American Predator

by Maureen Callahan

  Bell walked up to the truck. He wrote down the license plate number, FTC990, and the phone number on the driver’s-side door, under the words KEYES CONSTRUCTION. He took pictures of everything with his iPhone.

  The pickup had a lumber rack attached to the back, over the cargo bed. Looking closer, Bell could see the bolts attaching the rack were brand new, but the washers were rusty. The pickup on the surveillance video had no lumber rack. It must have been removed before Samantha was taken, then quickly reattached.

  Bell needed to get inside that house.

  * * *

  —

  Payne called Detective Doll, who would be flying to Texas with Bell later that day to interrogate Keyes. He was struck by her gracious offer for him to come along.

  Payne was honest with her. “I want to come down and talk to this guy so badly I can taste it,” he said. “But we’ve got to charge him or he’s going to get cut loose.” Payne wanted to write the affidavit. The initial charge was limited to Fraud with Access Device, and Payne wanted to make sure it was strong enough to get Keyes extradited from Texas to Alaska.

  He hung up with Doll and thought about the puzzling items found in the initial car search. Why so much cash in such small denominations? Most ATMs release $20 bills. Why was Keyes traveling with a dismantled cell phone? Why was the battery missing? Payne had never seen that before.

  * * *

  —

  Kimberly Anderson was picked up by APD at Alaska Regional Hospital and taken to the station, where she found herself sitting across from Doll. Anderson was horrified to hear that detectives were about to search the house she shared with Keyes and his daughter. She was adamant: Her boyfriend had nothing to do with Samantha’s disappearance. He was at home with her and his daughter the night Samantha vanished, Anderson said. He came into her bedroom several times that night.

  Her bedroom? Where was Keyes sleeping?

  Anderson went on to say that Keyes checked on his daughter and then rose at 5:00 A.M. to wake her. The two of them were leaving on a flight out that morning, and she had seen them get in a cab to the airport. Check his travel records—he and his little girl flew out of Anchorage, and Anderson met up with them a few days later, for a cruise out of New Orleans.

  There was no time for him to have done this, she said.

  * * *

  —

  Down in Texas, as Keyes was being driven to the Lufkin police station, Rayburn and Gannaway stopped at Subway. They grabbed some six-inch heroes and potato chips and talked about how best to approach Keyes.

  “I think you should take the lead,” Gannaway said. “We don’t know his temperament.” By this she meant: We don’t know how he’ll react to a female in charge. “Let’s see how he responds to a Texas Ranger,” she said.

  When they got to the station, Rayburn and Gannaway took another look at Keyes’s wallet, which he had seemed afraid to hand over at the traffic stop. Inside were credit cards, Keyes’s ATM card, business cards, and, tucked alone in a rear compartment, a green Visa debit card issued to Samantha’s boyfriend with a PIN number scratched on its face.

  Rayburn and Gannaway looked at each other, silent.

  Keyes sat waiting for them in a tiny interrogation room, audio and video set to record. Bryan Henry and other Rangers stood behind the two-way mirror, eager to hear what this suspect had to say. Keyes seemed quite calm.

  At 3:30, carrying their lunch and some bottled water, Rayburn and Gannaway walked in and sat opposite Keyes. They’d been told to keep the arrest quiet as a recent tip had Samantha alive in Wells, Texas, the same town Keyes had been visiting. Apparently Samantha had an aunt who lived there.

  Proceed carefully, they were told.

  “Would you like a sandwich?” Gannaway asked. “We picked one up for you.”

  “No,” Keyes said.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll leave it on the table in case you change your mind.”

  Their attempt at rapport building wasn’t going so well.

  “Do you know why you’re under arrest?” Rayburn asked.

  Keyes looked at him blankly. “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “We found the ATM card, the one belonging to Samantha’s boyfriend, in your wallet,” Rayburn said.

  Keyes didn’t flinch. “I don’t want to talk,” he said.

  That wasn’t closing the door, Rayburn thought. Keyes hadn’t said, “I want a lawyer.” Rayburn pushed a little further.

