Hey everyone. This October, I'll be meeting up with some of my favorite
podcasts for peak Fall Foliage in beautiful Berkshire County, Massachusetts, where I call
home and I want you to join me. Studio both And is hosting the
Berkshire Podcast Festival October nineteenth in North Adams, Massachusetts. This incredible podcast event
and live show will feature tons of podcasts including Generation Y, Truth and Justice,
Crime Lines, The Karen and Ellen Letters, La Not So Confidential,
The Only One in the Room, Lucy from Wine and Crime Already Gone,
The Trail Went Cold, Affirmative Murder, and many many more. The Berkshires
are conveniently located in western Massachusetts, just a quick trip from Albany, Boston,
New York City, Montreal, and Philadelphia. So come explore world class
museums, the birthplace of farm to table dining, and the epicenter of the
Garge, and then soak up the sounds of some of your favorite podcasts for
this weekend long event. To buy tickets, see who's coming, and learn
more about the Berkshires and the event, go to Berkshire Podcast Festival dot com.
That's b e r K s h i r E Podcast Festival dot com.
This is a studio both and production. Hey it's Josh. Just a
quick correction before we start the show. In the previous episode, I referred
to Jonathan Corey using a kayak to cross eld Inlet on the night that he
disappeared. John actually used a canoe. Sorry for any confusion. This is
true crime bullshit. I'm your host, Josh Hallmark, and this is a
serialized story of Israel Keys. Following a six year string of incidents and attacks
at the Evergreen State College, there was one final assault in October of two
thousand and seven. But first we need to go back to two thousand and
six and an encounter at a different Washington State campus that we previously discussed.
In season four, episode twelve, we discussed a tip that came in from
a listener named Lauren s. Here's a quick refresher. Lauren explained that she
was interested in the Keys case and this podcast because Israel always seemed eerily familiar
to her. But in episode eight of season two, something she heard stunned
her. Israel had on two occasions introduced himself to strangers as Israel, and
both times, when asked about his unique name, Keyes told him The reason
for his weird name is that he had hippy parents, and Lauren recalled having
that exact conversation with a man at the Everett Community College sometime around the spring
of two thousand six. She was taking night classes there as part of a
college head start program for high schoolers. At a round sunset, she encountered
a man who looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties. Keyes
was twenty eight in two thousand six. He was smoking in a somewhat wooded
area between the campus's maintenance shed and parking lot. The man asked her how
old she was, and when she told him she was sixteen, he began
trying to lure her away with the promise of beer. His persistence creeped her
out, and eventually she made her way back to the building she was working
in. According to Lorenette, this encounter happened at around the exact same time
is the attack on Valerie at Evergreen State College spring of two thousand and six,
and what Everett Community College, Evergreen State College, and Western Washington University
all have in common is that they are small campuses in heavily wooded areas near
a population center. They're all just across Puget Sound from the Olympic Peninsula.
They're all located within a four to five hour drive from Nia Bay, and
they all sit on the outskirts of the towns they are in. Everett Community
College is one hundred fifty seven miles and a four hour thirty five minute drive
from Keyes's house in Nia Bay. The Evergreen State College is one hundred ninety
seven miles and a three hour fifty five minute drive from Nia Bay. Western
Washington University is one hundred eighty eight miles and a four hour fifty minute drive
from Nia Bay. All relative satively close, but far enough away to create
personal, physical and forensic distance. I bring this up because it's indicative of
a pattern with many of the keys sidings and places Keys confessed to trolling.
For example, Vermont State College, Johnson, where Keys told the FBI he
planned on robbing a bank following the murder of the couriers, and where multiple
students have placed Keys. It's a small campus and a heavily wooded area on
the outskirts of a town. It's one hundred eight miles and a two hour
twenty minute drive across Lake Champlain and state lines from Keys's cabin and Constable Sunny
Albany, where we have multiple sightings of Keys in the late nineties and where
Susi Lyle attended when she went missing, is a small campus in a heavily
wooded area on the outskirts of town. It's two hundred three miles and a
three hour ten minute drive from Constable. All five campuses are essentially the last
stop before leaving town and entering the woods, much like the neighborhood that the
Couriers lived in the neighborhood where Marble Arvidson lived, the area where Deborah Feldman
disappeared, and many of the other places and schools will be discussing this episode
and later this season. The last known to US campus incident in western Washington
was in October of two thousand seven at Evergreen State College. Again on October
fifteenth, the student woke up in her dorm room at around three a m.
