They are the deadliest predators on the planet. This was somebody that was interested in inflicting pain, and I was sure people had died there. No killer is as cold, cunning, or bloodthirsty.
Police think they may be the remains of 15 victims of yet another so-called serial killer, and they may be closer than you think. He’s the guy who’s going to find you in the supermarket line. These killers don’t hunt in search of food; they pursue perverted fantasies.
He became sexually aroused when he watched his grandmother 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 a chicken, and he wanted to replicate that. They lust for power and control. The death is prolonged in such a way that every excruciating pain that is imaginable is part of the thrill.
What creates these cold-blooded monsters? What drives their warped psyches? There’s the fusion of a sexual thought with violence, and it becomes sexually arousing to them.
Now, rare recordings of the voices and visions of serial killers plunge deep inside their complex and twisted minds. This is Serial Psyche.
On March 22nd, 1999, a terrified woman runs down a country road. She’s naked except for a metal dog collar attached to a 6-foot chain. The young woman barges into a double-wide trailer screaming for help.
The homeowner calls 911. “Yes, I’m calling for a young lady that ran into the house saying she’d been raped. She’s got a chain on her and everything.
Please send someone right away. This lady is naked and everything else. She said they’ve been holding her for 3 days.”
She told this amazing story, and the story was that she had been abducted in Albuquerque, that she had been chained up and kept in a sunken room in this man’s house. Chained to a post, she had a bed and she had a bucket for a toilet, and she had been systematically raped and tortured over a period of three days. The woman’s name is Cynthia Vigil.
It’s clear she has looked into the eyes of Pure Evil.
Cynthia directs police to the home of David Parker Ray, and what they find there leads them to one of history’s most horrifying series of crimes. When the sheriff’s department responds to this house, they discover everything exactly supports what Cynthia Vigil’s account of events was. They find a room in disarray with clear signs of a struggle.
Rich Lopez is the lead case agent for the New Mexico State Police. They soon went down one of the short hallways into another room, which they thought was a bedroom, and discovered all kinds of sadomasochistic sexual devices, the likes of which nobody had ever seen. They did not appear designed for pleasure; they definitely appeared designed to inflict pain.
They had all been modified; some had nails melted into the plastic and bent.
Then police find a trailer next to the house, and none of them are prepared for what they discover. When you walk in the trailer, the first thing you’re going to see is the centerpiece, which is a gynecological chair, a black gynecological chair. Immediately suspended above it is this rack of harnesses and pulleys and trusses, all of which had manacles on them.
On the walls adjacent to it are devices that made the devices inside the house look like kids’ toys. These were obviously painful kinds of implements; I’ve never seen anything like it. The space was evil.
This space was sinister and mean.
David Parker Ray calls this $100,000 soundproof torture chamber his “toy box.” As soon as I went into the trailer and saw what was inside the utility trailer, I had two reactions. First of all, I knew we were dealing with somebody that was very, very accomplished at this behavior.
Whatever it was, they were obviously consumed by this; this was very important to them. Whatever was going on in this trailer. Second of all, I was sure people had died there.
David Parker Ray is a serial killer. This label places him in the most heinous category of these offenders. He’s a psychopathic serial sexual sadist.
Dr. Michael Stone and Dr. Gary Brucato are experts on violent crime, including serial sexual homicide.
Together they authored the book The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime. David Parker Ray being an example of a charming man who would go to bars and lure either prostitutes or other women who would be willing to go with him for a night of drinking to his house, only to then end up in his infamous “Toy Box” mobile home that he converted into a torture chamber.
Cynthia Vigil is a 21-year-old prostitute and heroin addict. Ray knows her disappearance is unlikely to arouse suspicion. He can take his time with his victim, and she will experience unspeakable torture.
Hanging on the wall inside the utility room was a checklist. It was a “how to handle a captured victim” and had checkboxes next to it, but it was an instruction manual on how to deal with an abducted woman who was being tortured. Before the torture began, the woman might be drugged and chained or hoisted to the ceiling and forced to listen to an extremely long, droning tape of Ray describing in detail all of the acts to which she was going to be subjected.
Commander Vernon Geberth is a world-renowned homicide investigator. He trains law enforcement on how to deal with these extreme killers. Ray’s introductory tape is a powerful element in his lectures to police officers.
“This is probably one of the most horrendous tapes I’ve ever heard, and there’s a few. I’ve heard some bad ones. I’ve heard tapes of people being tortured, sexually tortured, but this one is terrible because you have that psychopathic monotone voice talking about what he’s going to do to this party, and it’s outrageous.”
The tape describes what’s going to happen to them.
“Hello there. Are you comfortable right now? I doubt it.
Wrists and ankles chained, gagged, probably blindfolded. You are disoriented and scared too, I would imagine. Perfectly normal under the circumstances for a little while, at least.
You need to get your [__] together. It is very relevant to your situation. I’m going to tell you in detail why you have been kidnapped, what’s going to happen to you, and how long you’ll be here.”
That is scary. Did you hear that voice? He recorded that tape on July 23rd, 1993.
I can’t imagine how many women heard that tape before they were tortured and or killed. It’s horrible. Ray’s tape is carefully designed to induce maximum terror and strip away any last shred of power, hope, or personal identity.
This is key in satisfying the sexual sadist.
This is another part of that kind of meticulous behavior. He had crafted this kind of ominous welcome to them just to put them in a psychological state of terror. I think that’s a method of control, but it’s also, I think, because David enjoyed seeing fear and pain in another person.
An important element in a sadistic man committing serial sexual homicide is the deriving of joyfulness in causing intense pain and humiliation to another human being. The torture of that individual becomes sometimes a means in and of itself. The death is prolonged in such a way that every excruciating pain that is imaginable is part of the thrill.
David Parker didn’t want to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 them; he wants to cause them pain. It’s the infliction of pain and watching the victim suffer that was exciting for him.
The tape offers insight into David Parker Ray’s motives. “In my case, I cannot get off with a girl unless I hurt her first. That’s basically the reason I’m into rape and slavery and the reason that you’re going to be subjected to a certain amount of pain.
Actually, that pretty well covers it.” Yes, instilling the fear, psychologically breaking them down, making them compliant. If you hear what he says, he is basically telling them if you’re docile and you work and you go along with this, you may eventually be released.
So there’s that hope, that piece of hope out there that maybe I’ll get out of this, but it’s going to hurt.
For Ray, prolonging the torture is critical. He had knowledge of things like medical techniques where he would bring a person close to the brink of death and then revive them with medical equipment so that the individual did not die during the act, as much as they may have wished at the moment that they would have died. “Well, I believe I’ve told you about everything that I can.
I cannot predict the future. I can’t predict changes of procedure, and I can only give you advice. Be smart and be a survivor.
Don’t ever scream. Don’t talk without permission. Be very quiet, be docile and obedient, and by all means show proper respect.
Have a nice day.”
