August 8, 2024 • 34 mins
After his 2009 Tupper Lake NY crime spree, Israel Keyes buried his guns and left his shovel, 97 miles east next to the Winooski River in the heart of Vermont. This Cache of weapons remained hidden just off of Vermont’s Hwy 15 in the Woodside Natural Area until 2011, when he used the items inside to abduct and murder a married couple less than 2 miles away. In this episode Joshua wraps up his trip in the NE by retracing Keyes’ steps in Essex, and we discover what could be a new understanding of how Israel chose his locations to commit crime.
Music: "part 2" by Dirt Jake Replicas
"Mend" by Dirt Jake Replicas
Backing Tracks: Somewhere In The Pines
Researched, Written, Recorded, Edited, and Produced by Somewhere in the Pines
Patreon Producers:
Heather Horton Whedon
Nicole Guzman
Colleen Sullivan
Rochelle Roberts
Lynnlie Tuschoff
Attar Mann
For early episodes and more: www.Patreon.com/somewhereinthepines
This is a Studio BOTH/AND collaboration: www.somewhereinthepines.com / bothand.fyi For an ad-free experience: www.patreon.com/studiobothand
With Special Guests:SA Ted Halla and Steven Bernd
Resources:
Montage -
CBSN Live
CBS NEWS
NBC5 - WPTZ
KPTV
Music: "part 2" by Dirt Jake Replicas
"Mend" by Dirt Jake Replicas
Backing Tracks: Somewhere In The Pines
Researched, Written, Recorded, Edited, and Produced by Somewhere in the Pines
Patreon Producers:
Heather Horton Whedon
Nicole Guzman
Colleen Sullivan
Rochelle Roberts
Lynnlie Tuschoff
Attar Mann
For early episodes and more: www.Patreon.com/somewhereinthepines
This is a Studio BOTH/AND collaboration: www.somewhereinthepines.com / bothand.fyi For an ad-free experience: www.patreon.com/studiobothand
With Special Guests:SA Ted Halla and Steven Bernd
Resources:
Montage -
CBSN Live
CBS NEWS
NBC5 - WPTZ
KPTV
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
This is a studio both and collaboration.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Somewhere in the Pines is a serial podcast containing adult content,
including descriptions of violence, sexual assault, and suicide. Listener discretion
is strongly advised.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Last time on Somewhere in the Pines. What I mean,
there's something more in the story, just soungclare, there's something
more to the story of Debora that you're just not
don't want to tell us now.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
I just yeah, I want to talk about it. But
I'm right about that.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Yeah, I don't really know what to think about the
recover of bot Launch. I am honestly more interested in Dump.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
Road, a Special Forces Caching Techniques manual that we would
come to realize was linked in many ways to Israel's
cashing tactics certain areas.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
So you might have to have a dash cam or
something so I can see landmarks.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Pay attention to the landmarks that he brings up unprompted
as he leads them to the cash.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Because it was off sharp right hand turn, okay, and
then I took a left onto a road which.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Would be River Road. Yeah, the boat launch is right
off the road.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
There's a creek that runs underneath the road right by
the boat launch, the rad dumps into the reservoir. That
should be a power line right of way. It looks
like there's a line of trees right there between the
road and the right of way. Yeah, there's a bunch
of boulders and they're kind of drop off steeply towards
the water. Underneath that slab of rock, there is a
(01:42):
orange home depot bucket. Trying to think of a landmark
or something.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
I'm like two miles away from it. There's this old
cemetery right on the side of the road. Everything is
so close.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Cemetery, campground, something like that places.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
In twenty twelve, Alaskan law enforcements came face to face
with one of this country's most prolific serial killers.
Speaker 6 (02:17):
His name is Israel Keys.
Speaker 5 (02:20):
Investigators say Israel Keys had a.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
So called murdered kit.
Speaker 7 (02:23):
Keys strategically hit a box filled with weapons and tools
near the Windowski River.
Speaker 8 (02:28):
There is a orange defat bundt inside would be a gun,
weapons of.
Speaker 6 (02:34):
Rope, sip ties.
Speaker 7 (02:35):
He always flew somewhere, rented a car, and then drove hundreds,
if not one thousand, miles.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
He told investigators.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
He left the kids in Washington State, Wyoming and Texas
and Land the high one in.
Speaker 8 (02:46):
Arizonts in a whole bunch of states, I mean, Alaska, Vermont, Washington, Oregon,
New York, New Jersey, California, Texas, Illinois, Tennessee had a cash.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
In Washington because they're very in Lomington, all right, I
was a kid. I was used to doing that. I'd
find buried trade arn very well.
Speaker 8 (03:04):
If I can't find it, I might as well create it.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
It's the fifth location and second to last day of
my Northeast trip. This will be my first night in
a hotel, which I'm really looking forward to, a nice
hot shower, a place to dry out my tent in
a dry spot, to repack my suitcase for the flight
home back to the Pacific Northwest. This is not raining today.
That's great, actually really nice and cool the air. It
(03:55):
smells like it has been raining and it smells really
nice and fresh. Shovel my boots, damn it. Before I
go check in, I'm going to scout out all the
sites to get ready for a more thorough search in
the morning. Okay, here's the Minyuski River. It's a pretty
(04:22):
steve drop off. I'm currently walking the one mile woodside
Loop trail, a quiet getaway in the small park located
in the suburbs of Burlington, Vermont. This is where Israel
Key is buried to kill cash and stash a shovel
that he used to bury a victim who the FBI
believes to be Deborah Feldman in two thousand nine near
Tupper Lake, New York. And like here's the canoe launch,
(04:54):
he dug the cash up again in two thousand eleven.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
What are the guns?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
That bucket there was already buried in Burlington, and the
forty pal that you already have was buried in Burlington
with it right down there by the Wenewski.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Why did you have the guns buried there? They were
there from another trip a while back.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
I don't remember how they were there for a few years.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
This is another cash that Keys attempted to lead the
FBI to during a May twenty second, twenty twelve interrogation,
an interrogation that hasn't been released to the public. Keys
gave the FBI directions to get to the cash. Their
search was unsuccessful in recovering it or its exact location.
We were able to find some pages on their search
in the case file. Here's what those pages said.
Speaker 5 (05:44):
On August two, twenty twelve, a search of the Woodside
Natural Area in Essex, Vermont was conducted by FBI Albany
Division personnel and Essex Police Department detectives. The search was
conducted to locate a shovel and a wooden box left
in the area by Israel Keys. Keys stated he parked
on Woodside Valley Drive and walked down a trail to
(06:06):
Wanooski Park. The shovel is above ground, lying on an
indentation because that is where he pulled the cash from.
The box that the cash was in might also be there.
