SERIAL MURDERER: Israel Keyes Part 2

In this episode of Unspeakable, KJ continues her account of the tragic case of Samantha Koenig, an 18-year-old barista who disappeared from Anchorage, Alaska, on February 1, 2012. KJ details the events surrounding her abduction by Israel Keyes, offering a chilling narrative of her last moments at the coffee shop and the investigative journey that ensued. 

Unspeakable Listener Deals!

Eric Javits
Chic, Provactive, and Iconic-Eric Javits hats are the essence of designer elegance. Made famous by sex and the city and worn by Melania, these travel friendly sun hats and accressories are known worldwide. 
20% off for my listeners by using the code UNSPEAKABLE via the link below
Eric Javits Designer Hats and Accessories

SOURCES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkkX4L9fSg0 
https://allthatsinteresting.com/samantha-koenig
https://alaskapublic.org/news/2012-12-05/police-release-detailed-account-of-koenig-murder

Follow “Crime Wire Weekly” on it’s new channel HERE:
Apple Podcasts  
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-crime-wire-weekly/id1815864889
Spotify 
https://open.spotify.com/show/3zyrgjtW6gLUVbicJaYXV9?si=0dbf4983938344a2
Amazon Music 
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/3738411d-828e-4138-9976-223ab5de2c87/the-crime-wire-weekly

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where I tell
stories of real crimes with real victims, whose cases are
so shocking that many are left wondering how is this
even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections,
and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator,

(00:28):
dig deep into complex cases of evil acts, some so
evil many feel they are unspeakable.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Warning.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Unspeakable as intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended,
then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey y'all,
it's kJ You're back for another episode of Unspeakable. Are
you're ready for your Israel Keys Part two episode? Because
I am, and I've got it going on for you.
But before I do that, I've got some shout outs
I need to do for my new crime family members.

(01:12):
And we're going to start in Goshen, Indiana. I believe
it's Goshen, it could be Goshen. What do you think, Jim,
do you think Goshen or Goshen.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Goshen.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
We're going with Goshen gosh in Indiana and that is
where Natty lives. So hello, Natty, thank you so much
for joining. I'm thrilled to have you, and I hope
things are going great in your neck of the woods.
And then right here in my backyard in Albany, Louisiana,
which is just a few exits down the road, is
miss Ashley Freeman. And Ashley, are you the Ashley that
I taught, because I did teach Nashley Freeman back in

(01:43):
the day, and I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
That might be you.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Well, thank you for joining, and I'm glad to hear
your name and to see your name on my paperwork,
and so thank you for joining and supporting my dreams.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
This is amazing. So this is a part two.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Let me say that real quick before you listen to
this one. Make sure you go back and listen to
part one before I jump into part two. And I
also want to let all my Patreon members know that
there is going to be a T shirt special, a
special T shirt that I'm gonna post on there for you,
and so go check it out if you haven't, and
look for that special pricing on there because I think

(02:16):
they're cute and I want to give you that special deal.
So we left off last week with a man named
Israel Keys in custody and he was believed to be
the person responsible for the whereabouts of missing eighteen year
old Samantha Koenig. Now, she had been abducted from that
roadside coffee shop, as you remember, So her daddy had
gone and he deposited five thousand dollars as part of

(02:39):
the ransom note demand for her safe return, and he
put that five grand into the account because there was
a photo of Samantha near a recent newspaper and they
were all in that same photo, which was a proof
of life photo, which compelled him to go do that.
He wanted to get her back safe and sound. But
Samantha had been missing for weeks at this point.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
It wasn't like the next day or anything. But hope
was still.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
Strong that she would be returned and that she would
be returned safely. The reality was, though, in the flip
side of things, that just because he had her documents
in his car when he was pulled over, doesn't mean
that he actually was the one who kidnapped her. And
so that's kind of the issue we're at right now.

(03:25):
He could have stolen that car with the items in it,
or someone could have sold him this car. I mean, hell,
he could have found the items that truly is is
facts that happens oftentimes that people who have connections in
the criminal world can get items from those people, and
so this would have to be investigated further to ensure

(03:45):
that he even had further information about Samantha and her whereabouts.
So to find this out, Israel was arrested and he
was extradited back to Alaska. Now, before I start in
any further, I want to address something I misspoke in
the previous episode, but I just caught it as I

(04:06):
was getting my notes together for this part too, and
so it has to do whenever I said that he
took some cash, whenever the suspect took some cash, whenever
he went to the ATM the very first time to
check her pen, but that was incorrect. I misspoke her
balance At that first time he went to check the balance,
it was only ninety four cents, and so money was
not taken on that first trip.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
But I didn't catch that.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
I said that until, like I said, just now, as
I was going through my notes. So it doesn't really
matter in the big scheme of things, but accuracy matters
to me, and so I wanted to just address that
all right now, moving on, So Israel, now dressed in
his prison scrubs and sipping some coffee.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
He was with the FBI.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
Because they wanted to have a word with him. Now,
truth be told, when they were interviewing him, he was
not scary. He wasn't scary at all. He was super chill.
This guy is relaxed, normal, He's an everyday dude. His
criminal record, reviewing that before jumping into this investigation, his

(05:08):
criminal record wasn't much to shake a stick at.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
He did have one.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
Thing really on the rap sheet, and it was for
a DWI. Now that's huge. I'm not acting like a DWI.
I'm not minimizing that. For the record, I have a
good friend whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver,
so I will never minimize the choice to drink and drive. However,
his DWI didn't quite compare necessarily to an armed kidnapping

(05:36):
ransom note, you know, hold somebody hostage style of mo.
That level of violence just isn't the same in terms
of motive, in the way that people operate.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
I mean, anybody can be.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
Drunk driving to take somebody against their will and go
to the extent of holding them.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
Captive and taking a photo.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
That's really just a different, a different level, and he
had zero zero goose egg crimes of violence and zero
sexual criminal history. So to speak of people who take
young girls, you would assume that they would either want
to hurt them or they would want to rape them.
I mean, why else would you take a young girl.

(06:18):
But now, to complicate things, there was that ransom note
that had been received. So let's stop for a second
and let's really evaluate a ransom note. The most prominent
one of my time, personally me at forty years old,
would be the Jambinet Ramsey note. But the fact is
that they work. Ransom notes flat out work. There's three

(06:43):
basic elements and the re of why someone would.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
Send you one.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
Number one, they want to grab somebody's attention, obviously the
family in this case. Number two, the ability to apply
leverage of some sort is necessary. And then number three
create urgency. How else are you going to compel somebody
to come through with your demands? Now today, in twenty

(07:07):
twenty five, when we talk about a ransom note, sounds
kind of old school, you know, a ransom note sounds
kind of old Well, maybe it does, but really they
happen all the time, and even more now. But what
they're called or is ransomware. I know we've all heard
of this. Ransomware is more likely than a written note

(07:28):
for ransom, but it's now the software version of it.
Fifty nine percent of organizations are reportedly impacted by ransomware,
and projections indicate that a ransomware attack occurs every two seconds,
and that's like going up through the year of twenty
thirty one. So for us to say that ransom notes
are aren't common, they kind of are, just in a

(07:51):
different way. This, though, was not ransomware. This is a
personalized ransom note for one person in a random kidnapping,
and that is rare.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
The situation is rare.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
And the fact that it was typed would also cause
an issue, because I mean ransom No one oh one
is that police want to look at the handwriting to
evaluate that, maybe even look at the linguistics, which is
how a person speaks and things of that nature. But
there were definite steps here taken to hide that captor's

(08:28):
identity because it was typed, and it wasn't typed on
a computer where you could maybe get an IP address
and then go log in and look through records and
things stored on the computer or even things recently.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
Deleted because this was a typewriter. This is old school.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
For now, investigators are going to have to focus their
attention on the suspect at hand, who exactly is Israel Keys.
So I want to give you a little a few
demographics on him. He was thirty four years old, he
was from Alaska and flat out not interesting. There was
nothing about him that was interesting. He didn't have a

(09:05):
cool lifestyle, he didn't have a cool story. Hell, he
didn't even drive a cool car. He just was like
a dude. He worked for himself. He had a company
that he named Keys Construction, which by the way, was licensed, bonded,
and insured, so a legitimate business, not somebody who just
says they worked themselves. Basically, it was a small handyman business.

