September 25, 2025 • 46 mins
As we prepare for Season 7 of True Crime Bullsh**, we're sharing episodes from the past 6 seasons that will be foundational for the upcoming season.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
This is a studio both and production. Many of the
bravest never are known and get no praise, but that
does not lessen their beauty. Louisa may Alcott. Perhaps the
(00:37):
most compelling and significant aspect of the Israel Keys case
for me is that of the many victims who at
this point are missing persons or both missing persons and
John or Jane Dowes. The idea that someone you love
could be lost in the world, that you're left to
constantly wonder what happened to them? Are they hurt? Are
(01:01):
they alive? Did they disappear of their own volition? Did
they meet with foul play? Was there something I didn't know?
Was there something I did or something I could have done.
It's a mystery, yes, but a mystery of the most
heartbreaking kind. There are so many stories of people spending
(01:24):
their entire lives desperately trying to find their loved ones,
desperately trying to find answers, with no peace, with little reconciliation.
It's perhaps the slowest and cruelest torture Keys ever inflicted,
a torture that for some never ends. In Nemus alone,
(01:51):
there are seventy eight still unidentified bodies that have been
recovered since June of two thousand, when Keys returned from
his army deployment in Egypt. And that's in Washington State alone.
Seventy eight stories with no resolve, seventy eight families with
no resolve, seventy eight lives whose deaths can't even be
(02:16):
dignified with a name, And as we well know, NamUs
is by no means a complete catalog of loss. It's
merely an unfinished chapter in a book full of unfinished
chapters that never seems to end. I've reviewed almost every
(02:38):
single one of those seventy eight dos, but it was
two researchers for the podcast who were able to narrow
down those seventy eight doughs and using maps and data,
tell some pretty eerie and familiar stories. Stories will share
over the next two episodes. This is my friend Kaz,
(03:00):
who's a prosecutor and board member for the nonprofit organization
founded by Bruce Maitland, Private Investigations for the Missing. Kaz
really got the ball rolling in terms of taking a
look at does in Washington State and later in the Northeast.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
So where I started was, you know, everybody kind of
had like a niche that they fell into, and we
were all I felt like we were also like working
on this assumption that none of the people had been
found already, which made me think of NamUs and the
Unidentified Persons function on nea MISS. So I thought, if
we go through NamUs for a chunk of time that
(03:42):
would cover the keys timeline that everybody else has been
working on, maybe we can see if any of those
John or Jane does would match up to the to
the to the people that we were, the victims potential
victims that we were looking at, and find out if
they had already been compared and ruled out or if
they hadn't been compared at all. And you know, judging
by you know, time, location, the keys kind of like
(04:05):
you know touchstones, like things that we've been that we've
been seeing come up over and over again, like boat,
boat launches, boat ramps, outhouses, coffee shops, you know, wooded areas,
et cetera, cemeteries. You see, if any of those things
were in the areas of these unidentified persons that have
aready been found. So I started with Washington because we
(04:25):
know that he spent a lot of time in Washington
and a lot of the murders we think took place
in Washington. So I went in. I punched in as
my search criteria John and Jane does between January of
nineteen ninety seven to the present, and it returned ninety
(04:46):
three unidentified people.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
And that's all of Washington State.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
All of Washington State.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
As I'm looking at this list, it was obvious to
me that there was going to be some that were
not going to fit. For instance, more urban areas like say,
parts of Seattle. It's not going to fit with you know,
what we know about keys. You know, also the type
of individual it was in Washington. It was in some
other states too that I looked at. There were you know, deceased,
(05:15):
like very young infants, and that's not going to fit
with what we're looking for. So what I ended up
looking for in terms of criteria was, you know, it
was basically, you know, my opinions, first impressions and thoughts,
looking at what name is the information that name has
provided us, and then I would kind of plug those dates, times, places,
(05:39):
and criteria into Google to see if I can come
up with any news stories or anything that could give
me some extra information about these particular unidentified persons, and
for a lot of them, there wasn't a lot of
information at all. Sometimes I would get just a website's
page or you know, something something like that. For some
I got a lot of information. There was some news reports,
(06:02):
especially remains that were found closer in time to us. Now,
a couple of things that I kept in mind. You know,
just because remains were found in a certain year doesn't
mean that they were put there in that year. I
looked at, you know, do we have skeletal remains versus
do we have a full intact body or was there
(06:22):
some level of decomposition or putrification that would lean towards
a lend towards a body having been placed there closer
in time then, you know, as opposed to skeleton remains,
which could be in an environment in Washington anywhere. And
I'm just ballparking this because I'm not a scientist anywhere
from you know, a year to decades, you know. And
(06:44):
I also looked at, you know, the state of the body.
Do we have a skull, do we have a femur,
or do we have a full and fully intact skeleton.
And then also you know, just the locations ruling out
you know, again bodies that were found, means that were
found in more urban or suburban areas in the ocean,
in bodies of water or near bodies of water that
(07:06):
might not lend itself to keys being there. Like, we
kind of have a good idea, I think at this
point of what his type of place is. And it
was easy then, as I was going through the name
is chart to be able to you know, say like, Okay,
(07:26):
this is a very suburban area. This is not going
to be a place where he's gonna where he would
have put somebody. So we're gonna rull that one out.
The other thing too that I found, you know, not
just going through Washington State, but through the other states,
looking at you know, where there were some things where
you know, places change after a while. Sometimes there could
be excavation, there could be construction, and a lot of
(07:49):
these a lot of these remains are found when people
were doing some kind of work or like tearing down
an old abandoned house or ex stavating for a swimming
pool or something like that, and that's when these remains
were being found. So, you know, I started to think too,
that went into my mind as you know, something I
(08:09):
was computing, you know, what was this area like then?
What could it have been like before? So that's where
French and the and the Google Maps and the Google
Earth came in because you know, he was able to
take you know, this data and you know, see if
you can find you know the history of these these places,
(08:29):
like the photohistory of these places to see like, Okay,
so there's something built here, but what was it like
in twenty twelve, or what was it like in two
thousand and nine, or what was it like in nineteen
ninety nine?
Speaker 1 (08:42):
And when Kaz finished combing through those dough files, she
sent them along to French, who created some pretty compelling
maps using archival data, property records, and urban development history.
Speaker 5 (08:57):
When Caz approached me was super skeptical, and I think
there's a lot of keys mythology, you know, we because
we don't have a lot of bodies, you know, to
look at, we tend to think that he was an
expert at getting rid of them, even though he admitted
one was found and it was kind of accidental. So
I wanted to come in with like an open mind.
(09:19):
So I went through and I looked back through all
of the interviews and kind of thought about what we
know about keys and body disposal. You know, we've got
Deborah Feldman the Story of two thousand and nine, where
you know, there's just remains we don't know any more
than that somewhere near a river, maybe buried, maybe submerged,
I don't know much. And then you know, we got
(09:42):
the couriers left in the basement of an abandoned building
to decompose, and he was going to return later. And
then we've got Samantha Konig, who was obviously dismembered after
the fact after a while and then put into a lake.
And then we have his notes. He's talking about, you know,
putting people in legs, the couple that he buried, that
(10:04):
kind of thing. But I think the thing that stood
out the most of me was him talking about Eagle River.