He wasn't happy with it because it wasn't as waterproof
as he wanted it to be. As you drive on
Wanooski Road towards the detention center, on the right hand side,
there's a gated road that goes to the river boat launch.
(06:28):
Walk down that road and take the first walking trail
on the left. Straight ahead, the trail turns to a junction,
there will be several nineties lots of leafy trees and
a hole where the box was. Metal detectors should find
the shovel. The search team met at approximately eight thirty
am on Woodside Drive at the gated entrance to the
river Boat Launch access road of the Woodside Natural Area.
(06:51):
At eight thirty seven am, the search team entered the
park from the gated entrance and walked in a southeast
direction down to the river boat Launch road. The team
turned left in a northwest direction onto a marked trail
called Woodside Loop. The trail was followed for approximately fifteen minutes,
at which point the trail curved south and was covered
by wooden planks. The wooden plank trail led south to
(07:13):
a junction where ninety degree turns either to the east
or west were observed. The western direction was clear and
well maintained, whereas the eastern direction was less distinct and
not clearly maintained. However, a trail map of the Woodside
Natural Area located online shows the trail leading both east
and west from this junction. Just south of the junction
(07:33):
is a slope that leads to the Wanooski River. In
the area of the junction, a handheld GPS device was used,
which showed the location as having a match to the
coordinates identified by keys. The search team then searched the
general area of the GPS points. Detectives used a metal
detector during the search, which alerted in several areas. Many
(07:54):
of these areas were ruled out as nails or remnants
of wire fencing. Neither the shovel or box were lowd
in this area, nor were any obvious indentations which fit
the description provided by keys. The search concluded at eleven
oh seven am that.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Forty col I'm sure they've noticed by now it had
some rust damage because it was there for quite.
Speaker 6 (08:15):
A while, and.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
There was actually a land or like a mud slide
that kind of moved it. And I had took me
a while to find him again. But they were both
a little bit rusty, I mean, not bad enough that
they weren't working, just not as.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
Pretty as these to me. So and where did you
have them buried in? Well, I can show you on
the map, but they were right.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
They were only maybe five hundred yards from the hotel
I stayed at.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
After his two thousand and nine Tupper Lake, New York
crime spree, his real keys buried as guns and left
a shovel ninety seven miles east next to the Winooski
River in the heart of Vermont. The cache of weapons
remained hidden just off Vermont's Highway fifteen in the Woodside
Natural Area until twenty eleven, when he used the items
inside to abduct and murder a married couple less than
(09:16):
two miles away. In this episode, Joshua wraps up his
trip in the Northeast by retracing Keys's steps in Essex,
and we discover what could be a new understanding of
how Israel chose his locations to commit crime.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
I'm Dakota and I'm Joshua. Welcome to Somewhere in the Pines.
Episode four, Essex Vermont.
Speaker 6 (09:41):
Secular shout. He may now be se.
Speaker 9 (10:00):
Thought and also watching him for watching the street for
(10:25):
tops or cars driving by which there was anything.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
So, what happened after you entered the house and you
said you went right back to the bedroom took five
six seconds?
Speaker 6 (10:37):
What happened then?
Speaker 7 (10:40):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (10:40):
I just told him right away what was going on?
Were they cooperative at first?
Speaker 6 (10:46):
At least?
Speaker 4 (10:47):
What about yeah?
Speaker 6 (10:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (10:52):
Mm pretty shocked. People never expected to stop to.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Happen Essex, Vermont. Essex, Vermont is a thriving metropolis compared
to the locations we have visited so far. Its twenty
thousand residents puts Essex in second for the most populous
town in the state, nearly half of that of its
neighbor Burlington, Vermont. Big box stores, hotels, and well manicured
(11:21):
lawns are nestled in the rolling hills of beautiful deciduous trees.
It gives off a humble facade with its split level
and ranch style idyllic middle class neighborhoods, but it is
home to some of the richest residents of the state,
with Chitning County ranking in the top five richest counties,
as well as boasting one of the lowest crime rates.
It still has that small town field to it. It's welcoming, peaceful,
(11:45):
like nothing could go wrong. Its border runs along a
very distinct bend in the Minuskie River, a ninety mile
long river that empties into Lake Champlain. On this bend
of the river rests the Essex Overlook Park and Woodside
Natural Area Vacre Park Sandwich, in between Highway fifteen and
the river, known for bird watching, fishing, and river access
(12:06):
by a canoe launch. This proved to be a secure
spot to hide his weapons as Keys waited for his
inevitable return to the area. As fifty year old animal
care technician William Scott Currier and his wife, fifty five
year old Lorraine Simone Courrier, who worked in the financial
services department at the University of Vermont, covered the bird
cages and laid their heads down to rest. They could
(12:27):
have never known that a killer was outside, waiting for
the opportunity to strike. Seven seven minute drive on to
Woodside Rives, leaving the woodside natural area where the kill
cash was hidden, and making the short drive to the
home they once lived in.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
And as far as the couriers did, you told me
that was random?
Speaker 4 (12:52):
How you pick them out? It wasn't a reason. Well
it was, I mean I didn't know them.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yeah, it wasn't random how I picked.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
How did you choose them?
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Well, I'll tell that story to a point. So I
was fishing and driving around. I had got a Vermont
fishing license.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
That was kind of my alibi for being there, I guess.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
And plus I just wanted to check out the area.
I was in the motel that I had stayed at
a couple other times, I think.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
And and I.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Was also in that area because I wanted to dig
up those guns that I had buried there. They had
been there for a few years, and I wanted to
check on them make sure they were they were full
of water, and so I don't really I think what
I think. The way it worked is I went fishing
for a day. Then I went down and found the guns,
(13:57):
brought them back up to the motel room, and you know,
worked on them for a while getting everything working again.
So the plan was, I was in the hotel that evening,
the evening before they were reported missing or whatever. I
(14:18):
had all the guns ready to go, and I started
walking around town at about eight or nine o'clock after
it had got dark, because I already had so. I
had my backpack with me.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
It had a.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Bunch of stuff in it, like cable ties and duct
tape and some stuff for like blindfolds or something.
Speaker 5 (14:47):
On June eighth, twenty eleven, when Keys went to check
on the Winooskie Cash, he found that its contents were
water damage from not being properly protected from the wetlands
along the river. The elements had penetrated the wooden box
they buried in only five hundred yards from his room
at the Handy Sweet's Hotel. He took the guns back
the short distance to do maintenance. Being close to his
(15:08):
hotel is yet another link to the Special Forces Caching
Techniques Manual. It explains choosing a location within a few
miles of a safe house for easy packaging, access and retrieval.
Later that night, he left on foot with a rape
kit concealed in his backpack.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
I decided I was going to look for a house
with a couple in it, and you know, with a car,
decent car. And so I was started walking through neighborhoods
back behind the hotel.