(09:28):
He did own a home. He had this quaint home
in Anchorage. It had this blue siding with white trim.
And he was in a dedicated relationship with his living
girlfriend as well. So things just looked very average. He
didn't look like somebody. He didn't have a history of
somebody that would go to this level of kidnapping. But

(09:51):
also guess what, he was a dad. He had a
ten year old daughter of his own. He had a
little girl. She was the product of a previous relationship,
not his current girlfriend. But you know, this kidnapper took
someone's daughter. This guy has a young daughter. She lived
there at the house, so did the girlfriend. So would

(10:14):
he have had time to do this? How could he
have done this? Where is Samantha? If there's people at
the house, if he possibly did this. So they went
and they even spoke to his neighbors to see what
they had to say about him.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
Police did.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
The neighbors all had nice things to say about him.
They noted his hard work, ethic.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
And that he was just a regular joe.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
Even crazier is that when investigators were looking over the
details of Samantha's case and Israel Key's name came into
play and it was being discussed the DA, the district
attorney piped up and was like, whoa wait, wait a minute,
Israel keys Key's construction I said, yeah, he said, man,

(10:59):
I hired him before.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
He was a handyman at my house. He's done work
at my house. This guy's just.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
Run of the mill, very likable guy. He's easy going
and in no way was he someone that madeor spidy
senses start crawling. He I mean, everybody that had to
deal with him was like, I don't know, man. So
the beginning talks to Israel did not raise any red flags.

(11:26):
It's like, you watch these interrogations and it's like tailgating,
is what I would compare it to. It's you're tailgating
at a football game with strangers. You don't know them,
but you feel comfortable with them. And that was the
vibe of these conversations.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
And guess what. It also wouldn't be.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
Some hard nosed interview to break down with this suspect
who's unwilling to confess.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
No, not at all. He cooperated completely.

Speaker 1 (11:54):
And when I say cooperated completely, I mean this dude
spilled the beans.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
He was ready to talk, and talk he did.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
He opened up almost immediately, and laughing and small talk
were his jam. He was so casual, it's like I'm
talking to you right now. That was until he was
directly questioned about possible involvement in the adduction of Samantha Koenig.
Now you can imagine that someone might be like, all right,

(12:23):
you know we're getting into something serious here. Well, his
body language immediately shifted when this started. And while he
looked like the same man sitting there. His essence changed,
not in that doctor Jekyl mister Hydeway, though in more
of a let's make a deal type of way, like
we were at a business meeting and now we're going

(12:46):
to start talking negotiations. So he says, yeah, I mean,
I'll keep talking, but before I say anything else, I
need something.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
And what he needed was some sugar.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
Some sugar. And I don't mean he asked for some kisses.
That's not what I'm saying. He needed a Snicker's bar,
an Americano coffee from Starbucks, and a cigar. That's what
he needed to go further in talking about his potential
involvement and a kidnapping. So police obliged. They were like,
if you're gonna give us information, then loaded up right,

(13:23):
We're gonna run.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
Over to Starbucks and get what you need.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
There was hope that if he was involved, Samantha might
still be alive, because this guy.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Is just talk talk talk talk talk.

Speaker 1 (13:35):
But before I even go into what he said, I
want to address something that he wanted.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
He wanted that cigar, that coffee, and a snack.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
Now I am no cigar connoisseur. By any means. I'll
never claim to be, but I do hang out with
people and family members who do partake in cigars. And
whenever he said that he wanted one, it got me thinking,
it's not all the time that the people that I

(14:07):
know that smoke cigars have them. They don't have them
all the time. They have them in situations where I
can tell you that there's usually a pattern. Usually this
pattern is whenever we are relaxing, we're sharing, sharing golden memories,
big time stories, awesome fishing stories, things of that nature.

(14:29):
That is when the cigars come out. And it's usually
things that allow stories that allow for some like bravado,
a little bit of bravado to come out of it.
These stories are going to be shared in the group,
and so the cigars come out to add some flare,
some flair of like sophistication to the experience. And if

(14:49):
you know someone who smokes cigars or smokes them socially
in circumstances, I think you know exactly what I'm talking about.
And I couldn't help but get the feeling from his
demand that you know, he was trying to build that,
to build this feeling of grandeur and fun in what

(15:12):
he was about to share. And it may just be me,
but it irked me when he requested those very specific things,
because man, I watch people, I genuinely believe it or not.
Don't say everything that I think. I know people think
I always do, but I don't. In everyday life, I don't.

(15:33):
But I do sit back and I watch people, I
watch non verbal cues, and I'm always listening, okay, And
this irked me before he even started speaking. Think about
the movies. When do men smoke cigars? Typically think about
the movies to celebrate or to represent their influence over others.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
To distinguish themselves amongst the group.

Speaker 1 (15:59):
The group al capone did, mobsters did people in large
business negotiations do? And now Israel Keys wanted to. But
there was something else that was odd, and that's the
fact that Israel had been out of town according to
documentation on a Caribbean cruise during the main timeframe of

(16:23):
Samantha's disappearance. This was rock solid to y'all in writing
with proof, rock solid.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
That this happened.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
So something that's in the back of investigators' minds, I'm
sure is that people do say or allude to the
fact that they were a part of things sometimes just
for the notoriety of it.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
It's not heard of. This does happen.

Speaker 1 (16:48):
You can look in big cases and see where people
insert themselves. So was this possibly that type of situation
and he was kind of playing them just to see
what he could get from it. But cigar in hand
and coffee just a table's reach away, Israel Keys settled
in and he began chatting with investigators. So at this point,

(17:11):
I have two options as a podcaster. I could tell
you what he did, or I can let you hear
him in his own words.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
Okay, and I know.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
For a fact, for a one hundred percent fact, I'm
confident that I could do his story more justice than
he does in storytelling. But I want you to hear
his nonchalantness in all of it. I want you to
hear him say what he did, and pay attention to

(17:46):
the emotion in his voice or the lack thereof.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
I want you to hear it yourself.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
Now, I told you what Samantha went through up until
she was brought into the shed last episode by that suspect.
All of that, by the way, was accurate to this point.
That's not a guess that is what happened. And I
know this because Israel told it. But at this moment

(18:15):
in the story where I'm picking back up, a daddy
is beside himself wanting to know where his baby girl is.
He has begged for her to be taken care of
via the media. That's what's happening right now. And this
next audio is what the reality was of the care

(18:38):
that she that she was under. This is Israel Keys
explaining Samantha Koenig's last few weeks, starting with his return
from the first ATM trip to see if the pin
number worked after all.

Speaker 3 (18:53):
The credit or BTM stuff was done. UH got a
glass of wine and go to some water, and she
was she was asking me if everything was working out okay,

(19:16):
and if I had got a hold of her dad,
and if if the ATM, if I had the ATM
card and if you know, she just asking me if
all this stuff was going as planned and and then
I said, yeah, it's fine. And the uh unscrewed the

(19:36):
rope from the wall and cut the ties off of
her hands, not the cable ties on her wrist, but
the tie between him and uh had her laid down
on the floor on the mat and took two more
pieces of rope and put him through the cable ties hm.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
And on her hands, so her hands.

Speaker 3 (20:04):
Yeah, two separate pieces of rope on her hands. And
then I tied knots and the ends of the rope
and I screwed her screwed the rope down to the
floor floor of the wall, so her arms were out HM.
And did she ever.

Speaker 4 (20:22):
Struggle for any others or did she just let you
do that?

