This is a studio both and production. Before we start the show, I
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no longer available. Well that's because it's now its own podcast called The Pact,
and it will begin re airing in its entirety on Wednesdays starting March fifteenth.
You can subscribe to The Pact now wherever you get your podcasts. Additionally,
I've added two new stops to my twenty twenty three tour. I'll be
joining a handful of other true crime shows for a live event in Birmingham,
Alabama, at the wild Rose Cafe on May sixth. Tickets will go on
sale soon, so follow Truecrime bs on Instagram for more details. I'll also
be at the True Crime and Paranormal Festival in Austin, Texas, this on
August twenty fifth through the twenty seventh. For tickets and more information, go
to Truecrime Podcast Festival dot com. The festival will include live shows, panels,
conversations, and one on one time with some of your favorite podcasts,
including Murder She Told, Crime Lines, The Trail Went Cold, The Peripheral
True Crime Cases with Laney, The Defense Diaries, and more. And as
a reminder, I'm heading to the West coast this weekend. You can catch
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Crime Lines, True Crime Cases with Laney Already Gone, and True Consequences at
the Rico Bravo Brewing Company. To buy tickets, go to Truecrime Bullshit dot
com and click events. Following that, I'll be doing an informal meet up
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in Los Vila's LA at seven pm on March eighth, and finally a third
at Churchill in the Castro District of Francisco from four to six on March twelfth.
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show that trip when you when we into Vermont, you flew into Chicago and
you know these guys are you know, kind of mapping it out. You
flew into Chicago, you rented a car, you drove through Burlington, and
eventually you went up to Maine and he came back. What was the total
length of that trip? You don't know. If you get they might know.
But how long were you out of Alaska? U A couple of weeks,
maybe ten days? I don't know for sure. Since it was related,
you know, to that trip at the couriers. Should should these guys
be looking for other criminal activity during that time? Um? No, no,
no, you're not just saying that to No. I can't say you're
not looking at me. I can't tell you usually look at me, adal
or anything else that they should be looking at. Or you can tell me
you don't want to tell me, but you aren't looking at me. So
I wasn't sure you wanted to answer that or not. No, there's there
I mean, there's not anything else I want to talk about. Okay,
Well that's that's different answer than saying there's nothing to it. Right, Yeah,
Well no, I said I would tell back to where the curt couriers
happened. You're not gonna blame us for asking, right, No, that's
fine, Okay, this is true crime bullshit. I'm your host Josh Hallmark
and this is a serialized story of Israel Keys. In order to fully discuss
Israel Keys and Indiana in two thousand and eleven, we first need to look
at Indiana in two thousand and seven, when Heide Keys reportedly first arrived in
the Harlan area. Their varying reports on Heidi's time in Indiana, but what
we know is that she and at least three of her daughters arrived there in
early two thousand and seven. Haid he joined what is now referred to as
a post Amish church created by former Amish members. She worked as a health
home nurse and seems to have lived in three different places and bounced between two
different churches in the New Haven, Harlan, and Gravel areas of Indiana.
We know that Keys visited Heidi at least five different times while she was living
in Northeast Indiana between early two thousand and seven and January of two thousand and
twelve, once in early December of two thousand and seven, the trip we
discussed in the last episode, again around Christmas of two thousand and eight.
We believe this trip actually occurred the first two weeks of January two thousand and
nine, immediately prior to and following the courier's abduction and murder in June of
two thousand eleven, and in either late August or early September of that same
year. But there's also reason to believe he was in Indiana at least three
other times, in late summer of two thousand and ten, at some point
in two thousand and nine, and in April of two thousand and eight.
And we'll get into those two thousand and ten and two thousand nine trips in
a future episode, but for the purpose of this episode, I want to
focus on the potential April two thousand and eight trip because it would not only
place Keys in Indiana, but in Bloomington, Indiana. Earlier this year,
I talked with a listener named Marina who had an encounter with a man that
they believe was israel Keys in April of two thousand and eight, just several
miles north of Bloomington, Indiana, So I know that this happened during Little
five. I'm almost certain that it was the Sunday because in Indiana at the
time, you couldn't buy alcohol anywhere but a winery except on Sundays, so
I think that plus the horrible nature of living in downtown Bloomington, plus the
little five is what made us be like, I have to leave, I
have to go away. And so we went to Oliver Winery, which is
like a pretty pop you were wiry. It's it abuts the Monroe State Forest.
It's really pretty and it was April, so it was really nice out
and so we, you know, like, had our wine. We were
sitting outside. I think we bought some to take back with us, which
makes sense because I know I wasn't drinking much because I drove because two of
the people did not have driver's licenses and the other person did not have a
car, so I know that I drove, so I wasn't drinking much.
