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Jane Velez-Mitchell
New Video Clues Into Serial Killer`s Spree
Aired August 29, 2013 - 19:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JANE VELEZ-MITCHELL, HOST: Tonight a desperate plea for help from cops as we learn a serial killer has scattered the bodies of almost a dozen unknown victims all across the United States.
Tonight we`re unlocking the mysteries of 34-year-old serial killer Israel Keyes. He took those secrets to his grave. Secrets that could lead to finding a slew of still unidentified victims.
Good evening. I`m Jane Velez-Mitchell.
Tonight we`ll play this serial killer`s chilling, diabolical interrogation tapes as we hunt for the clues this jet-setting, bank-robbing killer tried to hide. Secrets he thought he had buried forever when he slit his wrists and strangled himself in a jail cell.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ISRAEL KEYES, CONFESSED SERIAL KILLER: Didn`t sleep much last night.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When he left Alaska, he did so with a specific purpose of kidnapping and murdering someone.
KEYES: I would prefer to wait until they find the bodies and move on.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He`s also claimed that he committed multiple murders throughout the country.
KEYES: Back when I was smart I would do it -- I would let them come to me.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Friendly, peaceful, good people who encountered a force of pure evil acting at random.
JOLENE GOEDEN, FBI: Israel Keyes had no remorse at all. He enjoyed what he did.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He then engaged in what he called a blitz attack.
KEYES: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) (LAUGHING)
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: A laughing sicko. Here it is, the moment he was arrested. Take a look at that. Incredibly, after years of meticulously plotting a string of murders, he`s caught using a victim`s debit card, of all things.
The FBI thinks this general contractor landscaper, Army veteran murdered at least 11 people. They`ve only identified three of those victims. Where are the others?
Well, here`s one identified. Beautiful 18-year-old coffee barista Samantha Koenig in Alaska. And then there`s Bill and Lorraine Currier, a couple in Vermont. He`s traveled around the entire nation robbing banks, stashing so-called murder kits. All to target complete strangers and strangle them to death. He was like a hunter, and his victims were the hunted.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KEYES: Back when I was smart I would do it -- I would let them come to me. Just a remote area. Completely remote area that`s not anywhere near where you live but that other people go to, as well. You might not get exactly what you`re -- not much to choose from in a manner of speaking, but there`s also no witnesses, really. There`s nobody else around.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: He`s killed himself in his jail cell before spilling the details on all of the murders. He gave frustrated investigators only vague, tantalizing details about his horrific crimes.
Well, now the FBI is left with his hours and hours of interrogation tapes and the weapon-filled murder kits he stashed in various states around the country. They need your help to unlock the secrets of Keyes`s cross- country killing spree.
Tonight, in our Lion`s Den, we have a terrific expert panel, including former police captain C.W. Jensen and famed private investigator Vinnie Parco. And of course, HLN law-enforcement analyst Mike Brooks is with us tonight, as well.
But first to KRLD reporter Joe Gomez in Texas, one of the many states this serial killer visited.
What happened when in Texas, Joe?
JOE GOMEZ, KRLD REPORTER: Jane, Israel Keyes may have been the most methodical killer in the modern age. By all accounts, though, looking at these interrogation tapes, it seems this guy was addicted to killing.
We understand that shortly after he murdered barista Samantha Koenig in Alaska, he flew down to New Orleans, where he went on a cruise. A cruise, believe it or not, after he tortured and killed Koenig.
Then he drove up to Texas where he, apparently, set a home on fire in Aledo, then robbed a bank in Hazel, Texas. He was finally arrested in Lufkin when he tried to use a stolen debit card from Koenig at some sort of ATM. They caught him there. And that`s where he was arrested and finally sent to jail.
By Jane, the FBI is asking for the public`s help. If you`ve seen this guy, if you thought you might have seen this guy in the past, in the last - - in the last year before he killed himself, please say something. Because it`s very likely he may have killed somebody in the Lone Star State.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: All right. Well, let`s go right out to our Lion`s Den of expert panelists. And I want to start with Vinnie Parco. We were talking before the broadcast, Vinnie. And I asked you, I said how do they find these victims? I mean, it seems like he only leaves these vague clues. What do cops do now?