Speaker 3 (20:26):
She knew? Did she knew? At that point? She said, uh,
please don't rape me. And I but I, uh put
my head right up to her ear, and I said,
you knew this was coming. And she started to nod,

(20:50):
and she started to cry a little bit. I said,
you can make it easier, you can make it harder.
And uh. She was still cooperative, but she was she
was really scared at that point. And so after I

(21:12):
had her hands screwed down, I I don't remember how
the tire feet I think I I don't think I
did much to tire feet. I think I just took
about a six foot piece of nylon rope and nodded
it around her ankles. Was she was I'm sorry?

Speaker 4 (21:36):
Was she face up?

Speaker 3 (21:37):
No, she's face down.

Speaker 4 (21:42):
And she didn't try to kick you or anything with
her feet or anything. Not fine, okay, I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
And and then after I had her all tied down,
I went up and still awake, I went in the house.
There was a uh sh. I didn't have her gagged

(22:09):
any of this time. I just told her that I
had my scanner on and if if any neighbors reported
any scream, you know, I was gonna be back in
a second, and you know, she'd be sorry. And uh
she Yeah, she never tried to scream. But I didn't
have her gagged or anything at the time, choosing the shed,
and but I wanted to put a gag in her

(22:30):
mouth before I raked her. And so I went into
the to the bedroom and I had a a silk handkerchief.
It was purple.

Speaker 4 (22:48):
I wanted to pick that.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
It was something I had left over from a girlfriend
a long time ago in Seattle. We used to tie
each other up with them. And yeah, so I had
that handkerchief and I took it. I took it back

(23:14):
into the shed and gagged her. But it wasn't like,
you know, she could still talk. It wasn't. I don't know,
did you when you gigged her.

Speaker 4 (23:26):
Did you tie it around her head or did you
stuff it in her mouth?

Speaker 3 (23:29):
No? I tied it, I wound it up, and I
didn't stick anything else in her mouth. I just I
don't know. It was mostly just because I wanted to
do it, because it didn't really keep her from making
any noise.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
You knew that this was coming. That is what he
whispered in that eighteen year old girl's ear. You knew
that this was coming. No, absolutely not this. You thought
you wanted money and her daddy would give it to you,

(24:06):
and he did. He did exactly what Samantha said that
he would do eventually. But you still used her as
a toy, as something that you could dress up and
that you could play with, not that she's a human being,

(24:28):
not that she's a girl, not that she was somebody's daughter. No,
she was your sex slave. And to say that to her.
This wasn't about money, okay, This was about control, and
this was about his perverted desires. That's what this is about.

(24:52):
So he then pours himself some water and he just continues,
very matter of fact.

Speaker 3 (25:00):
I knew she was gonna she was gonna scream eventually,
so I took thirty six inch cable tie and I
put it around her neck and I tightened it up,
not tight, but enough that she could feel that it
was there. And I told her, you know, I told her,

(25:26):
I said, all I have to do is pull this.
And once I pulled it, there's no going back if
you start screaming or if I don't like the way
things are going. And she just kept nodding her head,
and I took out a knife. I don't remember which knife.

(25:49):
I think it might have been that big black folding
one that I had on when they arrested me, So
maybe it wasn't that one. I had another knife that
keep you guys on canna find.

Speaker 4 (26:00):
But why aren't we gonna find it?

Speaker 3 (26:06):
It's I burned it in the fireplace and it's up
in Anchorage landfill somewhere. But it wasn't very big.

Speaker 4 (26:15):
It was.

Speaker 3 (26:17):
Had about a two or three inch blade, and it
was one of the freebie knives that Leatherman gives away with,
like their big multi tools. I think it was actually
a knife, and it was really sharp. That's the knife
I had on me most of the night, But I
think for some reason, I had that big black folding

(26:38):
one and I used that to start to cut off
her clothes. I started at for sure, I cut all
the way down. She had on a braw cut that
and then I cut the back of the arms. It

(26:58):
was just a T shirt, I think, very T shirt, and.

Speaker 4 (27:10):
Said she had to keep her jacket as people now
or was it.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
Just her way. I don't think she ever had her
jacket on. I thought she.

Speaker 4 (27:18):
Put it on in the coffee kiosk. I thought you
told her to put it on.

Speaker 3 (27:24):
Maybe she did. Yeah, I guess I did tell her
to put it on. I remember thinking. I remember thinking
I needed to get her tied up right away before
she got any ideas, so I didn't want to give
her time to put it on. But then I can
remember thinking, if I put the ties on her hands,

(27:44):
she won't be able to get her jacket on. It'll
just be draped over and it's going to attract more
attention when we're walking down the road. So yeah, I
guess I did let her put it on. I told
her to put it on, and then I put the
cable ties on. But I think by the time she
was in the shed, I had her I had heaters
going in there. It was hot, and she was. Yeah,

(28:08):
she was colder. I mean she was nervous or whatever, scared,
so she was. She kept asking me to turn the
temperature up. So it was hot in there. It was
like eighty or ninety degrees probably.

Speaker 4 (28:19):
So you didn't you don't remember having to cut straight
the jacket at some point.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
You think I did cut the jacket off of her.
I took it off of her when she was I think.
I think when I first put her in the shed
and changed the ties on her hands, I think I
had her take the jacket off because I feel she
get too hot. It was it was pretty.

Speaker 4 (28:41):
Warm in there, so.

Speaker 3 (28:44):
So yeah, I took the jack jacket off. And had
had a big black trash bag. And remember and you
had thirty like a really big contractor's bag. And I
was throwing everything in there. And I threw everything in
that through every cable tie. I cut her jacket, anything

(29:06):
that touched her tape, whatever, It all went in that bag,
including like the wallet with the credit card. Like once
I had the number scratched in the card, I didn't
even look at it again. I threw everything in there.
The only thing I took out of her purse was
the cash. I didn't even take the change. There was
a bunch of change and small stuff. I didn't take

(29:28):
any of that stuff out. I just threw her purse
in that big black bag and the other cash. I
just I think I might have even taken it in
the house right away. I stuck get in my backpack
that I was going to take on the trip. And yeah,

(29:50):
so anyway, she was on the floor and after I
cut off her shirt and her bro then I took
the knife and cut down each of her pant legs.
She had on like black tight black pants like stink
irispand it and and she had on her thong.

Speaker 4 (30:20):
Yeah did you read profagionally or analine?

Speaker 3 (30:34):
I I had some uh ky out there, and she
felt it when I put it on her, and I
think she thought I was gonna sodomize her. She started saying, oh, no,

(30:56):
not that. And after that, I just stood up and
looked at her for a while. I still had my
clothes on, and uh just watched her for a while
and was she still trying to talk to you? No, No,

(31:22):
she wasn't saying things. She was uh she was shaking
all of that. And then I uh took my clothes
off and put her on a condom and I raped her.

(31:50):
I don't know. It was a while, probably remember the
radio was on. I think a toush I don't know,
maybe two or three songs, and then uh, right before
I finished, I did sodom minds there and she screamed

(32:14):
a little bit right then, and right when she screamed,
I had uh. I think I pulled on the cable
time a little bit and told her to shut up.
And then after it was over, she was uh, well

(32:36):
she was I don't know. I guess you'd say she
was resigned at that point and still had uh. I

(32:56):
didn't have any clothes on, and she starts asking me
if I wasn't gonna kill her. I didn't say anything.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Jim, did you see what happened in Texas today?

Speaker 5 (33:16):
Wait before you tell me that, let me tell you
what happened in New York.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
It cannot be as crazy as the case I told
you about yesterday in Louisiana.

Speaker 5 (33:23):
You know what, we should do a podcast about it.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
And with that we did.

Speaker 1 (33:28):
Crime War Weekly covers the crime news headlines that have
dominated the week.

Speaker 5 (33:32):
We cover trending crimes from all over the country and
even sprinkle in a few globally.

Speaker 1 (33:38):
Crime War Weekly is available now wherever you listen to
your podcasts.