Speaker 6 (15:44):
And.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
I was looking for.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
A house that didn't look like it had a dog.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
I was looking for single car.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Garage with no cars parked outside, and I was looking
for a fairly easy way to get into the garage.
And there's was the first house I found that had
all those things. Yeah, once I found out that it
was the right house, and I knew that they were
(16:14):
home because I could I had walked around the house
and they had a I could hear some fans running
in the bedroom, so I knew what bedroom they were
sleeping in, and they had their house was locked up
really tight.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
It was.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
There was no way into the house. And but it, yeah,
the the garage. Other than other than the window, they
had left a window open in the garage. There was
one window on the side of the house that had
a fan in it, and I grabbed one of their
(16:53):
chairs in the backyard and took the fan out of
the window and just crawled through the window.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
And then once I got into the garage and decided
that it was.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
The right house. I the garage had a back door
on it too to the backyard, and.
Speaker 10 (17:11):
I undid unlocks the dead bolder on that, And then
I found the phone box on the side of the house,
and I had my side cutters with me, and I
cut the wire, the main wire of the phone box
and figured.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Figured if they had any kind of alarm or something,
the police would do a drag buy or something.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
And made sure every I mean I was checking.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Out all the other houses around there and make sure
that there was a wasn't anybody up in the house
right next door from the street, It would have been
the house on the left. They had a dog that
they kept letting out. It was like a big Golden
Retriever or something, and it kept barking, and there was
(17:58):
a die kept coming out and smoking cigarettes.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
So I just kept waiting.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
I just kept hanging out around their house, and and
then once it seemed like that house or that guy.
I don't remember if he left or if he went
to bed or what. He wasn't coming out of the
house anymore, and it seems like they had locked their
dog back inside. I went back into the garage and
(18:28):
by then I think it was probably one.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
Or two, and yeah, that's when. That's when it happened.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
The Courier is eleven hundred square foot ranch style house
sat only a half mile away from the Handy Sweets Hotel,
a mostly flat ten minute walk. After gaining access to
the house using a crowbar found in the garage, is
Real moved quickly and what he referred to as a
blitz attack, reaching their bedroom and taking control of the
victims in all of six seconds. Key said he was
(19:01):
familiar with this style house and he knew what to
expect from the layout, waking them from their sleep and
binding both Bill and the Rain with zip ties. Keys
then searched the house for valuables, packing up items, including
some of Lorraine's lingerie and her handgun, a snubnosed Ruger
thirty eight, into a suitcase taken from one of the rooms.
This gun was later recovered from Blake Falls Reservoir. Wanting
(19:23):
to immediately remove the victims from their residents. Israel got
them both into their car, a dark green four door
Saturn Sedan.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
After he had him in the car, I drove to
the hotel where my car was parked. My car was
parked off to the side, kind of in a dark
area of the parking lot, and I'm back to their
car and right alongside my car. And I hadn't decided
for sure at that point what to do with their bodies,
(19:50):
so I threw a bunch of stuff out of my
car into their car trunk.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
I had a shovel, had some diesel.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
I had a big roll of the fifty five gallon
trash bags and the draino.
Speaker 4 (20:13):
I threw that in their trunk.
Speaker 6 (20:17):
And.
Speaker 5 (20:25):
After loading the disposal items from his vehicle, Israel drove
the couriers and their car to a previously scouted location.
He said he used real estate websites to search for
abandoned and for sale properties, gathering a list of homes
to scout out when he arrived, choosing the best available
option to take a victim. We believe this may be
how Israel came across the abandoned farmhouse at thirty two
(20:46):
Upper Main Street in Essex, Junction three point two miles
in his six minute drive from the Courrier's residence. On
June one, twenty twelve, Lieutenant George Murdy, Vermont's lead investigator
on the Courier case, was given access by the FBI
to question keys and corroborate Israel's account of the events.
Speaker 7 (21:06):
Now, tell me about this abandoned farmhouse. And I know
in the interview you described quite plainly how how you
get the guy into the basement through the kind of
the storm door that that leads down into the basement.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Is that correct? Yes?
Speaker 7 (21:29):
Okay?
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Deep.
Speaker 7 (21:30):
And once he's the tied up in the basement, Uh,
do you bring her in the same door or a
different door? No?
Speaker 4 (21:39):
I brought her in through the front door. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 7 (21:43):
Now, when you were scoping that place out earlier, did
you go inside it and.
Speaker 8 (21:47):
Go through it?
Speaker 4 (21:48):
I did?
Speaker 7 (21:49):
Okay, so you knew what you knew exactly where where
things were and where you wanted to place.
Speaker 4 (21:54):
Them and all that stuff.
Speaker 7 (21:57):
I one thing I didn't get Now with her, you
bring her in the front door. There's an upstairs.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
There, right, Yes, you go upstairs? Are you on that
ground floor?
Speaker 6 (22:12):
Uh?
Speaker 5 (22:12):
No?
Speaker 4 (22:12):
I took her upstairs.
Speaker 5 (22:13):
With the couriers secured inside the abandoned farmhouse, the stage
was set for Israel to carry out his sadistic plan,
a plan that was two years in the making. With
Bill restrained in the basement, there's.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
A shot in the basement and I hit him with.
Speaker 5 (22:27):
That and Lorrain bound in the upstairs master bedroom.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
She was like a fighting the whole time.
Speaker 5 (22:32):
Keys was able to spend several hours with the victims
inside the vacant building.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Stuff that I had been thinking about for a while
that I was going to do.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
And I did it.
Speaker 5 (22:40):
Keys ultimately killed Bill Currier with a silencer that was
later found in the Blake Falls Reservoir cash. After sexually
assaulting and strangling Lorraine, Keys covered the bodies with d
reno and left them concealed in black garbage bags in
the basement. Upon his exit in the early morning hours,
just throw.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Back towards Burlington, parked the car in some a complex.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Yeah, why did you choose that place to mark it?
Speaker 1 (23:03):
It was within walking distance of the hotel and I
didn't see the cameras in the parking lot.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
After coming back from seeing the couriers home and the farmhouse,
just really creeped me out. How everything was so one
mile turned right onto the woodside trackey, so planned, so thought,
well thought out, seeing the places and knowing what happened
to them. Just thinking about that just fucked me up.
(23:57):
It just out and it was weird. It's like, I
don't know, it was too much doing this by myself,
I think, And I'm glad, you know we're gonna do
it together. The rest of the time, I am done.
I'm ready to go home. So it just passed a
(24:24):
sign that said Essex and Colchester, possibly some sort of border.
I wonder if that's something to look into, because I
know the Blake follows cash. There was a welcome to
Parishville sign that I saw just down the road from
the cash, And it looks like the NUSI Cash was
really close to this county or city border or whatever.
Speaker 8 (24:46):
It is.
