November 4, 2025 • 22 mins
We first covered Hunters, Washington back in season two. And while our reporting on it paused, our investigation into it did not. Jordan and an anonymous source have spent years digging into Hunters and the abandoned farmhouse there. And even as we thought there was nothing left to find, new information began pouring in. And continued pouring in as recording and post-production on this episode were happening.
This episode was written, researched, and produced by Josh Hallmark.
With research by: Jordan Taylor, Shana Wilensky, and Michelle Tooker.
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This episode was written, researched, and produced by Josh Hallmark.
With research by: Jordan Taylor, Shana Wilensky, and Michelle Tooker.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
True crime Bullshit is off this week, but I wanted
to pop in and announce my newest Trova trip. On
June thirteenth of twenty twenty six. We are going to Iceland.
And when I say we, I mean you, Me and
Shana and Tooks from the research team, and Sydney Copp
who helped identify Christopher Roof. For as long as I
(00:25):
can remember, Iceland has been number one on my travel
list and it still somehow eluded me for all these years.
So I'm inviting you to come experience Iceland with me
for the very first time. Will visit secret geothermal lagoons, waterfalls, geysers,
the Continental Rift, and black sand beaches littered with icebergs.
(00:46):
We'll take a private boat tour, see the glaciers, see
puffins and hang out and rekivic. It will be I'm
sure a life changing six days. Tickets go on sale
at noon Eastern today, but because of pre sale, there's
actually only a few tickets left, so reserve your spot asap.
Check out the link in the show notes or on Instagram.
(01:08):
I cannot wait to see you in Iceland.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
So and I think when.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Tad was asking me about how I think he was
like bringing so much to you, saying to someone, Hey,
if anybody asks, I was here, but more like ahead
of time telling maybe telling someone hypothetically you were going somewhere,
but actually going somewhere else.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
I mean, was that all right?
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Right, yeah, I take trips to eastern Washington, say I
was going to see old friends, are going to see
the old place in eastern Washington, you know, Mgorgon. Well, no,
not necessarily. I mean I may have gone to Eastern Washington,
(02:07):
but that doesn't mean I went to see old friends.
I don't have any old friends watching.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Hey everyone. For almost every season of True Crime Bullshit,
there's been one episode that's been haunted, an episode that
was a problem child that was written and then new
information came out where the research never quite ended. Whereas
we were writing or recording we found new information episodes
(02:40):
that seemed to be ever living Well. This is one
of those. When we started writing it, it was a
very different episode than what it's grown to be because
through the writing of this episode, we got more information,
we made more connections, and some of those remain open ended.
So for today, we're going to report on what we
(03:01):
have currently, knowing that there are still irons in the fire,
and we expect to find more answers and more connections.
We have pending phone calls. We've reached out to individuals
discussed in this episode, and we're hoping all of that
will bring even more clarification to Hunter's Washington and specifically
how Keys ended up there and what he was doing
(03:23):
there all the way. Back in season two, I first
reported on the FBI's curious interest in the small town
in eastern Washington called Hunters, specifically on the ground interviews
pertaining to a farmhouse on the outskirts of town. Here's
a quick refresher. In the week following Keyes's final FBI interview,
(03:47):
investigators started reaching out to various residents in Hunter's Washington.
You may recall that Keys drove to Tammy's son James
to see his father in Moses Lake over the weekend
of April first, two thousand five, and just a week later,
on April ninth, Keys purchased the Bayliner boat from James's dad. Well,
on that first April trip, Keys told Tammy and James's
(04:09):
dad that he was visiting friends in Hunter's Washington. He
would later admit to investigators that he didn't know anyone
in eastern Washington well. That outreach following his final interview,
it was quite specific. The FBI were trying to find
out who owned a particular abandoned farmhouse in Hunter's, Washington,
(04:29):
specifically who owned it. In April of two thousand and five,
they interviewed a neighbor of this particular farmhouse and a
prior owner, and some of these interviews were conducted in person,
meaning the FBI was actually in Hunters investigating the farmhouse.