Speaker 5 (33:42):
Simply by searching Crime War Weekly or clicking the link
in the description of this podcast.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
Acting as if this wasn't planned is all just a
fucking joke.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
Of course you didn't say anything, you coward.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
If you did, then she would act up, and that
would mean you had to fight Israel.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
And you didn't want that.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
You wanted easy, You wanted compliant. She was scared, she
was shaking, and she was compliant because she had to be.
It was her last ditch effort to not send you into.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
A violent spirbal And don't forget y'all. They just feet away.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
That house that he went back into to get.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
That purple gag.

Speaker 1 (34:43):
His living girlfriend and his young daughter are asleep right there,
no clue of the horrors right outside, and he has
a daughter of his own, and he still thinks that
this is fun.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
This is fun for him, it's pleasurable for him.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
But he continues on, and with a chip on his shoulder,
he says he's not getting into exactly what all he
did as he raped her.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
He's not going to get into that.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
Oh as if, like as if that's somehow reassuring to
us or something.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
No, that's not what it is.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
He's not He's not getting into it because he's sick
and he knows it. He is sick and twisted, and
he doesn't want to get into it because no one
on planet Earth that's a decent human being would understand
what you're saying, nor would they have the ability or

(35:45):
a willingness to downplay those acts.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
No way.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
This wasn't to save us from the horrors of it either.
Please don't get this twisted when you're listening to what
he is saying. He's not sparing you out of some
so's of decency. This is because he wanted to keep
those details for himself. That was his treasure, That was
his and it wasn't for others. As unspeakable as that

(36:13):
thought is to the rest of.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
Us, he wanted to keep it for himself.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
But he has no issue then expressing what he did
after the rape here that is in his own words
as well.

Speaker 3 (36:28):
I put my leather gloves on.

Speaker 4 (36:34):
Why as you put levess on you, not crab profo,
because it's hard work to strangle somebody who was a
cable tay.

Speaker 3 (36:46):
I knew I knew from the minute she walked out
of that coffee stand she wasn't. She wouldn't kind.

Speaker 4 (36:55):
Of live, Penny, yours is decided to how you were going? Still, No, but.

Speaker 3 (37:08):
After I put my gloves on, I had that little knife,
that little leatherman, the one that was really sharp, had
uh fallen out of my pocket when I was taking
off my pants and I was laying on the floor

(37:31):
this whole time. There wasn't any light in the shed,
just my head lamp hm, and I saw that knife
sitting there, and then I uh, after I put my
gloves on, I jumped on top of her, and I

(37:56):
grabbed the cable tie with my left hand and started
calling up as hard as I could, tightened it all
the way down. She never made so she didn't try
and struggle.

Speaker 4 (38:14):
Off screen, she did have struggled.

Speaker 3 (38:19):
She couldn't struggle much. Her legs were screwed down, but
she her arms were screwed down too with the rope.
So I was straddling her, and I had so much
force on the cable tie that she was her whole

(38:42):
like half from her body was lifted up off the floor.
And so yeah, even if she had been struggling.

Speaker 4 (38:51):
I wouldn't been able to tell how long did it
take her to die?

Speaker 3 (38:57):
It was taken. I mean, it's always it's hard to tell,
but it was taking a while, and I remember thinking,
I still have to shower, but I was still it's

(39:18):
gonna sound weird, but I was still really into her,
and so anyway, I'm not gonna tell all that part,
but I am. I stabbed her once right below her

(39:39):
right shoulder blade in her back.

Speaker 4 (39:44):
With the letton, with that little nice yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:50):
And it wasn't looking very deep going with that, but anyway,
she I didn't really stab her to make her die
faster or anything that was anything else, but.

Speaker 4 (40:04):
I took did you stab her because you were still
attractive to ner?

Speaker 3 (40:10):
No, I'm not gonna go into that. I took a
piece of rope that was laying there hm at this
point it was probably a couple of minutes, and I
could tell she still wasn't you know, there was still

(40:31):
life there, and tied it in the square knot to
the cable tie. And I took the rope and I
hung her off that shelf support and tied like a
half hitch had it so her head was in front

(40:56):
of her body was still lifted off the ground so
that there was a lot of pressure of it. And
and I finished my line and put my pants on
and went back into the house and to shower.

Speaker 1 (41:16):
So what I just heard here was that he tormented
her before as well as after raping her. That's what
I just heard, for the fun of it, for the
sick pleasure of watching her suffer. He told her what
he was going to do to her. The anticipation of

(41:42):
Samantha knowing what was coming just was part of the
thrill that he got. And this wasn't fun anticipation. This
is the fear, the anticipatory fear that she now.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
Knows what is coming. He got off on that.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
He's stronger up like Christmas lights, just to watch the
light fade. He never had intentions of her living. You
heard that with your own ears. So he can spare
me all of this spur of the moment bullshit, no
planning bullshit, because I don't buy that for a second.

(42:24):
He had the framework of his plan. He was just
an opportunist. He was looking for the right time. The
trash bag for all of the evidence that just happened
to be there, the bedding and the heater just happening,
happened to be there, the zip ties that he used,
yet knew the exact inch of thirty six inch zip

(42:44):
ties that just happened to be there, with the ropes
and the hooks. You're telling me that this was just happenstance.
Absolutely not no way. And these people are proud of
their DV make no mistake about it.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
He's proud of this.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
And as if kidnapping and torture and rape weren't enough,
he then stabs her. He had a knife on him,
he flipped it open, and he then jammed it once
into her back, right about her right shoulder blade.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
Why why did you have to stab her? And the
answer is.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
Just because it was part of an animalistic thrill that
he got to hear this young girl cry out. That
is there's no humanity in any of this. There's no

(43:48):
ounce of remorse or care. He doesn't look at this
girl at any point and realize that that was a
toddler at some point, that someone cares, that someone bottle fed,
that someone raised up, and that someone took back to
school pictures of on her first day of school, that

(44:09):
someone loved and doted on, just like his own daughter.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
Feet away, feet away. He didn't think of any of that.
This was thrill.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
So where was Samantha now, all of these weeks later,
Because if you missed it, he said something that caught
the attention, the attention of the interrogators. He did say
that he went on a trip, just like they knew

(44:44):
already because they had those cruise records.

Speaker 2 (44:47):
So he did go on the trip.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
That means all of this was done before he left
for the cruise back then. Yes, that's exactly what that meant.
So then it begs the question, Okay, who fed her?
Who gave her water? You were gone for two weeks
on a cruise. Who took care of her? He left,

(45:15):
by the way, the day after he took her, according
to this whole timeline. Matter of fact, when he was
sexually satisfied and he had fulfilled this fantasy that he had,
all that fulfillment for him was done. He got up,

(45:35):
he put on his clothes, and he simply shut the
door to the shed, sipping on a glass of wine
as he walked back into his house as if nothing happened.
The on off switch here is real with this guy
and the ability to change immediately just a switch of

(45:57):
a light switch from his actual predator and sadist to
dad packing for vacation is unsettling.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
I don't know is the right word.

Speaker 1 (46:09):
He walks in the house after what he's just done
to her. He checked on his sleeping daughter. He then
verified that all of their bags were packed and ready.

Speaker 2 (46:19):
For the vacation that'll wait ahead of them.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
Because this two weeks in the Caribbean sounds like a blast,
doesn't it. Never mind the eighteen year old girl being
frantically looked for by family members that love her, that's
now dying alone in the cold, gagged bound and hanging

(46:43):
by a rope around her neck in the shed. That's
happening right now. As he SIPs his wine, feeds his dogs,
and makes sure that the bags are all packed, so
he puts out the kibble for the dog. He did
a few more other small tasks when shit it hit him.