That little cliff I think it's seven twelve is super
interesting because he talks about his plan and how he
developed a plan to kill somebody and use a pre
dug ditch near that berm to bury them and then
(10:25):
cover them with sheet metal that was found nearby, which
kind of doesn't fit with a lot of the things
that we think about keys, because you know, he's not
taking them to a second location, he's killing them there,
or you know, up the road near the nature center
where there's an outhouse. But the fact that he was
just gonna, you know, I think, bury them, probably a
shallow grave, considering where he was near the road, and
(10:49):
then cover them with metal and then go on his way.
That made me believe that perhaps, you know, what would
have happened to that body had he actually succeeded and
killed someone and carried that out, how easy would it
have been for wildlife to get to it. And then
looking through Kaz's list, so many of these, you know,
are fragments out in the woods that wildlife was disturbed,
(11:13):
And that starts to make me think that it's very
possible that some of these bodies have been dug up
through a natural process, and that maybe some of the
remains have been discovered. So I went in with an
open mind in that way, and I just went through
and I started looking, you know, I looked at her
list and she had a great color coordination. And I
(11:33):
went through and I started reading all the news articles
I could about them and trying to find the exact location.
Because one of the things I noticed with NamUs is
that they'll give you a coordinates, but I'm guessing depending
on who enters it into the database, the coordinates are
not always accurate. Once I found that location, I would
plot it into this Google map, which has everything else
(11:54):
that we know about Keys put into it, and just
kind of look and see, like how it relates to
everything else, because you know, I'm such a visual person.
The spreadsheet tells a lot of good information, but it
doesn't tell the story the same way that I think
looking at you know, being able to see his movements
and like, oh, he stayed at a hotel over here,
(12:16):
Well when did he stay there? And how could that
possibly relate to a body being found in this area?
Is that support it at all? And once I found that,
once I determined that all out, I would also say like, okay, well,
if we know Keys was active during this timeframe, what
do the maps look like now compared to when this
(12:37):
body might have been placed there? I think the Lake
Taps is one of the best examples of that.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
The Lake Taps dough is one of two dough cases
that sparked our deep dive into unidentified remains, and it's
a case that using archival map data, French was able
to pinpoint a fair clear timeline for Lake Taps is
a small forested town just ten miles east of Tacoma, Washington,
(13:10):
which was built around yes Lake Taps, and this female
Dough came up in our research into the Giovanna Tyler
case as a reminder, Giovanna Tyler disappeared from her home
in Tacoma on March twenty eighth of two thousand and four,
and shortly before her disappearance, she and Israel Keys ended
(13:32):
up in the Nia Bay Police station on the same night.
But it's not so much the proximity of Tyler's home
to Lake Taps that led us to investigate this dough,
but it's many, many haunting similarities to what we know
about Israel Keys and what Israel Keys told the FBI
about his crimes.
Speaker 6 (13:54):
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dot com slash tcb. The lake taps Jane Doe was
(15:26):
discovered on August twenty eighth of twenty nineteen, during the
clean up and prep for sale of an abandoned property
two blocks from the lake. The skeletal remains, later determined
to be a woman between the ages of eighteen and fifty,
approximately sixty one to sixty seven inches tall, were found
(15:46):
in a recycling bin which had been almost completely swallowed
by overgrowth. A construction crew was on site to demolish
and clear out a run down and long ignored trailer
home on the property.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
I went through and I was like, okay, so they
found a you know, they were talking. There was a
construction crew that was getting rid of a trailer. They
found a recycling bin and it was too heavy to move,
and so they dumped it out and bones came out,
and that's how the body was discovered. So you go
up and you're looking around where they kind of describe it,
(16:21):
and you're clearly you know, there's a trailer right here
that's overgrown and overrun, there's a sale for sale sign,
there's an abandoned trailer, and there's a blue recycling bin,
which is super creepy to actually see on the map.
So I want to be able to go through and
see this was like I don't know when this photo
was taken necessarily because this version of Google Maps doesn't
(16:43):
show that. But this version does Google Earth pro. So
looking at Google earth pro here, I can go back
in time and see overhead when I want to know
when this trailer was actually abandoned, you know, because that
would if it was only abandoned within the last couple
of years, that would put a different you know, that
would rule keys out. So if we go back as
(17:04):
far as we can, there's not a whole lot. But
we keep going forward and we see it looks pretty
well occupied June two thousand and two, but by March
two thousand and five, it's starting to look less occupied
and less occupied. You can see this is the trailer.
You can see those the bushes are growing pretty well
(17:26):
next to the trailer where the recycling bin was found.
And then certainly by two thousand and nine, this is
an abandoned property. So taking that into consideration, we go
just to regular old Google Earth here or Google Maps
on your browser. If we can look at the street view,
we can go back in time at certain points. If
(17:49):
you're lucky, and we were lucky enough that we can
go back to two thousand and eight, and see, yeah,
this was not occupied in two thousand and eight. There's
clearly a first sale sign. And that second where the
recycling bin was found is overgrown. So my guess whoever
put that body there stuffed it in the recycling bin
and just tucked it into these It looks like BlackBerry
(18:10):
brambles and it wasn't touched for you know, close to
over a decade, I would say. And if we go
up to twenty twelve, you can see those brambles are thick.
You know, you lived in the Northwest, You're not going
to go through those brambles very easily at all, very thorny,
difficult to get into. By twenty fifteen, it's almost completely
(18:35):
overtaken the trailer and then luckily enough, about a month
before they actually discovered the body. That's why the recycling
bin is exposed, is because they were clearing this to
get ready to demolish the property. And so this is
July twenty nineteen, and this body was discovered in August
(18:55):
twenty nineteen. August twenty eight, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
After looking into property records, deed transfers, and property tax history,
we were able to determine that the body was most
likely placed on the property between two thousand four and
two thousand eight. The property went on the market in
late two thousand three, where it sat abandoned and for
sale for three years. In March of two thousand and six,
(19:25):
it was purchased, but remained abandoned and transferred hands through
quick claim sales multiple times until the twenty nineteen demolition.
And when analyzing both the growth of those brambles and
the presence of for sale signs, the likely timeline of
the Jane Do can be narrowed down to late two
(19:46):
thousand three to early two thousand and six, and Keys
fits into this picture in many notable ways. Let's start
with the timeline and geography this this is an area
that Keyes was incredibly familiar with. Lake Taps is less
than thirty miles from where he was stationed at Fort
(20:09):
Lewis and Tacoma from September of ninety nine until January
of two thousand, and then again following his return from
Egypt in June of two thousand until his eventual discharge
and moved to Na Bay in July of two thousand one.
The time frame for when the body was most likely
(20:29):
placed on the property is during a period where Keyes
was admittedly very active in Washington State, and specifically during
a time where he was traveling to or through the
Seattle Tacoma metro area almost daily between January of two
thousand four and June of two thousand six. We have
(20:51):
receipts placing keys crossing Puget Sound by Ferry thirty five
different times, and financial records and cell phone pings in
the area. Well beyond that, and from interviews with friends
and family, we also know for much of this time
he was dating Denise, who lived in the Takoma area, So,
(21:12):
like I said, he knew the area quite well. And
then there's cell phone pings that place keys driving past
Lake Taps on October twenty first of two thousand and four.