And while they were there investigating that farmhouse, Keys killed
(04:51):
himself and other than four heavily redacted interviews included in
the FBI files. If it never comes up again, what
exactly did Keys tell investigators about his time in Hunters
and why isn't it included in the available interviews or
available FBI files. As a keen listener noted, thirty minutes
(05:13):
have been edited out of the publicly available final FBI interview.
The timestamp skips ahead almost exactly thirty minutes, and when
the video resumes, you can hear Agent Godin say as
she enters the interrogation room, I think we found it.
Then the group goes on to discuss New York before
circling back to an in depth conversation about all of
(05:36):
Israel's Washington State victims. When the FBI made their way
down to Hunter's, Washington following that final interview, they started
asking around about a specific farmhouse. They also started asking
around about Keys. Did anyone know him? Did anyone know Joe?
Did anyone know Joe's son James? Did anyone know the
(05:57):
Keys family? The answers to all of those questions were
resounding no. As far as the FBI could tell, Keys
was right. They couldn't find anyone in Hunters who knew
who he was. But what they were able to find
was that abandoned farmhouse, which just so happens to have
been purchased shortly before Keyes's alleged visit that first week
(06:20):
of April two thousand and five. And what do we
know about Keys and abandoned homes for sale? Keyes had
a history of breaking into abandoned houses with for sale signs,
like the Essex Farmhouse, so we can surmise that Keyes
said something something that has remained sealed that sent the
FBI down to Hunters to look into a specific farmhouse
(06:43):
that was both abandoned and for sale. When Keys was
allegedly in town. But why won't the FBI release that information?
I can come up with four reasons. They searched the
property and found nothing. They searched they and found something,
but have not been able to identify it or link
(07:03):
it directly to Keys. They have specific information about the property,
but since Keys died while they were investigating it, could
no longer commit resources to searching the property, kind of
like with Lake Crescent, or someone else has information or
was involved in whatever happened at that farmhouse that weekend.
(07:24):
Since my initial reporting, we haven't stopped investigating Hunters, this farmhouse,
or any potential searches conducted there. Specifically, Jordan has devoted
a significant amount of time to unlocking the secrets in Hunters,
and he, with some help, has uncovered quite a bit.
In this episode, I'll be sharing our findings thus far,
(07:47):
what they might mean for the investigation, and dispelling some
mythology surrounding the farmhouse. When Hunters, Washington first came onto
my radar, all I had to go off of were
those two two very redacted interviews with locals. In the
interview with Tammy's ex husband asking if he knew anything
about Keys's time in or in relation to Hunters, and
(08:09):
he only recalled that Keyes once told him that he
had family in Hunters and assumed that in the days
prior to checking out the boat and picking up James,
Keyes was likely there or in Callville. One of the
two locals the FBI interviewed was a seven fingered man,
who it turns out lived across the street from the
abandoned farmhouse in question. They asked him about who owned
(08:30):
the property, for how long, and what work had recently
been done on the property. They also specified that they
were looking for a man who had affiliations with an
undisclosed indigenous population who either owned or had once owned
the property. The second man they interviewed had owned the
property prior to Keysa's suspected time there. This man has
(08:52):
the same last name as Tammy and her ex husband,
and so the FBI seemed to assume that he was
related to them. He was not, and that's what we
had until Jordan and an anonymous source went to work.