(47:06):
She might start to smell if she's dead. Wait a minute, no,
she won't, he thinks about it. It's twenty degrees outside.
I have nothing to worry about. Those were his exact words.
By the way, I have nothing to worry about. So

(47:27):
to answer the question of who took care of her
while he was gone for the two weeks. That answer
is no one why they wouldn't have to, because as
he completed those few tasks in the house, Samantha Koenig
hung to her death while bleeding out. About twenty minutes

(47:51):
later he returned out to the shed, and he did find,
in fact, that Samantha was dead. All of this before
he left to go on his cruise, so, not wanting
her to be discovered obviously while he was away, he
cut her down. He just cut her down, wrapped her

(48:12):
up in a tarp that he had, and then he
tidied up the place. And then he had some cabinets
in this shed. He stuffed her inside of that cabinet
down in the bottom so that if anyone looked in
while he was gone, they wouldn't see anything. Now, the
extension cord, he had an extension cord that he rolled

(48:33):
out and was using in the shed. He had plugged
in a little heater. At some point while he was
doing all this tidying, he realized that the extension cord
that he had gone to the shed had overheated that
small heater and it actually melted the cord. It was
that bad and it had left now a melted trail
of snow in the driveway right up to the shed.

(48:58):
And he looks at it, and he says, oh, well,
the heater wasn't necessary anyway, So he kicked the snow
over the trail. When he looked out, he just he
went and he rolled up the cord. He kicked some
snow over the trail, put the cord away, threw it away, whatever.
And then at five am sharp, after he was done
stuffing her in the cabinet, he shut the door to
the shed, made every sure everything outside looked well, and

(49:21):
he made a phone call to a cab company.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
That showed up.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
His family woke up, They got all everything stuffed up
in the cab, and then it drove him to the airport.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
They all smiled.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
They were giddy with excitement the fun to come. I mean,
his little girl, you're the best daddy. I can't wait
to see the boat. This is gonna be exciting. I mean,
she was just beside herself with excitement. So they made
their flight. They got there in time. They flew to
New Orleans, right here in my neck of the woods.
And then they loaded the ship for their two week vacation. Crewise,

(49:56):
and that, my friends, is why there was a delay
in communication after Samantha was taken, because he took a
break to relax and to go travel the whole time,
minute by minute, hour by hour and excruciating day by day.
Samantha's family was aching for some type of communication for

(50:20):
her to be returned.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
Her daddy pled with the media, like I said in videos.

Speaker 1 (50:25):
About being worried that she wasn't being fed, and y'all,
his fears were justified because she wasn't being fed.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
She was dead.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
He just didn't know, and she was decomposing in Israel
Key's shed while he went on a vacation. And while
recounting this, he even chuckled at his own story that
he was telling these investigators because he says, yeah, I
tell my girlfriend, you know, pull your vehicle right up
to the shed so that while we're gone, nobody can

(50:56):
get in and steal my tools.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
But then he started laughing.

Speaker 1 (50:58):
He thought this was funny, and he's like, I mean,
that really was possible that someone might try to steal
my tools, and that would have sucked if they would
have like opened it up and boom, found a body,
you know, like he's not talking about a human being.
He's talking about her like she's a prop or something
of that nature. He was also really enjoying the media

(51:20):
frenzy around Samantha's disappearance. He knew something that nobody else did,
and that was exciting for him. It was so exciting
for him that he even brought his laptop with him
on vacation and he followed the news about Samantha's abduction
and that she was missing. While he was waiting to

(51:40):
board the cruise ship in New Orleans, he sat down
and plugged up his computer and was doing some lookabouts
in the news about it, so he could see the
people freaking out about what only he knew he had done.

Speaker 2 (51:54):
But after the two week vacation ended.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
Israel returned and now he wanted to get the money
he knew he could get if she was still alive.
So they returned from the cruise on Sunday the eighteenth,
and his daughter, she had school the following Monday, and
that's when he decided to do something with Samantha's body.
But there was a big problem. Whenever he goes back

(52:20):
into the shed and he opens up the bottom cabinets,
Samantha was frozen almost solid, and so he couldn't manipulate
her body and he couldn't get her out of the cabinet.
It was warm enough though, that if he was able
to get her out that she could thaw, but that
was going to take some time. So he decided that

(52:42):
he was going to dismantle the shed and that would
make it a lot easier for her for him to
get her frozen body out. But first, before he could
dismantle the inside, he had to remove a bunch of
items and he had to clean up, so he tore
the inside out of the shed all around her, all
the while she remained in that bottom level cabinet, and

(53:03):
as you can imagine, this took all school day for
him to move everything out and start disassembling the inside
shelving and things like that. So his daughter returned to
school before he returned to the house before he finished.
So that night, once his daughter went to bed and
his girlfriend was occupied up in the house, he went

(53:25):
back into the shed and he was able to roll
and maneuver Samantha out of the bottom cabinet after he
took the front doors off because she had started to thall.
But then this posed another issue. The tarp that he
had wrapped her up in so tightly it wasn't leak proof.
He had done his best to wrap her up real good,

(53:48):
but he wasn't perfect at it. And that stab wound
where he just rammed that knife into the back of
her shoulder blade, that wound had leaked out. That warm
blood was leaking out until it eventually froze. While he
was gone for those two weeks. It had leaked out
so much that it went through the tarp, it went

(54:11):
down into the flooring, and it even made its way
into some of the insulation of the building. So not
bothered much by this, he had some contractor bags and
he began to unroll her take her out of the tarp.
He then took her out of that sleeping bag that
he had put around her as well, and he started
cutting up the bloody items, cut them up into chunks,

(54:34):
and then he put them into the contractor bags. Now,
when he was raping her, some of her clothing was
bunched up underneath her. He didn't even like remove the
clothing all the way necessarily, like he got it off
of her, but it kind of was bunched up underneath her,
and it was still there too, but now it was
soaked in blood and having been wrapped in the tarps,

(54:58):
it was kind of like frozen solid in there, but
it had started to thaw so he could get it out.
So what he did was he went outside and he
started a fire. This is around two am, and he
burned all of the aforementioned items in the early morning
darkness as most people slept. So now with just the

(55:18):
shed structure and her body, he got viscueen and he
wrapped the inside of the shed. It was just basically
the shell like Dexter if you've seen Dexter. He basically
took a note out of that book and he nailed
the viscueen all along the walls and the surrounding floor

(55:39):
of the shed, and he left her body right there
on top. And he made mention that now, because it
had been so many hours, she was limber, she was movable.
And he looked at her laying on the ground and
he realized something. He was still into her, as he

(56:01):
put it, he still liked her. So he decided that
he was going to grab some more rope. He tied
it around her arms, pulled it tight, and then somewhat
lifted her up by these rope and then he nailed
those rope back up onto the walls as before, above

(56:26):
her head. So she's deceased, and limber arms her up,
tied up, and he nails them up above her head.
So she's still undressed, and he did what he referred
to as a private matter, and I want to stop
real quick, he said, this is a private matter while

(56:47):
he was talking to the investigators, and I was just
disgusted by this a private matter. Everything else that you've
so willingly said that you've done to her wasn't a
private matter. This is a private matter between him and
the girl he was into. And he was upset because
there was multiple people in the room and he didn't

(57:09):
think that he should be sharing this private matter with
so many people. But he did finally spit it out,
and he said, I was still into her, and so
I had sex with her her two week old corpse.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
He had sex with her after she was deceased.

Speaker 1 (57:29):
So when he was done, he got up and he
got dressed. So it was now these wee wee wee
hours of the morning. He knew his daughter would be
getting up soon, and so he needed to get back
in the house. So he goes to open the door
to the shed and right as he opens it almost
like a jump scare. I'm not sure whether it was

(57:49):
his daughter or it was his girlfriend because it was redacted,
but one of the two was standing right there at
the door, scared the living shit.

Speaker 2 (57:57):
Out of him.

