away to have a glass of wine.
Keyes did not hesitate to continue with his life and even went on the pre-planned trip with his family the next day. As Keyes enjoyed his one week vacation, Koenig's body lay in the shed for a week. He was not worried about the body smelling as the temperature was cold enough to keep the body from stinking.
While he enjoyed his trip, Koenig's father started a hunt to crackdown his daughter's location. Posters were pasted all over the city in the hope of getting any information they could. Unfortunately, nothing was good enough. Once Keyes came back, he noticed that Koenig's body had frozen. He kept it in front of the heater for it to melt and once it was done, Keyes decided to make it look like Koenig was still alive.
He put makeup on her face and made sure her eyes were open by sewing them using a fishing line to make sure she looked alive to ask for ransom from her family. Keyes did not waste any time and quickly sent Koenig's picture to her family. While her family hoped she was alive, Keyes chopped her body into pieces and threw the remains in the lake.
The hunt for finding Keyes started but the police had no concrete information to move on with the search. One week after he sent the picture, he flew down to another state and used Koenig's ATM card to rent a car. As soon as the police got notified, they started their search again. However, Keyes was smarter than the police, he traveled across different cities and stopped on the way to withdraw money from the ATM but would move to another city before the police could trace him.
His plan failed when he decided to rob a bank. Keyes broke into a house and stole everything he could and then set the house on fire in a bid to move the police's attention when he robbed the bank. His plan would have been successful if he had noticed that there was a CCTV present in the location. The cops identified the car and he was soon arrested.
Once under custody, Keyes refused to speak up. He would often give small details in exchange for something he wanted. This would mean coffee to drink or a cigar to smoke. Keyes admitted he had committed a few crimes in the past and even robbed banks. One footage from a particular event that he was describing confirmed it was Keyes himself. However, the footage showed Keyes had used real hair to make a fake mustache.
When asked where he got the real hair from, Keyes did not give a concrete answer and instead stated that when one needed real hair, it was easy to get. As the investigation continued, Keyes stated that he wanted the death penalty and did not want to go through the court hearing. At the same time, he did not want his name to be given out in the press as he did not want his daughter to know about the crimes he had committed.
Even though Keyes admitted he was "two different" people, the police tried their best to get an admission out of him. They feared he had committed more crimes than he was revealing. It is believed that Keyes's behavior could have been influenced by the way he was raised. While he assured the police that he was not abused as a child, a look into his childhood revealed he grew up in a conservative family and was not allowed to socialize with other children of his age.
The police believe his isolation might have been one of the reasons for his behavior. When he was 14, he shot a cat. He went to the woods and took a piece of parachute cord and tied the cat to the tree and then shot it in the stomach. When he was 19, he kidnapped a girl, raped her, and then allowed her to go freely. Keyes confessed to having "Kill Kit" buried in different states to make sure he had everything at his disposal if he wanted to carry out a kill.
He called them his "buried treasure". While the police decided to drag him to court, the court hearing went on for a long time and he grew impatient. He finally decided to take matters in his hand and cut his wrist to bleed out. To make sure he was successful with the killing, he tied a bedsheet around himself after cutting his wrist to make sure there was no chance of him staying alive.
While the nation wanted Keyes convicted, his suicide stopped that from happening. 'Serial Psyche' airs on Fridays at 8 pm ET on Reelz.