VINNIE PARCO, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR: Well, first, they -- all the victims had -- must have had credit cards. He likes to use credit cards.
As meticulous as he is, he did make a big mistake. That`s how he got caught. So I`m thinking that if the FBI has their computers, they can check to see missing persons whose credit cards were used after they were missing. It`s possible it could be him.
Now, he also -- he picked people that are female or elderly people, because he`s really a coward. And he claims that he`s macho because he was an Army veteran. The other thing is also, he was a contractor. He might have gotten contract licenses, permits. In many states you cannot do work without having a permit. And in those areas where he might have gotten a permit, maybe he might have put some of the bodies there that he killed.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, Mike Brooks, HLN law enforcement analyst, you know a lot about this case. I know he got certain permits to go camping. He was into the outdoors. It seems like a needle in the haystack. And yet there are patterns within his killing spree that are pretty identifiable.
MIKE BROOKS, HLN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Right. And there might be victims whose deaths were ruled an accident, who might have been on a hiking trip somewhere, and they may have found a body at the bottom of the ravine, you know, in Washington and Oregon, somewhere there. Because he liked -- as we heard during the interrogation tapes, he liked remote areas. And he would sit there and wait for his victims to come to him at the area of trailheads and near lakes. These kinds of things.
So and also a body. If a body was found in a lake, it looked like it might have been a drowning. Well, it might not have been, Jane. It could have been a victim of Israel Keyes.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: In fact, he told investigators, "Hey, one of the victims, and I won`t tell you who it is, they ruled that it was an accidental death. Her body or his body was found, but it wasn`t. It was my murder." Imagine how evil that is, Kelly Saindon, former prosecutor out of Chicago. He`s taunting them.
KELLY SAINDON, FORMER PROSECUTOR: Absolutely he is. And he did a great job of hiding this for so long that you`re right, it`s going to be very difficult. And we need lots of people to get involved to try to piece this together.
Because he made it clear. He didn`t want to help. He enjoyed putting people through pain. And I think this is just a way to continue that legacy with the unknown of who were his victims.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Now, the abduction and murder of 18-year-old Samantha Koenig was the horrific killing that led to this sicko`s arrest. He got sloppy. He was caught on camera wearing a face mask, driving a white Ford Focus, making an ATM withdrawal with the missing Alaska woman`s debit card.
He confessed to killing Samantha right before she killed himself in jail. Now, she worked as a barista in this coffee shop in Alaska. Surveillance video from inside and outside the store around the night of her disappearance shows Samantha actually in her final moments. This is just so horrifying. A young woman, a hard-working young woman. A beautiful young woman. There she is right before he abducts her.
So cops say he went into this coffee shop. He was wearing a ski mask. He pulled a gun on her, demanded money. At one point you see Keys force his way into the store, just the two of them inside the shop, and he ties Samantha`s hands with zip ties. They leave together. They get in his car. Samantha was sexually assaulted and choked to death inside this shed.
And then he goes on a cruise. I`ve got to go to -- I want to go to Tanya Acker and Areva Martin. Because something about this says if surveillance video was there, as I look at it now carefully, why the heck didn`t they get on his tail sooner? I mean, that should be a no-brainer. You see this. These coffee shops. Somebody should look at that instantly and be on his tail immediately. Areva.
TANYA ACKER, ATTORNEY: Of course, Jane. Sorry.
AREVA MARTIN: Absolutely, Jane. This case is so appalling to me. And when I think about it, not only, like you said, that the cops should have gotten on this. They should have found some leads and caught this guy.
This guy was such a control freak. He didn`t want to stand trial. He didn`t want to face his -- you know, the victims, the families of the victims. He didn`t want to face the criminal justice system. He killed himself as the ultimate act of control.
And I think for the families that`s going to be very hard for them to deal with. Because I know these families want to see this guy sit in jail for the rest of his life or face the death penalty. And they won`t have that satisfaction, because consistent with his entire actions, he killed himself as the coward that he was. And that`s so just galling to me about this entire case. It`s really disturbing.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Brian Russell, forensic psychiatrist.