David Parker Ray’s crimes span more than 40 years. He’s believed to have brutally tortured and killed more than 50 women. Investigatively speaking, I’d call him a human predator.
Clinically speaking, I’d say he’s a psychopathic sexual sadist. Theologically speaking, I’d call him the devil on Earth. He’s like a ghost, not looking for fame and glory or recognition, simply slipping through society like a dark cloud.
The most heinous breed of serial killers are identified as psychopathic sexual sadists. For them, murder is not enough. These monsters are addicted to rape and torture before they 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁.
At the core of their evil is that they are psychopaths. This is the diagnosis of 95% of serial killers. Dr.
Brianna Fox is an expert on psychopaths, serial killers, and violent offenders. A psychopath is somebody who is narcissistic, cold, and callous. They have very low empathy for others, and they’re very willing to break laws and norms to do exactly what they want.
This is somebody who doesn’t have a lot of emotion and who doesn’t really feel bad when they commit crimes or hurt others. All of that is very characteristic of someone who’s willing to commit crimes against other people, including murder. Certainly not all psychopaths are criminals, but it’s frequently a trait of serial killers.
What makes them extraordinary is just how ordinary they appear. David Parker Ray is a master mechanic for the New Mexico State Parks Department. He was very clever.
If you think about it, here he is a state employee. I believe in 1995 he got an Employee of the Year award, because nobody knew what he was doing back in his little compound. He’s a reliable employee; we don’t need to supervise him.
So here’s a guy who’s operating completely separately from everybody else, and on the surface everything looks fine.
Ray uses his psychopath’s charm to convince victims to come to his home, only to end up in his so-called toy box. One of Ray’s favorite tricks is to pose as a police officer. Investigators find authentic uniforms, gear, and badges in his home.
Cynthia Vigil, the escapee from the toy box, had been lured in by this deceit. “One morning I was walking to a restaurant and this guy came up to me and told me that he had asked for me. So I went over there and he acted like a cop and told me I was under arrest and he put his handcuffs on me and he had me in his trailer and he drove me to Elephant Butte and he did a lot of sick stuff.”
Vigil quickly becomes one of David Parker Ray’s 𝒔𝒆𝒙 slaves. He is now her master. She’s horrified to find out that Ray has an accomplice.
The toy box is also ruled by a mistress. New Mexico State Police investigate the home of 59-year-old David Parker Ray, a suspected sadistic serial killer. They find a soundproof trailer outfitted as a torture chamber.
The tools they discover inside the dungeon offer clear evidence of acts of unimaginable cruelty and terrifying insight into the mind of a psychopathic serial sexual sadist.
But meanwhile, to his neighbors and co-workers, Ray is just a friendly, regular guy. When you spoke to David, the David that you got was an intelligent, articulate kind of guy with a sense of humor. You’d never get the feeling when you were talking to him that you were dealing with somebody that was inherently evil or was capable of this kind of behavior.
He was excellent at shielding that part of himself from anybody.
David Parker Ray’s charm not only attracts victims. In a 𝓈𝒽𝓸𝒸𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔 revelation, investigators discover that he has convinced accomplices to assist in his heinous acts, including his own daughter, Jesse Ray. Ray also had a daughter that lured women to the toy box.
There was one incident where she bopped a woman over the head in a bar with a beer bottle after drugging her, and they brought her home and she was tortured. Ray also has a live-in girlfriend who becomes his partner in crime for several years, named Cindy Hendy. Ray is the dungeon master; Hendy is the mistress.
Shockingly, Cindy Hendy and Jesse Ray lure in victims, and Hendy also participates in the torture of the young women. The fact that he incorporated a female accomplice is very uncommon. Not many serial killers have a female accomplice that actually participates in the sexual assault of another woman.
While she was with him, she talks about doing 18 “packages,” meaning victims, during that time. Ray also persuades a friend of Jesse’s named Roy Yancy to join the group. Ray convinces Yancy to murder one of their torture victims, Marie Parker.
Together they dump her body in the desert outside of Truth or Consequences.
David seemed to have this ability to manipulate people, and he would surround himself with people who were easily controlled and easily manipulated, and who were much less intelligent than he was. In a manner of speaking, he’s brainwashing them. He’s providing them with the things they want.
He’s making them feel good about themselves. He’s filling a hole somehow in their life, and out of gratitude for that, or out of this idea that they have this meaningful relationship with him, they’ll basically do whatever he wants them to do.
After Cynthia Vigil’s escape and the discovery of the toy box, David Parker Ray and Cindy Hendy are arrested. Ray claims he was just helping Vigil detox from her heroin addiction and all the rough 𝒔𝒆𝒙 was consensual. That was David’s whole story, that any 𝒔𝒆𝒙 that they would have had during that time was consensual.
She was a prostitute; he would pay her for that. This was his approach, and he was very, very confident in this kind of approach.
Meanwhile, the state police and the FBI set up a task force in nearby Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. They are convinced there must be more victims. What we were interested in doing was trying to collocate David with known missing persons.
If we could put David in the vicinity at the time that a particular person was reported missing, we could make some kind of connection there and maybe follow that up as a lead and see if we could develop any evidence. What we were able to do was to show the possibility of upwards of 90 to 95 potential missing person events that David Parker Ray was in that vicinity at the time. We can place him there at the time that person was reported missing.
But Ray’s victims are tough to track. Typically they are prostitutes or runaways, young women who won’t be missed. After torturing and killing them, he cleverly hides the corpses in the vast New Mexico desert or in Elephant Butte Lake next to his home.
Investigators can’t find any bodies despite finding Ray’s hand-drawn treasure map. This is Elephant Butte Lake, Elephant Butte Reservoir, and it’s 42 miles long. When we found a map that had X’s on it, for example, one X would be up there what we call Kettle Top, the large plateau off in the distance, and then there would be other X’s like over here by Rattlesnake Island.
There would be an X down here in this part of the lake which leads down to the Elephant Butte itself, and we had dive teams in all of those places. But you kind of get an idea of the challenge you’re facing. Even in the best of conditions, it’s very, very difficult to locate something underwater.
David Parker Ray has operated under the radar for decades. The number of victims is unknown. He skillfully hides his crimes, and law enforcement doesn’t even realize there is a serial killer on the loose.
But not all psychopathic serial sexual sadists enjoy lurking in the shadows. Some crave the media spotlight, like the brutal serial murderer known as BTK, Bind, Torture, 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁.
Law enforcement is searching for more victims of one of history’s most horrific and cunning serial killers, David Parker Ray. They develop leads on a possible 95 victims that could have been abducted by the prolific murderer. Ray has operated totally under the radar for over 40 years.
But meanwhile, a different breed of sadistic serial killer is on the loose, one who craves the spotlight.
January 15th, 1974. It’s a quiet morning in this Wichita neighborhood. An armed invader cuts the phone line and forces his way into this home.