Speaker 6 (24:53):
It would be.
Speaker 5 (24:53):
During his retelling of the Courier abduction, the keys would
reveal two extremely important things to investigators. First thing, the beginning,
the middle, and the end. He explained his preparation, how
he chose each location and their relation to one another,
where he planned to take the victim from where he
planned to take the victim to where the guns came
(25:15):
from and where the guns ended up. The Minuoski River
cash was in a wooded area just within city limits,
only five hundred yards from his hotel, in less than
one mile from the courrier's home. The farmhouse where he
murdered and disposed of the couriers was only three miles away,
finally parking their vehicle back where he started the Knight's
events close to the cash. Secondly, this wouldn't be the
(25:39):
only time Israel gave up every part of his plan.
In the same interrogation, he told special agents about a
disposal cash in Alaska and how we planned to use it.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
I just remembered I had a stash of that I had.
This is kind of unrelated, but made me think of it.
There's a shovel and some two gallons of draining on
up on the road in Eagle River.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
That's the place I had staked out before I went
back east.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
That that was right after I had finished the gun.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
I was out looking for trouble.
Speaker 5 (26:19):
This is another cash, a disposal cash that is confirmed
to be Israel's that we can gather data from. It
was placed along Eagle River Road outside of Anchorage, Alaska.
This cash site we have yet to visit, but we've
examined the area using maps in Google Earth. Israel stakeout
began miles away at the Eagle River Nature Center. Leaving
his vehicle behind, Keys rode his bike the five miles
(26:42):
towards the parking lot near where the cash of disposal
materials was hidden. He planned to use the same silencer
he used to kill Bill Currier to shoot out the
sidewall of someone's tire as they approached North Fork trailhead,
with no other option but to pull over. He could
then overtake them, drive their vehicle into the parking area,
and lock the gate behind them with his own padlock.
(27:03):
Keys planned to sexually assault and murder this hypothetical victim
right there in the parking area. The victim would then
be driven a quarter of a mile up the road
to the cache that he described, where they would be
disposed of using the shovel and draino Next, he planned
to drive any evidence in the victim's vehicle to the
nature center parking lot, reuniting with his vehicle, transferring over
(27:25):
any clothes or other items that he removed from the victim.
Ultimately leaving their car in this parking lot to stage
their disappearance miles away from where the actual events took place.
Every step was within a small geographical area, Just like
the locations in Essex. Every part of the crime is
planned out in great detail. It provides a place to
hide a cash, a location to abduct, murder and dispose
(27:48):
of a victim, and await a mislead investigators by relocating
the victim's vehicle.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Bringing the Eagle River, Alaska cash into the mix. It
gives us another location to use for a compare and
paying great attention to how we plan to use it
gives us clues on how we operated when concealing or
accessing a cash. Looking at Blake Falls Reservoir under the
same lens, we have to ask ourselves. Was it just
a spot to hide a cash or was it one
piece of a bigger plan for that area. What are
(28:16):
the locations nearest to the Blake Falls cash that align
with what we know about Israel? We know we needed
access to victims, a place to take someone, a disposal site,
all in close proximity to his vehicle. McNeil Campground is
a campground located one mile north of the cash at
the Blake Falls boat ramp. This is the type of
location that Israel confessed to seeking victims. Then we have
(28:38):
the maintenance shed in Stark Cemetery, located two miles south
of the boat ramp, the type of building Israel plan
to use during the commission of a murder. The surrounding
forest and shorelines provide limitless options to dispose of a victim,
all within a very small area and not far from
his vehicle. When Israel described the location of the Minuski cache,
he said he wasn't sure if authorities would find the
(28:58):
shovel that he used to dig it up. As he
explained earlier, he moved a shovel from his car to
the courier's car. Was this newly purchased shovel or the
same shovel? Is there a chance he moved his shovel
to what he deemed to be a good burial spot
near Blake Falls Reservoir. It would make sense that he
brought a shovel with him as he surveyed new areas
to buryer cache, and how to county and city boundaries
play into all of this. Profusely scrutinizing every detail of
(29:21):
Israel's fully developed plans has given us an advantage. With
the full scope in mind, it will better inform us
as to where to search when we begin combing the rivers, lakes,
and roadsides of the Pacific Northwest. It's clear that the
landmarks we've identified in the Caching Techniques manual aren't the
only similarities shared by the locations keys would hide a cache.
The Woodside Natural Area has many of the same attributes
(29:43):
as a Blake Falls site. It is in a relatively
secluded area, bordering a power line right of way, there's
access to water, and is close to a cemetery and
a number of vacant, disheveled homes. But it also has
all the pieces in place for an opportunistic killer to
carry out his plan in a significantly s short amount
of time while still leaving authorities with very few leads
to go on. Understanding that he was carrying out his
(30:05):
crimes in a small geographical area is significant. Standing along
the bank of the Wenuski River, I'm sticking to the
game plan of pulling as much debt out of every
location as I can. In a few hours, I will
return my rental car six hundred miles worse for wear
and board a plane headed for Oregon, where Dakota and
I can review all that we've learned. But there's still
(30:26):
more to do. While I'm here, figure movie such a
pretty spot. Maybe I'll just stop and get some Mario
and do a moment of silence for the couriers for
Bill and the rain. So let's do that right.
Speaker 11 (30:42):
Now, playing on the farm Thomas Party.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Sitting against a column on the floor of the airport,
charging my phone, I frantically text Dakota before my flight.
I can't help but shake the coincidence of seeing a
boundary line sign located so close to both cashing locations.
I quickly sketch up a picture of the sign to
send a Dakota so we can start looking into it,
hoping for another breakthrough to assist us and narrowing our search.
(31:28):
It stands out because there's a portion of the interrogations
where Western Washington FBI special agents Ted Halla and Colleen
Sanders were brought in to speak with Israel about his
crimes committed while living on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. They were
discussing jurisdictional lines and how they could charge Israel federally
which is what he wanted by identifying the crimes, it
took place in the federal nexus.
Speaker 12 (31:49):
It puzzled about your You seem an adamant that there's
no possible federallexus with the Washington cases. And I'm just
shocked because knowing the peninsula like we do, there's so
much federal land out there, a specially to the national
forest national parks, and you know, my understanding then would
be that nothing's happened on those type of lands.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
Are we correct understanding the head or no?
Speaker 3 (32:16):
That interview was over twelve years ago, and after getting
confirmation this week we will have the opportunity to speak
with that very same special agent, lead investigator into the
crimes of Israel Keys for Western Washington, Ted.
Speaker 6 (32:28):
Halla, are you in the same bone mine we are?
Speaker 4 (32:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Well, I think all five pretendivians are here, and I
think I guess we can get started.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
Cool, all right, awesome.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Yeah, mild care personal periodsity, what kind of you guys
interested in buying cases in the birthplace?
