American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

The cautious approach of the Anchorage Police Department (APD) stood in stark contrast to the attitude of Samantha’s father, James Koenig. A single father who worked as a trucker, James had a well-known devotion to his daughter, despite rumors about biker gang activity and possible drug dealing. He decided to “galvanize Anchorage to search for his daughter” by handing out flyers across the city that stated that Samantha had been kidnapped, despite APD’s belief that she had not (11). He also spoke to reporters, affirming that Samantha would never leave without telling him. He pointed to the fact that he and Samantha called and texted multiple times a day, but after the incident, she didn’t pick up her phone once despite his constant calls. Her boyfriend, Duane, who had moved in with Samantha and James eight months ago, had been due to pick Samantha up after her shift on the 1st, but when he arrived, she wasn’t there. The public pressure James and Duane created forced the APD to release parts of the surveillance video and to make statements about the nature of the case, galvanizing greater urgency from the Anchorage community to find her.

After speaking to Duane, Doll became suspicious that he had orchestrated the disappearance. After going through his texts, she saw that Duane and Samantha had been fighting. Duane also claimed that at 3 am on February 2nd, while he waited for Samantha to come home, he spotted a stranger rooting through Samantha’s pickup truck parked outside their lawn. He went outside to check, and the man stared at him for a moment, then shut the car door and walked away. Afterward, Duane went through the car and saw that Samantha’s driver’s license was missing before going back inside to sleep. This story didn’t seem plausible to Doll, who questioned him on it. Both Duane and James’s behavior seemed odd to Doll, who noted that they refused to let the police inside their house when they visited, and also, they hadn’t called 911 until the day after they realized she was missing. Both men stated that they didn’t think the police would do anything unless it had been 24 hours. 

James, aware that he was a prime suspect, started to recruit people to hold a candlelight vigil and to spray paint messages of hope on the snow. He made it so it was impossible to “not know who Samantha was,” which pressured the APD to start looking further afield for any clues (16). James also set up a reward fund, which raised over $60,000 by February 15th. Theories flew through social media accusing James, Duane, and even Samantha of drug dealing, blaming a drug deal gone bad for the abduction. Privately, the APD believed that “Samantha [had] staged the abduction” with an accomplice (18). However, even after two weeks, the department was finding no new leads, and were growing desperate to provide answers to an impatient, frightened public.

On February 24th, Duane received a text from Samantha’s phone. It read, in its entirety: “Conner park sign under pic of albert aint she purty”(19). Duane and James shared this mystifying message with the police, then rushed to Connors Bog Park. Under a flyer for a missing dog named Albert, they found a Ziploc bag containing a ransom note and Polaroids of Samantha. Duct tape covered her mouth, but she wore makeup and her hair was braided. In one of the photos, her head was held by a man, and a newspaper from February 13th was in the shot as well. The ransom note, rambling and incoherent, demanded $30,000 to be deposited into Duane and Samantha’s account. The note claimed that if this and all future demands were met, Samantha would be released in six months.

The note made Samantha’s disappearance into an official kidnapping—a federal crime. Agent Payne now had access to all the resources of the FBI and could lead the case. He assembled a team of investigators which included Doll and Bell, since they were so familiar with the case. Payne and his team tried to determine whether Samantha was still alive in the photos provided with the ransom note. Payne believed she was alive, since she had no injuries, was wearing different makeup, had shaved armpits, and braided hair. Other members of his team, including Doll and Bell, believed she was probably dead in the photos. The ransom note also ignited disagreement: it was riddled with errors—which the investigators suspected were intentional since the abductor was clearly intelligent. The whole team decided to ask James to deposit the money, since their culprit would then use the ATM card and generate more clues as to his location.

James was reluctant to follow the ransom note’s demands. He argued that it could all be a hoax. The investigators, especially Doll, found this suspicious. She got a warrant for James’ home and found a marijuana growing operation, large enough that he must be distributing it illegally. A family friend also told the APD that James was obsessed with the reward fund, checking its balance multiple times a day, and had used some of the funds to settle debts, as James himself admitted to the media.

James agreed to deposit $5000 in the account on the advice of the FBI, hoping to “frustrate whoever was making the demand” and prompt them to make further contact (26). Only four hours later, someone tried to withdraw $600 from an ATM in Anchorage. The ATM only allowed for $500 withdrawals, meaning that the user of the ATM card was likely inexperienced with accessing money electronically, perhaps meaning they ran a cash business, like drug dealing. Two hours after the first unsuccessful attempt, someone withdrew $500 from an ATM close to the first a few minutes before midnight. Another withdrawal popped up for $500 from another ATM right after midnight, taking advantage of the daily withdrawal limit. These two factors pointed the APD toward James as a prime suspect. 

Payne’s team, exhausted and frustrated, felt that they needed to find new leads and fast. They reached out to an image analyst at FBI headquarters in Quantico, trying to get information from the grainy surveillance recording of one of the ATMs the kidnapper had used. The image analyst found that the suspect had an athletic build, had a paint spatter on his chest, and his jacket read “CORPS” on the back, possibly indicating that he was a Marine. They also finally received footage from the parking lot surrounding the coffee kiosk where Samantha was abducted. They determined that the kidnapper drove a white Chevrolet truck, and they even saw him escorting her to his truck after binding her wrists in the kiosk. At one point, Samantha broke away and ran, and the man tackled her and apparently threatened her. After that, even though some strangers walked by, Samantha didn’t struggle or call for help. She got into the car and it left the parking lot.