According to Jordan, back in twenty twenty three, a listener
(09:14):
who would like to remain anonymous reached out to him
with some interesting information. She had made the trek out
to Hunters to try to find out where this farmhouse
was and see what other information about Keys's or the
FBI's time there was available. She started where all great
fact finding missions start, the local bar. While there she
(09:41):
met a man that Wheel called j who confirmed that
the FBI had been out to an old farmhouse on
Springdale Hunters Road, and he knew that because he owned
the property across the street and had actually been one
of the two people to talk to the FBI. Yes, es,
that's how small Hunters is. She stopped into a local
(10:04):
bar on her first night in town and met one
of two locals that the FBI had interviewed, and she
was first able to confirm this when she looked down
and saw that Jay only had seven fingers. Jay gave
our source both his address and full name, and Jordan
was then able to find a two thousand and one
(10:24):
citation against him for a failure to carry a v
endorsement on his commercial driver's license for missing digits. Jay
also gave our source the address of the farm house
the FBI were looking into, which took Jordan and our
source down some very interesting and often surprising pads. Pads
(10:46):
were still connecting to even more interesting and surprising characters. First,
the two were able to confirm one of the FBI's
primary questions, the arrival of a triple wide Moe home
on the property. The FBI was trying to determine when
it showed up and specifically if it was on the
(11:07):
property when they believed that Keyes was most likely there
in early April of two thousand and five, or if
it had appeared sometimes shortly thereafter. And our team determined
that the triple wide showed up at some point between
July two thousand and five and July two thousand and six,
and that the property was owned by someone we'll call Ray,
(11:28):
but it remained vacant until that triple wide showed up
after Keyes was in the area. Now, for reasons entirely unclear,
the FBI never tracked down nor interviewed Ray. They only
interviewed Jay, the seven fingered man who owned the property
across the street, and a guy will call Brad, who
(11:50):
owned the property before Ray owned it, before they believed
Keyes was on it. And it's important to note that
while Brad owned that property, he never actually lived on it.
After doing some digging, Jordan and our source were able
to snag the property records for this house, along with
(12:10):
its surrounding areas. Ray bought the house from Brad in
November two thousand and four, just six months before Keyes
is believed to have been on the property, but Ray
didn't register it as his mailing address until after July
two thousand and five, around the same time the triple
wide showed up, and there's no information linking anyone to
(12:32):
living on that property for the entirety of Brad's ownership
and then until around July two thousand and five, meaning
it was in fact very likely vacant when Keyes was there.
The property is quite unique because it borders Bureau of
Land Management property, which is federal and appears to border
(12:56):
part of the Spokane Reservation, so it sits between in federal,
county and city jurisdictions. Hunters, Washington itself has the Roosevelt
Lake National Recreation Area to the north federal land, the
Calville Reservation to the west federal and Indigenous land, and
the Spokane Reservation to the east, in addition to state, county,
(13:19):
and city jurisdictions. The town of three hundred and six
people sits along the Columbia River and is known primarily
for camping, and it turns out our team were able
to connect Keys to not only Hunters, but loosely to
this particular farmhouse. Much like all things with Keys, the
(13:47):
information he gives around eastern Washington and Hunters are highly
predicated on semantics. At the time of his final interview,
he said that he did not know anyone nor have
any family in Hunters, which is true as far as
we can tell. But he did have family and new
people in Hunters at some point prior. In nineteen ninety four,
(14:13):
Keys's oldest sister married a man from Hunter's, Washington, and
the pair briefly lived there, but that's not where the
connections end at all. In two thousand and five, Keys's
sister's brother in law, who we'll call Dean, inherited property
about a mile and a half from the Hunter's farmhouse,
and Dean's son, according to Facebook, is friends with Heidi Keys. Additionally,
(14:40):
Dean is friends with Ray, the guy who owned the
vacant property when Keys was believed to have been there.
So there are at minimum acquaintance, ships or entanglements between
the Keys extended family and the owners of this farmhouse.
Another odd coincidence we're looking into is that Ray and
na Heidi and John Jeffrey Keys all lived in Torrance,
(15:03):
California at around the same time, and Torrance experienced a
bit of an exodus for Calville, Washington when Christian identity
minister Pete Peters was doing road shows in southern California.
More on Pete in a minute. What's intriguing about this,
apart from the fact that the FBI doesn't seem to
(15:23):
have ever made these connections, is that it's not the
first time we've seen Keys operating in areas his extended
family is associated with. In fact, we've begun to notice
a pattern.
Speaker 5 (15:36):
What what timeframe are we talking about?
Speaker 4 (15:39):
Uh was the same day as the bank rover go
Fidler's seen.
Speaker 5 (15:44):
Yeah, sounds right.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
And it was south of Alto. There was a house
that I found that was like south out of there. Yeah,
there was.