Go ahead, Tanya.
ACKER: I just wanted to pick up, Jane, on your point about the surveillance. Because it`s so interesting to me that we`re having this national conversation about the government collecting information, about people being watched and so on and so forth. And yet and still, people are still permitted to engage in these really brutal, horrific acts and disappear.
You know, we really -- we`re caught in this tension where, on one hand, everybody is afraid of being watched, but on the other hand, the people who are doing really, really insidious, dangerous things are somehow able simply to disappear.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: I agree with you 100 percent. Stay out of our e- mails from satellites and get these videos on the streets, on every street corner. I`ve said it a million times. I have I don`t know how many pictures of me going through red lights. They`ve got my face up close and personal, because they`re giving me a ticket and they`re getting money.
This is what we need to do. More cameras on the streets. And high- quality cameras that can identify people. Face recognition technology exists. OK, had they had the technology immediately following that situation, they would have caught him right when he was leaving the store.
The FBI identified three of 34-year-old Israel Keyes`s victims. But they believe they were at least eight others. The problem is he was very vague and secretive during many hours of interrogation, and he taunted the FBI agents who grilled him. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KEYES: I would prefer to wait until they find the bodies in Vermont, but it sounds like that could be a while, so I guess as long as we have that letter from them, and you know, as soon as I have a chance to look it over or have other people look it over, or have other people look it over, then we can move onto the New York trip.
But I mean, you guys already have, I`m sure, quite a bit of information on it. You probably have more than I remember at this point.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Straight out to the Lion`s Den. Brian Russell, forensic psychologist, the investigators said that he told them, quote, or words to this effect, "I have these people. They`re my people. They belong to me. You`ll never get these people out of my head." So in other words, when he kills them, he thinks that he somehow owns them?
BRIAN RUSSELL, FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST: Jane, he appears to have thought that the best way to live in infamy -- and keep in mind he felt like he was competing with other serial killers, like Dennis Rader and Ted Bundy -- was to die without revealing the number and locations of the victims.
And he also actually may have exaggerated the number of victims so as, in his twisted mind, to increase his notoriety. So we may never know how many there actually were.
But there`s one up side, Jane, to all the planning and preparation and practice, and it`s this. People who watch your show, people who watch my show on I.D. often think that some kind of mental illness explains a guy like Keyes, and it doesn`t. Because you can see in that planning, preparation and practice, a mind working plenty well enough to differentiate right from wrong if he had had any interest in doing so.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: He`s a sadist.
RUSSELL: Yes.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: And I don`t say this because I`m an animal advocate. But every single one of these serial killers starts out by torturing animals. And he`s no exception, Mike Brooks. He tortured a cat. That was done in front of people. And they ran away from him. And he reportedly felt like he was different. And that`s when he knew he was different. He`s a sadist who tortured an animal first and then moved onto people.
BROOKS: Right. And also, you look at that, what do you usually see with animal abuse? You see arson. And we have that. He was a bank robber, a murderer, an arsonist, a rapist. He is just -- he`s unbelievable.
But I think, Jane, to be honest, and I`ve been talking to some of my law-enforcement buddies, we think that there could be maybe 20 or more people that he was involved with.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: I agree with you, because he took 30 multi-day trips over eight years. Why 30 mysterious trips and only 11 victims? I think there are a lot more.
On the other side we`re going to talk about his fascination with Ted Bundy and his contempt for the BTK serial killer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOEDEN: Israel Keyes had no remorse at all. He enjoyed what he did. He talked about enjoying what he did. He talked about had he not been caught some of his future plans and what he would have done, which included continuing to do what he was doing. Continuing to kidnap and murder people. So he had no remorse at all.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOEDEN: He said that it would be his kind of early 20s, mid-20s that he really came to terms with who he was, recognizing that he was different from other people and that he had these urges and that there wasn`t -- you know, he tried to initially blame it on Satan and religious things on why he was like this and a number of different things. And then he ultimately realized that that`s just who he was, and he accepted that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Satan, oh, yes.