Joseph Otero, his wife Julie, their 9-year-old son Joseph II, and 11-year-old daughter Josephine all hope this is only a robbery. The Oteros are bound and strangled to death, and there is clear evidence of sexual violence and torture. The young girl is hung on a pipe in the basement.
The murderer masturbates on her lifeless body. The killer leaves no concrete leads, and the case goes cold.
Then, in October, three suspects are taken into custody for the crime, and suddenly a chilling letter arrives at the Wichita Eagle newspaper. The letter declares those three dudes you have in custody are just talking to get publicity for the Otero murders. They know nothing at all.
I did it by myself and with no one’s help. Let’s put it straight. This was his homicide.
He wanted credit for that. So he sends a letter to the press. “Those three dudes that you have in custody did not do it.
I did this.” And then he begins to articulate that only someone who was at the crime scene would know the location and position of each of the bodies. The writer signs the letter “Yours truly, guiltily,” with a postscript.
He then concludes with the fact that he will continue to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 and he wants to be called BTK for Bind, Torture, 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁. “And from now on, when you hear from me, it will be BTK.”
The killer’s real name is Dennis Rader. He’s a church-going family man respected in the community. Rader brutally murders at least 10 people.
The hunt to find him will last over 30 years. Like David Parker Ray, he is also a psychopathic serial sexual sadist, but Dennis Rader is fueled by somewhat different desires. While David Parker Ray makes every effort to hide his crimes, Dennis Rader lobbies for publicity.
Rader is thought to have been driven by narcissism. That means he feels he possesses unique talents and believes he’s entitled to special treatment. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He gets off on the thrill that he’s a threat, that he’s somebody. In real life he’s nobody, but in this persona of the BTK, he’s somebody to be reckoned with, and that’s what’s driving him.
Ray and Rader hunt for two different types of prey. David Parker Ray’s anonymous victims go missing completely, but Dennis Rader targets ordinary citizens, and then he poses the corpses in provocative positions. These victims were everyday people, residents of Wichita, Kansas, and basically he had literally terrorized the city of Wichita because nobody knew where he would come in.
People would come in, and the first thing they would do is go to their phone and pick it up to see if it was dead. That’s how paranoid people became, because in the newspapers it reported that he would cut the phone lines of each of these victims’ houses. So that was one of his signatures.
After three more murders, Rader sends his next letter asking, “How many do I have to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 before I get a name in the paper or some national attention?” David Parker Ray and Dennis Rader may be two different types of sexual sadists, but at their core, both are lethal psychopaths. The key questions that still puzzle experts are how do people become psychopaths, and then how do they go on to be sadistic serial killers?
It’s very important to make a distinction between what we would call primary and secondary psychopathy. It’s certainly understood that the vast majority of serial killers are going to demonstrate some degree of psychopathy. But when we talk about primary psychopathy, we’re referring to hereditary psychopathy, what we might call a “bad seed.”
Secondary psychopathy is where an individual is so badly maltreated, neglected, or abused that the individual looks an awful lot like a person who from birth has this kind of proclivity, and it’s sometimes difficult to tease them apart.
Dennis Rader had a fairly normal upbringing without any evidence of 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮, but he developed a fascination with torturing and killing animals. If you look at his history, it would lead you to believe that this was a kid that had some issues when he was young. When he was a child, he admitted that he became sexually aroused when he watched his grandmother 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 a chicken, and he wanted to replicate that.
Children that do certain kinds of things, the killing of animals, those are kids that need watching, and those are kids that you need to attend to. But that never happened to Dennis Rader.
It appears David Parker Ray did suffer a cruel childhood. He grew up in an abusive, broken home. The socially awkward child was bullied in school, and in adolescence developed a fascination with drugs, pornography, sadomasochism, and murder.
Ray claimed to have committed his first sadistic attack when he was a young teen, and he bragged about it in his journal. Now you link psychopathy with sexual sadism, and what you have is a human predator. Ray had a very peculiar split in his personality that seemed to have developed in adolescence, where he was capable of viewing a woman as a good object that he could incorporate into his crimes and idealize a little bit, or view her as garbage.
There’s an infamous incident in the life of David Parker Ray where he told one of the female captives that he did not 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁. He turned to her and said, “You know, if I had known that you were such a good woman, I wouldn’t have thought of you as the type of person that I would torture in the toy box.”
Another common trait of sadistic serial killers is their engagement in paraphilia, defined as abnormal sexual behaviors or impulses that play out through intense and recurring sexual fantasies and urges. The BTK Strangler always strives to perfect his techniques. He creates gruesome sketches and builds models of his fantasies.
He used a ball to strengthen his fingers because you have to keep your fingers very strong because it takes a lot to strangle someone. Dennis Rader methodically scouts his victims and plans his attacks, all while carrying on with his normal life. In addition to being a church leader and a US government worker for the city, he also was a Boy Scout leader.
They would go on camping trips, and he would use the camping trips as cover for him to go out and do a hit because his wife believed he was on a camping trip. When the kids were sleeping, he would leave the campsite, take a cab, go to the location that he had cased, and attack his victim.
This aspect of planning their crimes is one area where Rader and Ray are alike. In the case of BTK Dennis Rader and David Parker Ray, we see these tendencies to journal, to sketch things out, to plan out their future crimes. This is both a way to relive the crimes that they committed in the past to get pleasure out of it, much like we would look through a photo album of happy moments from the past, or to plan out the future crimes.
David Parker Ray even uses Barbie dolls in his planning. He had taken these dolls and perverted them and turned them into a kind of action figure for S&M. They were naked, and he had manufactured little devices to put on them, and they were decorations in his utility trailer.
What his disturbingly vivid diaries record is years of fantasies of torture that were worsened by the fact that he had an incredibly brilliant knack for creating devices, sort of technical devices.
Ray is a skilled mechanic and builder. At work, he is known to be a packrat, bringing home scrap items to use on personal projects. This is the headquarters for the state park of Elephant Butte, and David was employed here with State Parks as a mechanic.
If there were things that were left over, little bits and pieces that he could use, he would pack those away. We found a garage filled with just scrap and old tools and scrap metal, and that’s some of the material he would use to create his devices. He had a ready supply of it right here at work.
For decades, Rader and Ray carried out their gruesome attacks. Ray feeling he’s invincible and can’t be caught, while Rader thinks he’s smarter than the police and dares them to stop him before he kills again. Sadistic serial killers are the most brutal predators on the planet.
David Parker Ray and Dennis Rader are two of history’s most horrific examples of this kind of murderer. They both carry on their monstrous acts for decades. Their crimes are similar, but their motives and methods are very different.
Often these crimes worsen over time as the killers habituate to the experience and need to intensify the sadistic acts to get the thrill they crave. There are times where a sexually sadistic killer will jump immediately into serial killing, and in those cases we tend to see a slight escalation in the severity of their crimes. But more often we see it where they keep trophies of their offenses, and that helps them to relive the fantasy, to keep that high going that they had, and also the premeditation of their next crime.