Speaker 1 (57:58):
His dead captive right behind him where he had just
finished having sex with her, and now he's looking out
the door at one of.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
The two from the household.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
So he was able to slip out of the door
and shut it like nothing was going on, and usher
whoever that was back into the house where he made
his daughter breakfast, thinking of how lucky he was that
he hadn't still been having sex with her, and the
shed door be pulled wide open. So by Tuesday, he

(58:30):
knew it was time for phase two of getting the
ransom money, and so he set out for some things
that he knew that he would need. He wanted a newspaper,
and he wanted a polaroid camera, which was now an
obviously very outdated item to find, and he also needed
to go get some computer paper. So the typewriter he

(58:51):
was able to find at a thrift store, but the
polaroid that was an issue. He was having a hard
time with that, so he's like, where am I going
to find one of these that works? And that's when
he got on line and realize, oh, wait a minute,
these are actually sold at Target that you know how
They're now like kind of back in style, the old
school polaroids.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
They're now readily sold.

Speaker 1 (59:11):
My own kids had one pops out those instant photos.
But by the time all this research was done, his
daughter had to be picked up from school. So he
was a daddy and he did what daddies do. He
went and he picked up his daughter and said, you
want to go to Target? Sure, And he took his
daughter to Target to pick up the very polaroid camera

(59:34):
that he would need as part of his ransom.

Speaker 2 (59:36):
Note he took his daughter.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
Y'aw, he took his own daughter to buy the camera
that he would use to extort money from another.

Speaker 2 (59:48):
Man for his daughter. Think about that.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
So he gets home from the trip and he realizes
there's no film. It didn't come with the camera, so
that was a bum. He waited until that evening when
his daughter and his girlfriend were in bed and he left.
He made sure to leave a cell phone by his
girlfriend so that if she were to wake up or
needed him or something, she could just call him. And

(01:00:15):
then he slipped off to go get the film from
another town nearby. Afterwards, after he was able to secure
that film, he decided he needed to go scout out
an area that he could use to dump Samantha's body,
because he did say I wanted to keep her, but
I couldn't do that. So a lake that was nearby

(01:00:36):
really got his curiosity because but he wanted to know,
you know, how many people are out there after dark?

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
Is it populated?

Speaker 5 (01:00:43):
Well?

Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
Is are there a lot of people that are gonna
be out there that might see me?

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
But while he was trying to find it, he got
lost and he didn't get to check it out before
it got too late and he had to head back home. Remember,
he's going to be very primitive when he's trying to
reach out and find where he's gonna put her body.
He doesn't want to be able to tracked there, so
he's trying to do this just the primitive way, not
using a GPS or anything. And at some point I'm

(01:01:08):
not sure exactly what day because it wasn't very clear
to me, but he also used his girlfriend's car and
he went and he purchased a sled, and he also
went and he bought some large totes with lids from
home depot because that was going to be what he
used as Samantha's casket. So, according to Israel, after a

(01:01:28):
few days went by, he says it was just business
as usual because he didn't want to go out to
the shed while his girlfriend was home because now it's
empty and only his dead captive is in there. And
he says, look, this is going to be a huge
issue for me because I don't want her to come
snooping around and find anything out there. But he realized,

(01:01:50):
I got a move man, it's time I need. I've
got to make a move here for this ransom money.
Enough time has gone by, so he needed at this
point to send the text to get the attention of
the family. But he knew that he needed proof of
life photos so that they would know. You know that
he's not going to get the money if they think
that Samantha is dead. So how did he text this

(01:02:15):
text and then put the ransom note in the park
with a photo of Samantha still alive after the cruise
because he didn't have the polaroid until after the cruise. Well,
he had kept a few things of hers before he
burned everything, a few things of Samantha's that included her
id and she also had a little bit of makeup

(01:02:36):
in her purse. So he left for Walmart and he
went to go make a few purchases, and that included
buying some fishing line, a few other items, and he
also bought a little bit more makeup that he matched
to what was similar that Samantha had in her purse.
He then went to a dumpster that was behind the store,

(01:02:59):
and there he locked up. He found a stack of
old newspapers and look have it, they were in chronological
order by date, and so he noticed they had newspapers
that dated from the sixth through the nineteenth. So he
really thought this through. He wanted to be clever about it,
and he chose the newspaper with the date of the

(01:03:20):
thirteenth on it because that was the day that he
had left for the cruise initially. And he figured, all right,
this will fit an alibi should I be questioned about this,
because I couldn't be taking pictures if I'm on a cruise.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
Makes sense.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
So his girlfriend went out of town or went out
with friends for a while, and so he was able
to return home that night, and he decided he wanted
to spend the night with Samantha's body, So he made
a makeshift table and he put that table in the
center of the VisQueen out into the shed, and then

(01:03:58):
he put he lay Samantha. He picked her up and
he lay her on top of that table, and he
looked at her, and that's when he said he obviously
had some work to do, because she looked pretty different
at this point. You think she's been dead two weeks.
And he started by fixing her hair. He separated it

(01:04:22):
into three equal strands, three equal groupings, and he braided
her hair for her because he wanted her to have
a more put together look. By this time that he
did her hair and got her look in the way
he wanted, she had completely and totally thawed, and this
frustrated him because now her face wasn't looking the same.

(01:04:45):
There was a lot of slack to it because the
muscles weren't being used, and she didn't look as good
as she did when she was fresh. So he decided
he was going to help her out, and he spent
the next three to five hours doing her makeup. He
went through tubes and tubes of foundation. He even went

(01:05:10):
and got some of his girlfriend's old makeup when he
ran out. And this just became frustrating for him because
after he put all the makeup on her, he put
the blush on her. He did all that he could do.
He was frustrated because Samantha lacked expression.

Speaker 2 (01:05:30):
It wasn't very convincing.

Speaker 4 (01:05:31):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:05:32):
He needed to do something about that, he said.

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
He first tried to tape her mouth to where it
would look like a more lifelike position, and once he
got the mouth kind of set like he liked it,
he realized now her eyes were a problem.

Speaker 2 (01:05:49):
It just didn't look right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
So he grabbed some super glue and he tried to
superglue the eyes open, but that didn't work. It just
didn't look right. And that's when he reached and he
grabbed that ten pound test line that he had purchased,
and using a curved needle, he thread that ten pound

(01:06:12):
test line on the hook and he began sewing her eyes.
He decided once he started working that the best look
would be for them to be closed. It was a
better option. Yes, that is what happened. I'm gonna let
you listen to him explain this process.

Speaker 3 (01:06:35):
And then I was still having problems with her eyes
or her forehead, you know, because there was no expression.
And tried super glue. That didn't work. So I took

(01:07:00):
the needles that I had, had a big curved needle,
get what they call it. But and then I had
that ten pound test fishing line, and I seed took

(01:07:21):
the needle and went down through her growl, like right
between her eyebrows, down up along her nose cartilage under
the skin, and came out and then went back up
and along the same path and did it again, and

(01:07:42):
then pulled the tight to make it look like she
was squeezing her eyes shut. And then I took a
test picture just to kind of see what it was
gonna look like. Okay, put a little more makeup on
after that. I already had her hair braided at that point.

(01:08:08):
And what did you put the makeup on it? Makeup?
I used, like what was left over? I didn't know,
I mean, wear on her everywhere. I had to put foundation,
like every part you see in that picture as a foundation,
on two or three different kinds. Why did you hear it? Well,

(01:08:29):
she didn't look good. I mean her skin, you could
see it, start to see the blood under the skin
and the brute and bruisine, and I mean she was
still in good shape, and you know, she definitely didn't
work alive. And so yeah, it took me a long time.

(01:08:54):
I think I used two or three tubes of and
then after that I had to go over it with
a couple other colors in different areas, because I mean,
at first it just looked like she was painted. I
had to add in some red and I don't know,
a different stuff different places.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
Just while y'all, I know that's horrifying. I know it is,
and I want to tell you something else. I was
very disappointed in some other podcasters as well as some
articles that were written about this story, because as horrifying

(01:09:40):
and demonic really as these admissions are, a lot of
media has passed around a photo that they are claiming
is Samantha with her eyes open with a newspaper, and I.