Serial killer Israel Keyes was clearly actually very proud that he had gotten away with murder for so long. He was actually a student of other serial killers. He was critical of Dennis Rader, you know, the BTK serial killer, because Rader apologized to his victims and praised the police department for catching him. Remember Rader`s bizarre, bizzaro speech before the judge?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DENNIS RADER, BTK SERIAL KILLER: Even though I`m a criminal, I think you have to appreciate the police department. They`ve done a lot of work. Even though it took a long time, they gathered evidence. And when they got the key suspect they zeroed in on him.
And finally, I apologize to the victims` families. There`s no way that I can ever repay you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: That was a sicko who also led a double life. He was the head in his church and all sorts of things.
But this Keyes fellow, who also led a double life -- he was a well- liked general contractor who was an admirer of serial killer Ted Bundy. He`s the guy with the 5-o`clock shadow on the right who killed an estimated 35 people and was described as charming and handsome and intelligent by those who knew him. Keyes believed he was able to successfully lead the same kind of double life as Bundy did.
I want to go to the Lion`s Den. C.W. Jensen, retired police captain out of Arizona, could this be a Bundy copycat killer in some ways?
C.W. JENSEN, RETIRED POLICE CAPTAIN: Yes, in some ways. I mean, when you think about it, you know, serial killers -- I had a case where a guy killed three little boys. So that was his gig. This guy targeted, you know, young women and old people. People he could easily overpower.
So, I mean, they all in their, you know, sick ways -- and a lot of them, you know, you have this seemingly normal life, and then on the side you`re doing these horrible things. And so oftentimes it`s difficult. You know, you would think you`d be able to pick some nut case out of the crowd. And really they`re just running under the radar.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: You know, but I...
GOMEZ: I want to add something.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Sure.
GOMEZ: Something about Israel Keyes, what makes this even -- what makes this very scary for me is that he would pick his victims at random at random states. He would have these murder kits, Jane, stashed away, and he would just go to an isolated area, find somebody in an open space. It didn`t matter if it was a couple, if it was a single woman. He didn`t have a demographic, let`s say, of people that he targeted. Basically anybody could be a victim of Israel Keyes. That`s what makes this case so scary. That the monster really is, really could be out there next door.
BROOKS: And Jane, he went -- he went to Ted Bundy`s place of birth, Burlington, Vermont, and killed that couple there. That is really, really creepy.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Wow, that sounds, Brian Russell, like an homage killing. Like, "Ooh, I`m going to go to --" It`s like a tourist, a serial killer tourist. "I`m going to go to Ted Bundy`s hometown. I`m going to commit a killing there in his honor."
RUSSELL: Yes, Jane. I think Israel -- Israel Keyes is the personification of what I call evil. Let me just say how I use that word. I don`t use it in any kind of religious context or anything like that. Evil is the rejection of humanity. Not just of others but of oneself. It`s a choice to ignore one`s intellect, which is what allows all of us human beings to differentiate right from wrong, through reason. That`s what separates us from animals.
And then to act, instead, upon animalistic emotional or physiological impulses in ways that indulge the self that are profoundly destructive to others, basically to make oneself into an animal. Not only did Israel do that...
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, I disagree with you 100 percent.
BROOKS: Oh, boy.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Leave animals out of it. Animals are innocent. They`re not sadistic killers who kill for fun. And the vast majority of animals don`t kill anything. They just eat grass.
RUSSELL: Because they don`t have intellect, Jane. That`s what...
VELEZ-MITCHELL: They have intellect. You talk to my Chihuahua. My Chihuahua has a lot of intellect. My Chihuahuas are smarter than a lot of the people I know.
I want to go to Areva Martin and I want to get her to weigh in.
MARTIN: Jane -- Jane -- I`m listening to the conversation about humanity. You know, what`s so interesting about Keyes is he has a daughter. And apparently, he was very concerned about his daughter`s thoughts about him and how she would view him, and how she`d be able to go onto Google and search for her dad and find out all of these horrible things that he did.
So you have this man out there committing these horrific acts, but yet he`s concerned about how his daughter is going to view them and how his legacy -- the legacy that he`s going to leave for his young daughter. So that makes this guy even more complex and, you know, in some ways more horrible. Because he`s concerned about his reputation, but yet he`s killing, you know, random people across the country.