  “The FBI has pictures of your truck at the crime scene,” Rayburn said.

  “If they had that,” Keyes said, “they already would have talked to me.”

  Keyes was right, and it pissed Gannaway off. His whole demeanor was smug and superior. It just oozed off him: Who were they to interrupt his day? They had found him with Samantha’s driver’s license and Duane’s ATM card, and he had not a care.

  “Anchorage is gonna do you for this,” Gannaway told him.

  Keyes said nothing.

  The conversation didn’t progress much beyond that. Eventually, Rayburn and Gannaway prepared to transport Keyes to federal prison. Rayburn handcuffed Keyes’s wrists in front, then hooked them up to a belly chain with only a few inches of slack. Keyes could barely lift his arms. Then Rayburn shackled Keyes in equally taut leg irons and put him in the front passenger seat of his marked Ford pickup truck, belting him in and then shoving the seat all the way forward so that Keyes was sandwiched tight against the dashboard.

  Gannaway sat directly in back of Keyes, no cage separating them. It was now six o’clock in the evening, the longest day either Rayburn or Gannaway had in a while. They set out on the two-hour drive to Beaumont, where Keyes would be held in a federal penitentiary before his arraignment the next day. Or maybe the day after that. The hope was that Anchorage would get their detectives to Texas before the hearing, before Keyes would have a court-appointed lawyer. Once that happened, there was little chance Keyes would say anything.

  * * *

  —

  Bell and Doll were scrambling. They didn’t even have time to go home and pack. They made a pit stop at Walmart to buy some warm-weather clothes, then rushed to the airport and boarded a commercial red-eye. With no direct flights from Anchorage to Houston, they would first spend three and a half hours in the air to Seattle. There they’d connect to a flight to Houston—another four and a half hours, not to mention renting a car and driving nearly a hundred miles to the courthouse, adrenalized and jet-lagged.

  They thought about the emergency meeting they’d had with Steve Payne, Jolene Goeden, and two members of the US Attorney’s Office, Frank Russo and Kevin Feldis. Together, they had all tried to war-game the Keyes interview.

  How much should Bell and Doll tell Keyes? Or show? They had the picture of Keyes’s truck in the Home Depot parking lot the night Samantha went missing, which really proved nothing. Surveillance stills from the coffee kiosk were useless. Grainy images of a masked man would only show Keyes how impossible it was to ID him.

  Those were out.

  What about the ransom note? It was entirely possible Keyes didn’t write it. Then again, if he had an accomplice, Keyes would still know about that.

  If they played it right, the note could work.

  Their thoughts went to James Koenig. Payne had called him down to the FBI offices after Keyes’s arrest. Payne wanted to do it there, partly because it was a controlled environment, but partly because he wanted James to know how serious they were. The very blandness of the FBI’s offices—beige walls, beige carpet, beige furniture—helped give family members a sense of orderliness and competence, underscoring that these were investigators of the highest degree.

  Payne told James they had someone in custody in Texas, and they had good reason to believe he was involved in Samantha’s disappearance. James wanted to know who.

  A man named Israel Keyes, Payne said
. We’re going through everything we can find on him.

  James was dumbstruck. He’d never heard of an Israel Keyes. He could not think of a possible connection between this man and his daughter. None.

  You have to keep this very quiet, Payne said. Please don’t tell anyone. Please don’t go on Facebook and post his name. This is the most sensitive part of the investigation, our best chance of finding your daughter.

  * * *

  —

  Bell and Doll landed in Houston early on the morning of March 14, the day after Keyes had been arrested. It was 73 degrees, bright and clear. They rented a car at the airport and headed out on the drive to Beaumont.

  Shortly after eleven o’clock, Bell heard from Rayburn. “You won’t believe this,” Rayburn said, “but I just got a call—there’s an active shooting on the courthouse steps. It’s not Keyes, but you need to stand clear.”

  Every single thing about this case, still in its genesis, was bizarre.