I was sitting outside knitting, and the three people that I was with decided
to go into the woods and smoke pot, which again I was driving.
I'm like the biggest teetoller in the entire world, and I was just like,
Okay, I'm just gonna sit here and knit, and a guy comes
up to me and starts talking to me, which again I'm like a twenty
two year old film presenting person at this point, so I was pretty used
to like random guys coming up and being in my space and thinking that that
was like acceptable, especially in a college town. And he was like like
very close, like I think I was sitting on so there's like a little
firepait area, but there's no fire pit because it was like warm, warm,
and it wasn't dark. It was like getting darker, so maybe like
six or seven, and he was sitting like really close to me on the
bench when there were lots of other places to sit that were not taken up
by people. So my first reaction was just like, Okay, one of
these guys. Cool. It was weird. It was really weird. He
was asking me like if I was from Bloomington, if I was with anyone
at the winery, would anyone notice if I had just got in a car
and drove right now. And I was like, um, yeah, they
would actually because I have like friends who are here. And then he was
like, well, I'm here for out of town and I'm just trying to
get into something tonight. And I was like, oh, hey, joke.
Well we're here to like get away from the things going on. So
if you want to find something to do, you should probably go to downtown
Bloomington, and he was like, oh, I don't know, kind of
just was looking to do something, you know, maybe more personal. And
I'm like, oh god, I can't. I cannot deal with this tonight.
I just I just want my my weird too sweet wine and to leave.
And so I like try to steer off of the topic a couple of
times, like I ask if he has like friends to go to the college,
and he's very like elusive about it, and then tells me that he's
there on a business trip, which is weird because it's Bloomington. And also
he's like dressed like a farmer, which again is not weird for Bloomington,
but him being there on a business trip and dressed like that at a winery
is very weird. What would you describe as dressed like a farmer? So
there's definitely like there's donute like a farmer Indiana sort of look, which is
like Carharts but like the car hurts, but not like the full like monkey
suit type, like the overalls with a shirt over it. And this was
a very popular look at the time for a certain demographic that lived in Rome
and Row County, UM, So this is not unusual to see guys dressed
like that because Bloomington's like the biggest place in the county that people go to.
Um, I believe he had like a flannel shirt over it and like
a wife beater under it, which I didn't think it was like out of
the ordinary. I thought that the combination of things was weird. Yeah,
And did he say what kind of business he was on? I don't know.
I don't know. He had a bag, like a big bag,
and like a like a big backpack, like a hiking backpack, which I
also thought, but like that's also not that weird because people carry giant backpacks
on college towns where there's like really weird public transportation and people live in like
cabins in the woods. Like that's not weird, you know what I mean?
Like, Yeah, So I don't think he told me what kind of
business he was in, or I would have tried to elaborate that on that
to do anything besides having him hit on me. But like the whole time,
I'm looking over my shoulder and waiting for my friends to get back,
who are smoking apparently the biggest joint that's ever existed, because it's just like
fifteen minutes, like and it was weird. And so then after that my
friends came back and I sort of heard them coming back, and I saw
him get up and walked towards the door. My friends were like, who
is that? And I was like, oh, some guy who's talking to
me. They're like, oh, you should have invited him back, and
I'm like, I don't think so. I don't think that's what we should
have done. But then we went inside right after that, and he was
not in there, so I have no idea where he went because I didn't
see him like come back out. I didn't see him like in the parking
lot, you know, so he was just like gone. But yeah,
I don't know. And then I tried to tell them how weird this was.
But it was three guys that I was with, I will tell you,
and they seemed to think that it was perfectly fine at the time,
and I certainly did not. Like I know you described body was wearing and
this may feel redundant, but like, what did he look like apart from
like keys, Well, he looks like this guy went to high school,
but actually like quite a bit, and I thought that was weird. I
remember sort of a like a bigger nose, and that his hair was like
kind of greasy, but not not like dirty greasy, like sweaty greasy and
sort of pulled back in like a lowish ponytail, bundant kind of thing.
I don't remember him having any facial hair. Do you remember about how like
Tally was, what his build? I'm like five to seven and he was
quite a bit taller than me, so at least at least six feet tall.
And you think this was April twentieth of two thousand and eight, Um,
no, we we, We kind of tracked that down a little bit.
So Little five is usually the third weekend in April, but it was
not. It was the second weekend this year, so it actually took place
the eleventh through the thirteenth. And we know this because President Obama came that
year, and there's video of him at Little Pride during that time, at
Little Little Five during that time. I love it when stuff like that happens.
God boys, I was like, thanks Obama for real. Um,
But but yeah, I'm I'm almost certain it was the Sunday because on Friday,
Thursday I had a late class, so it cannot have been Thursday.