Also of note is the property itself.
Speaker 7 (21:32):
I did check out this house for a while to
know it was empty, right, Well, no, I don't.
Speaker 8 (21:39):
I think I found it that day, maybe early in
the morning that day.
Speaker 9 (21:45):
I had left Dallas early.
Speaker 7 (21:47):
That morning, I don't remember what time, but I was
driving around to a lot of small towns that day.
Speaker 9 (21:53):
With a plan of finding a bank around.
Speaker 8 (21:56):
Yeah, yeah, I had them all. It seems like maybe
you were killing time before the bank's opened with that
house or was that.
Speaker 10 (22:06):
What you were doing?
Speaker 8 (22:07):
Yeah, no, I was. I mean I always look, I
always stop at empty houses, especially if they have for
sale signs and looking for Yeah, just to kill time
and check out an area.
Speaker 9 (22:24):
And and I don't know.
Speaker 8 (22:28):
In Texas, I was surprised, like the security is actually
pretty tight, Like there's a lot most people have gates
and locked gates.
Speaker 7 (22:36):
And I mean, so it took me. It took me
a while to defind that place. But yeah, I was
just killing time whatever.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
The Lake Taps trailer sits on half an acre of
land obscured almost entirely from the road like trees and overgrowth.
Archival street view photos show that only the roof of
the trailer could be seen from the road from two
thousand and four through twenty eighteen. Even the majority of
(23:13):
the driveway and surrounding property are not visible from the road,
and directly across the street from the property is a
tree lined back fence. And it should be noted that
trailer homes come up multiple times in interviews with Keys.
(23:34):
He discusses setting one on fire, he discusses breaking into
multiple trailers, and he talks about staying for a short
while in a trailer. In fact, real estate images show
that at some point between two thousand and three and
twenty eighteen, the Lake Taps trailer was broken into. But
(23:55):
what's most interesting about this apparent break in is the method.
The majority of the windows are missing on the trailer,
making it incredibly easy to slip in and out without
making a noise or any visible disturbances. Yet the rear
sliding glass door has been shattered. It also appears that
(24:18):
someone tried to remove the slider completely but couldn't due
to an obstruction, so it's fair to say that whoever
broke in was trying to move something very large into
the trailer, rather than simply just trying to gain access
to the already very accessible interior. The other standout is
(24:40):
the property's transactional history, specifically that it was consistently on
the market from late two thousand three until spring of
two thousand six. Keyes told investigators that he found the
Essex Junction farmhouse where he killed the couriers and abandoned
their bodies. By looking for a abandoned properties in real
(25:01):
estate magazines and websites, this property was abandoned and listed
during the three years the body was most likely to
have been placed there.
Speaker 5 (25:13):
And then that's the kicker is once I determined the
exact location, like this is clearly where that body was found,
and look up that location, you know, I found the
listening and it showed all of the the interior photos
of this property and something that I can't tell when
those were posted, but clearly, you know, that's something he's
admitted to doing. He would look online at all of
(25:35):
these for sale properties and you could very clearly tell
that this was an abandoned property and it you know,
I think it would have been just a really great
place for Keys to do his thing. Unfortunately.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
And then I guess going back to the reason we
stumbled upon this or started really looking into this, was
when we were looking into the case of Giovanna Tyler
because she disappeared. It's been a while since I've done
the map, but I think five miles from this trailer.
Speaker 5 (26:07):
I think it's about thirteen miles driving like the most
direct route, and Giovanna, you know, went missing two thousand
and four, which kind of lines up. I think it
would have been a freshly abandoned property at that time.
It definitely it makes it seem like this is somebody
that they should be comparing the DNA too, and I'm
(26:27):
almost positive CAZ has determined that they haven't.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Yeah, which is crazy.
Speaker 5 (26:32):
I think that's one of the big takeaways. One of
the big tragedies of this whole learning experience is that
you know, DNA is not being compared at the rate
it should to these bodies.
Speaker 10 (26:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
I think what was really disappointing for me and what
cast sent over is seeing there's bodies they're finding in
Washington that they're comparing to people who are missing in California,
but not to people who are missing in Washington State.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Absolutely, just to clarify, I guess like up on me
Miss and the Lake, the Lake taps Jane Doe, there's
been no comparisons that have been put into this, and
you know, part of that is is because this is
something that I've been looking into a little bit recently,
is that you know, depending on the bones and depending
(27:16):
on what we what we have two to actually get
DNA out of those remains, you know, I imagine that
it's probably costly. I imagine that it's not something that
is necessarily on everybody's radar. Is something to do in
terms of you know, law enforcement and you know, it
doesn't it doesn't really say even on the case file.
(27:37):
I mean it says it's a near complete or complete skeleton.
You know, even just take DNA out of the out
of the running for a second. If you if at
least if they had, you know, dental records or or something,
or some kind of medical records that they can compare,
you know, why aren't we doing that?
Speaker 1 (27:55):
And that's the hardest part about looking into these many,
many an idea bodies, these bodies who are people with
lives and stories and loved ones. Local law enforcement and
even the FBI don't seem to have the resources, time,
or bandwidth to do simple comparison testing, even in some
(28:17):
cases where it seems pretty clear cut who these people
could be. After French and Kaz shared their findings with me,
I started running these doughs against missing persons cases in
NAMIS and on the Charlie Project. And in all of
(28:38):
these highly curated doughcases, there were matches familiar to this
podcast and my investigation, names and faces I've come to
know quite well. When running the known and estimated data
on the lake taps, Jane doe through missing persons cases
out of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and California. There are twenty
(29:01):
one possible matches, and these matches include names you're familiar with,
Giovanna Tyler, Kimberley, Ann Forbes, Cynthia Jane Marle, Lynn o'honna,
and Tina may Costin, among many others. But there's something
(29:21):
else that stands out about the geography of Lake Taps
its proximity to a population dense metro area. Lake Taps
itself is fairly e Surban, but it abuts to Washington
State's largest metropolitan area, which is actually not Unlike the
locations of the Couriers and Samantha, Konix remains Essex Junction
(29:47):
is a fifteen minute drive from downtown Burlington. Mattanouska Lake
is a forty minute drive from downtown Anchorage. What this
location tells me is if it's Key, it's likely someone
who was abducted from nearby. As in the cases again
of the Couriers and Samantha, and as I went through
(30:10):
the twenty one missing persons matches, the majority were from
rural and remote areas some distance away. Why would Keys,
or anyone for that matter, drive a kidnapping victim or
even a body over one hundred miles through remote forest,
farmland or high desert into a population dense neighborhood. It
(30:36):
makes no sense, and it's high risk with even higher effort.
And if there's two things we've learned about Keys, it's
that he avoided high risk situations and yet was somehow
still an incredibly lazy criminal. It seems more likely that
the Lake Taps janeed Do was abducted from nearby and
(30:59):
taken to this area, which would be the closest low
population forested area to the I five corridor. And when
the search is narrowed using that assumption, there's only six
possible matches Danica Child's, Cynthia Devrize, Valerie Renee Delaney, Pamela
(31:20):
fay Cuick, Catherine Rose, and Giovanna Katie Tyler. Three of
those disappearances occurred shortly after the two thousand and six
sail of the trailer in Land. Cynthia Devrize, who disappeared
from Lynnwood, Washington on May thirtieth of two thousand and six.