Speaker 5 (32:50):
Next time on somewhere in the pines, Joshua and I
reunite in the Pacific Northwest to begin our search of
the Olympic Peninsula. As we discussed jurisdictional boundary lines with
the f B.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
I thanks for listening to this episode of Somewhere in
the Pines. One simple way for you to join the
(33:20):
search is to rate and review the show, and don't
forget to subscribe and tell a friend. For photos of
the locations we visit, go to Somewhere in the Pines
dot com forward slash photos for ad free episodes and
behind the scenes content. Join us on Patreon at patreon
dot com, forward slash Somewhere in the Pines. We'd also
like to give a very special thank you to our
Patreon producers Heather Horton, Whedon, Nicole Guzman, Colleen Sullivan, Rochelle Roberts,
(33:46):
Lynley Twoshof, and PDX Ball Hockey All Star defenceman ottur Man.
Speaker 5 (34:33):
At eight thirty seven am, the search team entered the
park from the gated entrance and walked in a southeast
direction down the river. Oh fuck, alright,
This is a studio both and collaboration.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Somewhere in the Pines is a serial podcast containing adult content,
including descriptions of violence, sexual assault, and suicide. Listener discretion
is strongly advised.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Last time on Somewhere in the Pines. What I mean,
there's something more in the story, just soungclare, there's something
more to the story of Debora that you're just not
don't want to tell us now.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
I just yeah, I want to talk about it. But
I'm right about that.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Yeah, I don't really know what to think about the
recover of bot Launch. I am honestly more interested in Dump.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
Road, a Special Forces Caching Techniques manual that we would
come to realize was linked in many ways to Israel's
cashing tactics certain areas.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
So you might have to have a dash cam or
something so I can see landmarks.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Pay attention to the landmarks that he brings up unprompted
as he leads them to the cash.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Because it was off sharp right hand turn, okay, and
then I took a left onto a road which.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Would be River Road. Yeah, the boat launch is right
off the road.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
There's a creek that runs underneath the road right by
the boat launch, the rad dumps into the reservoir. That
should be a power line right of way. It looks
like there's a line of trees right there between the
road and the right of way. Yeah, there's a bunch
of boulders and they're kind of drop off steeply towards
the water. Underneath that slab of rock, there is a
(01:42):
orange home depot bucket. Trying to think of a landmark
or something.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
I'm like two miles away from it. There's this old
cemetery right on the side of the road. Everything is
so close.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Cemetery, campground, something like that places.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
In twenty twelve, Alaskan law enforcements came face to face
with one of this country's most prolific serial killers.
Speaker 6 (02:17):
His name is Israel Keys.
Speaker 5 (02:20):
Investigators say Israel Keys had a.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
So called murdered kit.
Speaker 7 (02:23):
Keys strategically hit a box filled with weapons and tools
near the Windowski River.
Speaker 8 (02:28):
There is a orange defat bundt inside would be a gun,
weapons of.
Speaker 6 (02:34):
Rope, sip ties.
Speaker 7 (02:35):
He always flew somewhere, rented a car, and then drove hundreds,
if not one thousand, miles.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
He told investigators.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
He left the kids in Washington State, Wyoming and Texas
and Land the high one in.
Speaker 8 (02:46):
Arizonts in a whole bunch of states, I mean, Alaska, Vermont, Washington, Oregon,
New York, New Jersey, California, Texas, Illinois, Tennessee had a cash.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
In Washington because they're very in Lomington, all right, I
was a kid. I was used to doing that. I'd
find buried trade arn very well.
Speaker 8 (03:04):
If I can't find it, I might as well create it.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
It's the fifth location and second to last day of
my Northeast trip. This will be my first night in
a hotel, which I'm really looking forward to, a nice
hot shower, a place to dry out my tent in
a dry spot, to repack my suitcase for the flight
home back to the Pacific Northwest. This is not raining today.
That's great, actually really nice and cool the air. It
(03:55):
smells like it has been raining and it smells really
nice and fresh. Shovel my boots, damn it. Before I
go check in, I'm going to scout out all the
sites to get ready for a more thorough search in
the morning. Okay, here's the Minyuski River. It's a pretty
(04:22):
steve drop off. I'm currently walking the one mile woodside
Loop trail, a quiet getaway in the small park located
in the suburbs of Burlington, Vermont. This is where Israel
Key is buried to kill cash and stash a shovel
that he used to bury a victim who the FBI
believes to be Deborah Feldman in two thousand nine near
Tupper Lake, New York. And like here's the canoe launch,
(04:54):
he dug the cash up again in two thousand eleven.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
What are the guns?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
That bucket there was already buried in Burlington, and the
forty pal that you already have was buried in Burlington
with it right down there by the Wenewski.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Why did you have the guns buried there? They were
there from another trip a while back.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
I don't remember how they were there for a few years.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
This is another cash that Keys attempted to lead the
FBI to during a May twenty second, twenty twelve interrogation,
an interrogation that hasn't been released to the public. Keys
gave the FBI directions to get to the cash. Their
search was unsuccessful in recovering it or its exact location.
We were able to find some pages on their search
in the case file. Here's what those pages said.
Speaker 5 (05:44):
On August two, twenty twelve, a search of the Woodside
Natural Area in Essex, Vermont was conducted by FBI Albany
Division personnel and Essex Police Department detectives. The search was
conducted to locate a shovel and a wooden box left
in the area by Israel Keys. Keys stated he parked
on Woodside Valley Drive and walked down a trail to
(06:06):
Wanooski Park. The shovel is above ground, lying on an
indentation because that is where he pulled the cash from.
The box that the cash was in might also be there.
He wasn't happy with it because it wasn't as waterproof
as he wanted it to be. As you drive on
Wanooski Road towards the detention center, on the right hand side,
there's a gated road that goes to the river boat launch.
(06:28):
Walk down that road and take the first walking trail
on the left. Straight ahead, the trail turns to a junction,
there will be several nineties lots of leafy trees and
a hole where the box was. Metal detectors should find
the shovel. The search team met at approximately eight thirty
am on Woodside Drive at the gated entrance to the
river Boat Launch access road of the Woodside Natural Area.
(06:51):
At eight thirty seven am, the search team entered the
park from the gated entrance and walked in a southeast
direction down to the river boat Launch road. The team
turned left in a northwest direction onto a marked trail
called Woodside Loop. The trail was followed for approximately fifteen minutes,
at which point the trail curved south and was covered
by wooden planks. The wooden plank trail led south to
(07:13):
a junction where ninety degree turns either to the east
or west were observed. The western direction was clear and
well maintained, whereas the eastern direction was less distinct and
not clearly maintained. However, a trail map of the Woodside
Natural Area located online shows the trail leading both east
and west from this junction. Just south of the junction
(07:33):
is a slope that leads to the Wanooski River. In
the area of the junction, a handheld GPS device was used,
which showed the location as having a match to the
coordinates identified by keys. The search team then searched the
general area of the GPS points. Detectives used a metal
detector during the search, which alerted in several areas. Many
(07:54):
of these areas were ruled out as nails or remnants
of wire fencing. Neither the shovel or box were lowd
in this area, nor were any obvious indentations which fit
the description provided by keys. The search concluded at eleven
oh seven am that.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Forty col I'm sure they've noticed by now it had
some rust damage because it was there for quite.