Speaker 2 (01:09:55):
Want to tell you that photo is fake. It is
not real.

Speaker 1 (01:09:59):
It is a a misrepresentation of the reality. It's clearly
a picture that someone made of what they believed it
would look like. But it's being passed around the media.
As if it's real, and per his own interrogation, his
own words, he said he sewed her eyes shut, not open,

(01:10:25):
and failure to tell the truth to me is a
failure for Samantha and it's a failure for her family
because I don't need to lie or make grandiose gore. Okay,
that's not the goal nor the point. Sowing a precious
girl's eyes in any way, shape or form is the

(01:10:48):
devil's work, and I implore people do your research.

Speaker 2 (01:10:51):
And do it well.

Speaker 1 (01:10:53):
Actually pay attention and listen to the interrogations when these
types of cases come out, because what this child inn
door in both life and after her passing is sickening.
It's sickening enough without the lies that seemed to have
been compiled for shock factor, and I find it to
be further injurious to her story and to those that

(01:11:13):
love her. So I will put that fake picture on
Patreon so you can see what I'm talking about, but
I want to be clear that is not her, and
I am not passing that off as her now, after
all of that horrificness was done, he did take a
series of photos after he did her hair and her makeup,

(01:11:36):
but he didn't like the first few, he said, they
didn't do for him what he wanted. But eventually he
got a shot he liked. So he then cut out
that polaroid out of the frame that it prints out in.
And his original plan was that he was going to
give the picture and then the ransom note.

Speaker 2 (01:11:54):
But he decided, no, I think I'll do.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
I'll go a different route, and so he put the
picture and he photo copied it on to a sheet
of paper, and just the photocopied sheet of paper with
the picture was the one that he would nail up
in the park because he wanted there to be a
question in anyone investigating this. He wanted there to be
a question in their mind of whether it was a

(01:12:17):
polaroid or not. He didn't want that to just be
crystal clear.

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
He then threw.

Speaker 1 (01:12:21):
Away the makeup, he threw away the unliked photos that
he took, and he burned all of that after his Again,
his girlfriend was gone, but now it was time to
post the note and to tease the family. That's what
he wanted to do. Now, I want to ask you something.
Do you know whether he needed the money or not?

(01:12:41):
I haven't heard that addressed anywhere. I wanted to know.
Did he need the money? Was this out of in
some sick way necessity in his mind that he needed
to do this to get a quick cash grab. The
answer is no. He even said I didn't need the money.
I was just bored. Those are his words. I was

(01:13:04):
bored with my nine to five handyman work. And this
was a fun and easy way to get a lot
of cash. So when his girlfriend was gone, that's whenever
he had bought that typewriter, or excuse me, he brought
that typewriter into the house and he settled in to
write his demands, and, ever careful to not leave any DNA,

(01:13:27):
he wore latex gloves the whole time he was typing.
He took care note by note, letter by letter as
he wrote that he would create immense amounts of stress
and urgency for this family when they got this, and
he typed it with calculated precision, he wanted them to

(01:13:49):
think that she was possibly sold off as a sex
slave in Mexico's prostitution world. So the reason he was
thinking this was from the time that he took the
photo to the actual writing of the ransom note, there
was about ten days. This was enough time if you

(01:14:10):
were going to drive to Mexico and sell her off
and then drive back, you could do it. That's the
distance he could have made, and so he wanted to
maybe lead investigators in that direction away from him. He
then finished the letter. He pulled the completed ransom note
from the typewriter and he placed it, along with that

(01:14:32):
photo of Samantha, on the printer glass he had and
made a copy. He then folded it nicely and carefully
placed it inside that ziplock, still wearing those gloves, and
then he placed that ziplock inside of another one so
that he wouldn't inadvertently transfer any DNA to the inside bag,

(01:14:52):
which would be the one he would leave at the park.
And then he just stashed it away until he was
ready to make his move. The morning that the texts
were sent to Samantha's boyfriend, Israel got up early, It
was about six am, and he drove to Connor's Park
and he used a pushpin to put that zip lock

(01:15:13):
up on that pushpin board, pop it in, and then
he left and he immediately went back home. Because see,
he had a plan here. None of this was by chance.
He was going to wait a few days before texting.
He had used his girlfriend's car to go place the note,
and he wanted the tracks to be covered with snow

(01:15:37):
before he made his next move, so he put the
note up before he texted. He also threw away his
shoes that he wore to place the note. So when
we say something is calculated, or that a person is
a calculated murderer, this is a prime example by what we.

Speaker 2 (01:15:56):
Mean by that.

Speaker 1 (01:15:58):
So that same evening that he went and he put
the note up, he was asked by his girlfriend if
he would be the designated driver for her and her
friends who were going to go out and party. He
said he didn't want to go, and she said, well,
will you be designated driver then, and he thought this
is perfect. Hell yeah, this will even establish more alibi

(01:16:20):
for me. Lots of people will see me.

Speaker 2 (01:16:23):
This is great.

Speaker 1 (01:16:25):
So what he did instead was he had already put
the note up. Now he was going to be designated driver.
So while he was dropping off a male buddy of
his at a friend's house, he had Samantha's cell phone
in his pocket the whole time. Well, he then took
a buddy up to a store to buy some beer,

(01:16:47):
and so while the buddy was in the store, he
took the battery and he popped it back in to
Samantha's phone shortly thereafter. That's whenever he sent those text messages,
and then he removed the battery immediately and he went
back home.

Speaker 2 (01:17:02):
So he was making a plan.

Speaker 1 (01:17:03):
Here if he's driving about and they can't locate where
that cell phone, those notes, the text messages.

Speaker 2 (01:17:09):
Were being sent from. This was making it.

Speaker 1 (01:17:11):
You know what I'm saying, He can do it now,
he doesn't have to wait. But curiosity got the better
of him. Did his messages get received? He started really
thinking about it. Did they get my messages? He wanted
everyone to know about the ransom, and he started thinking, Tom,
I sent it.

Speaker 2 (01:17:28):
To the boyfriend, Well, why did I do that? Boyfriend's
not gonna be the one to pay. The dad's going
to be the one to pay.

Speaker 1 (01:17:34):
And he's like, man, maybe you know, the police probably
have the boyfriend's cell phone, and so what if they
intercepted the message, and then I'm messing with the police,
thinking I'm messing with So he really just started thinking
about this. So he decided to drive back by the
park where he had left that note to see was
there any movement there, and he could tell as he

(01:17:58):
drove by that a crime scene was set up. He
couldn't see in there, he said. He was more secretive looking,
but he was definitely a hush hush crime scene set up.

Speaker 2 (01:18:08):
Bingo. He knew that they knew they.

Speaker 1 (01:18:12):
Had gotten it, so this was perfect for him. Game
on and he slowly drove past the officers that were
posted right there on the outer edges of the scene,
and then calmly he texted his friends that were out
and said, Hey, are y'all needing to ride from point
A to point B?

Speaker 2 (01:18:29):
Yet they were like, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:18:31):
Man, come get us. So he went and he picked
him up from a party. They were playing poker, and
he told the other buddy, you know what, go ahead
and cancel your cab. Man, I got you. Matter of fact,
you can stay at our house. I'm having a really
good night. Just come stay at our house. So they
all went back to his house. And now that that
plan was in motion, he had to get rid of

(01:18:51):
her body because by the way, she was starting to smell. So,
like I said, he wanted to keep her at first,
and he wanted to bury her in his own backyard,
but that wasn't feasible here. It wasn't gonna work, so
this is what he decided to do instead.

