"A Remarkable Sort of a Pathway": WPTZ Reports the FBI's Count of 11 Israel Keyes Victims, 2013
A WPTZ NBC5 report from August 2013, as the FBI raised its count of Israel Keyes's victims to 11 and released a timeline of his movements, with comment from a forensic psychologist. Keyes is not heard.
- Subject
- Israel Keyes
- Recorded
- about 2013
- Runtime
- 2:50
Content warning: Concerns abductions and murders, including those of a Vermont couple; no graphic detail.
The Report
This is a 2-minute-50-second news report by WPTZ NBC5, the NBC station serving Burlington, Vermont, posted on the station's own channel on August 14, 2013. An anchor introduces the FBI's new count of 11 killings linked to Israel Keyes and its newly released timeline; a WPTZ reporter summarizes the timeline and interviews a forensic psychologist, named in the report as Dr. Thomas Powell. Keyes himself is not heard, and no recordings of his FBI interviews are included.
Historical Context
Israel Keyes was arrested in Lufkin, Texas, on March 13, 2012, for the abduction and murder of Samantha Koenig in Anchorage. In custody he confessed to the murders of Bill and Lorraine Currier, who disappeared from their home in Essex, Vermont, in June 2011, and spoke of other killings. He died by suicide in the Anchorage Correctional Complex on December 2, 2012, before trial. The Currier case and his ties to upstate New York made the story a local one for WPTZ.
Circumstances
On August 12, 2013, the FBI said it believed Keyes had killed 11 people, up from the eight he was reported to have admitted. On August 13 it released an interactive map, a timeline of his movements and more than six hours of his interview recordings, asking the public for help in identifying further victims.
What the Report Covers
The anchor reports the new count and the timeline. The reporter says the FBI believed Keyes was involved in "nearly a dozen murders in 10 separate states" (the station's figure), and that the timeline, spanning 1997 to his arrest in 2012, added nothing new on the Curriers. It notes trips to Montreal, his confession to abducting and killing a woman from the East Coast and burying her in upstate New York in April 2009 (not, investigators believed, on his property in Constable), and the robbery of a bank in Tupper Lake the next day. Dr. Powell calls Keyes "a textbook psychopath" and says he was "very specific about some of the details he gave and very vague about others," taking to the grave "many of the things that they would love to know."
What Makes the Recording Significant
The report records how the FBI's unusual public appeal, made eight months after Keyes's death, was presented in the market of his Vermont victims and near the upstate New York sites named in the timeline.
Archival Importance
A short local report from WPTZ's own channel.
Important Caveats
Keyes does not speak in this video. The psychologist's name is heard once in a single machine source; a Vermont forensic psychologist named Thomas Powell (founding partner of Vermont Forensic Assessment and for 18 years director of clinical services for the Vermont Department of Corrections, per Vermont Public, 2019) exists, which supports the spelling, but the match rests on the name alone and no name strap appears in the frames checked; the anchor and reporter are not named. "10 separate states" is the station's figure and was not found in the sources checked; page copy should say the FBI linked 11 killings to him, eight admitted and three inferred from his statements, in several states. "While in prison in Alaska" is loose: Keyes died in a cell at the Anchorage Correctional Complex, a jail where he was held before trial. The psychologist's comments are opinion. No captions exist, so the transcript rests on Whisper alone.
Anchor: Tonight, the FBI now believes confessed serial killer Israel Keyes took 11 lives. That's up from their previous count of eight. The FBI is also releasing a new, detailed, multi-year timeline regarding the whereabouts and dealings of Keyes. The 34-year-old committed suicide while in prison in Alaska last year, but before he died, he confessed to killing Bill and Lorraine Currier of Essex, Vermont, and several others.
Reporter: Tonight, the FBI believes Keyes was involved in nearly a dozen murders in 10 separate states and are working with few precious details to find closure for his victims.
Dr. Thomas Powell: Really, this is a remarkable sort of a pathway that he's left for investigators.
Reporter: Forensic psychologist Dr. Thomas Powell believes the latest set of clues provided by the FBI are evidence investigators are finally beginning to piece together who Israel Keyes really was.
Dr. Thomas Powell: He's a textbook psychopath, really.
Reporter: The details span more than a decade, from 1997 through his arrest in 2012. But the timeline reveals no new details about Essex couple Bill and Lorraine Currier, whom Keyes abducted from their home in June of 2011 and killed at an abandoned farmhouse nearby. Investigators do say Keyes made several trips to Montreal, where he spent time with prostitutes. They also say Keyes confessed to abducting and killing a woman from the East Coast and burying the body in upstate New York in April of 2009, but they do not believe it was at his property in Constable. And they say the very next day, Keyes robbed Community Bank in Tupper Lake. He waited at a park nearby and watched as authorities rushed in.
Dr. Thomas Powell: This guy clearly is in a league of his own in terms of what was motivating him and how he was actually able to pull off, you know, a decade of cross-country homicides, abductions, bank robberies, and other assorted felonies that really left a trail of misery in his wake.
Reporter: Dr. Powell believes Keyes was manipulative and controlling, and carefully calculated how he released information.
Dr. Thomas Powell: He was very specific about some of the details he gave and very vague about others, leading me to believe that he was certainly holding a lot of cards up against his chest at the time he died.
Reporter: Keeping his grasp on control over authorities, the investigation and his victims, even from the grave.
Dr. Thomas Powell: One of the tragedies that go along with a case like this and a guy like this is that he takes to the grave many of the things that they would love to know. And in a way, it's the ultimate act of cruelty.
Reporter: Authorities have released several other dates and locations of Keyes's whereabouts and dealings over the years. We've put all of that information on our website. They're hoping someone will look at it and help them solve some of the mystery around Keyes's victims. ---