To find a man in a ski mask and armed with a handgun standing
over her bed. The student reported to campus police that the man raped her
for approximately thirty minutes before leaving her dorm apartment through an unlocked window. What's
interesting is the victim was living in the same dorm type that the guys who
rescued Valerie from in last week's episode. Were in the type with the big
sliding windows that students often used as doors. According to an article in The
Olympian titled Students reconsider safety on Evergreen Campus, her attacker exited through her ground
floor window. Students said it is accustomed to enter friends apartments or dorms by
opening the window and stepping inside. Based on campus maps and alumni have spoken
to there is only one part of campus with these specific apartment dorms, across
from parking Lot F and precisely where Valerie was attacked the year before in spring
of two thousand and six, and much like the previous attacks, this one
occurred in the midst of multiple sightings of a man on campus watching people.
According to that same Olympian article, the lead investigator on the rape investigation received
multiple tips from students regarding a suspicious man in the area on the day surrounding
the assault, and one student even reported that while she was working at the
campus pool, she saw a man watching her through the windows. So where
was keys? On October fifteenth of two thousand and seven, well, I
bet you know the answer. Yep, we can't place him anywhere. We
do know that Kim left for a two week work trip in California on the
sixteenth, and that she'd previously been working in Wyoming from September twenty third through
October seventh. We also know that, according to the Keys construction calendar I've
built, Keyes had a mysterious work stoppage between August twenty fourth and November twenty
first of two thousand and seven, a period where Kimberly was mostly gone,
Sarah hadn't yet arrived in Alaska, and Keyes stopped responding to clients and booking
jobs. Incidentally, this attack also happened to occur right around Sarah's birthday,
a period which historically we can place Keys with Sarah or his brother, who
shares the same birthday. Sarah was in Nia Bay at the time. And
then, of course there's the ski mask and handgun of it, all which
are by no means revolutionary in breaking and entering an assault, but they also
coincide with his use of Samantha's debit card and somewhat with her abduction. He
said that for her abduction he used a cut off sleeve from a long sleeved
shirt to fashion into a ski mask, and in the photos of his first
few atm withdrawals in Alaska, he's wearing an actual ski mask. And while
that may be the last known incident at Evergreen State College, it's not the
last reported sighting of keys in the area. According to a string of comments
on a YouTube video about keys, a man believes he met Israel at a
soup kitchen in Olympia in two thousand and nine. This man posted that he
met a man with short, curly hair named Israel at the Union Gospel Mission
at some point that year. He said that the name Israel stood out to
him because he'd never met anyone with that name before. He also said after
watching the video that the man he met was very possibly Israel keys. The
Union Gospel Mission is in an industrial area of Olympia on a small peninsula,
surrounded by ports, a water treatment facility, a lumber yard, and the
inner city transit building. And here's the thing about the many, many sightings
of keys, and there's more to come. At soup kitchens and homeless shelters,
We've talked a lot about how they would be easy places for him to
prey on vulnerable victims, but they'd also be easy places for keys to eat
and sleep without leaving a digital or transactional footprint. There are places where israel
keys could be surrounded by vulnerable victims, eat and sleep for free, and
remain almost entirely invisible. The sightings of keys at Western Washington college campuses end
essentially as soon as he left the area, and that's precisely when they pick
back up again on the East Coast. Now, as we move to the
East Coast, much like Keys himself, will be jumping around a bit,
so bear with me as we travel back and forth through the timeline and across
New England. Keyes told the FBI that once he moved to Alaska, he
had to start traveling to commit his crimes, and as we've learned throughout the
podcast, most of those travels fell within the keys hotspots, areas he'd returned
to over and over again. That much like the college campus sightings were close
but not too close to places he had homes or loved ones. In the
East Coast sidings mirror that exactly. They place him in New Jersey, Maine,
Vermont, and New Brunswick. So let's start with New Jersey a state
we can only positively place Keys once during his abduction of Deborah Feldman in April
of two thousand nine. On December twenty one of two thousand seven, a
woman named Susan Coate was showering in the woman's locker room at County College of
Morris and Randolph, New Jersey, when a masked man entered the locker room
and, according to the Morris County Daily Record, tried to get at her
through the shower curtains. Susan screamed as loudly as she could, and the
man quickly ran out of the locker room, never to be seen again.