(31:42):
Catherine Rose, who disappeared from Piollup, Washington on June twenty
sixth of two thousand and six, and Danica Diane Childs,
who disappeared from Federal Way, Washington on December twenty first
of two thousand and seven. Of the three remaining missing persons,
only one, Giovanna Tyler, lines up with Keys's known m
(32:08):
Valerie Delaney disappeared from the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle,
which is a high density, high traffic area. Other than that,
there's not a lot of information available on her disappearance.
Pamela Cwick was very likely killed by her estranged and
abusive husband, who is currently serving time for a different murder,
(32:30):
and of all twenty one missing persons cases that match this,
Jane Doe Giovanna Tyler's disappearance occurred the closest to where
the remains were recovered. Lake Taps, is just thirteen miles
from Giovanna's house and an almost straight line from door
to door. The second dough that inspired our deep dive
(32:54):
was one I came across while looking into the case
of Stephen Michael Mason.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
I would love to discuss because it's the one that
drives me the craziest.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
The l Law reserv oh.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Go on May tenth of twenty twelve, a dog dug
up an adult human leg bone from a thin layer
of silt on the lower el Law Column reservation, just
eight miles southwest from downtown Port Angelis. And let's start
with the general frustration, which is very little has been
(33:29):
made public or is known about who this leg belonged to.
According to available records, the sex is uncertain, the height
and weight of the person cannot be estimated, the estimated
age range is eighteen to ninety nine, and the year
of death cannot be estimated either. Although it has been
(33:52):
determined that the bone is not that of any ancient
tribal remains, the bone was initially thought to belong to
Karen Tucker, a woman who disappeared from the area in
nineteen ninety one. However, DNA analysis done in October of
twenty twelve ruled Tucker out. Unfortunately, as of this recording,
(34:17):
that is the only information about the DNA analysis that
has ever been made publicly available. But there are multiple
reasons beyond just proximity to consider keys when looking at
these human remains.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
Okay, so this el Wah one stands out for lots
of reasons. For one, they drained a reservoir and found it.
For two, this is right at the intersection where he
was harassing Molly while she was driving. El Wah comes
up a lot, and I remember just last week we
were talking about it came up in a weird place.
Speaker 5 (34:53):
That in the witness report from the barista that end,
she said that Keyes specifically mentioned that he did work
on the Elwah reservation.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
This leg was found not just along the shore of
the Elwah River, but in an area that had previously
been the deepest section of Lake Aldwell, a reservoir that
was drained as part of an ecosystem restoration project in
the spring of twenty twelve. Additionally, Keyes did work on
(35:33):
the lower Elwah Column reservation in at least two thousand
and four and two thousand and five, and possibly later
into two thousand and six. And this is the exact
location where Keys tried to run a woman named Molly
off the road late one night in winter spring of
two thousand and one two thousand and two. And while
(35:58):
we don't know a lot about this bone based on
where it was recovered in the history of Lake Caldwell,
which was created by the nineteen thirteen damning of the
Iwah River. It seems most likely that the bone arrived
by boat, and while the Lake Taps and Lake Caldwell
(36:25):
does are the remains that ignited our deep dive, they
are by no means the cases that most line up
with Keys. In addition to these two doughs, we investigated
seven other Washington does that could possibly be Key's victims,
Four who were found in national or state parks and forests,
(36:49):
one who was found following the demolition of another abandoned house,
one who was found adjacent to Fort Lewis, where Keys
was stationed in the army, and one who was found
near a boat ramp in the very town where Keys
bought his Bayliner boat. And when looking for missing persons
(37:12):
who could match these does, we encountered many disappearances that
look similar to Keyes cases, including more than a handful
of names familiar to us, like Wendy de Hoop, Robert Perry, Bissell,
Cynthia Jane, Marl Cooi, dang Vou, Kimberly, Anne Forbes, Juvanna Tyler,
(37:36):
and del Mar Wayne. Sample. When you experience loss, people
say you'll move through the five stages of grief, nile, anger, bargaining,
(38:03):
depression acceptance. What they don't tell you is that you'll
cycle through them all every day. Ranata Suzuki. It's sometimes
easy to buy into the key's mythology and get lost
in an orchestrated hopelessness that we might never find the
(38:27):
remains of his victims. But there are bodies out there,
recovered remains that just haven't been identified yet, And the
strange dichotomy of how we talk about those bodies isn't
lost on me. That body tends to refer to the
(38:49):
entirety of something, its completeness, a body of work, But
in the case of the human body, in the instant
of finding bodies, the body is missing the thing that
made it complete, its humanity, its person. When a person
(39:14):
becomes just a body, they are no longer a complete
body of work. And when someone is minimized down to
just the nameless body that remains, it becomes easier and
easier to overlook them, to overlook that body, to not
(39:35):
prioritize the closure, to not find its home. It's easy
to talk about how DNA testing costs too much or
takes too much time when that person is just a
body who currently belongs to no one, and that's the
(39:58):
other conflict in these bodies. How in the recovery of
a missing loved one, there is the simultaneous pain of
there being no more hope and the long awaited emancipation
from wondering and worrying and searching. Hope often dies with closure.
(40:19):
It's a tortuous liberation, but in many cases, short of
a miracle, it's the most we can hope for.
Speaker 11 (40:31):
A picture you in the sun, wondering what well.
Speaker 10 (40:39):
And falling down on your needs, asking for sympathy.
Speaker 4 (40:48):
And being caught in between all you wish for and
are you see and trying to find.
Speaker 11 (40:58):
Anything you can't feel that you can be.
Speaker 10 (41:05):
Man, Make God's love be with you, Oh, make God's
love be late here.
Speaker 12 (41:23):
I know I would apologize if I could see uh eyes,
Cause when you show me myself, you know I became
someone else.
Speaker 9 (41:40):
But I was caught in between all you wish for,
all and all you me.
Speaker 12 (41:48):
I'll picture your prize to sleep.
Speaker 9 (41:52):
I know you had comes you can't kill.
Speaker 13 (42:00):
May cots up the way here, Oh way.
Speaker 9 (42:08):
Make cots up? Yeah, make cots up three west year, may.
Speaker 14 (42:26):
Cots up bee west see five pock If I find
mi way, how't my swearing my five five p If
I find my way, I don't my twel I find
(42:49):
if five pick, if five five mile way, I'm twelve five.
Speaker 9 (43:05):
I don't know any more what it's for.
Speaker 11 (43:29):
I'm not even sure if there is anyone who is
in this sun, will you help me to understand, because
I've becout in between all.
Speaker 9 (43:45):
I wish for them, all I need. Oh, maybe I'm
not even show what it's for. And even more that maybe.
Speaker 13 (44:01):
May cots all three wa years, oh way, make cots
up three very year?
Speaker 9 (44:15):
Uh, make cots of three year oh is, make cots
off be wayar.
Speaker 14 (44:33):
Kiss. If I five mile way, I'm not twel fine
if five, if five five mile waiting, I'm a twel.