Speaker 6 (08:15):
A while, and.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
There was actually a land or like a mud slide
that kind of moved it. And I had took me
a while to find him again. But they were both
a little bit rusty, I mean, not bad enough that
they weren't working, just not as.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
Pretty as these to me. So and where did you
have them buried in? Well, I can show you on
the map, but they were right.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
They were only maybe five hundred yards from the hotel
I stayed at.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
After his two thousand and nine Tupper Lake, New York
crime spree, his real keys buried as guns and left
a shovel ninety seven miles east next to the Winooski
River in the heart of Vermont. The cache of weapons
remained hidden just off Vermont's Highway fifteen in the Woodside
Natural Area until twenty eleven, when he used the items
inside to abduct and murder a married couple less than
(09:16):
two miles away. In this episode, Joshua wraps up his
trip in the Northeast by retracing Keys's steps in Essex,
and we discover what could be a new understanding of
how Israel chose his locations to commit crime.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
I'm Dakota and I'm Joshua. Welcome to Somewhere in the Pines.
Episode four, Essex Vermont.
Speaker 6 (09:41):
Secular shout. He may now be se.
Speaker 9 (10:00):
Thought and also watching him for watching the street for
(10:25):
tops or cars driving by which there was anything.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
So, what happened after you entered the house and you
said you went right back to the bedroom took five
six seconds?
Speaker 6 (10:37):
What happened then?
Speaker 7 (10:40):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (10:40):
I just told him right away what was going on?
Were they cooperative at first?
Speaker 6 (10:46):
At least?
Speaker 4 (10:47):
What about yeah?
Speaker 6 (10:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (10:52):
Mm pretty shocked. People never expected to stop to.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Happen Essex, Vermont. Essex, Vermont is a thriving metropolis compared
to the locations we have visited so far. Its twenty
thousand residents puts Essex in second for the most populous
town in the state, nearly half of that of its
neighbor Burlington, Vermont. Big box stores, hotels, and well manicured
(11:21):
lawns are nestled in the rolling hills of beautiful deciduous trees.
It gives off a humble facade with its split level
and ranch style idyllic middle class neighborhoods, but it is
home to some of the richest residents of the state,
with Chitning County ranking in the top five richest counties,
as well as boasting one of the lowest crime rates.
It still has that small town field to it. It's welcoming, peaceful,
(11:45):
like nothing could go wrong. Its border runs along a
very distinct bend in the Minuskie River, a ninety mile
long river that empties into Lake Champlain. On this bend
of the river rests the Essex Overlook Park and Woodside
Natural Area Vacre Park Sandwich, in between Highway fifteen and
the river, known for bird watching, fishing, and river access
(12:06):
by a canoe launch. This proved to be a secure
spot to hide his weapons as Keys waited for his
inevitable return to the area. As fifty year old animal
care technician William Scott Currier and his wife, fifty five
year old Lorraine Simone Courrier, who worked in the financial
services department at the University of Vermont, covered the bird
cages and laid their heads down to rest. They could
(12:27):
have never known that a killer was outside, waiting for
the opportunity to strike. Seven seven minute drive on to
Woodside Rives, leaving the woodside natural area where the kill
cash was hidden, and making the short drive to the
home they once lived in.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
And as far as the couriers did, you told me
that was random?
Speaker 4 (12:52):
How you pick them out? It wasn't a reason. Well
it was, I mean I didn't know them.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yeah, it wasn't random how I picked.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
How did you choose them?
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Well, I'll tell that story to a point. So I
was fishing and driving around. I had got a Vermont
fishing license.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
That was kind of my alibi for being there, I guess.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
And plus I just wanted to check out the area.
I was in the motel that I had stayed at
a couple other times, I think.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
And and I.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Was also in that area because I wanted to dig
up those guns that I had buried there. They had
been there for a few years, and I wanted to
check on them make sure they were they were full
of water, and so I don't really I think what
I think. The way it worked is I went fishing
for a day. Then I went down and found the guns,
(13:57):
brought them back up to the motel room, and you know,
worked on them for a while getting everything working again.
So the plan was, I was in the hotel that evening,
the evening before they were reported missing or whatever. I
(14:18):
had all the guns ready to go, and I started
walking around town at about eight or nine o'clock after
it had got dark, because I already had so. I
had my backpack with me.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
It had a.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Bunch of stuff in it, like cable ties and duct
tape and some stuff for like blindfolds or something.
Speaker 5 (14:47):
On June eighth, twenty eleven, when Keys went to check
on the Winooskie Cash, he found that its contents were
water damage from not being properly protected from the wetlands
along the river. The elements had penetrated the wooden box
they buried in only five hundred yards from his room
at the Handy Sweet's Hotel. He took the guns back
the short distance to do maintenance. Being close to his
(15:08):
hotel is yet another link to the Special Forces Caching
Techniques Manual. It explains choosing a location within a few
miles of a safe house for easy packaging, access and retrieval.
Later that night, he left on foot with a rape
kit concealed in his backpack.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
I decided I was going to look for a house
with a couple in it, and you know, with a car,
decent car. And so I was started walking through neighborhoods
back behind the hotel.
Speaker 6 (15:44):
And.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
I was looking for.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
A house that didn't look like it had a dog.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
I was looking for single car.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Garage with no cars parked outside, and I was looking
for a fairly easy way to get into the garage.
And there's was the first house I found that had
all those things. Yeah, once I found out that it
was the right house, and I knew that they were
(16:14):
home because I could I had walked around the house
and they had a I could hear some fans running
in the bedroom, so I knew what bedroom they were
sleeping in, and they had their house was locked up
really tight.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
It was.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
There was no way into the house. And but it, yeah,
the the garage. Other than other than the window, they
had left a window open in the garage. There was
one window on the side of the house that had
a fan in it, and I grabbed one of their
(16:53):
chairs in the backyard and took the fan out of
the window and just crawled through the window.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
And then once I got into the garage and decided
that it was.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
The right house. I the garage had a back door
on it too to the backyard, and.