But six years later, after Keys was arrested and died by suicide in prison,
Susan was shown a photo of him on Facebook. This is what she
had to say. I think he was in northern New Jersey in late December
of two thousand and seven. All I need to see to be absolutely positive
of it is a picture of him smiling, showing his teeth pattern. If
anyone has one, please post. Someone then posted a picture of Keys smiling,
and this was her response. From what I can see of the dental
this matches an individual who attacked me in a New Jersey Community College women's locker
room shower on twelve twenty one, two thousand seven. As you probably remember,
Keyes had a distinct recession in his two front teeth, which set back
from the rest of his teeth, so it's interesting that Susan asked specifically about
his teeth. Now, we had a lot of questions for Susan, specifically
how she could be so sure it was Keys, considering the man who attacked
her was wearing a mask and appears to have done so through a shower curtain.
We also wanted more specifics about how the attack occurred, which was incredibly
vague in both Susan's Facebook posts and the Morris County Daily Record. Unfortunately,
Susan Cope passed away in twenty twenty two. In lieu of conversation, we
filed a FOYA for the police report and our awaiting approval. Keyes, as
usual, can't be placed anywhere when Susan's attack occurred. All we know is
that he returned to Alaska from a trip to his at Heidi in Indiana and
then Sarah in Washington on December sixteenth, and according to the Keys construction timeline,
Keyes did a plumbing job for a client in Anchorage between late December two
thousand seven and January fourteenth of two thousand and eight. Although we don't have
specific dates of work, this is the same job where the client reported that
Keyes had a blonde girlfriend who would bring him lunches. County College of Morris
is interesting, though in the Greater Keys narrative, it's just thirty miles from
Deborah Feldman's apartment and thirty three miles from Mahwah where Deborah was believed to have
been abducted, and it's less than a two hour drive from Hawk Mountain,
where a woman saw Keys retrieving a bucket from the woods and later burning items
from his trunk in multiple campfires, much like Keyes reported he did in the
New Hampshire Woods following the Courier attack. Deborah Feldman was abducted a year and
three months after this County College of Morris attack. The Hawk Mountain siding was
a year and two months after the attack, at which point Keyes had seemed
to have already placed that bucket in the woods. Additionally, Chiama Gray of
the name is forty five disappeared just one week prior to Susan's attack geographically,
County College of Morris stands out for many of the same reasons as our previous
colleges. It's a small campus in a heavily wooded area on the outskirts of
town. It's three hundred and fifty seven miles and a five hour thirty minute
drive from Constable across state lines, and to get there and back, Keyes
would travel either New York State Route thirty or directly past the Mahwah Hotel.
Deborah Feldman disappeared from Susan's attack. Takes us to another string of incidents at
a Northeast college with a startling to israel Keys. Between nineteen ninety nine and
two thousand six, there were a string of incidents and attacks at the University
of Maine in Orino, Maine. These incidents began with an unsettling encounter in
the women's locker room showers on December seventh of nineteen ninety nine. A female
student was showering and suddenly saw a tall, medium built man with short hair
staring at her from over the shower divider. Another dorm resident later saw the
man running from the locker room and described him as standing around six feet tall,
with short hair and glasses. It's unclear if those were reading glasses or
sunglasses. Now, at first glance, this likely couldn't be Keys. He
was already enlisted in the army at the time and appears to have been stationed
at Fort Lewis in Olympia, Washington, and we know that he used at
least some of his military leave at around Christmas Day year to visit his aunt
and grandmother in Orange County, California. But there's some interesting information we've had
for a while now that we've been trying to verify and make sense of.
Israel Keys allegedly had an Amish girlfriend who lived in orin Omain for years before
he moved to Alaska with Kimberly. It all began on the hellscape known as
Reddit. In twenty thirteen, an account posted on the ask reddit subreddit in
response to the question what's the closest You've ever come to a serial killer?
Knowingly or unknowingly? The account posted a link to the Israel Keys Wikipedia page
and then typed this, My sister dated this guy and he was like an
older brother to me when I was growing up. He moved to Alaska when
I was four fourteen, and I didn't hear from him until he began to
show up in the news after being caught for killing up to five people.
So Shana Tooker and a listener named Kelly started digging into this person, and
through the data mining skills we've learned, they were pretty quickly able to link
this Reddit account back to a real person, a man will call Z.