I find if five five five mile wait time at
(44:56):
twelve five five
Speaker 7 (45:01):
It
This is a studio both and production. Many of the
bravest never are known and get no praise, but that
does not lessen their beauty. Louisa may Alcott. Perhaps the
(00:37):
most compelling and significant aspect of the Israel Keys case
for me is that of the many victims who at
this point are missing persons or both missing persons and
John or Jane Dowes. The idea that someone you love
could be lost in the world, that you're left to
constantly wonder what happened to them? Are they hurt? Are
(01:01):
they alive? Did they disappear of their own volition? Did
they meet with foul play? Was there something I didn't know?
Was there something I did or something I could have done.
It's a mystery, yes, but a mystery of the most
heartbreaking kind. There are so many stories of people spending
(01:24):
their entire lives desperately trying to find their loved ones,
desperately trying to find answers, with no peace, with little reconciliation.
It's perhaps the slowest and cruelest torture Keys ever inflicted,
a torture that for some never ends. In Nemus alone,
(01:51):
there are seventy eight still unidentified bodies that have been
recovered since June of two thousand, when Keys returned from
his army deployment in Egypt. And that's in Washington State alone.
Seventy eight stories with no resolve, seventy eight families with
no resolve, seventy eight lives whose deaths can't even be
(02:16):
dignified with a name, And as we well know, NamUs
is by no means a complete catalog of loss. It's
merely an unfinished chapter in a book full of unfinished
chapters that never seems to end. I've reviewed almost every
(02:38):
single one of those seventy eight dos, but it was
two researchers for the podcast who were able to narrow
down those seventy eight doughs and using maps and data,
tell some pretty eerie and familiar stories. Stories will share
over the next two episodes. This is my friend Kaz,
(03:00):
who's a prosecutor and board member for the nonprofit organization
founded by Bruce Maitland, Private Investigations for the Missing. Kaz
really got the ball rolling in terms of taking a
look at does in Washington State and later in the Northeast.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
So where I started was, you know, everybody kind of
had like a niche that they fell into, and we
were all I felt like we were also like working
on this assumption that none of the people had been
found already, which made me think of NamUs and the
Unidentified Persons function on nea MISS. So I thought, if
we go through NamUs for a chunk of time that
(03:42):
would cover the keys timeline that everybody else has been
working on, maybe we can see if any of those
John or Jane does would match up to the to
the to the people that we were, the victims potential
victims that we were looking at, and find out if
they had already been compared and ruled out or if
they hadn't been compared at all. And you know, judging
by you know, time, location, the keys kind of like
(04:05):
you know touchstones, like things that we've been that we've
been seeing come up over and over again, like boat,
boat launches, boat ramps, outhouses, coffee shops, you know, wooded areas,
et cetera, cemeteries. You see, if any of those things
were in the areas of these unidentified persons that have
aready been found. So I started with Washington because we
(04:25):
know that he spent a lot of time in Washington
and a lot of the murders we think took place
in Washington. So I went in. I punched in as
my search criteria John and Jane does between January of
nineteen ninety seven to the present, and it returned ninety
(04:46):
three unidentified people.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
And that's all of Washington State.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
All of Washington State.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
As I'm looking at this list, it was obvious to
me that there was going to be some that were
not going to fit. For instance, more urban areas like say,
parts of Seattle. It's not going to fit with you know,
what we know about keys. You know, also the type
of individual it was in Washington. It was in some
other states too that I looked at. There were you know, deceased,
(05:15):
like very young infants, and that's not going to fit
with what we're looking for. So what I ended up
looking for in terms of criteria was, you know, it
was basically, you know, my opinions, first impressions and thoughts,
looking at what name is the information that name has
provided us, and then I would kind of plug those dates, times, places,
(05:39):
and criteria into Google to see if I can come
up with any news stories or anything that could give
me some extra information about these particular unidentified persons, and
for a lot of them, there wasn't a lot of
information at all. Sometimes I would get just a website's
page or you know, something something like that. For some
I got a lot of information. There was some news reports,
(06:02):
especially remains that were found closer in time to us. Now,
a couple of things that I kept in mind. You know,
just because remains were found in a certain year doesn't
mean that they were put there in that year. I
looked at, you know, do we have skeletal remains versus
do we have a full intact body or was there
(06:22):
some level of decomposition or putrification that would lean towards
a lend towards a body having been placed there closer
in time then, you know, as opposed to skeleton remains,
which could be in an environment in Washington anywhere. And
I'm just ballparking this because I'm not a scientist anywhere
from you know, a year to decades, you know. And
(06:44):
I also looked at, you know, the state of the body.
Do we have a skull, do we have a femur,
or do we have a full and fully intact skeleton.
And then also you know, just the locations ruling out
you know, again bodies that were found, means that were
found in more urban or suburban areas in the ocean,
in bodies of water or near bodies of water that
(07:06):
might not lend itself to keys being there. Like, we
kind of have a good idea, I think at this
point of what his type of place is. And it
was easy then, as I was going through the name
is chart to be able to you know, say like, Okay,
(07:26):
this is a very suburban area. This is not going
to be a place where he's gonna where he would
have put somebody. So we're gonna rull that one out.
The other thing too that I found, you know, not
just going through Washington State, but through the other states,
looking at you know, where there were some things where
you know, places change after a while. Sometimes there could
be excavation, there could be construction, and a lot of
(07:49):
these a lot of these remains are found when people
were doing some kind of work or like tearing down
an old abandoned house or ex stavating for a swimming
pool or something like that, and that's when these remains
were being found. So, you know, I started to think too,
that went into my mind as you know, something I
(08:09):
was computing, you know, what was this area like then?
What could it have been like before? So that's where
French and the and the Google Maps and the Google
Earth came in because you know, he was able to
take you know, this data and you know, see if
you can find you know the history of these these places,
(08:29):
like the photohistory of these places to see like, Okay,
so there's something built here, but what was it like
in twenty twelve, or what was it like in two
thousand and nine, or what was it like in nineteen
ninety nine?
Speaker 1 (08:42):
And when Kaz finished combing through those dough files, she
sent them along to French, who created some pretty compelling
maps using archival data, property records, and urban development history.
Speaker 5 (08:57):
When Caz approached me was super skeptical, and I think
there's a lot of keys mythology, you know, we because
we don't have a lot of bodies, you know, to
look at, we tend to think that he was an
expert at getting rid of them, even though he admitted
one was found and it was kind of accidental. So
I wanted to come in with like an open mind.
(09:19):
So I went through and I looked back through all
of the interviews and kind of thought about what we
know about keys and body disposal. You know, we've got
Deborah Feldman the Story of two thousand and nine, where
you know, there's just remains we don't know any more
than that somewhere near a river, maybe buried, maybe submerged,
I don't know much. And then you know, we got
(09:42):
the couriers left in the basement of an abandoned building
to decompose, and he was going to return later. And
then we've got Samantha Konig, who was obviously dismembered after
the fact after a while and then put into a lake.
And then we have his notes. He's talking about, you know,
putting people in legs, the couple that he buried, that
(10:04):
kind of thing. But I think the thing that stood
out the most of me was him talking about Eagle River.
