Confessed killer wasn’t finished, FBI reveals

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – A confessed Alaska serial killer who targeted people across the country told authorities he planned to strike again in the state if he had gotten away with the murder of an 18-year-old Anchorage barista, the FBI said Thursday.

“He wasn’t going to stop,” FBI spokesman Eric Gonzalez said.

Keyes, 34, prepared a body disposal cache in summer 2011 for a future target, Gonzalez said. Murder kits also have been recovered in New York and Vermont.

In Alaska, authorities recovered the cache containing a shovel and two large bottles of Drano from Eagle River north of Anchorage. Gonzalez said the drain de-clogger would speed up decomposition of a body.

Keyes told authorities he killed barista Samantha Koenig and at least seven others over the past decade, including Bill and Lorraine Currier, of Essex, Vt., in June 2011. The couple’s bodies have not been found.

Keyes was found dead Sunday in his Anchorage jail cell after he killed himself by slitting a wrist and strangling himself with a rolled-up sheet.

Keyes dismembered Koenig’s body and put it in a frozen lake north of Anchorage after drilling a hole in the ice with a chain saw, according to authorities.

He was arrested in Lufkin, Texas, in March after using Koenig’s stolen debit card at ATMs there and in Alaska, Arizona and New Mexico. He was facing a March 2013 trial in Koenig’s death.

Koenig’s remains were found in April after Keyes told authorities where to look.

Keyes didn’t identify any other victims or say where the remains were, other than to say four were killed in Washington state and one was killed on the East Coast, with disposal of that body in New York.

The FBI released new details about the discovery of weapons and other items connected to Keyes at an upstate New York reservoir.

FBI spokesman Paul Holstein said an April 18 search in the Adirondacks town of Parishville turned up a bucket containing a silencer, .22-caliber Ruger frame, ammunition and a flashlight, all linked to Keyes. Divers on April 24 found the bolt and barrel of a gun used during the killings of the Curriers. Divers found a gun owned by the Curriers on June 5. Keyes owned property in the Adirondacks.

Gonzalez confirmed that Keyes buried a murder kit in the woods on the banks of the Winooski River in spring 2009 in Vermont, then dug up the cache two years later and used the weapons in the Vermont killings.

Anchorage police said Keyes also targeted others in Alaska before killing Koenig but always backed off before acting.

In May 2011, he focused on a couple at Point Woronzof, a popular park area along the Anchorage shorefront.

Lt. Anthony Henry, commander of the homicide unit, said Keyes backed off at the last minute after police inadvertently arrived during a routine patrol.