It turns out, as far as we could verify, Z was telling the
truth. His family was and remains friends with Heidi Keys. Most of Keyes's
siblings and even his in laws down in Wells, Texas. They grew up
in an Amish community not far from Smyrna, Maine, where the Keys family
lived and maintain a maple farm, and we were able to determine this family
was the same family who helped rebuild the Sugar Shack with the Keys family,
including Israel in twenty ten. There are even photos of Keys with z z
extended family. So while none of this proves the part about Keys dating his
sister, I'm inclined to believe it. Zee posted to redd it anonymously,
and yet every other part of his story can be verified and is true.
So why lie about this part, and what that tells us is contrary to
what travel records indicate, Keyes spent a somewhat significant amount of time in Maine
between nineteen ninety eight when his family bought the Maple Farm in two thousand and
seven, and that while he was with Tammy and raising Sarah, and even
while he was with Tammy and Annie, Keyes was likely in a relationship in
Maine with a Heidi approved Amish woman, and that is one major theme of
this season. Not everything on the East Coast is as it has Seemed's immediately
interesting about this girlfriend in Orano in relation to college campus sidings in Maine is
that they once again aligned perfectly with Keys's time there. He was allegedly dating
this girl between sometime around late nineteen ninety eight until he moved to Alaska in
the spring of two thousand seven, and the sightings at the University of Maine
Orino and to terrifying encounters near Colby College in nearby Waterville all occurred between nineteen
ninety eight and two thousand and six. Now, before we continue on with
the Orino incidents, let's go to the Waterville incidents, which both occurred on
the same night October eleventh of nineteen ninety eight. An article from the October
twelfth, nineteen ninety eight issue of the Bangor Daily News titled police searching for
collision rapist reported on a rape and an attempted rape in the Waterville area of
Maine, wherein the perpetrator got women to stop on the highway after bumping their
cars with his dark colored forward pickup truck. The first incident took place at
around nine fifty pm on Interstate ninety five between Waterville and Fairfield. The pickup
truck bumped a small suv with a lone female driver. The two pulled over
to exchange information, at which point the man in the pickup truck tried to
force the woman into the truck. However, she was able to fight off
her attacker and get back into her car and flee. The second woman was
not so lucky. At around ten twenty that same night, at a stop
sign at an I ninety five exit in Waterville, the same man in the
same truck rear ended a small sedan with once again another lone female driver.
This time the man talked to the driver. He told her that his brakes
had failed and he needed a ride. To Clinton, Maine, eleven miles
northeast up I ninety five en route to Orino. So the woman followed him
to a nearby church parking lot where he left his truck and then got into
her car for the sixteen minute drive to Clinton. Once arriving in Clinton and
pulling off I ninety five, the man forced her to drive to an isolated
and heavily wooded cemetery on Hinckley Road, about a mile and a half off
the interstate. That's where he raped her, and after the rape, he
forced her to drive him all the way back sixteen minutes to the church parking
lot where he left his truck. From there, he casually got into the
truck and drove off. Both women described their attacker as a white man in
his early to mid twenties. Keys was twenty at the time, with short,
dark hair and dark eyes. Keys had short, brown hand and brown
eyes, weighing approximately one hundred sixty to one hundred seventy five pounds. Keyes
weighed one hundred seventy pounds according to his army records. Unfortunately, the article
did not mention the perpetrator's height. Now, let's start with the Army Keyes
enlisted with the Army in July of nineteen ninety eight and was quickly sent to
Fort Lewis on July ninth. The details of this period of his army career
are murky at best. We know that at some point between being sent to
Fort Lewis and May of nineteen ninety nine, he spent time at Fort Hood
in Colleen, Texas. He also fairly early on trained at Camp Riley outside
of Astoria, Oregon, and he did a training stint at Fort Sherman and
Panama around Thanksgiving of ninety eight. Following that, he trained at Fort Irwin
in Barstow, California in May of ninety nine. Following his return from Barstow,
were pretty clear on his whereabouts with the Army. I am told that
he would have a crude leave and could request to use it to visit family
in cases of emergency or prior to a non emergency deployment, which makes a
trip to Maine in October of ninety eight possible but not necessarily likely. But
also, according to registration records included in the FBI Foya Keyes had a black