The next ATM withdrawal came on March 7th, not from Alaska, but Arizona. Another quickly came from New Mexico, meaning that the kidnapper was on the move. Through surveillance footage, they identified the figure once more, and determined that he was no longer driving the white Chevy truck. Payne and his team realized that the ATM card was their best opportunity to track the suspect, and they alerted law enforcement in the American Southwest to be on the lookout for anything suspicious.

A Texas Ranger named Steve Rayburn received notification from the FBI about the suspect’s movements and their belief that he was headed for El Paso. He was assigned to stay on the lookout and keep in contact with the FBI. New information suggested that the suspect was driving a white Ford Focus now. Rayburn was dismayed at this knowledge, since a white Ford Focus is the “most commonly rented vehicle in the United States” (37). Nevertheless, local law enforcement started to painstakingly search for the correct car. Despite the difficulty, they tracked down the correct car and located it parked at a Quality Inn. They quietly started moving in on the car and its driver, noting that there were little girl’s clothes in the backseat. When they saw that the driver was getting ready to leave the motel, they sent an officer to find a reason to intercept the car. Shortly after the suspect left the motel, he exceeded the speed limit by two miles. The officer tailing him turned on his emergency lights and watched in disbelief as the suspect calmly pulled over.

After looking at the man’s license, the officer saw he was from Alaska. The suspect’s name was Israel Keyes, and he stated he was in town for his sister’s wedding. Keyes stayed calm, but the officer noted he was sweating profusely. He also provided many insignificant details about his family’s gathering, a sign of anxiety and possibly deception.

One of the local officers reached out to Payne, asking if they should search the vehicle on such slim coincidences as an Alaska driver’s license and a white Ford Focus. If the initial search was later deemed unlawful because of lack of probable cause, the evidence obtained could be thrown out of court and the case could be ruined. Payne agonized over the decision, then told the officer to find a pretext to search the car, no matter what. The officer called back after ten minutes, stating that they had found “enough” in their search to take Keyes into custody.

The local officers, including Rayburn, took photos of everything they found inside the car. Among the everyday items, including a road map, an adult male and a female child’s clothing, cash, food, and a camera, they also found receipts from ATMs and a Walmart, the locations of which matched the FBI’s tracking of the suspect. In the trunk, they found DVDs of pornography, and clothing that matched the surveillance tapes, including sunglasses, a mask, and similar-looking shoes. They also found a laptop, a cell phone with the battery and SIM card removed, and a handgun. After arresting Keyes, they searched his wallet and found Samantha’s driver’s license.

Payne immediately ran Keyes’s name through the FBI database, shocked to find he had a clean record. His team was unable to find much of anything on him, and his address was in a nicer neighborhood in Anchorage. They found that he was dating a nurse, Kimberly Anderson, and they lived together with his daughter from a previous relationship. After getting picked up by the APD, Anderson vehemently denied that Keyes could have kidnapped anybody. She provided a partial alibi, telling the officers that Keyes and his daughter had left at 5 am the morning after Samantha’s disappearance to travel to New Orleans for a few days before a cruise. Anderson joined them a few days later to go on the cruise as well. He wouldn’t have had time to kidnap anybody, she claimed, and she noticed nothing amiss in the house or surrounding area while she was alone for a few days.

Meanwhile, the local Texas officers were frustrated with Keyes’s reluctance to talk. His attitude, they noted, was “smug and superior” despite the fact that they had found Samantha’s license and Duane and Samantha’s ATM card in his wallet (57). They finally transported him to a federal penitentiary, hoping that his arraignment could be delayed for a couple days, to give the Anchorage police and the FBI some time to get down there and interrogate him before he was given a court-appointed lawyer. Doll and Bell scrambled to leave as soon as they could, not even wasting time to go home and pack, instead stopping to get summer clothes at a Walmart before grabbing a flight. Meanwhile, Payne broke the news to James, Samantha’s father, that they had an Anchorage man in custody. James had never heard of Israel Keyes, and could not think of any connection between his family and Keyes.

Doll and Bell arrived, and they agreed that the only piece of evidence they would show Keyes was the ransom note, to make him think they had less information than they did. Keyes had a favorable reaction to Doll, the “pretty blond detective who’d flown all the way from Alaska just to talk to him” (60). He claimed that he had found the ATM card along with a phone in a Ziploc bag on his truck’s seat and assumed that someone had left him those two things as payment for construction work. Doll called his story ridiculous, but Keyes stuck to it. He appeared very confident, and the detectives realized that as long as he stuck to this story, all they could charge him with was credit card fraud. They had to make him talk.

After Keyes’s arraignment, the detectives saw an older woman outside the courtroom. She wore simple, homemade clothes and, from her appearance, the detectives believed “she could be Amish” (61). They discovered the woman was Keyes’s mother, Heidi. Doll approached her for help, but Heidi was unmoved, stating that if God wanted Samantha to be found, she’d be found.