Speaker 5 (16:02):
A house that wasn't I think it's in that m
It's hard to say, Uh, I remember it. Yeah, I
was looking at uh banks in that town and I
found a house south Uh been southwest of town that
(16:22):
there wasn't anybody in. So I I broke.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
Into it and uh took some stuff and then found
some gasoline there, so just decided to burn it.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
So it wasn't an abandoned house, and it wasn't no
I lived in house.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
Well, I don't know. It looked like nobody had been
there for a couple of weeks. But it was a mess.
There was like it was like a horridor house. Uh maybe, yeah,
it wasn't. Probably the easiest way to find it is
gonna be to do uh a search for that fire Alto, Texas.
(17:02):
It's probably been the only one there. Since it's not
a very big town. They probably will have the address.
Speaker 5 (17:13):
Yeah. Wait, so explain to us how you found this house.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Well, I was looking at banks and Alto.
Speaker 5 (17:22):
And what do you mean when you're sere looking at backs?
Speaker 1 (17:28):
You probably recall this interview where Key seems to misidentify Aledo,
Texas as Alto, Texas. It's something I hear from listeners
about all the time, because there is actually a town
in Texas called Alto. Alto, Texas is just thirty miles
north of Wells, where Heidi and most of her daughters
live now, and it's about forty minutes from Mount Enterprise,
(17:53):
where Jimmy Tidwell lived. Keys would have at minimum driven
through Alto numerous times times while in Texas. It's about
halfway between Lufkin and Jacksonville on Highway sixty nine. For
a while, we thought nothing of this interview clip. Keyes
was likely just misremembering the town's name, except that several
(18:16):
years ago we discovered that Keyes's brother in law's family
owned and operated a lumberyard in Alto, Texas, which is
again just a forty minute drive from where Jimmy Tidwell's
truck was found abandoned on the side of the road.
To me, if Keyes had merely just been driving through Alto,
(18:37):
it seems he would remember the name of the town
that he I don't know robbed a bank in more
than he would remember the name of a tiny town
that he passed through a few times, unless, of course,
he did something else in Alto, Texas. Now, this same
brother in law's family who owned and operated that lumberyard
(18:58):
also owned a property Tupper Lake. So that is three
different times and places where Keyes did commit crimes or
is believed to have committed crimes in the immediate vicinity
of vacant properties owned by his in laws or friends
of them. Circling back to Hunters One big question still remains,
(19:22):
how did the FBI land there in the first place.
We know that cell phone pings placed Keys in Ellensburg,
Washington during that weekend in April, and you may recall
Keyes asked specifically which jurisdiction Ellensburg was in when trying
to determine which Washington State jurisdictions would need to be
(19:42):
involved in his various murder investigations. Additionally, ted Halla believes
the male female couple were likely abducted around this time
and killed near Ellensburg, although it's worth noting that there's
nothing concrete that I have that proves that the male
female couple and the Ellensburg victim are one and the same,
(20:03):
but it does stand a reason that this was one
of the best opportunities for Keys to commit a crime
in eastern Washington. And in his interview, he stated that
the male female couple were before he bought the Bayliner,
and I can't help but wonder if this is another
moment where semantics are important. Maybe he literally meant right
(20:24):
before he bought the Bayliner while he was there alone
for several days. And again we don't know what Keyes
said or the FBI found that led them to a
specific house in Hunter's Washington. But there is one other
odd coincidence. April second, two thousand and five, the day
(20:46):
the FBI believes Keys committed this double murder, was Keys's
childhood girlfriend and fiancee, Annie's first wedding anniversary. And it's
worth noting that Annie's family has also been entangled with
the Christian identity movement. Pete Peters presided over her mother's
(21:06):
wedding in two thousand and one. So if there's one
solid connection between the Keys family, Annie's family, Ray, and
Keys's in laws and Hunters, it's Pete Peters and the
Christian Identity movement. Now, this is where I'd planned to
discuss potential missing couples that could be linked to Keys
(21:30):
in general and specifically in this timeframe. But while I
thought the Hunter storyline was as close to complete as
it could get when we started writing this episode, throughout
writing it and even recording it, even as I record
it now our research app is digging over and over
and over again with new information about Hunters and people
connected to this property, and so we're talking to people,
(21:55):
We're doing more digging. We're interviewing people who were involved
in the Christian identity of movement, people who knew the
Keys family, and we seem to be getting a better
understanding of how Keys's childhood more definitively plays into the
crimes he committed. So for now, we're pressing pause and
(22:17):
we'll be back next week with more on Hunter's Washington
True crime Bullshit is off this week, but I wanted
to pop in and announce my newest Trova trip. On
June thirteenth of twenty twenty six. We are going to Iceland.