RUSSELL: Let me explain that. I can explain that.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: OK. Well, like a lot of human beings, he cares about the people he knows. He cares about the people in his -- in his immediate world where he`s king of the castle. And anybody out there who`s a hypothetical human, watch out.
So go ahead. Proceed, Doctor -- Dr. Russell.
RUSSELL: Narcissistic adults often see their children as extensions of themselves. So while it appears that he cared a lot about this child, it was probably really only because he saw her as an extension of himself and he had that preservation instinct towards her that was really just an extension of his self-preservation instinct.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: I agree with you. That`s exactly what I said. It`s an extension of his own narcissism. He -- and that`s an extreme example of just caring about people you know in your immediate surroundings and the rest of the world be damned.
Tanya Acker, go ahead.
ACKER: Well, it`s really -- I think it`s these flashes of humanity, or perceived humanity or fake humanity, that really allowed this guy to stay under the radar. I mean, I think that -- you know, we talk about these cases, and we talk about the people -- these people and the things that they`ve done. I think there`s a tendency, you know, we oversimplify a little bit. You know, we know that they`re monsters now. But this guy didn`t proceed through life acting like a monster.
But to Jane`s point, had people been clued into the early signs -- the animal torture, the arson -- you know, that`s when you start to see clues of what`s really going on beneath. But you know, they`re able to fly beneath the radar, because they`re able to act more human, frankly, than they actually are.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Look at this scary scene. This man is out of a horror movie. Except it`s not a movie. For 11 victims and their families who don`t even know, most of them, that their missing loved one is connected to this fiend, it`s real, very real.
Stay right there. We`ll be back in a moment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At about 11:15 yesterday morning Alaska authorities informed us that Israel Keyes was found dead in an apartment of an apparent suicide in the facility in which he was incarcerated in Anchorage, Alaska.
Keyes has -- had been detained since March on charges related to the murder of 18-year-old Samantha Koenig of Anchorage, Alaska. In the course of investigating Keyes`s role in that homicide, investigators in Alaska became convinced that Keyes had committed other murders.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Look at this hideous image. CW Jensen, retired police captain, he`s taking flights and renting cars. You can`t do that with cash. There`s got to be a way, as Vinnie Parco said, to follow this trail.
CW JENSEN, RETIRED POLICE CAPTAIN: Well, I wish I could say, yes, you do this, that and the other thing, but I worked homicide for six years and I`ll tell you it`s a daunting task, you know. They`ll try to figure out where he was at certain times. And that`s going to be difficult, as everybody said.
I mean he`s using cash. He`s doing this, that, and the other thing. And then let law enforcement agencies in the general area know hey, this guy was in the area at this time. Do you have any --
(CROSSTALK)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: But I have to jump in. CW, I`ve traveled a lot and I`ve rented a lot of cars. I`ve never been in a situation where people accept cash for either of those two transactions. There has to be some record.
JENSEN: Right. I think that they will be able to figure out where he went at certain times. But as he said, he would pick people up and then maybe go over multiple state lines. So it`s not as easy as saying he was absolutely in Detroit for these two weeks.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: But as learned from the Jodi Arias case when you rent a car they know your mileage. So if he rents a car in this place and he used 1,000 miles then you can draw a circle and say he was in a thousand- mile radius presumably at that particular time.
We`re just getting started. The police, law enforcement, FBI, they need your help solving this case. We have a tip line, 1-800-CALL-FBI if you know anything at all. No tip too insignificant. Call them.
Stay right there. We`ll be back with more.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NANCY GRACE, HLN HOST: Very often we find people fascinated by serial killers and they wonder why. Why do they kill? Many of them have sexual perversions. They were abused as children. They have all sorts of psychological problems.
ISRAEL KEYES, SERIAL KILLER: I didn`t know why -- I really wish I hadn`t created all this drama.
GRACE: Keyes, very simply, enjoyed the act of killing. He loved to kill people. It was like hunting for him.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At this time Keyes realized that Bill Currier was not going to cooperate with his attempts to subdue him. Israel Keyes then retrieved the gun and silencer and shot Bill Currier to death.