There's definitely Little five stuff going on on Thursday too. On Friday, I
worked at an alteration shop after school, and then Saturday and Sunday morning I
worked at this coffee and juice bar, and I think I had to get
there at like six thirty in the morning, So I highly doubt it would
have been Saturday night because I absolutely would have been working because I wanted those
those good, good tips, so like, yeah, there would be absolutely
no reason, and I don't think they even would have let me request off.
So I'm almost almost certain that it was the Sunday, which extra makes
sense because of the not being able to buy alcohol anywhere else. Yeah,
and then just tell me about at what point you determined that this could have
been keys, Like, I just I guess your line of thinking through all
that. So it's weird. So I listened to I listened to the first
two seasons of the podcast kind of like quickly and sort of like off handedly,
and there was something about his like constant laugh that made me really like
Edgy. And so then it was the Kelly Cochrane season, right, and
so I was listening to that, and she's from Indiana, so I was
like, Okay, this is interesting. And then the new season was coming
out, and I was like, all right, I should go back and
re listen to these and also I should look up more information about who this
person is, and because it was like the pandemic and I was bored,
and so I just like went on like a deep dive and I'm looking at
this picture of him and I was like, God, he looks like Adam.
Who's this guy went to high school with? And then I was like,
oh, I remember another guy who looked like Adam in a very weird
situation. So at this point, I don't think it was the Lauren Spear
episode in season two, Yes, I think I don't. I don't think
I had actually listened to that episode, because I think I listened to the
Kelly Cochrane season. Then I was like, all right, I'm gonna try
these other ones again because I like this podcast. But like, there's something
about the FBI interviews was like very very off putting to me, So,
um, I don't think I listened to that, And I was like,
I wonder if that. I was like, that surely couldn't be. And
then I was looking at just like everything looking at the time when and then
I saw on Reddit that someone had talked about um lawn Spear as a possible
connection, and they said that he would have probably hidden a kill kitten Monroe
State Forest, and I was like, oh oh my, oh wow,
that could actually be a thing. So then, of course I listened to
the seasons. I listened to whatever we're calling is it season three? Now
real? Season three? Um? So I listened to that, and then
I asked, like, because I've told people this story before, I've told
many many people the story before this ever happened, and I referred to it
as the time I think I almost got abducted. And so I talked to
people that I talked to you about that, and they're like, I mean,
it seems right. I think you should at least tell them, And
so I sent you a message. It was very It was a very it
was very weird. It was a very gradual realization. Okay, this is
super helpful. Is there anything else you feel like I should know? Um?
Oh yeah? So the okay, So the phrase that sticks the most
into my mind about this is when he told me he wanted to get into
something, which is a weird phrase and not something that like people from Indiana
say. And I always thought that that was like really weird because I didn't
know like what the context of that was, and it felt like very unsafe.
That in that phrase was actually what made me be like, this is
an unsafe situation, this is not this is not okay. Yeah, so
that was the exact phrase. Yes, okay, that's interesting. And I
will say that three other people that I was with. One of them remembers
it, but he doesn't have like he only barely saw the guy and didn't
have any interaction with him. And the other two people, one of them
I had like a really rough falling out within the other one I I have
no idea what happened to him after college. I think he just like quit
social media. So I talked to the one person who I'm still in contact
with, and he remembered it happening, but was like, yeah, you're
being really weird, and I was like, I wasn't being weird, So
but yeah, that's it I did. I checked a bunch of bunch of
stuff. I pulled my transcripts to check my class schedule, and queerly did
a bunch of deep diving into that day there. So true crime Bullshit is
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are a few components of Marina's encounter that stand out to me. For one,
Keys's appearance, as we all know by now, Keys was six foot
two, often wore car hearts, had shoulder length hair at the time,
which was often described and photographed as greasy, and the phrase dressed like a
farmer has come up over and over again in the files and impossible encounters and
sightings. Granted, dressed as a farmer is quite ambiguous, and most of
the Midwest is agricultural. Moving on, there's the they're on business thing.