And when I say we, I mean you, Me and
Shana and Tooks from the research team, and Sydney Copp
who helped identify Christopher Roof. For as long as I
(00:25):
can remember, Iceland has been number one on my travel
list and it still somehow eluded me for all these years.
So I'm inviting you to come experience Iceland with me
for the very first time. Will visit secret geothermal lagoons, waterfalls, geysers,
the Continental Rift, and black sand beaches littered with icebergs.
(00:46):
We'll take a private boat tour, see the glaciers, see
puffins and hang out and rekivic. It will be I'm
sure a life changing six days. Tickets go on sale
at noon Eastern today, but because of pre sale, there's
actually only a few tickets left, so reserve your spot asap.
Check out the link in the show notes or on Instagram.
(01:08):
I cannot wait to see you in Iceland.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
So and I think when.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Tad was asking me about how I think he was
like bringing so much to you, saying to someone, Hey,
if anybody asks, I was here, but more like ahead
of time telling maybe telling someone hypothetically you were going somewhere,
but actually going somewhere else.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
I mean, was that all right?
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Right, yeah, I take trips to eastern Washington, say I
was going to see old friends, are going to see
the old place in eastern Washington, you know, Mgorgon. Well, no,
not necessarily. I mean I may have gone to Eastern Washington,
(02:07):
but that doesn't mean I went to see old friends.
I don't have any old friends watching.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Hey everyone. For almost every season of True Crime Bullshit,
there's been one episode that's been haunted, an episode that
was a problem child that was written and then new
information came out where the research never quite ended. Whereas
we were writing or recording we found new information episodes
(02:40):
that seemed to be ever living Well. This is one
of those. When we started writing it, it was a
very different episode than what it's grown to be because
through the writing of this episode, we got more information,
we made more connections, and some of those remain open ended.
So for today, we're going to report on what we
(03:01):
have currently, knowing that there are still irons in the fire,
and we expect to find more answers and more connections.
We have pending phone calls. We've reached out to individuals
discussed in this episode, and we're hoping all of that
will bring even more clarification to Hunter's Washington and specifically
how Keys ended up there and what he was doing
(03:23):
there all the way. Back in season two, I first
reported on the FBI's curious interest in the small town
in eastern Washington called Hunters, specifically on the ground interviews
pertaining to a farmhouse on the outskirts of town. Here's
a quick refresher. In the week following Keyes's final FBI interview,
(03:47):
investigators started reaching out to various residents in Hunter's Washington.
You may recall that Keys drove to Tammy's son James
to see his father in Moses Lake over the weekend
of April first, two thousand five, and just a week later,
on April ninth, Keys purchased the Bayliner boat from James's dad. Well,
on that first April trip, Keys told Tammy and James's
(04:09):
dad that he was visiting friends in Hunter's Washington. He
would later admit to investigators that he didn't know anyone
in eastern Washington well. That outreach following his final interview,
it was quite specific. The FBI were trying to find
out who owned a particular abandoned farmhouse in Hunter's, Washington,
(04:29):
specifically who owned it. In April of two thousand and five,
they interviewed a neighbor of this particular farmhouse and a
prior owner, and some of these interviews were conducted in person,
meaning the FBI was actually in Hunters investigating the farmhouse.
And while they were there investigating that farmhouse, Keys killed
(04:51):
himself and other than four heavily redacted interviews included in
the FBI files. If it never comes up again, what
exactly did Keys tell investigators about his time in Hunters
and why isn't it included in the available interviews or
available FBI files. As a keen listener noted, thirty minutes
(05:13):
have been edited out of the publicly available final FBI interview.