Dennis Rader exhibits a rare behavior for a serial murderer: he is able to completely stop killing for long stretches of time. He takes five victims in 1974, two in 1977, then one a year in 1985, 1986, and 1991. His last correspondence with the press is received in 1988.
Commander Vernon Geberth is brought in as a consultant on both the Ray and BTK cases. So he remained dormant. If you think about it, from 1988 to 2004, nobody heard anything about him.
Now, the old adage or caveat in cases like this is that the serial killer is either in jail or has died. Well, guess what? BTK just rewrote the book.
It changed all the rules. He actually remained dormant all those years. And how did he do that?
Dennis Rader stashes away trophies taken from his victims and uses them to play twisted autoerotic games. He engages in self-bondage and takes selfies. Dennis Rader, in some instances, would actually wear the clothing of the victim or dress like the victim and put a mask over his face, and put himself in the same position as the victims he had killed, and he was able to relieve himself sexually like that.
In one photo, he digs a shallow grave and wraps himself in plastic and wears a frightening mask. In another, he suspends himself upside down from the trees. All keeping the memories of his victims alive, fulfilling his fantasies, and allowing him to stop killing.
By 2004, the case goes cold. It’s assumed BTK is in jail or dead. Then, 2004, he announces that he’s back.
Why is he making that announcement? Because the Wichita Eagle had a special front-page edition for the 30-year anniversary of the BTK killings, which basically set him off again to come forth. Over the next 12 months, BTK sends 11 communications confirming his role in several earlier murders with gruesome photos and victims’ driver’s licenses and ID badges.
One chilling letter confirms BTK’s new intentions. This letter was more intense, it was scary, because he ends up with a threat. “I have spotted a spoiled latch key kid.
Just have to work out the details. I think fall or winter would be just about right for the hit.” So now he’s putting the authorities on alert that he is about to strike.
He’s identified his possible victim, and this is putting a whole new spin on it. The pressure on the authorities is unbelievable.
Now, in Wichita, 30 years after BTK first appears, a long-dormant horror is about to rear its head once again. David Parker Ray, the Toy Box Killer, and Dennis Rader, the BTK Strangler, are two of the most evil serial killers in the annals of crime. Both remain on the loose for decades.
After 3 days of torture, Cynthia Vigil manages to escape while David is out. She’s able to overcome Cindy Hendy and get free. Finally, Ray’s reign of terror comes to an end.
Police find incriminating evidence at the crime scene, but the few victims that survived were so heavily drugged and brainwashed that their testimony is not considered credible. Investigators hunt for definitive evidence of murder. They continue to scour the desert and the lake for bodies, but they still come up empty.
In the courtroom, the judge rules against playing Ray’s introductory audio tape, and in the first trial there’s a hung jury. Prosecutors cannot let this monster go free, so they retry the case. Still, they can’t convict Ray of murder without a body.
But this time, the tape is played for the jury, and finally in 2001 he is convicted for kidnapping and torture and is sentenced to 224 years in prison. David showed zero remorse for anything. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand the ramifications of what he’s doing; he just didn’t care.
His daughter Jesse Ray cooperates with the prosecution and only receives probation. Cindy Hendy is sentenced to 36 years. She is released on probation in 2019 after serving half her sentence.
Roy Yancy also cooperates and agrees to take police to the site of Marie Parker’s body, but the body isn’t there. He realized that more than he knew where that body was; he went back, dug that body up, and put it someplace else. Very smart, very clever, very evil.
So when Roy Yancy, who was arrested, admitted to what he had done, he actually brought the authorities out there. “This is where the body was,” but the body wasn’t there anymore. Roy Yancy is sentenced to 22 years for the murder of Marie Parker.
David Ray is sent to prison, but just 8 months later he dies of a heart attack. He dies eight months into a sentence at a prison facility in Hobbs, New Mexico. It was frustrating for us because that ended any possibility we had, or the best possibility we had, of being able to take something to the families of his victims and say, “Here’s what happened.”
These people are still at home with pictures of their daughters. Somewhere in that house, that daughter is dead. She’s gone, and we couldn’t do anything about that.
That is what was the frustration with David’s death for all of us.
By 2004, three decades after Dennis Rader’s first murder, the case had been declared cold. But then the letters and other correspondence flood into Wichita media outlets. The BTK Strangler’s ego and narcissism are his downfall.
Eventually, the police trick him into sending a floppy disc to the newspaper. Officers are able to trace the computer files to a desktop machine located at Christ Lutheran Church in Wichita. Quickly, they identify the source: Dennis Rader, president of the congregation council.
BTK is finally stopped.
In BTK’s 𝓈𝒽𝓸𝒸𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔 courtroom confession, he describes his methods of trolling then stalking his victims. Coldly, he refers to his targets as “projects.” Like Katherine Bright, his sixth victim.
“I had many, what I called them, projects. There were different people in the town that I followed, watched. Kathleen Bright was one of the next targets.
But anyway, that’s it. It was basically a selection process. Work toward it.
If it didn’t work, I just move on to something else.”
Part of the plea agreement was that he had to admit to each of these cases in front of the families of the victims, which he did. When he articulated that, it was almost like he was reading a laundry list. No emotion.
No emotion. He talked about, “Well, I realized they saw me, so I had to put them down.” That’s an expression used for animal control, “putting them down.”
That’s what he said. “I had to put them down.” Just like that.
The psychopath’s lack of sympathy is clearly evident through BTK’s 45-minute statement. “I strangled with the belt. I took the belt off and retied that with pantyhose real tight, and then I masturbated.”
In August 2005, 60-year-old Dennis Rader receives 10 consecutive life sentences.
Sadistic serial killers may carry no remorse or sympathy for their prey, but concern for the victims and their families must never be ignored. When we talk about serial killing, mass killing, spree killing, we become interested in understanding how people can do these things, and we’re fascinated and horrified sometimes simultaneously. What I have found often gets lost is the fact that what we’re talking about are crimes that involved real human beings.
Given the fact that so many victims of serial killers are females and they’re younger women, I find it really difficult to dissociate from that. When I see these crime scene photos, when I read about what had happened to these women, often times I think that could have been me, or that woman looks like me. It’s really difficult to not feel the pain, feel the fear that they must have felt when they were about to go through these horrible experiences.
I just want to be able to prevent this type of thing from happening in the future.
I think the right way to present these kinds of cases is to see if there’s something to learn from them. I would like to see, whether it’s David or BTK or anyone else, a presentation of how does somebody evolve into this. How does that happen, and is there anything that can be done to prevent it?
Because by doing so, you’re literally saving somebody’s life somewhere. You don’t know them, but they have a family. They’re important in their world, and they don’t deserve to die the way these women die.
What motivates a serial killer? For some, it’s sheer hatred against humankind. He was punishing those who had the good fortune to be raised in a warm, loving home.
Some of these murderers seek revenge for an abusive childhood. They’re destroying them out of a need for vengeance. And then there are others who just simply love to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁.