  Bell fought to keep his head clear. He and Doll kept heading northeast toward the I-10, the same corridor Keyes had traveled. Once in Beaumont, at least they could stand outside the taped-off perimeter at the courthouse, bask in the sun, and sweat out their anxiety.

  * * *

  —

  Two hours later, Rayburn greeted Bell and Doll on the courthouse steps. Bell got a kick out of Rayburn’s look—cowboy boots, blue jeans, a white ten-gallon Stetson hat, and a single gun on his hip. A Texas Ranger, just like you’d see on TV. Rayburn was much younger than he sounded, his face wide and open.

  On their way inside, Bell and Doll conferred quickly. Doll would take the lead; Rayburn had gotten nowhere yesterday. Maybe Keyes would respond to a pretty blond detective who’d flown all the way from Alaska just to talk to him.

  Each member of the team had agreed: Only show Keyes the ransom note.

  Bell stepped into the interrogation room first. He looked at Keyes and felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He did it, Bell thought to himself.

  Doll was right behind him, getting the exact same feeling. She slid the ransom note across the table. Keyes began silently reading it.

  “Whoever wrote this,” Doll said, “whoever did this, is a monster. I don’t think you’re a monster.”

  Doll was following the script they had worked on in Alaska, using a classic interrogation technique: trying to connect. She wasn’t saying, “I don’t think you did this.” In effect, Doll was telling Keyes she understood, that she knew there was a reason Keyes took Samantha. She was sympathetic to him.

  Keyes said nothing. Doll and Bell hoped that the note would at least get Keyes onto some kind of story. Even a denial would be a starting point.

  “There’s nothing I can do to help you,” Keyes said. He seemed quite interested in Doll though.

  “Well,” Doll continued, “how do you explain her boyfriend’s ATM card in your wallet?”

  “Oh,” Keyes said. His tone softened. “Now I know how I’m involved in this.”

  Doll perked up. Here we go.

  Someone, Keyes said, had left a ziplock bag on the front seat of his pickup truck a few weeks ago. Inside that bag was a cell phone and that ATM card with a PIN number scratched on it. Keyes said he had left his driver’s-side window open a crack because he was a smoker, which they’d surely know from the cigars he had in his rental. He assumed that someone he had done construction work for, who still owed him money, left those things as payment.

  “Frankly,” Doll said, “that is a ridiculous story. We know you did this. We know you took Samantha.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Keyes said.

  * * *

  —

  After less than an hour with Keyes, Bell and Doll left the room deflated. Keyes had said nothing that could implicate him in Samantha’s disappearance. He was extremely confident. And if Keyes thought that all they could charge him with was credit card fraud, he was right. Bell and Doll knew that Keyes could, if he was smart, avoid ever being charged for kidnapping Samantha.

  After Keyes was arraigned, Bell spotted an older woman standing outside the courtroom. She was tall and slender and wore no makeup, her long white hair in a braid down her back. Her simple cotton dress, which covered her from neck to ankle, looked homemade. Bell thought she could be Amish.

  Heidi Keyes, Gannaway told the Alaskan detectives. Israel Keyes’s mother.

  Bell approached and introduced himself.

  “We believe your son knows where a missing eighteen-year-old girl is,” Bell said. “But he won’t tell us anything. Can you help us? Can you ask him, please, to tell you, as his mother?”

  “I can’t help you,” Heidi replied. She sounded just like her son.

  Bell was stunned. “Please,” Bell said. “I’m begging you. There’s a girl out there whose father is frantic. She’s been missing for over a month.”

  “Well,” Heidi said, “if God wants that girl to be found, she’ll be found.”

  Then she turned and walked away.

  PART II

  NINE

  It would take two weeks to extradite Israel Keyes from Texas to Alaska, and in that time investigators needed to learn as much about him as possible. Kat Nelson found a local website for his business, Keyes Construction, which included a capsule biography. This would be the launchpad for part two of the investigation.