GRACE: Police pushed Keyes to give them an exact number of people that he killed. He never did.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KEYES: There is no one who knows me or who has ever known me who knows anything about me really.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We believe there are 11 victims total.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How long does a body last in fresh water lake?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Investigators in Alaska became convinced that Keyes had committed other murders.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He talked about enjoying the fact that he was two different people.
KEYES: I`m two different people basically.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Even he was holding back tears -- tears welling up and said you don`t know what I`ve done. You don`t know the depths of darkness I have gone to.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: How many did he kill? They`re saying 11. But others believe that could be the tip of the iceberg; that the number could be in the 20s. One of the most organized serial killers, one of the most methodical serial killers in memory.
And like most serial killers this 34-year-old Israel Keyes lived a double life. To the outside world, he was an army vet, a good father to a young daughter, a boyfriend to a clueless woman, a well-liked general contractor and landscaper in a remote part of Alaska. He kept his dark need to hunt and kill innocent strangers far from home as his ultimate secret.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KEYES: There`s no one who knows me or who has ever known me who knows anything about me really. They know they`re going to tell you something that does not line up with anything I tell you because I`m two different people basically. And the only person who knows about what I`m telling you, the kind of things I`m telling you, is me.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How long have you been two different people?
KEYES: A long time. 14 years.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Now look, he robbed a bank back in 2009 on his cross country killing spree. Here`s some surveillance videos of him in disguise robbing a Texas bank. You know, I always thought most bank robbers were caught.
Straight out to "The Lion`s Den", I am still wondering how this man got away with so much for so long. I mean Vinnie Parco, money that you steal from banks, last time I checked is marked, and I understand that he had marked money. How does he get away with all this?
VINNIE PARCO, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR: Well, look at the area, he did this all in rural areas. He didn`t do it in a big city so probably got, you know, under the radar.
Mike said something very important. He said that he visited Ted Bundy`s home where he grew up and one of the people were found in that area. He might have done that with other areas that other serial killers might have grown up. I think that should be looked up.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Yes. And listen, I want to open it up to our panel. Everybody says we have absolutely no clues. Well, I looked at this. He killed four in Washington -- four unidentified people between 2001 and 2006. Two of those were an unidentified couple. So how many couples, Tanya Acker, disappear in Washington between 2001 and 2006? That`s got to be a very limited number.
TANYA ACKER, ATTORNEY: I know, Jane. That`s what I`m saying. I mean I really think you`re on to something. The idea that there are just no clues and that, you know, we have to take this killer`s words for it. By the way, I think it`s a mistake to give credence to everything he says on the video.
I don`t know if I believe him when he said there was an accidental death that he`s responsible for. You know, we know that these guys like to claim credit for saying it then trap (ph), mislead investigators. So I don`t know that we should just be relying on what he says. I think that there has to be hard evidence. There has to be something.
JOE GOMEZ, REPORTER, KRLD DALLAS: But you can`t discount. You can`t just totally discount.
KELLY SAINDON, FORMER PROSECUTOR: Well Joe, in this case you have to start somewhere.
GOMEZ: Right.
SAINDON: You have to start somewhere --
GOMEZ: Yes.
SAINDON: -- and this is a guy who is finally talking. He was bragging. He got caught, maybe intentionally. Maybe he was tired of his life. You can`t just say oh, I don`t believe him. Where do you start?
BROOKS: Right.
SAINDON: You track his background --
(CROSSTALK)
ACKER: You base his statements on where you start.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Ok, I want to give you Tanya a chance -- or Areva answer the question, then.
AREVA MARTIN, ATTORNEY: Well, I just want to raise a different point and that point is about missing adults, Jane, because one of the things that is clear here is that some of these adults went missing, and how broad was the search nationwide?
We have amber alert when children go missing.
ACKER: Exactly.
MARTIN: And we`ve gotten pretty good in this country about, you know, looking for missing kids. But what about missing adults?
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Exactly.
MARTIN: I don`t know how extensive the search has been for them.