Israel Keyes killed because he enjoyed it. He got an adrenaline rush from it. He loved the thrill of it.
What creates these cold-blooded monsters? What drives their warped psyche? Now, the actual voices and visions of serial killers.
“Once I started, you know, and there was nothing else like it.” Plunging deep inside their complex and twisted minds.
February 1st, 2012. It’s a cold winter’s night in Anchorage. A heinous crime is about to be committed.
18-year-old Samantha Koenig is working alone at the Common Grounds coffee hut. A little bit before closing time that night, a tall man in a dark coat walked up to the window and ordered an Americano coffee. He stood there and watched as Samantha turned around and made it.
When she turned back around, he had pulled a gun on her. Shocked and surprised, Samantha raises her hands as if being held up. He tells her it’s a robbery.
She steps back, surprised. He then ends up coming in through the window, climbs in through the window, ties her up with some zip ties, and then forces her at gunpoint out of the coffee stand and walks her back to his car.
The abductor’s name is Israel Keyes. He is a serial killer responsible for a steady string of brutal murders for more than a dozen years. Keyes didn’t have a real victim profile.
He was pretty unusual for serial killers. He didn’t have a certain race or certain age or certain 𝒔𝒆𝒙 that he targeted. He was much more random.
It was more opportunity crimes with him, just who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. For Samantha Koenig, she was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Keyes had decided that he was going to rob this particular Common Grounds coffee shop.
That’s originally what he planned on doing, just robbing it. But when he got there, when he saw Samantha, he changed his mind and decided to take her.
Keyes tries to keep his captive calm by telling her it’s only a kidnapping, that he’s going to hold her for ransom. He takes Samantha Koenig to the shed next to his home and binds and gags her. Incredibly, his live-in girlfriend and 10-year-old daughter are in the house just several feet away.
He took her into the shed, closed it up, tied her up in there, left her in the shed. He then actually got information from her and went to her house where her truck was parked outside to get her wallet, to get her ATM card and some other things. Came back to the shed where she was still subdued, and that’s when he raped her.
Still, Samantha prays she will survive this horror, hoping it’s only a kidnapping. She gives Keyes her ATM PIN number, but she never had a chance. Once Keyes made up his mind back at the coffee hut, Keyes strangles the helpless young woman.
He enjoyed the thrill, the adrenaline rush of it. He enjoyed having control over his victims. He enjoyed seeing their fear.
He raped his victims, we know that.
Astoundingly, after the murder, Keyes immediately returns to his normal life. After he kills Samantha, he drinks a glass of wine calmly, goes back into the house where his daughter was sleeping and his girlfriend was sleeping. Later on that very morning, they all leave for a pre-planned vacation.
They fly to Houston and then drive to New Orleans for a one-week cruise. Keyes doesn’t have time to dispose of Samantha’s body prior to the trip. Before leaving, he had put Samantha’s body in a cabinet in the shed.
The thought being that it’s so cold in Anchorage in the middle of winter that her body would be perfectly preserved there while he was gone.
Meanwhile, a frenzied hunt begins for Samantha. Her dad launches a grassroots campaign to find his daughter. Upon returning home, Israel Keyes calmly checks back on Samantha’s corpse.
When he gets back, Samantha’s body is frozen solid in the cabinet there. He has some difficulty getting it out, actually. He takes the body out, thaws it out with heaters, has 𝒔𝒆𝒙 with the corpse.
Then, in a horrifying turn, Keyes makes a successful ransom demand by sending a photo of the young woman made up to appear alive. He applies makeup, sews her eyes open with fishing line, and poses the body alongside an edition of the Anchorage Daily News from 4 days earlier. And then ultimately ends up cutting her up into pieces, dismembering the body to get rid of it.
He puts body parts in trash bags and hauls them to a frozen lake near Anchorage, cuts a hole in the ice, drops the bags into the water, weighs them down, and lets them sink to the bottom of the lake.
On March 6th, with her ATM card in hand, Israel Keyes flies to Las Vegas and rents a car. A dramatic chase begins. At this point, police think they are tracking a kidnapper.
They have no reason to believe he is a serial murderer. They have no clues to his identity and no concept of the enormous depth of his crimes. Keyes is a 34-year-old psychopathic serial killer, and like so many of these monsters, he’s able to commit these grisly crimes while still carrying on a normal life.
Somehow he was able to maintain this dual existence, having these two separate identities: the one of the family man, the devoted father, and the one as the killer.
Detective Malcolm Reiman encountered these types of violent psychopaths for over 30 years as a New York City Police Department homicide investigator. He specialized in sexual predator and serial killer cases. People expect to see serial killers as being some type of drooling maniac, creepy, maniacal person, and it’s not really the case.
What you’ll often find is they’re charming, articulate, friendly, normal people.
The FBI defines psychopathy as a personality disorder manifested in people who use a mixture of charm, manipulation, intimidation, and sometimes violence to control others and satisfy their own selfish needs. Psychopathic serial murderers have no empathy for their victims and no remorse for their crimes, and sadly, they’re surprisingly hard to spot. Israel Keyes had his own business, a construction business.
All his clients reported that he seemed very normal, he seemed very friendly most of the time, nothing unusual about him. The neighbors reported he just seemed like a normal, friendly guy.
From all appearances, Israel Keyes is far from normal. He sets out from Las Vegas on a determined drive across the Southwest. He heads through Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
Along the way, he stops several times to withdraw ransom money from Samantha’s ATM account. When he made the withdrawal, there would be a ping basically on the investigator’s system. They would know the card’s been used at this location, so they would rush to the location.
But of course, by the time they got there, Keyes was long gone. He was off in another town somewhere else.
Investigators still have no idea who the kidnapper is, what kind of car he’s driving, or if Samantha is with him on his journey. Meanwhile, Samantha’s disappearance has now gained national attention, fueled by her father’s relentless efforts to save his daughter. Israel Keyes is cleverly staying one step ahead of law enforcement.
But then, the man known as the most meticulous serial killer of the 21st century makes an uncharacteristic mistake, and police uncover 𝓈𝒽𝓸𝒸𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔 truths about this heartless serial killer.
Alaska serial killer Israel Keyes abducts 18-year-old Samantha Koenig and brutally rapes and murders the young woman. He stashes her body in a cabinet and calmly leaves on a family vacation. On his return, he dismembers the corpse and drops the remains in a frozen lake, but still convinces her father and the police she’s only been kidnapped.
Now law enforcement is tracking Keyes through the Southwest United States by the use of Samantha’s ATM card, hoping she is still alive. What’s going on inside the warped mind of this killer, and what drives him towards these heinous acts?
Keyes is energized by his crime and craves more thrills. In addition to using the ATM card while he was in Texas, Keyes also decided he was going to rob a bank. This is something he had done before; he’d robbed several banks before in the past.
He found a house in a small town in Texas. He broke into the house, burglarized it for what he could, and then set it on fire. The point of setting it on fire was for diversion.