  According to his self-report, Keyes had lived in Colville, Washington, from 1995 to 1997, working as a contractor for a man named Kelly Harris. Nelson looked up Colville on Wikipedia. It was a small town, less than three square miles. As of the 2010 census, it had a population of less than five thousand.

  Keyes’s driver’s license, expired by one month when he was arrested—a small violation, but the hint of a criminal—listed his birth date as January 7, 1978. That would put Israel Keyes in Colville from ages seventeen to nineteen, at least. People there might remember him.

  The next entry in the biography put Keyes in the US Army from 1998 to 2000, stationed at Fort Lewis in Washington, Fort Hood in Texas, and Sinai, Egypt. He had passed, with distinction, the army’s pre-Ranger course, a merciless sixty-one days of training that typically flushes out half its hopefuls in the first week.

  Nelson also found an application for a US passport listing the same birthday as his driver’s license. He put his birth state as Utah. Under the question “Have you ever been issued a passport before?” Keyes wrote, “Don’t remember.”

  Who doesn’t remember getting their passport?

  After an honorable discharge from the army in 2001, Keyes moved to a remote part of Washington State called Neah Bay, where he worked for the Parks and Recreation Commission for the next six years.

  A Wiki search gave Nelson a thumbnail sketch of the area. Situated on the uppermost western tip of Washington, Neah Bay was a designated reservation for the Makah tribe. Only 865 people lived there. Like Colville, it was less than three square miles. Household income was less than thirty thousand dollars a year.

  How did this young man—athletic, fairly good-looking, smart, skilled, with a clear sense of adventure—end up in such poor, rural, isolated pockets of the Pacific Northwest?

  And why the sudden move to Anchorage? What was the draw? Had it been Kimberly? That relationship was a whole other mystery; since the arrest, Kimberly had refused to cooperate. She was adamant that Keyes was innocent and that she had nothing to do with any of this either. She was enraged and humiliated that her house had been aggressively searched while Israel was in custody in Texas.

  Why would she help them now?

  Keyes’s biography ended in 2007 with his move to Alaska and the establishment of Keyes Construction. “Have yet to have a dissatisfied customer!” Keyes wrote.

  Nelson sent the whole bio to the team. Goeden, who was now co-case agent with Payne, knew that she would have to work on Ki
mberly herself down the line, once the shock and anger wore off. But as Goeden was learning, Kimberly wasn’t the only important woman in Israel Keyes’s life. In fact, there were two who knew him well: His mother, Heidi, and Tammie, the mother of his child. Though they were never married, Keyes called Tammie his ex-wife.

  * * *

  —

  Within hours of Israel’s arrest, Deb Gannaway was at Heidi’s front door. Somehow, she convinced her to open up to an interview.

  Heidi was fifty-nine years old, handsome, with a proud bearing. Her house, in the tiny town of Wells, was small and spartan, reminiscent of Little House on the Prairie.

  Gannaway’s first impression was of a serious woman who, unlike Kimberly, was sad but not in shock. This was interesting. Israel Keyes’s own mother, in such a raw moment, was silently conceding that yes, it was possible that her own son was responsible for the kidnapping of a teenage girl, maybe worse. What led Heidi to accept this? What had Israel been like growing up? The team in Anchorage hadn’t found a criminal record for him, but that didn’t mean no criminal history. It only meant he hadn’t been caught.

  Gannaway, just like Goeden and Nelson, would want to know everything about the Keyes family. Most pressingly, Gannaway needed to know everything Israel had done on this visit to Texas, all while fresh in Heidi’s mind.

  That would be fine, Heidi said.

  How long had Heidi been living in Texas? Was Israel a frequent visitor?

  I recently moved here with four of my daughters, Heidi said. They had all been living in Indianapolis, Indiana, where they met two young men Heidi called “street preachers,” charismatic evangelicals who somehow convinced the Keyes women to move nearly nine hundred miles south and join their congregation. First they had moved to Dallas, then Wells. One of Heidi’s daughters had just wed a fellow church member in an arranged marriage. That’s why Israel had been in Texas.