(CROSSTALK)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Joe Gomez, I think we need to look at the commonalities of the killing.
MARTIN: Absolutely.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: He liked to strangle -- even though he didn`t strangle everyone -- that was his preferable mode. So in the cold cases, strangulation in the areas that he was in -- I mean there`s got to be a computer program. If they can figure out that I bought a foot stool and keep trying to sell me foot stools, they have to be able to use this computer technology to hone down the pool --
GOMEZ: You can imagine so, Jane, I mean the guy used zip ties, you know. He had guns. He had stashes of money buried away. You mean to tell me that nobody saw somebody out there, you know, at a random area digging up a hole and burying something or that you can`t track this through receipts or Wal-Mart security cameras and so forth?
I mean it is absurd that my e-mails can be read, my correspondents with somebody through text message or what have you. Yet, you can`t find somebody who`s going on a cross country killing spree picking people at random, torturing them, binding them up with duct tape and then murdering them. It`s absolutely outrageous.
MARTIN: Exactly.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: I agree. I always you can track a FedEx package across country in 24 hours, know where it is every second of the way. But sickos like this they roam the country terrorizing with abandon.
We`ll be right back.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That stunt yesterday in the courtroom did not go over well.
KEYES: They don`t think that was too funny.
Why? Were they afraid I was actually going to get away? That would be embarrassing for them, I guess.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What changed for you, though?
KEYES: Nothing. Possibly additional charges.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KEYES: If me looking for the death penalty is going to make this into a bigger circus than it already is, and they`re going to take all this information that I -- all the things that I`ve done and put them in a public sentencing hearing I --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It doesn`t have to happen that way, though.
KEYES: From an entertainment perspective, from my perspective, yeah, it would be really fun to have this all come out but you know I`m not trying to single-handedly give my mom a heart attack.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: What a sicko. Oh, this is a lot of but I don`t want to upset my mom. During his time behind bars 34-year-old Israel Keyes taunted his captors as he dropped hints and clues about his victims rather like fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter. Remember this from Orion pictures "The Silence of the Lambs"? Who could forget?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANTHONY HOPKINS, ACTOR: A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Even his suicide note, I`m talking about serial killer Israel Keyes was filled with clues. But I have to tell you right now a lot of people are asking, how could law enforcement have let Keyes kill himself behind bars?
Straight out to "The Lion`s Den" -- listen, Vinnie Parco, one of the investigators described it as a total failure. He had a razor and slit his wrist. He was able to strangle himself. How could they let that happen?
PARCO: Incompetence. That`s the only thing I can say.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: I mean this is out of control. You know, you`re a former prosecutor, Kelly Saindon. I mean how did the prosecutors -- the U.S. attorneys was absolutely devastated. They`ve spent years working on this --
SAINDON: Sure.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: -- and they get him and then he kills himself right in jail.
SAINDON: I know. It`s very disgusting. It`s a lapse in the system. It`s one of the problems that we have. Lots of our government employees are overworked and underpaid or it was just sloppy police work. But it`s very upsetting especially for victims` families. There`s no justification. There`s no vindication, and he got to control his finale, his ending. And no answers have been received.
So I agree with Vinnie. It was an inexcusable failure.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: I mean Areva Martin --
GOMEZ: Yes, I hope somebody got fired for that one Jane because there`s a lot of families out there grieving right now. And I reviewed most of those interrogation tapes, by the way, and you could kind of see that he had an end game plan. Like he knew -- he knew this is what he was going to do from the very beginning. He knew he was probably going to kill himself and just let everybody just, you know, kind of fend for themselves, leave all these family in tears with their sorrow they`re never going to get over with.
I can just tell by looking at those tapes that he had an end game in his mind.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well yes. And also he said it himself. That he owned those people and as long as he did not reveal the identities of the people that he owned, and those were his people, he felt the power of ownership. I think -- who is it wanted to get in?
MARTIN: I just wanted to say, Jane, I think this is a big wake-up call both for law enforcement in terms of policing people in its custody, i.e., so that they don`t commit suicide, but also how we treat missing adults. I can`t help but believe that we could do a better job in this country of identifying and finding and, you know, following clues of adults who are missing in the same way we do with respect to children. And if we had a system to do that, you know, we wouldn`t be sitting here today all trying to figure out what happened. You know, why all these adults slipped through the cracks?