In other words, he planned on the fire drawing out the police from the nearby town so that he could then go to the town and rob the bank, which he did, robbing the bank in Gode, Texas.
The anonymous murderer continues across the Southwest, but finally investigators catch a break. It’s an uncharacteristic slip-up for a killer whose precise planning has kept him under the radar for many years. At one of his ATM withdrawals, the security camera catches a glimpse of Keyes’s rental car.
It’s a white 2012 Ford Focus. It wasn’t until they got the video of his rental car that they had something concrete they could actually search for. So then the FBI put out a BOLO, a be-on-the-lookout, for this 2012 white Ford Focus.
On March 13th, a Texas highway patrolman spots the white Ford in the parking lot of a Quality Inn motel in Lufkin, Texas. Keyes got in the car, drove off, and they pulled him over. In the car, they found, in addition obviously to the strangeness of this driver having an Alaska driver’s license, they also found Samantha Koenig’s cell phone, they found Samantha Koenig’s ATM card, a gun, cash with an ink stain on it from the robbery, and they knew they had their guy.
“Before we ask any questions, you must understand your rights. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in court.
You have the right to talk to a lawyer for advice before we ask you questions. You have the right to have a lawyer with you during questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you before any questioning.”
The Anchorage Police and the FBI interrogate Keyes, still having no idea he may be involved in any other murders. Sadly, on March 31st, 2012, he gives a gruesome confession of Samantha Koenig’s torture and murder. And then the complex psychology of Israel Keyes begins to unveil.
He hints that there are other victims, many other victims. “There is no one who knows me or who has ever known me who knows anything about me, really. They’re going to tell you something that does not line up with anything I tell you, because I’m two different people, basically.
And the only person who knows about what I’m telling you, the kind of things I’m telling you, is me.”
“How long have you been two different people?”
“Long time. 14 years.”
Over the next nine months, investigators attempt to piece together other crimes Keyes may have committed. More than 40 hours of complex interrogation and psychological maneuvering reveals a killer with a shockingly precise method for serial murder. In the case of Israel Keyes, even after he was arrested, he still felt the need to try to control the situation, control law enforcement, and make the situation as beneficial for himself, despite the fact that he was apprehended as a serial killer.
For example, he was only willing to give very limited information to police even though they had arrested him. He was willing to negotiate, but he had very specific stipulations associated with all of the information he was willing to give out, and he was only willing to give out more once the stipulations were fulfilled.
Investigators hope he’ll cooperate and help bring closure to the victims’ families, while Keyes often focuses on receiving coffees and cigars. “First of all, do I get a cigar today? What I can do is I can give you something.
We’ll get you a cigar.” There was a bank robbery in Tupper Lake, New York. “That was me.”
Security cam photos confirm Keyes’s account. The investigators and Keyes share a laugh about using real hair for his disguises. Keyes’s response is chilling.
“You use real hair. Where do you buy real hair? You don’t have to buy real hair to get real hair.”
“Fair enough, I guess. You just take it, don’t you?” “Uh-huh.
Hair is free. Everything’s free if you take it.”
He wanted to have control. He seemed to enjoy toying with the investigator as well. He would generally allude to certain crimes without giving details or specifics, leaving the investigators wanting more and more from him and kind of drawing them along that way.
Interrogating these cunning serial killers can be very challenging for investigators. Detectives call the interrogation room “the box.” When I’m in the interview room, when I’m in the box with the serial killer, before I go in there, I want to know everything about that person.
I want to know every intricate detail about that person’s life. I want to know about the traumatic things that happened in childhood. I want to know about previous crimes.
I want to know everything about them. I want them to feel transparent. I want them to feel like there’s nothing that they can hide from me, that either I know or I’m going to find out.
Experienced detectives learn how to read non-verbal cues and how to manipulate the suspect to get the information they need. Investigators notice that Israel Keyes gets physically excited when he talks about his kills, rapidly tapping his hands and feet and jangling his shackles. It’s a way detectives know when he is telling the truth.
With Israel Keyes, this process is extremely difficult. Keyes agrees to continue to cooperate on the condition that they keep his name out of the media. “We could work out some sort of agreement that, you know, I give you all the answers on these cases and families get closure.
You find as many of them as possible. And in return for that, you know, I don’t plan on being around a whole lot longer, but a really big concern to me is, you know, my kid’s going to be around. I don’t want her to type my name in the computer and have it pop up.”
He doesn’t want his 10-year-old daughter to hear about his grisly crimes. “I’m not in this for the glory, and I don’t see why the media has to get involved at all.” FBI Special Agent Jolene Goeden is part of the interrogation team.
He wanted the death penalty, and he wanted it fast. Speaking generally, that was what he wanted. There were little things along the way that he wanted, like he wanted evidence returned to family members and things like that.
But big picture, what he wanted was he wanted to avoid trials. He wanted to avoid publicity in media. He wanted to avoid being taken from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and tried in multiple places.
Ultimately, he wanted the death penalty, and he wanted it quickly. He didn’t want to sit in jail for a long period of time.
Investigators tell Keyes he won’t get the death penalty without other victims. He slowly begins to reveal information about others he murdered. They learn that Keyes has been eluding capture through brilliant planning.
He has studied the serial killers of the past and idolizes Ted Bundy. But they’re shocked to discover that there’s never been any serial killer quite like Israel Keyes.
The FBI and the Anchorage, Alaska Police Department are deep into the interrogation of serial killer Israel Keyes. Keyes has already confessed to one heinous murder, but now investigators are unraveling horrifying layers of complex and unspeakable crimes. Keyes viewed the entire country as his hunting ground.
Even though he was based out of Anchorage, Alaska, he would fly to another city. Say, for example, he’d fly to Chicago. Once he got there to Chicago, he’d rent a car.
He’d then drive that car to a different state or through multiple states, putting on hundreds, even thousands of miles before he got to where he actually committed the crime. So the crime was committed thousands and thousands of miles away, in multiple jurisdictions, making it very difficult to try to track him or come up with any sort of suspect in the crimes.
Everything was meticulously planned, and our interviews with him were the same from his standpoint. I never got the sense that he accidentally told us something or got angry and riled up and then something flew out of his mouth. My sense was that he knew every time he came in kind of what he was going to give us that day.
In the chilling interview, Keyes talks about his inspiration and his motives. “Stuff about other people like that, I probably know every single serial killer that’s ever been written about. It’s kind of a hobby.
I don’t really consider myself all that different or all that special from hundreds of thousands of other people. All you have to do is type in a word search on any given 𝒑𝒐𝒓𝒏 site, and you know, there’s all kinds of people who have fantasies about rape and bondage and, you know, the kinds of things that I take to another level. I think with me, it’s a combination of things.
It’s not just about the sexual fantasies, and it’s definitely not just about the money, and it’s not just about the adrenaline, but it’s all of those things together. And that’s what I get out of it. And once I started doing, you know, once I did it once, I started, you know, and there was nothing else like it.”