The timestamp skips ahead almost exactly thirty minutes, and when
the video resumes, you can hear Agent Godin say as
she enters the interrogation room, I think we found it.
Then the group goes on to discuss New York before
circling back to an in depth conversation about all of
(05:36):
Israel's Washington State victims. When the FBI made their way
down to Hunter's, Washington following that final interview, they started
asking around about a specific farmhouse. They also started asking
around about Keys. Did anyone know him? Did anyone know Joe?
Did anyone know Joe's son James? Did anyone know the
(05:57):
Keys family? The answers to all of those questions were
resounding no. As far as the FBI could tell, Keys
was right. They couldn't find anyone in Hunters who knew
who he was. But what they were able to find
was that abandoned farmhouse, which just so happens to have
been purchased shortly before Keyes's alleged visit that first week
(06:20):
of April two thousand and five. And what do we
know about Keys and abandoned homes for sale? Keyes had
a history of breaking into abandoned houses with for sale signs,
like the Essex Farmhouse, so we can surmise that Keyes
said something something that has remained sealed that sent the
FBI down to Hunters to look into a specific farmhouse
(06:43):
that was both abandoned and for sale. When Keys was
allegedly in town. But why won't the FBI release that information?
I can come up with four reasons. They searched the
property and found nothing. They searched they and found something,
but have not been able to identify it or link
(07:03):
it directly to Keys. They have specific information about the property,
but since Keys died while they were investigating it, could
no longer commit resources to searching the property, kind of
like with Lake Crescent, or someone else has information or
was involved in whatever happened at that farmhouse that weekend.
(07:24):
Since my initial reporting, we haven't stopped investigating Hunters, this farmhouse,
or any potential searches conducted there. Specifically, Jordan has devoted
a significant amount of time to unlocking the secrets in Hunters,
and he, with some help, has uncovered quite a bit.
In this episode, I'll be sharing our findings thus far,
(07:47):
what they might mean for the investigation, and dispelling some
mythology surrounding the farmhouse. When Hunters, Washington first came onto
my radar, all I had to go off of were
those two two very redacted interviews with locals. In the
interview with Tammy's ex husband asking if he knew anything
about Keys's time in or in relation to Hunters, and
(08:09):
he only recalled that Keyes once told him that he
had family in Hunters and assumed that in the days
prior to checking out the boat and picking up James,
Keyes was likely there or in Callville. One of the
two locals the FBI interviewed was a seven fingered man,
who it turns out lived across the street from the
abandoned farmhouse in question. They asked him about who owned
(08:30):
the property, for how long, and what work had recently
been done on the property. They also specified that they
were looking for a man who had affiliations with an
undisclosed indigenous population who either owned or had once owned
the property. The second man they interviewed had owned the
property prior to Keysa's suspected time there. This man has
(08:52):
the same last name as Tammy and her ex husband,
and so the FBI seemed to assume that he was
related to them. He was not, and that's what we
had until Jordan and an anonymous source went to work.
According to Jordan, back in twenty twenty three, a listener
(09:14):
who would like to remain anonymous reached out to him
with some interesting information. She had made the trek out
to Hunters to try to find out where this farmhouse
was and see what other information about Keys's or the
FBI's time there was available. She started where all great
fact finding missions start, the local bar. While there she
(09:41):
met a man that Wheel called j who confirmed that
the FBI had been out to an old farmhouse on
Springdale Hunters Road, and he knew that because he owned
the property across the street and had actually been one
of the two people to talk to the FBI. Yes, es,
that's how small Hunters is. She stopped into a local
(10:04):
bar on her first night in town and met one
of two locals that the FBI had interviewed, and she
was first able to confirm this when she looked down
and saw that Jay only had seven fingers. Jay gave
our source both his address and full name, and Jordan
was then able to find a two thousand and one
(10:24):
citation against him for a failure to carry a v
endorsement on his commercial driver's license for missing digits. Jay
also gave our source the address of the farm house
the FBI were looking into, which took Jordan and our
source down some very interesting and often surprising pads. Pads
(10:46):
were still connecting to even more interesting and surprising characters. First,
the two were able to confirm one of the FBI's
primary questions, the arrival of a triple wide Moe home
on the property. The FBI was trying to determine when
it showed up and specifically if it was on the
(11:07):
property when they believed that Keyes was most likely there
in early April of two thousand and five, or if
it had appeared sometimes shortly thereafter. And our team determined
that the triple wide showed up at some point between
July two thousand and five and July two thousand and six,
and that the property was owned by someone we'll call Ray,
(11:28):
but it remained vacant until that triple wide showed up
after Keyes was in the area. Now, for reasons entirely unclear,
the FBI never tracked down nor interviewed Ray. They only
interviewed Jay, the seven fingered man who owned the property
across the street, and a guy will call Brad, who
(11:50):
owned the property before Ray owned it, before they believed
Keyes was on it. And it's important to note that
while Brad owned that property, he never actually lived on it.