VELEZ-MITCHELL: I agree with you.
I mean, look at the Ariel Castro case. These girls were right in the neighborhood the whole time, he was an obvious suspect.
MARTIN: Yes.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: His kids were friends with all the women -- many of the women who disappeared. He was a direct link. Somebody had said, go look at this guy, you need to look at him and they didn`t.
MARTIN: Yes.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: I mean Tanya Acker --
ACKER: Right.
No, it`s inexcusable. I mean I think that one of the things that Keyes even reportedly said is that people don`t look for missing men in particular. When a guy goes missing people assume that he just left. And you know, there`s not a tendency to be as aggressive or assertive about looking for certain types of people.
And you know, going back to my point about the credence that we give to his interview, I`m not saying we ignore it. Of course, I`m not saying we ignore, that would be absurd. But that the idea that there is not hard evidence somewhere about what he did, where he went, I just don`t believe it. I just don`t believe it doesn`t exist.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: I agree with you, Tanya.
(CROSSTALK)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: In fact, we were giving him too much power. We`re giving him too much credit. The information is out there somewhere. If you know anything, call our tip hot line, 1-800-CALL-FBI. No tip is too insignificant.
Stay right there. We have a lot more for you.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEFF BELL, FBI TASK FORCE OFFICER: He was oftentimes coy with us. Playing games with -- on semantics on where he was and what he may have done. I think he enjoyed watching investigators be frustrated and try to figure things out. He liked having the upper hand.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KEYES: Where are they at with the -- did they find the bodies yet?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it`s like two football fields worth of stuff they`re going through.
KEYES: God that`s a lot of trouble to go to. I almost feel guilty. Costing the taxpayers a lot of money to find those. I could have just kept my mouth shut.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: So funny -- not. And there he is, confessing to the murder of Bill and Lorraine Currier of Vermont. The Curriers -- ok, here`s how this murder went down. He flew to Chicago -- flew from Alaska to Chicago, rented a car then drove over a thousand miles to Vermont, of all places. But remember, that`s Ted Bundy, right?
Like Samantha, he randomly chose this couple as his victims -- or did he? Brian Russell, he also mentioned that he chose this couple because they were childless. And he apparently had some weird value system that if you were childless, you were worth less than if you had children. He has a daughter or had a daughter. His daughter survived. She is about 10 or 11. What do you make of that?
BRIAN RUSSELL, FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST: Well, again, Jane, I don`t look at that avowed concern for his child as any kind of real genuine empathy for others. What I look at it as is just an extension of himself in the child in wanting to protect the child and by extension, himself.
Now, it`s really interesting how he seems to have this homage, as you said, to Bundy, and go to Bundy`s hometown to do this. And then to put down BTK, Dennis Rader, who actually if look at it there are many similarities between Keyes and Rader.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: I agree with you because they both talk about oh, you know, Dennis Rader said the law enforcement investigators did a great job. And this guys saying, you know, taxpayers are going to -- they`re going to pay a lot of money for this investigation. I should have stayed quiet -- very similar kind of disjointed thinking.
Vinnie Parco -- it`s not random. He chose a couple who were childless. So it`s not random. There is a contradiction.
PARCO: No. In statistics, they tell you, there is no such thing as random. So he had some sort of plan. He`s a meticulous person, Army vet. So he thinks like an army person, as a military man. And he had a plan. And we just got to find out what the plan is, and you can find out where his victims are.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Ten seconds, Mike Brooks. We`ll give you the last word.
BROOKS: I`ll tell you what. I still think there are maybe upwards of 20, maybe 25 people that are his victims that are out there. And I tell you, I think this is a great thing that HLN is doing. It`s the largest public service announcement I`ve ever seen us do. I think it`s a great idea.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: I agree.
GOMEZ: Agreed.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: And I hope people come forward. Anything -- anything you think is a connection.
More on the other side.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Nancy has more, next.
END