That little cliff I think it's seven twelve is super
interesting because he talks about his plan and how he
developed a plan to kill somebody and use a pre
dug ditch near that berm to bury them and then
(10:25):
cover them with sheet metal that was found nearby, which
kind of doesn't fit with a lot of the things
that we think about keys, because you know, he's not
taking them to a second location, he's killing them there,
or you know, up the road near the nature center
where there's an outhouse. But the fact that he was
just gonna, you know, I think, bury them, probably a
shallow grave, considering where he was near the road, and
(10:49):
then cover them with metal and then go on his way.
That made me believe that perhaps, you know, what would
have happened to that body had he actually succeeded and
killed someone and carried that out, how easy would it
have been for wildlife to get to it. And then
looking through Kaz's list, so many of these, you know,
are fragments out in the woods that wildlife was disturbed,
(11:13):
And that starts to make me think that it's very
possible that some of these bodies have been dug up
through a natural process, and that maybe some of the
remains have been discovered. So I went in with an
open mind in that way, and I just went through
and I started looking, you know, I looked at her
list and she had a great color coordination. And I
(11:33):
went through and I started reading all the news articles
I could about them and trying to find the exact location.
Because one of the things I noticed with NamUs is
that they'll give you a coordinates, but I'm guessing depending
on who enters it into the database, the coordinates are
not always accurate. Once I found that location, I would
plot it into this Google map, which has everything else
(11:54):
that we know about Keys put into it, and just
kind of look and see, like how it relates to
everything else, because you know, I'm such a visual person.
The spreadsheet tells a lot of good information, but it
doesn't tell the story the same way that I think
looking at you know, being able to see his movements
and like, oh, he stayed at a hotel over here,
(12:16):
Well when did he stay there? And how could that
possibly relate to a body being found in this area?
Is that support it at all? And once I found that,
once I determined that all out, I would also say like, okay, well,
if we know Keys was active during this timeframe, what
do the maps look like now compared to when this
(12:37):
body might have been placed there? I think the Lake
Taps is one of the best examples of that.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
The Lake Taps dough is one of two dough cases
that sparked our deep dive into unidentified remains, and it's
a case that using archival map data, French was able
to pinpoint a fair clear timeline for Lake Taps is
a small forested town just ten miles east of Tacoma, Washington,
(13:10):
which was built around yes Lake Taps, and this female
Dough came up in our research into the Giovanna Tyler
case as a reminder, Giovanna Tyler disappeared from her home
in Tacoma on March twenty eighth of two thousand and four,
and shortly before her disappearance, she and Israel Keys ended
(13:32):
up in the Nia Bay Police station on the same night.
But it's not so much the proximity of Tyler's home
to Lake Taps that led us to investigate this dough,
but it's many, many haunting similarities to what we know
about Israel Keys and what Israel Keys told the FBI
about his crimes.
Speaker 6 (13:54):
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I take my problems to the group chat, the guy
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I also take my problems to my Better Help therapist. Jane. Friends,
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dot com slash tcb. That's Better Help h e LP
dot com slash tcb. The lake taps Jane Doe was
(15:26):
discovered on August twenty eighth of twenty nineteen, during the
clean up and prep for sale of an abandoned property
two blocks from the lake. The skeletal remains, later determined
to be a woman between the ages of eighteen and fifty,
approximately sixty one to sixty seven inches tall, were found
(15:46):
in a recycling bin which had been almost completely swallowed
by overgrowth. A construction crew was on site to demolish
and clear out a run down and long ignored trailer
home on the property.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
I went through and I was like, okay, so they
found a you know, they were talking. There was a
construction crew that was getting rid of a trailer. They
found a recycling bin and it was too heavy to move,
and so they dumped it out and bones came out,
and that's how the body was discovered. So you go
up and you're looking around where they kind of describe it,
(16:21):
and you're clearly you know, there's a trailer right here
that's overgrown and overrun, there's a sale for sale sign,
there's an abandoned trailer, and there's a blue recycling bin,
which is super creepy to actually see on the map.
So I want to be able to go through and
see this was like I don't know when this photo
was taken necessarily because this version of Google Maps doesn't
(16:43):
show that. But this version does Google Earth pro. So
looking at Google earth pro here, I can go back
in time and see overhead when I want to know
when this trailer was actually abandoned, you know, because that
would if it was only abandoned within the last couple
of years, that would put a different you know, that
would rule keys out. So if we go back as
(17:04):
far as we can, there's not a whole lot. But
we keep going forward and we see it looks pretty
well occupied June two thousand and two, but by March
two thousand and five, it's starting to look less occupied
and less occupied. You can see this is the trailer.
You can see those the bushes are growing pretty well
(17:26):
next to the trailer where the recycling bin was found.
And then certainly by two thousand and nine, this is
an abandoned property. So taking that into consideration, we go
just to regular old Google Earth here or Google Maps
on your browser. If we can look at the street view,
we can go back in time at certain points. If
(17:49):
you're lucky, and we were lucky enough that we can
go back to two thousand and eight, and see, yeah,
this was not occupied in two thousand and eight. There's
clearly a first sale sign. And that second where the
recycling bin was found is overgrown. So my guess whoever
put that body there stuffed it in the recycling bin
and just tucked it into these It looks like BlackBerry
(18:10):
brambles and it wasn't touched for you know, close to
over a decade, I would say. And if we go
up to twenty twelve, you can see those brambles are thick.
You know, you lived in the Northwest, You're not going
to go through those brambles very easily at all, very thorny,
difficult to get into. By twenty fifteen, it's almost completely
(18:35):
overtaken the trailer and then luckily enough, about a month
before they actually discovered the body. That's why the recycling
bin is exposed, is because they were clearing this to
get ready to demolish the property. And so this is
July twenty nineteen, and this body was discovered in August
(18:55):
twenty nineteen. August twenty eight, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
After looking into property records, deed transfers, and property tax history,
we were able to determine that the body was most
likely placed on the property between two thousand four and
two thousand eight. The property went on the market in
late two thousand three, where it sat abandoned and for
sale for three years. In March of two thousand and six,
(19:25):
it was purchased, but remained abandoned and transferred hands through
quick claim sales multiple times until the twenty nineteen demolition.
And when analyzing both the growth of those brambles and
the presence of for sale signs, the likely timeline of
the Jane Do can be narrowed down to late two
(19:46):
thousand three to early two thousand and six, and Keys
fits into this picture in many notable ways. Let's start
with the timeline and geography this this is an area
that Keyes was incredibly familiar with. Lake Taps is less
than thirty miles from where he was stationed at Fort
(20:09):
Lewis and Tacoma from September of ninety nine until January
of two thousand, and then again following his return from
Egypt in June of two thousand until his eventual discharge
and moved to Na Bay in July of two thousand one.
The time frame for when the body was most likely
(20:29):
placed on the property is during a period where Keyes
was admittedly very active in Washington State, and specifically during
a time where he was traveling to or through the
Seattle Tacoma metro area almost daily between January of two
thousand four and June of two thousand six. We have
(20:51):
receipts placing keys crossing Puget Sound by Ferry thirty five
different times, and financial records and cell phone pings in
the area. Well beyond that, and from interviews with friends
and family, we also know for much of this time
he was dating Denise, who lived in the Takoma area, So,
(21:12):
like I said, he knew the area quite well. And
then there's cell phone pings that place keys driving past
Lake Taps on October twenty first of two thousand and four.
