News

Texas Trooper Stops Israel Keyes in Lufkin After ATM Withdrawals Tied to Missing Anchorage Barista Samantha Koenig

Investigators tracked withdrawals on an account linked to Koenig across four states. Keyes later confessed to her murder and to other killings.

Published

Illustration of a patrol car with flashing lights stopped behind a white car on a wet highway at night, a trooper walking up. Not an actual scene from the case.

Samantha Koenig, 18, was abducted from an Anchorage coffee stand on February 1, 2012. On March 13, police in Lufkin, Texas, arrested Israel Keyes after withdrawals were made with a card tied to her account.

After Koenig disappeared, her father deposited reward money donated by the community into the account connected to the card, so investigators could track any withdrawals. Withdrawals were made in Anchorage and then in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, and the FBI and the Texas Rangers determined that the person making them was driving a white Ford Focus. Texas Highway Patrol Cpl. Bryan Henry pulled over a matching car, and Keyes was driving. Koenig's cell phone was found in the car and the card in Keyes's wallet, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, the FBI and the Anchorage Police Department. He was arrested in the parking lot of a Cotton Patch restaurant in Lufkin.

Officials later said Keyes had killed Koenig the night he abducted her and, after returning from a cruise, sent a $30,000 ransom demand with a photo staged to make her appear alive. After his arrest he confessed to her murder and to killing Bill and Lorraine Currier of Vermont in 2011, and the FBI said it believed he had 11 victims in all, based mainly on what he told investigators. Keyes died by suicide in his Anchorage jail cell on December 2, 2012, before he could be tried.

Sources

Related News

In the Archive