After doing some digging, Jordan and our source were able
to snag the property records for this house, along with
(12:10):
its surrounding areas. Ray bought the house from Brad in
November two thousand and four, just six months before Keyes
is believed to have been on the property, but Ray
didn't register it as his mailing address until after July
two thousand and five, around the same time the triple
wide showed up, and there's no information linking anyone to
(12:32):
living on that property for the entirety of Brad's ownership
and then until around July two thousand and five, meaning
it was in fact very likely vacant when Keyes was there.
The property is quite unique because it borders Bureau of
Land Management property, which is federal and appears to border
(12:56):
part of the Spokane Reservation, so it sits between in federal,
county and city jurisdictions. Hunters, Washington itself has the Roosevelt
Lake National Recreation Area to the north federal land, the
Calville Reservation to the west federal and Indigenous land, and
the Spokane Reservation to the east, in addition to state, county,
(13:19):
and city jurisdictions. The town of three hundred and six
people sits along the Columbia River and is known primarily
for camping, and it turns out our team were able
to connect Keys to not only Hunters, but loosely to
this particular farmhouse. Much like all things with Keys, the
(13:47):
information he gives around eastern Washington and Hunters are highly
predicated on semantics. At the time of his final interview,
he said that he did not know anyone nor have
any family in Hunters, which is true as far as
we can tell. But he did have family and new
people in Hunters at some point prior. In nineteen ninety four,
(14:13):
Keys's oldest sister married a man from Hunter's, Washington, and
the pair briefly lived there, but that's not where the
connections end at all. In two thousand and five, Keys's
sister's brother in law, who we'll call Dean, inherited property
about a mile and a half from the Hunter's farmhouse,
and Dean's son, according to Facebook, is friends with Heidi Keys. Additionally,
(14:40):
Dean is friends with Ray, the guy who owned the
vacant property when Keys was believed to have been there.
So there are at minimum acquaintance, ships or entanglements between
the Keys extended family and the owners of this farmhouse.
Another odd coincidence we're looking into is that Ray and
na Heidi and John Jeffrey Keys all lived in Torrance,
(15:03):
California at around the same time, and Torrance experienced a
bit of an exodus for Calville, Washington when Christian identity
minister Pete Peters was doing road shows in southern California.
More on Pete in a minute. What's intriguing about this,
apart from the fact that the FBI doesn't seem to
(15:23):
have ever made these connections, is that it's not the
first time we've seen Keys operating in areas his extended
family is associated with. In fact, we've begun to notice
a pattern.
Speaker 5 (15:36):
What what timeframe are we talking about?
Speaker 4 (15:39):
Uh was the same day as the bank rover go
Fidler's seen.
Speaker 5 (15:44):
Yeah, sounds right.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
And it was south of Alto. There was a house
that I found that was like south out of there. Yeah,
there was.
Speaker 5 (16:02):
A house that wasn't I think it's in that m
It's hard to say, Uh, I remember it. Yeah, I
was looking at uh banks in that town and I
found a house south Uh been southwest of town that
(16:22):
there wasn't anybody in. So I I broke.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
Into it and uh took some stuff and then found
some gasoline there, so just decided to burn it.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
So it wasn't an abandoned house, and it wasn't no
I lived in house.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
Well, I don't know. It looked like nobody had been
there for a couple of weeks. But it was a mess.