Also of note is the property itself.
Speaker 7 (21:32):
I did check out this house for a while to
know it was empty, right, Well, no, I don't.
Speaker 8 (21:39):
I think I found it that day, maybe early in
the morning that day.
Speaker 9 (21:45):
I had left Dallas early.
Speaker 7 (21:47):
That morning, I don't remember what time, but I was
driving around to a lot of small towns that day.
Speaker 9 (21:53):
With a plan of finding a bank around.
Speaker 8 (21:56):
Yeah, yeah, I had them all. It seems like maybe
you were killing time before the bank's opened with that
house or was that.
Speaker 10 (22:06):
What you were doing?
Speaker 8 (22:07):
Yeah, no, I was. I mean I always look, I
always stop at empty houses, especially if they have for
sale signs and looking for Yeah, just to kill time
and check out an area.
Speaker 9 (22:24):
And and I don't know.
Speaker 8 (22:28):
In Texas, I was surprised, like the security is actually
pretty tight, Like there's a lot most people have gates
and locked gates.
Speaker 7 (22:36):
And I mean, so it took me. It took me
a while to defind that place. But yeah, I was
just killing time whatever.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
The Lake Taps trailer sits on half an acre of
land obscured almost entirely from the road like trees and overgrowth.
Archival street view photos show that only the roof of
the trailer could be seen from the road from two
thousand and four through twenty eighteen. Even the majority of
(23:13):
the driveway and surrounding property are not visible from the road,
and directly across the street from the property is a
tree lined back fence. And it should be noted that
trailer homes come up multiple times in interviews with Keys.
(23:34):
He discusses setting one on fire, he discusses breaking into
multiple trailers, and he talks about staying for a short
while in a trailer. In fact, real estate images show
that at some point between two thousand and three and
twenty eighteen, the Lake Taps trailer was broken into. But
(23:55):
what's most interesting about this apparent break in is the method.
The majority of the windows are missing on the trailer,
making it incredibly easy to slip in and out without
making a noise or any visible disturbances. Yet the rear
sliding glass door has been shattered. It also appears that
(24:18):
someone tried to remove the slider completely but couldn't due
to an obstruction, so it's fair to say that whoever
broke in was trying to move something very large into
the trailer, rather than simply just trying to gain access
to the already very accessible interior. The other standout is
(24:40):
the property's transactional history, specifically that it was consistently on
the market from late two thousand three until spring of
two thousand six. Keyes told investigators that he found the
Essex Junction farmhouse where he killed the couriers and abandoned
their bodies. By looking for a abandoned properties in real
(25:01):
estate magazines and websites, this property was abandoned and listed
during the three years the body was most likely to
have been placed there.
Speaker 5 (25:13):
And then that's the kicker is once I determined the
exact location, like this is clearly where that body was found,
and look up that location, you know, I found the
listening and it showed all of the the interior photos
of this property and something that I can't tell when
those were posted, but clearly, you know, that's something he's
admitted to doing. He would look online at all of
(25:35):
these for sale properties and you could very clearly tell
that this was an abandoned property and it you know,
I think it would have been just a really great
place for Keys to do his thing. Unfortunately.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
And then I guess going back to the reason we
stumbled upon this or started really looking into this, was
when we were looking into the case of Giovanna Tyler
because she disappeared. It's been a while since I've done
the map, but I think five miles from this trailer.
Speaker 5 (26:07):
I think it's about thirteen miles driving like the most
direct route, and Giovanna, you know, went missing two thousand
and four, which kind of lines up. I think it
would have been a freshly abandoned property at that time.
It definitely it makes it seem like this is somebody
that they should be comparing the DNA too, and I'm
(26:27):
almost positive CAZ has determined that they haven't.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Yeah, which is crazy.
Speaker 5 (26:32):
I think that's one of the big takeaways. One of
the big tragedies of this whole learning experience is that
you know, DNA is not being compared at the rate
it should to these bodies.
Speaker 10 (26:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
I think what was really disappointing for me and what
cast sent over is seeing there's bodies they're finding in
Washington that they're comparing to people who are missing in California,
but not to people who are missing in Washington State.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Absolutely, just to clarify, I guess like up on me
Miss and the Lake, the Lake taps Jane Doe, there's
been no comparisons that have been put into this, and
you know, part of that is is because this is
something that I've been looking into a little bit recently,
is that you know, depending on the bones and depending
(27:16):
on what we what we have two to actually get
DNA out of those remains, you know, I imagine that
it's probably costly. I imagine that it's not something that
is necessarily on everybody's radar. Is something to do in
terms of you know, law enforcement and you know, it
doesn't it doesn't really say even on the case file.
(27:37):
I mean it says it's a near complete or complete skeleton.
You know, even just take DNA out of the out
of the running for a second. If you if at
least if they had, you know, dental records or or something,
or some kind of medical records that they can compare,
you know, why aren't we doing that?
Speaker 1 (27:55):
And that's the hardest part about looking into these many,
many an idea bodies, these bodies who are people with
lives and stories and loved ones. Local law enforcement and
even the FBI don't seem to have the resources, time,
or bandwidth to do simple comparison testing, even in some
(28:17):
cases where it seems pretty clear cut who these people
could be. After French and Kaz shared their findings with me,
I started running these doughs against missing persons cases in
NAMIS and on the Charlie Project. And in all of
(28:38):
these highly curated doughcases, there were matches familiar to this
podcast and my investigation, names and faces I've come to
know quite well. When running the known and estimated data
on the lake taps, Jane doe through missing persons cases
out of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and California. There are twenty
(29:01):
one possible matches, and these matches include names you're familiar with,
Giovanna Tyler, Kimberley, Ann Forbes, Cynthia Jane Marle, Lynn o'honna,
and Tina may Costin, among many others. But there's something
(29:21):
else that stands out about the geography of Lake Taps
its proximity to a population dense metro area. Lake Taps
itself is fairly e Surban, but it abuts to Washington
State's largest metropolitan area, which is actually not Unlike the
locations of the Couriers and Samantha, Konix remains Essex Junction
(29:47):
is a fifteen minute drive from downtown Burlington. Mattanouska Lake
is a forty minute drive from downtown Anchorage. What this
location tells me is if it's Key, it's likely someone
who was abducted from nearby. As in the cases again
of the Couriers and Samantha, and as I went through
(30:10):
the twenty one missing persons matches, the majority were from
rural and remote areas some distance away. Why would Keys,
or anyone for that matter, drive a kidnapping victim or
even a body over one hundred miles through remote forest,
farmland or high desert into a population dense neighborhood. It
(30:36):
makes no sense, and it's high risk with even higher effort.
And if there's two things we've learned about Keys, it's
that he avoided high risk situations and yet was somehow
still an incredibly lazy criminal. It seems more likely that
the Lake Taps janeed Do was abducted from nearby and
(30:59):
taken to this area, which would be the closest low
population forested area to the I five corridor. And when
the search is narrowed using that assumption, there's only six
possible matches Danica Child's, Cynthia Devrize, Valerie Renee Delaney, Pamela
(31:20):
fay Cuick, Catherine Rose, and Giovanna Katie Tyler. Three of
those disappearances occurred shortly after the two thousand and six
sail of the trailer in Land. Cynthia Devrize, who disappeared
from Lynnwood, Washington on May thirtieth of two thousand and six.