nineteen seventy seven Ford pickup truck at this time, and we know that Keys
like to use his victim's cars to move from point A to point B rather
than his own, and Keyes told us he liked using cemeteries to commit his
rapes. And Waterville is less than an hour from Orino, where Keys allegedly
had an Amish girlfriend at the time, and one hundred fifty miles and a
two hour drive from Keyes's family farm in Smyrna, Maine. And Keys matches
the women's description of their attacker in body type, weight, hair color,
eye color, and hairstyle. And finally, this man employed the exact method
that we've heard about in dozens of stories about encounters with men people believed were
Keys, most notably and credibly that of Molly. Just two years later outside
of Nia Bay in late two thousand and one or early two thousand and two,
two sketches were provided of the man, both of which sort of looked
like Keys, while also not really looking alike themselves. In two thousand and
three, back at the University of Maine Orino, according to the main campus
news, a man asked a student for directions before attempting to pull her into
his car. The man was described as white, standing at around five foot
ten in his mid twenties, weighing approximately one hundred eighty pounds, having a
muscular build, with no facial hair, and spiky blonde hair. We don't
necessarily believe that this was Keys, but are including it just in case,
particularly because we believe Keys was in the area at the time, and other
than the spiky blonde hair, most of the description matches. The last known
to US assault on campus at University of Maine Orino occurred on October twelfth of
two thousand and six. Again, and I can't stress this enough. Keyes
was known to and historically did visit the Maple Farm almost every single October,
and you'll notice a pattern that most of these attacks occurred in October. That
Saturday night, an unidentified man grabbed a female student and tried to pull her
into the brush and further result her outside of Shibble's Hall. According to the
student, the man was between twenty two and twenty nine years old. Keys
was twenty eight. He stood between five eleven and six feet tall. Keys
was six foot two and had a medium build, short brown hair, and
slight facial hair. Keys had a medium build, short brown hair, and
rarely had facial hair. This man was wearing a green Carhart jacket and blue
jeans. A sketch was produced which does look like a younger Israel Keys,
particularly the weak chin and distinct Roman nose. What stands out about this attack
is that we believe Keys was in Maine when it happened. The timeline can't
place him anywhere, but shows that he likely rented a car on October eighth,
And as you may recall from last season, on October fifteenth of two
thousand and six, Donny Mesier disappeared from Waitesfield, Vermont, just three days
later and two hundred and eighty four miles away, and that brings us back
to Vermont, where things have changed drastically. Mama gripped onto the Milkman's hand
and that she finally gave birth years ago. By still I don't know who
shall inherit this earth, and no one will know my name Talent on Stone
World, This Christiana. This episode was written, researched, edited, and
produced by me Josh Hallmark, with additional research by Kim Kay, Shanawlensky,
Michelle Tucker, and Jordan Taylor. Resources include the Olympian Students reconsider safety on
Evergreen Campus. The Bangor Daily News police searching for collision rapist and Yumayane police
investigate an alleged assault. This episode was made possible by the following Patreon producers
Amelia Hancock, Amy Basel and Marie Cash and at l ash Fish, Benjamin
Choppafon, Casey Jensen, Richardson, Drew Vipond, Hallie Reid, Heather Horton,
Wheedon, Jessica Ally, Hodzig, Jillianatale, Jordan good Night, Kathleen
Studor, Kendall C, Charisma Rodriguez, Kimberly K, Lanna, Lauren F
Lindsay Curtis Lindsay Lucifer Lindley, Tuscoffman, Ols Bulcus, Nicole and Dennis Henry,
Sarah King, s C. Shelley Brewer, Sherry D Tuesday Woodworth,
Vicky Russell, zach Ignatowitz, Warren, Beth McNally, John Comery, Jordan
Taylor, Sarah C, SHAWNA. Harden, and Lydia Fiedler. Thank you
to Studio Both Anne's newest Patreon supporters Tory M, Laura C, Tracy d
Amanda B. Claudia F, Steve W, Katie M, ken C,
Jennifer C, Jeanine V Elizabeth P. Jen W. Austin H. Carmel,
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To support the investigation and get AD free episodes, go to Patreon dot com,
slash Studio both and. This episode included music by William Hellfire, Parhelion
Jamison, Nathan Jones, Wings for Louise and sarahge Cheramisina, with featured music
by the Eels Father Jerry, you can't make me into you. I never
wanna be like you. Why can't you see it's me? You know it's
time to let me go this because beyond the tap in him. Never know
who it might be that you're talking this because y're the gie. This could
be you haven't known money but your t bay discretely a Loki taw