There was like it was like a horridor house. Uh maybe, yeah,
it wasn't. Probably the easiest way to find it is
gonna be to do uh a search for that fire Alto, Texas.
(17:02):
It's probably been the only one there. Since it's not
a very big town. They probably will have the address.
Speaker 5 (17:13):
Yeah. Wait, so explain to us how you found this house.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Well, I was looking at banks and Alto.
Speaker 5 (17:22):
And what do you mean when you're sere looking at backs?
Speaker 1 (17:28):
You probably recall this interview where Key seems to misidentify Aledo,
Texas as Alto, Texas. It's something I hear from listeners
about all the time, because there is actually a town
in Texas called Alto. Alto, Texas is just thirty miles
north of Wells, where Heidi and most of her daughters
live now, and it's about forty minutes from Mount Enterprise,
(17:53):
where Jimmy Tidwell lived. Keys would have at minimum driven
through Alto numerous times times while in Texas. It's about
halfway between Lufkin and Jacksonville on Highway sixty nine. For
a while, we thought nothing of this interview clip. Keyes
was likely just misremembering the town's name, except that several
(18:16):
years ago we discovered that Keyes's brother in law's family
owned and operated a lumberyard in Alto, Texas, which is
again just a forty minute drive from where Jimmy Tidwell's
truck was found abandoned on the side of the road.
To me, if Keyes had merely just been driving through Alto,
(18:37):
it seems he would remember the name of the town
that he I don't know robbed a bank in more
than he would remember the name of a tiny town
that he passed through a few times, unless, of course,
he did something else in Alto, Texas. Now, this same
brother in law's family who owned and operated that lumberyard
(18:58):
also owned a property Tupper Lake. So that is three
different times and places where Keyes did commit crimes or
is believed to have committed crimes in the immediate vicinity
of vacant properties owned by his in laws or friends
of them. Circling back to Hunters One big question still remains,
(19:22):
how did the FBI land there in the first place.
We know that cell phone pings placed Keys in Ellensburg,
Washington during that weekend in April, and you may recall
Keyes asked specifically which jurisdiction Ellensburg was in when trying
to determine which Washington State jurisdictions would need to be
(19:42):
involved in his various murder investigations. Additionally, ted Halla believes
the male female couple were likely abducted around this time
and killed near Ellensburg, although it's worth noting that there's
nothing concrete that I have that proves that the male
female couple and the Ellensburg victim are one and the same,
(20:03):
but it does stand a reason that this was one
of the best opportunities for Keys to commit a crime
in eastern Washington. And in his interview, he stated that
the male female couple were before he bought the Bayliner,
and I can't help but wonder if this is another
moment where semantics are important. Maybe he literally meant right
(20:24):
before he bought the Bayliner while he was there alone
for several days. And again we don't know what Keyes
said or the FBI found that led them to a
specific house in Hunter's Washington. But there is one other
odd coincidence. April second, two thousand and five, the day
(20:46):
the FBI believes Keys committed this double murder, was Keys's
childhood girlfriend and fiancee, Annie's first wedding anniversary. And it's
worth noting that Annie's family has also been entangled with
the Christian identity movement. Pete Peters presided over her mother's
(21:06):
wedding in two thousand and one. So if there's one
solid connection between the Keys family, Annie's family, Ray, and
Keys's in laws and Hunters, it's Pete Peters and the
Christian Identity movement. Now, this is where I'd planned to
discuss potential missing couples that could be linked to Keys
(21:30):
in general and specifically in this timeframe. But while I
thought the Hunter storyline was as close to complete as
it could get when we started writing this episode, throughout
writing it and even recording it, even as I record
it now our research app is digging over and over
and over again with new information about Hunters and people
connected to this property, and so we're talking to people,
(21:55):
We're doing more digging. We're interviewing people who were involved
in the Christian identity of movement, people who knew the
Keys family, and we seem to be getting a better
understanding of how Keys's childhood more definitively plays into the
crimes he committed. So for now, we're pressing pause and
(22:17):
we'll be back next week with more on Hunter's Washington
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