(31:42):
Catherine Rose, who disappeared from Piollup, Washington on June twenty
sixth of two thousand and six, and Danica Diane Childs,
who disappeared from Federal Way, Washington on December twenty first
of two thousand and seven. Of the three remaining missing persons,
only one, Giovanna Tyler, lines up with Keys's known m
(32:08):
Valerie Delaney disappeared from the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle,
which is a high density, high traffic area. Other than that,
there's not a lot of information available on her disappearance.
Pamela Cwick was very likely killed by her estranged and
abusive husband, who is currently serving time for a different murder,
(32:30):
and of all twenty one missing persons cases that match this,
Jane Doe Giovanna Tyler's disappearance occurred the closest to where
the remains were recovered. Lake Taps, is just thirteen miles
from Giovanna's house and an almost straight line from door
to door. The second dough that inspired our deep dive
(32:54):
was one I came across while looking into the case
of Stephen Michael Mason.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
I would love to discuss because it's the one that
drives me the craziest.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
The l Law reserv oh.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Go on May tenth of twenty twelve, a dog dug
up an adult human leg bone from a thin layer
of silt on the lower el Law Column reservation, just
eight miles southwest from downtown Port Angelis. And let's start
with the general frustration, which is very little has been
(33:29):
made public or is known about who this leg belonged to.
According to available records, the sex is uncertain, the height
and weight of the person cannot be estimated, the estimated
age range is eighteen to ninety nine, and the year
of death cannot be estimated either. Although it has been
(33:52):
determined that the bone is not that of any ancient
tribal remains, the bone was initially thought to belong to
Karen Tucker, a woman who disappeared from the area in
nineteen ninety one. However, DNA analysis done in October of
twenty twelve ruled Tucker out. Unfortunately, as of this recording,
(34:17):
that is the only information about the DNA analysis that
has ever been made publicly available. But there are multiple
reasons beyond just proximity to consider keys when looking at
these human remains.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
Okay, so this el Wah one stands out for lots
of reasons. For one, they drained a reservoir and found it.
For two, this is right at the intersection where he
was harassing Molly while she was driving. El Wah comes
up a lot, and I remember just last week we
were talking about it came up in a weird place.
Speaker 5 (34:53):
That in the witness report from the barista that end,
she said that Keyes specifically mentioned that he did work
on the Elwah reservation.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
This leg was found not just along the shore of
the Elwah River, but in an area that had previously
been the deepest section of Lake Aldwell, a reservoir that
was drained as part of an ecosystem restoration project in
the spring of twenty twelve. Additionally, Keyes did work on
(35:33):
the lower Elwah Column reservation in at least two thousand
and four and two thousand and five, and possibly later
into two thousand and six. And this is the exact
location where Keys tried to run a woman named Molly
off the road late one night in winter spring of
two thousand and one two thousand and two. And while
(35:58):
we don't know a lot about this bone based on
where it was recovered in the history of Lake Caldwell,
which was created by the nineteen thirteen damning of the
Iwah River. It seems most likely that the bone arrived
by boat, and while the Lake Taps and Lake Caldwell
(36:25):
does are the remains that ignited our deep dive, they
are by no means the cases that most line up
with Keys. In addition to these two doughs, we investigated
seven other Washington does that could possibly be Key's victims,
Four who were found in national or state parks and forests,
(36:49):
one who was found following the demolition of another abandoned house,
one who was found adjacent to Fort Lewis, where Keys
was stationed in the army, and one who was found
near a boat ramp in the very town where Keys
bought his Bayliner boat. And when looking for missing persons
(37:12):
who could match these does, we encountered many disappearances that
look similar to Keyes cases, including more than a handful
of names familiar to us, like Wendy de Hoop, Robert Perry, Bissell,
Cynthia Jane, Marl Cooi, dang Vou, Kimberly, Anne Forbes, Juvanna Tyler,
(37:36):
and del Mar Wayne. Sample. When you experience loss, people
say you'll move through the five stages of grief, nile, anger, bargaining,
(38:03):
depression acceptance. What they don't tell you is that you'll
cycle through them all every day. Ranata Suzuki. It's sometimes
easy to buy into the key's mythology and get lost
in an orchestrated hopelessness that we might never find the
(38:27):
remains of his victims. But there are bodies out there,
recovered remains that just haven't been identified yet, And the
strange dichotomy of how we talk about those bodies isn't
lost on me. That body tends to refer to the
(38:49):
entirety of something, its completeness, a body of work, But
in the case of the human body, in the instant
of finding bodies, the body is missing the thing that
made it complete, its humanity, its person. When a person
(39:14):
becomes just a body, they are no longer a complete
body of work. And when someone is minimized down to
just the nameless body that remains, it becomes easier and
easier to overlook them, to overlook that body, to not
(39:35):
prioritize the closure, to not find its home. It's easy
to talk about how DNA testing costs too much or
takes too much time when that person is just a
body who currently belongs to no one, and that's the
(39:58):
other conflict in these bodies. How in the recovery of
a missing loved one, there is the simultaneous pain of
there being no more hope and the long awaited emancipation
from wondering and worrying and searching. Hope often dies with closure.
(40:19):
It's a tortuous liberation, but in many cases, short of
a miracle, it's the most we can hope for.
Speaker 11 (40:31):
A picture you in the sun, wondering what well.
Speaker 10 (40:39):
And falling down on your needs, asking for sympathy.
Speaker 4 (40:48):
And being caught in between all you wish for and
are you see and trying to find.
Speaker 11 (40:58):
Anything you can't feel that you can be.
Speaker 10 (41:05):
Man, Make God's love be with you, Oh, make God's
love be late here.
Speaker 12 (41:23):
I know I would apologize if I could see uh eyes,
Cause when you show me myself, you know I became
someone else.
Speaker 9 (41:40):
But I was caught in between all you wish for,
all and all you me.
Speaker 12 (41:48):
I'll picture your prize to sleep.
Speaker 9 (41:52):
I know you had comes you can't kill.
Speaker 13 (42:00):
May cots up the way here, Oh way.
Speaker 9 (42:08):
Make cots up? Yeah, make cots up three west year, may.
Speaker 14 (42:26):
Cots up bee west see five pock If I find
mi way, how't my swearing my five five p If
I find my way, I don't my twel I find
(42:49):
if five pick, if five five mile way, I'm twelve five.
Speaker 9 (43:05):
I don't know any more what it's for.
Speaker 11 (43:29):
I'm not even sure if there is anyone who is
in this sun, will you help me to understand, because
I've becout in between all.
Speaker 9 (43:45):
I wish for them, all I need. Oh, maybe I'm
not even show what it's for. And even more that maybe.
Speaker 13 (44:01):
May cots all three wa years, oh way, make cots
up three very year?
Speaker 9 (44:15):
Uh, make cots of three year oh is, make cots
off be wayar.
Speaker 14 (44:33):
Kiss. If I five mile way, I'm not twel fine
if five, if five five mile waiting, I'm a twel.
I find if five five five mile wait time at
(44:56):
twelve five five
Speaker 7 (45:01):
It
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