In his intricate planning, Keyes even goes so far as to bury pre-packed murder kits in at least five states around America. Israel Keyes put so much thought and preparation and planning into his crimes. He would use what he called “𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 kits.”
These were five-gallon plastic buckets. He would then put certain things in the buckets that he wanted to use for his crimes. He would put guns in the buckets, ammunition in the buckets, zip ties in the buckets, tape in the buckets, flashlights, whatever he thought he’d need.
He’d then seal up the bucket and bury it in the ground. He did this in multiple states: New York, Vermont, Washington, Alaska. Then he would return to these sites, sometimes years later, dig up the bucket, get the items out, and then use them for the crime.
He even included caustic chemicals like Drano and lye to help dispose of the bodies. The kits allowed him to travel without any weapons or tools to avoid security concerns at airports. Keyes referred to his kits as “buried treasures.”
Investigators find that Keyes uses guns to control his victims, but that’s not how he likes to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁. Keyes takes investigators through the killing of Bill and Lorraine Currier in Essex, Vermont, in June of 2011, 4,000 miles from Anchorage. It’s a typical stalk-and-𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 murder for this ruthless predator.
The Curriers were chosen mostly at random. There was a little bit of criteria involved, not for the victims themselves, but for their home. Keyes had certain things he was looking for that particular night.
He wanted a one-story building. He wanted a home with an attached garage. He wanted a home that looked like there weren’t any children there.
Unfortunately for the Curriers, their home fit the profile to a tee.
He called it a “blitz-style attack.” He broke in through the garage. No one could see him.
It was an attached garage, so he broke in the window in the garage door, broke into the kitchen of the house, immediately stormed into the Curriers’ bedroom, surprised them, subdued them, and took them away. But Keyes says he was unhappy it didn’t go according to his plan, and he had to shoot Bill Currier. He typically liked to strangle his victims to death.
It was kind of a more personal murder, hands-on, literally, in the killing. In the case of Bill Currier, the murder victim in Vermont, he was shot and killed, which is very unusual for Keyes to do. The reason why Keyes did it is Bill Currier was not cooperating, not following directions.
Ultimately, it was a loss of control of the situation. There was screaming and shouting and not following instructions, not following directions from Keyes. This loss of control angered Keyes.
It pissed him off, and he reacted violently, shooting him multiple times. Keyes states he was disappointed because he had other plans for Bill Currier. He never specified what the other plans were, but implied in that is that there was definitely some sort of torture that was in mind.
This idea of power and control often runs through the motives of many serial killers. For years, researchers have tried to identify and categorize what creates and drives these monsters. Israel Keyes fits in the categories of seeking power and control as well as the sheer thrill of killing.
𝒔𝒆𝒙 and torture are also common elements of serial murders, but these components are not always involved. I see really two basic types that I’ve dealt with. The first type being a sexual predator hunter who’s going out and hunting down victims, seeking them out, and deriving some type of sexual pleasure in victimizing them.
Then you have another type of serial killer who’s exacting some type of revenge. It’s a revenge killer. They’re getting revenge from rejection, alienation, perceived slights against a group of people, and they’re destroying them out of a need for vengeance.
Keyes seems to fit into the sexual predator hunter category, while another brutal serial killer from the Ukraine falls into the revenge category. Anatoly Onoprienko took the lives of at least 52 innocent victims. A 12-gauge shotgun was his weapon of choice.
A serial killer who was not oriented toward sexual homicide so much as just plain misanthropic killing of one person after the other would be this fellow, Anatoly Onoprienko, from the Ukraine. Onoprienko’s grisly crime scenes appear to express pathological rage against families, a hatred spawned by his own troubled childhood. When Onoprienko was just 4 years old, his mother died.
His older brother stayed on with his father, but Anatoly was placed in an orphanage. Apparently, this abandonment fuels his homicidal rage. He developed a hatred for how he was raised and for mankind in general.
He would often invade a house in these small-town places and 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 all the people in the house, sometimes several at once, and then burn the house down in order to further get back at the people who had the advantage of living in a nice home, which he never could do. He was punishing those who had the good fortune to be raised in a warm, loving home.
Many serial killers claim they are on some kind of mission, driven by psychotic visions or voices to commit such crimes. “You have to be given the right, but I can’t prove who gave me the right. Maybe God gave me the right.
How can I prove it? When, for example, there are 6 billion people on Earth who claim to have seen God, but they can’t prove it. But maybe I’ve seen God.
Maybe I’ve received a concrete task from him, but I can’t prove it.”
Psychosis is more of a break from reality. The person views reality in a significantly different way than persons around them. They may have delusions, which are beliefs that have no basis in reality.
They may experience voices that no one else around them hears. They may see things that no one else around them sees. They may be actually very disorganized in their thought.
There’s a clear break with reality. Generally, they’re seen as mentally ill. Serial killers sometimes 𝒻𝒶𝓀𝑒 psychosis in order to escape the death penalty.
Onoprienko tried to use insanity as his defense, but the courts felt he was faking his mental illness, and he was sentenced to death.
There’s no one course that makes an individual turn into or become a criminal. There’s only one individual path. There are different things you want to look at.
One is the family dynamics, the relationship with the family, the mother, the father, the relationship the mother and the father have with each other. Some experts believe Keyes’s unconventional childhood played a role in fueling his desire to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁. Israel Keyes grew up in a remote forest outside the small town of Colville, Washington.
He was one of nine children. His family belonged to a strict religious group called “The Ark,” a church associated with racist and anti-Semitic theology. He was homeschooled and had little chance to socialize with other kids.
He insists he wasn’t abused or neglected as a child, but could the extreme isolation in his childhood be what transformed him into a monster?
Serial killer Israel Keyes has operated completely under the radar for decades. His precise planning has allowed him to murder an untold number of victims without leaving a hint of a trail. Now, investigators are interrogating the killer to attempt to determine the depth of his crimes and the motives behind his depravity.
It seems a strange childhood may have played a role. Keyes grew up in the isolated woods outside of the small town of Colville, Washington. He enjoyed hunting and once remarked he would 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 anything with a heartbeat.
“I’ve known since I was 14 that there was things that I thought were normal and that were okay that nobody else thought was okay. There were some friends that came with us, and there was a cat of ours that was always getting into the trash, and we all went up into the woods and took a piece of parachute cord, tied it to this tree, and I shot it in the stomach. That was pretty much the last time anybody went in the woods with me.”
When he was young, about 19 or 20, he committed his first violent crime against another person. He was watching a girl tubing on a river in Oregon from the woods, and he decided that he was going to take her and 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 her. He took the girl, grabbed her when she was separated from the people she was with, grabbed her off the tube, dragged her up, and raped her, but then decided to let her go.
Is it just a dreadful childhood that turns these people into serial killers? The often-asked question is whether it’s nature or nurture. Is it a result of their upbringing, or are they born to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁?