Speaker 10 (17:11):
I undid unlocks the dead bolder on that, And then
I found the phone box on the side of the house,
and I had my side cutters with me, and I
cut the wire, the main wire of the phone box
and figured.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Figured if they had any kind of alarm or something,
the police would do a drag buy or something.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
And made sure every I mean I was checking.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Out all the other houses around there and make sure
that there was a wasn't anybody up in the house
right next door from the street, It would have been
the house on the left. They had a dog that
they kept letting out. It was like a big Golden
Retriever or something, and it kept barking, and there was
(17:58):
a die kept coming out and smoking cigarettes.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
So I just kept waiting.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
I just kept hanging out around their house, and and
then once it seemed like that house or that guy.
I don't remember if he left or if he went
to bed or what. He wasn't coming out of the
house anymore, and it seems like they had locked their
dog back inside. I went back into the garage and
(18:28):
by then I think it was probably one.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
Or two, and yeah, that's when. That's when it happened.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
The Courier is eleven hundred square foot ranch style house
sat only a half mile away from the Handy Sweets Hotel,
a mostly flat ten minute walk. After gaining access to
the house using a crowbar found in the garage, is
Real moved quickly and what he referred to as a
blitz attack, reaching their bedroom and taking control of the
victims in all of six seconds. Key said he was
(19:01):
familiar with this style house and he knew what to
expect from the layout, waking them from their sleep and
binding both Bill and the Rain with zip ties. Keys
then searched the house for valuables, packing up items, including
some of Lorraine's lingerie and her handgun, a snubnosed Ruger
thirty eight, into a suitcase taken from one of the rooms.
This gun was later recovered from Blake Falls Reservoir. Wanting
(19:23):
to immediately remove the victims from their residents. Israel got
them both into their car, a dark green four door
Saturn Sedan.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
After he had him in the car, I drove to
the hotel where my car was parked. My car was
parked off to the side, kind of in a dark
area of the parking lot, and I'm back to their
car and right alongside my car. And I hadn't decided
for sure at that point what to do with their bodies,
(19:50):
so I threw a bunch of stuff out of my
car into their car trunk.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
I had a shovel, had some diesel.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
I had a big roll of the fifty five gallon
trash bags and the draino.
Speaker 4 (20:13):
I threw that in their trunk.
Speaker 6 (20:17):
And.
Speaker 5 (20:25):
After loading the disposal items from his vehicle, Israel drove
the couriers and their car to a previously scouted location.
He said he used real estate websites to search for
abandoned and for sale properties, gathering a list of homes
to scout out when he arrived, choosing the best available
option to take a victim. We believe this may be
how Israel came across the abandoned farmhouse at thirty two
(20:46):
Upper Main Street in Essex, Junction three point two miles
in his six minute drive from the Courrier's residence. On
June one, twenty twelve, Lieutenant George Murdy, Vermont's lead investigator
on the Courier case, was given access by the FBI
to question keys and corroborate Israel's account of the events.
Speaker 7 (21:06):
Now, tell me about this abandoned farmhouse. And I know
in the interview you described quite plainly how how you
get the guy into the basement through the kind of
the storm door that that leads down into the basement.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Is that correct? Yes?
Speaker 7 (21:29):
Okay?
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Deep.
Speaker 7 (21:30):
And once he's the tied up in the basement, Uh,
do you bring her in the same door or a
different door? No?
Speaker 4 (21:39):
I brought her in through the front door. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 7 (21:43):
Now, when you were scoping that place out earlier, did
you go inside it and.
Speaker 8 (21:47):
Go through it?
Speaker 4 (21:48):
I did?
Speaker 7 (21:49):
Okay, so you knew what you knew exactly where where
things were and where you wanted to place.
Speaker 4 (21:54):
Them and all that stuff.
Speaker 7 (21:57):
I one thing I didn't get Now with her, you
bring her in the front door. There's an upstairs.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
There, right, Yes, you go upstairs? Are you on that
ground floor?
Speaker 6 (22:12):
Uh?
Speaker 5 (22:12):
No?
Speaker 4 (22:12):
I took her upstairs.
Speaker 5 (22:13):
With the couriers secured inside the abandoned farmhouse, the stage
was set for Israel to carry out his sadistic plan,
a plan that was two years in the making. With
Bill restrained in the basement, there's.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
A shot in the basement and I hit him with.
Speaker 5 (22:27):
That and Lorrain bound in the upstairs master bedroom.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
She was like a fighting the whole time.
Speaker 5 (22:32):
Keys was able to spend several hours with the victims
inside the vacant building.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Stuff that I had been thinking about for a while
that I was going to do.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
And I did it.
Speaker 5 (22:40):
Keys ultimately killed Bill Currier with a silencer that was
later found in the Blake Falls Reservoir cash. After sexually
assaulting and strangling Lorraine, Keys covered the bodies with d
reno and left them concealed in black garbage bags in
the basement. Upon his exit in the early morning hours,
just throw.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Back towards Burlington, parked the car in some a complex.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Yeah, why did you choose that place to mark it?
Speaker 1 (23:03):
It was within walking distance of the hotel and I
didn't see the cameras in the parking lot.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
After coming back from seeing the couriers home and the farmhouse,
just really creeped me out. How everything was so one
mile turned right onto the woodside trackey, so planned, so thought,
well thought out, seeing the places and knowing what happened
to them. Just thinking about that just fucked me up.
(23:57):
It just out and it was weird. It's like, I
don't know, it was too much doing this by myself,
I think, And I'm glad, you know we're gonna do
it together. The rest of the time, I am done.
I'm ready to go home. So it just passed a
(24:24):
sign that said Essex and Colchester, possibly some sort of border.
I wonder if that's something to look into, because I
know the Blake follows cash. There was a welcome to
Parishville sign that I saw just down the road from
the cash, And it looks like the NUSI Cash was
really close to this county or city border or whatever.
Speaker 8 (24:46):
It is.
Speaker 6 (24:53):
It would be.
Speaker 5 (24:53):
During his retelling of the Courier abduction, the keys would
reveal two extremely important things to investigators. First thing, the beginning,
the middle, and the end. He explained his preparation, how
he chose each location and their relation to one another,
where he planned to take the victim from where he
planned to take the victim to where the guns came
(25:15):
from and where the guns ended up. The Minuoski River
cash was in a wooded area just within city limits,
only five hundred yards from his hotel, in less than
one mile from the courrier's home. The farmhouse where he
murdered and disposed of the couriers was only three miles away,
finally parking their vehicle back where he started the Knight's
events close to the cash. Secondly, this wouldn't be the
(25:39):
only time Israel gave up every part of his plan.
In the same interrogation, he told special agents about a
disposal cash in Alaska and how we planned to use it.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
I just remembered I had a stash of that I had.
This is kind of unrelated, but made me think of it.
There's a shovel and some two gallons of draining on
up on the road in Eagle River.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
That's the place I had staked out before I went
back east.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
That that was right after I had finished the gun.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
I was out looking for trouble.