Speaker 3 (01:19:08):
Yeah, So I took her off, rolled her off the table,
and took the table apart, cut up the plywood that
it was made out of, and it burned that and
had a big rolling toe wasn't very deep, about five
or six inches teep, and put her in that. And

(01:19:37):
that's what I cut her up in much as she
used to cut her up. Did you find the knife,
the yellow? That's mostly what I used. I took the wire.
I already had the wire. I use the wire like
a tourniquet the blood to a minimum, and wrapped it

(01:20:03):
around both sides of everywhere where I planned to cut,
and had everything all wired up, and then made the cuts.
I like to pay a few minutes and trickle bagged
everything and there wasn't really a mess in the shed

(01:20:26):
at all. I remember thinking that I was going to
have to burn the toe that I cut her up,
and all the viscreen and everything, But then I just
decided to even if someone found it at the landfill,
it didn't really look like anything but trash. So so
I took all that stuff and I had some big

(01:20:46):
clear fifty five. Yet there were really big trash bags
that I got at home depot, and I stopped triple
back to her and blacked plastic, darted back two different bungles,
foot drinking the corner of the shed, and then we
started tearing down all of this screen, tore down all

(01:21:08):
the spring, stuffed it in, stuffed it in the big
clear bag. And then I had a bunch of other
stuff that I had used to thorrow out in the
garage that I didn't think was looked that bad, So
I decided just to throw that stuff away too, So

(01:21:31):
I bagged all that stuff up and put it all
out in the trailer, and and she, yeah, she sat
out there for a few days, two or three days.

Speaker 1 (01:21:50):
After listening to that, I think I have more conviction
discussing the paint color options of my house when I
was repainting than he does out cutting up a girl
dismembering her. I just put her in a tote and
I used a knife to cut her into parts. You

(01:22:11):
really wouldn't believe this unless you hurt it with your
own ears. And that's why I wanted you to hear
him tell it. It's callous. He's not affected he's just
matter of fact. And then he went and he created
what he called an ice hut, which is like a tent,

(01:22:31):
and he brought his fishing gear with him too, because
he was gonna have to do this over a series
of days. So he gets out on that lake where
the ice is really thick, and using a chainsaw, he
cut roughly a thirteen by twenty inch hole. So he
needed that hole to be big enough for what he

(01:22:53):
was going to do next. But that took him a
while to set up. He had to set up his
little tent, he had to cut through the ice, he
had to break the ice up, and he had to leave,
y'all because he had a parent teacher conference that day.

Speaker 2 (01:23:05):
Now, he hadn't kept.

Speaker 1 (01:23:06):
His battery in his phone the whole time because he
didn't want to be tracked by it. So when he
got back to his truck, he realized, shit, I'm gonna
be late for my parent teacher conference.

Speaker 2 (01:23:16):
So he had to call the school and he told.

Speaker 1 (01:23:18):
Them, look, I don't think i'm gonna make it to
the conference, and they're like, that's fine, we can reschedule
for tomorrow. It wasn't gonna be a lot of time,
so he said that'll work, and he got in his
truck and he drove back home. So the next day,
that's when he took some pieces of Samantha to the lake,

(01:23:39):
careful to not stay too long and to be able
to get back in time for that parent teacher conference.
And by the way, I'm gonna put on Patreon, I
have that teacher, I have some interrogation of that teacher
and that conference audio. I'm gonna put that on Patreon
for you, so you can go check that out. But
when he returned to bring pieces of Samantha out there,

(01:24:03):
he had to find a way to make her go
down in this hole. And he used the sled to
transport the totes out to his to his ice hut,
and he brought with him a bunch of weights, like
fishing weights. And so what he did was he decided
he was going to put the smaller pieces of her
in first and then would follow with the larger ones.

(01:24:27):
He would tie a weight with the fishing strt. However,
you know, with the fish and string, he would tie
a weight to the piece of her body and then
drop it in the hole. And then he would get
the next piece same thing, then drop her in the hole,
small pieces first, and then the larger ones. Now her

(01:24:48):
arms were bound together and those slid right into the hole,
no problem. Her legs they were separate. He tied those,
dropped those down in. Her head was also cut off,
which he dropped into the hole. But when he got
to her torso the day that he went out there again,

(01:25:09):
because he did this over a couple of days, when
he got to her torso, it was really heavy, he said,
and so whenever he dropped the torso in.

Speaker 2 (01:25:18):
It splashed.

Speaker 1 (01:25:18):
It made a huge splashback, and blood bubbled up out
of the hole with the water and then rushed over
the edges of the ice. So now he's got a
big bloody area around where his ice hut is. But
he wasn't perturbed by it too much, so he made
sure to cover it up and to wash it away

(01:25:40):
with water and ice so that it wouldn't draw any attention.
After she was completely piece by piece put in the water,
he felt accomplished, and so he built a fire, and
he set up his fishing rigs, and he decided to
do some fishing. This is just it's been a very

(01:26:01):
accomplished day for him, he felt.

Speaker 4 (01:26:04):
So.

Speaker 1 (01:26:04):
After he did him some fishing. Later on, he returned
home and he decided that he would continue to follow
this case in the media, including going to online blogs
about the case and in the coburger style, you know,
the Idaho four coburger. You know he went online.

Speaker 2 (01:26:26):
This guy Israel Keys.

Speaker 1 (01:26:28):
He was the same way because he not only went
on blogs about it, he even commented on them. He
would make comments about the case on this blog. He
never expected to be tracked down by clever police, nor
ever thought that he would be pulled over, especially not
in another state. And again, all while this family was

(01:26:52):
desperate and clinging to hope that their daughter, that their
little girl, would be returned home. Because if loving his
honey bunny was enough to save her, Samantha's daddy would
have saved her instantly.

Speaker 2 (01:27:10):
We all know this.

Speaker 1 (01:27:12):
If love was enough, we could stop so many tragedies
in this world. But all the love and devotion in
the world would not work.

Speaker 2 (01:27:23):
This time.

Speaker 1 (01:27:25):
Samantha Koenig was gone, and now that this confession had
been made, her family knew of her horrific death and
her unspeakable method of disposal. So dive teams for the
FBI they went out on the lake and they spent

(01:27:46):
grueling hours out there, ten grueling hours searching for any
body parts that they were able to find, and they
were able to recover a few. There be no open casket,
no physical proof that she was really gone. Israel Keys

(01:28:09):
made sure that he destroyed every ounce of her existence,
but there was something that he could never remove. Ever,
despite all of the work he put in, he would
never be able to erase or remove the memories of

(01:28:32):
a girl fiercely loved and treasured by her family and friends.
They will never let this go. She is not going
to be forgotten. Her soul was forever and it still
is today. And I don't know about you, but I
don't have to see all that.

Speaker 2 (01:28:54):
I believe is real.

Speaker 1 (01:28:55):
It's kind of like the wind, you know. I can't
see it, but I know when it's there. Well, after
the news was broken to Samantha Koenig's family that she
wouldn't be coming home. You know, I don't have to
detail the heartbreak. We all know what that was, We
all know how that must have come. But a memorial
was held for her, and her family asked that flowers

(01:29:18):
not be sent. And I wanted to tell you why
instead In lieu of flowers. They asked that you keep
Samantha in your thoughts by sharing a smile and sharing
a laugh with those that you encounter, And that tells
me exactly who Samantha was and how the importance of

(01:29:44):
spreading joy is a gift that we can all continue
to give. But Israel, Israel had now admitted and confessed
to his crimes against Samantha in explicit detail. Yet he
said a statement that again caught the attention of investigators,

(01:30:06):
and it went like this. He chuckles, and he says, yeah,
I've been basically two different men for the past fourteen years.
What hold on this case about Samantha? This has all
just taken place over a month or so. So was

(01:30:29):
he's saying that he's been a killer for fourteen years?

Speaker 2 (01:30:33):
Were there more victims? Guys?

Speaker 1 (01:30:37):
We are just getting started. And yes, there will be
a part three to this Israel Keys series. So many
people had hired Israel to do small repair jobs at
their homes, including the district attorney. If you remember, how
in the world did everyone miss this guy in playing you?

Speaker 2 (01:31:00):
Well, I'll leave you with this.

Speaker 1 (01:31:02):
When your handyman tells you that he can fix anything,
no one ever imagines that's going to include their life
expectancy