That’s a great question. I think that question is currently hotly debated, and it’s something that’s been questioned now for about 250 years. Is someone born a criminal?
Is someone made a criminal? Behavioral studies theorize that the serial killer’s dysfunctional childhood may lead to a cold-hearted lack of empathy. Most research that I’ve seen has suggested it’s the interaction between nature and nurture.
It’s the biological tendencies combined with the right environment to allow them to act out on those tendencies. If they have a predisposition to, let’s say, be impulsive or be unempathetic or to commit crimes, parents could help neutralize that. But if they have that tendency and they have very bad parents, you can imagine that that tendency could just run wild and be exacerbated.
I think absolutely that there is something innate, something intrinsic, something that is within somebody to become a serial killer. I think that an environmental stimulus certainly can trigger it, and there are certain traits or occurrences that will happen to somebody that may trigger it. But the bottom line is it’s got to be something within them to make them that way.
Israel Keyes develops his love for killing very early in life, and he continues honing his murderous craft. Understanding Israel Keyes’s motives for killing presents a complex puzzle for law enforcement.
Another notorious serial murderer from Great Britain displays a similar psychopathic love of killing. “We understand that the police called on the owners of number 163 Melrose Avenue today because they own two dogs, and those two dogs might have picked up some of the bones from 195 Melrose Avenue and buried them in their back garden. Police described it tonight as only a cursory search and said they would be checking other gardens in the street as well.
And I think it’s right to say that we have found a significant amount of human bones and also a part of a jaw with teeth attached to it.”
Dennis Nilsen is one of Great Britain’s most notorious serial killers, claiming at least 12 young men as victims. Like Keyes, his murders are motivated by the thrill of killing, but Nilsen’s crimes appear to be driven by a morbid fascination with death and extreme loneliness. He would lure young male victims back to his home, strangle them, and plunge their heads underwater to be certain they were dead.
He’d sometimes commit 𝒔𝒆𝒙 acts with his dead victims. Nilsen said he saved the corpses for a while to keep him company. But at least 15 people paid the ultimate price for Dennis Nilsen’s hospitality.
He killed them, he chopped up their bodies, and he then burned, boiled, or buried the pieces. 12 of the 16 murders happened at Nilsen’s flat in Melrose Avenue, North London. Each time, he hid the body under the floorboards.
Nilsen was asked by police how many bodies were under the floorboards at any one time. He replied, “I didn’t do a stock check or anything. It’s all a bit of a jumble.”
Like Israel Keyes, Nilsen shows no mental break with reality. He displays clear and calculating thought. In 1983, after 5 years of killing, plumbing clogged with human remains and the body parts found by the dogs lead to Nilsen’s capture.
When asked about his motive for murder, Nilsen says, “Well, enjoying it is as good a reason as any.”
In 1998, after his troubled childhood, Israel Keyes joins the Army. He starts to drink heavily and enjoys the company of prostitutes, but he also learns more valuable skills to help him intensify his experiences. He enlisted in the Army when he was about 20 years old.
He was stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington, and so he learned survival skills in the Army. He learned how to handle weapons in the Army. These sorts of skills that he would then put to use for committing his crimes later on.
It was during this time he meets Tammy Hawkins, and together they have a daughter. After the Army, he lives with Tammy and his daughter in the lush forests of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, and it’s thought that there he puts his hunting skills to the test on human beings.
Keyes would typically try to find areas that were isolated. Parks were one of his favorite areas to scout and stalk people. He would then wait for people to show up, he would follow them, he would track them as necessary, and then surprise them.
It appears Keyes murders four victims in the forests of Washington state, often disposing of the bodies in remote mountain lakes. His murders continue for more than 14 years, and law enforcement has no idea there’s even a killer at large. Then, in February 2012, Keyes kills Samantha Koenig close to home in Anchorage, Alaska, a rare impulsive decision for this calculating murderer.
One of his primary rules was not to commit these crimes where he lived, and with Samantha, he broke his own rule. This mistake of temptation has now led to his downfall.
He’s now under arrest and heading for trial in Anchorage. The negotiations continue to try to get more information from Israel Keyes. Then, suddenly, during a court appearance, he once again shocks law enforcement.
During one of the hearings in court for Keyes, he decided he was going to try to escape. While the attorneys were up arguing before the judge, he bolted, tried to run out of the courtroom. But before he could even clear the aisle, the courtroom deputies tackled him and subdued him.
In typical fashion, Keyes shows no remorse for his escape attempt. “I mean, come on, let’s face it. Yeah, what happened yesterday?
Oh, I’m a bad guy. I tried to escape. But, um, but let’s be honest, nobody really thought I was a good guy before that.”
During months of interrogation, Israel Keyes admits to killing at least nine people, but investigators fear the actual total is higher. He was very evasive at times during interviews. When we tried to pin him down on a number, he would say it was “less than 12.”
But then there were things that he would say that led us to believe that by “less than 12,” he simply meant 11. He was quick to correct us in interviews if we had something wrong. There were several times where we just threw out statements like “You have 11 victims” or things like that, and he didn’t correct us.
So based on that and some just additional things that he said, we believe the number is 11. He traveled so extensively both in the US and in other countries for such long periods of time that authorities haven’t been able to pinpoint where he was often times. So the number of victims is going to be much higher than 11, in my opinion.
Israel Keyes begs the FBI for a quick death sentence, but the agents continue to press for information on other victims. Keyes grows impatient with the process and decides to take matters into his own hands. On December 1st, 2012, while he was in prison awaiting trial in the Koenig case, he slashed his wrists and also used his bed sheet to strangle himself.
His insurance to make sure he got the job done. As he bled out and as his body shifted and relaxed from the bleeding, he rigged the sheets so that they would strangle him, to make sure he did the job. He committed suicide while in prison.
In many cases with serial killers, they start at a very young age, often start in their teen years, and I think historically they never stop. The only way that a serial killer stops historically is if they are incarcerated or they 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 themselves, which somewhat often they do commit suicide. Crumpled inside the blanket on Keyes’s deathbed is a bloodstained suicide note.
The case of Israel Keyes reinforces the immense challenges facing law enforcement in their efforts to apprehend serial killers. When you take a common murder case, you start at the nucleus of that person’s life, then you work your way out from there. With a serial killer, there’s often just a random person, and that person does not even figure into that investigation.
It’s somebody who’s completely off the radar. How are you going to find them? You have to use modern technology, and you have to use old-fashioned police work, and you have to be absolutely relentless.
You just got to keep on plugging.
Keyes is really unique in the world of serial killers in the amount of preparation and planning he put into his crimes. He was so meticulous in his crimes that he’s really a new breed of serial killer. He was extremely deceptive, extremely cunning.
He got an adrenaline rush from it. He loved the thrill of it. If he hadn’t been caught, Keyes would still be out there doing it today.
As a serial killer, as an individual, Keyes was deceptive and cunning as the devil.