Speaker 5 (26:19):
This is another cash, a disposal cash that is confirmed
to be Israel's that we can gather data from. It
was placed along Eagle River Road outside of Anchorage, Alaska.
This cash site we have yet to visit, but we've
examined the area using maps in Google Earth. Israel stakeout
began miles away at the Eagle River Nature Center. Leaving
his vehicle behind, Keys rode his bike the five miles
(26:42):
towards the parking lot near where the cash of disposal
materials was hidden. He planned to use the same silencer
he used to kill Bill Currier to shoot out the
sidewall of someone's tire as they approached North Fork trailhead,
with no other option but to pull over. He could
then overtake them, drive their vehicle into the parking area,
and lock the gate behind them with his own padlock.
(27:03):
Keys planned to sexually assault and murder this hypothetical victim
right there in the parking area. The victim would then
be driven a quarter of a mile up the road
to the cache that he described, where they would be
disposed of using the shovel and draino Next, he planned
to drive any evidence in the victim's vehicle to the
nature center parking lot, reuniting with his vehicle, transferring over
(27:25):
any clothes or other items that he removed from the victim.
Ultimately leaving their car in this parking lot to stage
their disappearance miles away from where the actual events took place.
Every step was within a small geographical area, Just like
the locations in Essex. Every part of the crime is
planned out in great detail. It provides a place to
hide a cash, a location to abduct, murder and dispose
(27:48):
of a victim, and await a mislead investigators by relocating
the victim's vehicle.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Bringing the Eagle River, Alaska cash into the mix. It
gives us another location to use for a compare and
paying great attention to how we plan to use it
gives us clues on how we operated when concealing or
accessing a cash. Looking at Blake Falls Reservoir under the
same lens, we have to ask ourselves. Was it just
a spot to hide a cash or was it one
piece of a bigger plan for that area. What are
(28:16):
the locations nearest to the Blake Falls cash that align
with what we know about Israel? We know we needed
access to victims, a place to take someone, a disposal site,
all in close proximity to his vehicle. McNeil Campground is
a campground located one mile north of the cash at
the Blake Falls boat ramp. This is the type of
location that Israel confessed to seeking victims. Then we have
(28:38):
the maintenance shed in Stark Cemetery, located two miles south
of the boat ramp, the type of building Israel plan
to use during the commission of a murder. The surrounding
forest and shorelines provide limitless options to dispose of a victim,
all within a very small area and not far from
his vehicle. When Israel described the location of the Minuski cache,
he said he wasn't sure if authorities would find the
(28:58):
shovel that he used to dig it up. As he
explained earlier, he moved a shovel from his car to
the courier's car. Was this newly purchased shovel or the
same shovel? Is there a chance he moved his shovel
to what he deemed to be a good burial spot
near Blake Falls Reservoir. It would make sense that he
brought a shovel with him as he surveyed new areas
to buryer cache, and how to county and city boundaries
play into all of this. Profusely scrutinizing every detail of
(29:21):
Israel's fully developed plans has given us an advantage. With
the full scope in mind, it will better inform us
as to where to search when we begin combing the rivers, lakes,
and roadsides of the Pacific Northwest. It's clear that the
landmarks we've identified in the Caching Techniques manual aren't the
only similarities shared by the locations keys would hide a cache.
The Woodside Natural Area has many of the same attributes
(29:43):
as a Blake Falls site. It is in a relatively
secluded area, bordering a power line right of way, there's
access to water, and is close to a cemetery and
a number of vacant, disheveled homes. But it also has
all the pieces in place for an opportunistic killer to
carry out his plan in a significantly s short amount
of time while still leaving authorities with very few leads
to go on. Understanding that he was carrying out his
(30:05):
crimes in a small geographical area is significant. Standing along
the bank of the Wenuski River, I'm sticking to the
game plan of pulling as much debt out of every
location as I can. In a few hours, I will
return my rental car six hundred miles worse for wear
and board a plane headed for Oregon, where Dakota and
I can review all that we've learned. But there's still
(30:26):
more to do. While I'm here, figure movie such a
pretty spot. Maybe I'll just stop and get some Mario
and do a moment of silence for the couriers for
Bill and the rain. So let's do that right.
Speaker 11 (30:42):
Now, playing on the farm Thomas Party.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Sitting against a column on the floor of the airport,
charging my phone, I frantically text Dakota before my flight.
I can't help but shake the coincidence of seeing a
boundary line sign located so close to both cashing locations.
I quickly sketch up a picture of the sign to
send a Dakota so we can start looking into it,
hoping for another breakthrough to assist us and narrowing our search.
(31:28):
It stands out because there's a portion of the interrogations
where Western Washington FBI special agents Ted Halla and Colleen
Sanders were brought in to speak with Israel about his
crimes committed while living on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. They were
discussing jurisdictional lines and how they could charge Israel federally
which is what he wanted by identifying the crimes, it
took place in the federal nexus.
Speaker 12 (31:49):
It puzzled about your You seem an adamant that there's
no possible federallexus with the Washington cases. And I'm just
shocked because knowing the peninsula like we do, there's so
much federal land out there, a specially to the national
forest national parks, and you know, my understanding then would
be that nothing's happened on those type of lands.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
Are we correct understanding the head or no?
Speaker 3 (32:16):
That interview was over twelve years ago, and after getting
confirmation this week we will have the opportunity to speak
with that very same special agent, lead investigator into the
crimes of Israel Keys for Western Washington, Ted.
Speaker 6 (32:28):
Halla, are you in the same bone mine we are?
Speaker 4 (32:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Well, I think all five pretendivians are here, and I
think I guess we can get started.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
Cool, all right, awesome.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Yeah, mild care personal periodsity, what kind of you guys
interested in buying cases in the birthplace?
Speaker 5 (32:50):
Next time on somewhere in the pines, Joshua and I
reunite in the Pacific Northwest to begin our search of
the Olympic Peninsula. As we discussed jurisdictional boundary lines with
the f B.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
I thanks for listening to this episode of Somewhere in
the Pines. One simple way for you to join the
(33:20):
search is to rate and review the show, and don't
forget to subscribe and tell a friend. For photos of
the locations we visit, go to Somewhere in the Pines
dot com forward slash photos for ad free episodes and
behind the scenes content. Join us on Patreon at patreon
dot com, forward slash Somewhere in the Pines. We'd also
like to give a very special thank you to our
Patreon producers Heather Horton, Whedon, Nicole Guzman, Colleen Sullivan, Rochelle Roberts,
(33:46):
Lynley Twoshof, and PDX Ball Hockey All Star defenceman ottur Man.
Speaker 5 (34:33):
At eight thirty seven am, the search team entered the
park from the gated entrance and walked in a southeast
direction down the river. Oh fuck, alright,
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