It's something else that's come up time and time again in the most credible Keys
tips a man who looks like Keys, acting sketchy in an air he was
known to be claiming to be in town on business, usually for either insurance,
construction or translation. It comes up in the Contradance siding, the Lake
Force Park siding, and several others we haven't discussed yet, but most notably
here it comes up in the Montpellier, Ohio siding from around this time,
where a woman who lived forty minutes from Heidi Keys claimed that Israel approached her
house pretending to be an insurance salesman, and she told the FBI the thing
that made her most uncomfortable about this encounter was that the man she believes to
be Keys, wasn't dressed like an insurance salesman. And then there's the question
we get over and over again, would anyone notice if you'd disappeared? That
comes up in the Paris Lake Siding, the Saint Albans Bay Siding, and
the Marshall's Encounter, just to name a few. And finally, Keys and
Kimberly were avid wine drinkers, went to wineries frequently in Washington, Oregon,
California, much like his love for the Minnesota Vikings. His love for wine
and visiting wineries comes up in almost every interview with his adult friends. The
second thing of note is the location of the winery itself. The winery Marina's
encounter occurred at is the Oliver Winery, which is about ten miles north of
downtown Bloomington on Interstate sixty nine and Route thirty seven. Route thirty seven takes
you directly through Harlan, Indiana. The winery also backs up to a densely
wooded forest on the outskirts of the Morgan Monroe State Forest. The third thing
we need to explore is the timing of the encounter. Marina strongly believed it
was on the Sunday of the Bloomington Little five hundred in two thousand and eight,
which would make it April thirteenth. Arters Keys can't be placed anywhere for
the entire month of April in two thousand and eight. His last known prior
whereabouts are in February when he did some construction work on a house in Anchorage,
and even there we don't have exact dates. And then from March twenty
sixth through the twenty ninth, while Kimberly was in Oakland, California, their
dog sitter reported that Keys was out of town, but on paper, Keys
doesn't show up again until May eleventh, when he goes to a client's house
in Anchorage to take photos for his website. So we know that Keys was
most likely out of Anchorage at a minimum from March twenty sixth through the twenty
ninth, but possibly completely through April. The other interesting note about this particular
weekend is that, as Marina mentioned, it was the Bloomington Little five hundred
Race, which is a pretty big deal in Bloomington. Its average attendance is
reportedly twenty five thousand. Much of the city is blocked off in detour and
there is an abundance of police supervision, most precincts are diverted to cover the
three day event, meaning there's less coverage outside of downtown Bloomington. And this
is something that comes up in the Courier case and in Maureene Callahan's American Predator,
which in this instance Grain of Salt. The Couriers were abducted during a
large jazz festival in Burlington, and according to Callahan, Keys told the FBI
that he liked to plan his abductions around events that would divert police attention.
The other timing factor at play is that April thirteenth is just two weeks after
Keys's sister's birthday, a sister who lived in Harlan, Indiana at the time.
So if this was Keys, what does it mean, what's its value?
Well, it would place him in Bloomington, Indiana, period, but
also so three years prior to Lauren Spier's disappearance at minimum. But as you'll
recall from my original coverage of Lauren's case in season one, episode thirteen,
there's the high possibility that he was also in the area during his December two
thousand and seven trip when he brought both Sarah and guns to visit Heidi.
This closely mirrors his behavior in the years leading up to the Courier's abduction and
murder. He went to Essex once to stake out the area and bury a
kilkit. He returned to check on the kilkit, and then he went a
third time to use the kilkit and commit the murders. As we all know,
Keys likes to be familiar with the places he commits crimes. It's also
worth noting that starting in April of two thousand and eight, Lake Monroe experienced
historic flooding, so if Keys had buried a kilkit near it, as we
suspected in season one, perhaps he was turning to check on it. Since
that season one episode, we have new information regarding the flight that Keys took
to Chicago in June of two thousand and eleven. We were able to pull
old flight records and confirm that Keys arrived in Chicago at eight eleven on the
morning of June second, close to thirty hours before he arrived in Harlyn at
Heide's house on the evening of June third. And then there's those Indiana toll
road tolls that came up in the timeline wherein Keys's financial records placed him on
the Indiana Toll Road at some point on June third. Well, we were
able to get in touch with the General Council for the Indiana Toll Road and
asked about those three specific charges. Here's what he said. The key item
is that the three dollars fifty cent toll is most likely the Chicago Skyway,
which connects to the Indiana Toll Road. Therefore, he would have hit the
Skyway then our road if headed eastbound. However, it looks like the next
two charges are entering and then exiting the toll road headed eastbound, and taking
an exit early on that would likely be used to head south. He specified
that for someone to have incurred these exact charges, they'd have to exit the
toll road at one of the following exits, Gary East Lake Station or Portage
Willow Creek. What's notable here is that the Gary East exit feeds into Interstate
sixty five, which travels due south to Bloomington, and while you could feasibly
take the Portage Willow Creek exit to get to Harlan, the three fastest routes
would be off of exits further east along the toll road. So this could
mean a few things. One Key spent June second doing something in the Chicago
area. He did tell the FBI that he bought the cigars that he smoked
during the courier's rape and murder while he was in Chicago, and then at
some point thereafter on the third, he drove a somewhat irregular route to Harlan
two. Key spent June second in the Chicago area, then sometime around midnight,
drove directly to Bloomington, taking the Chicago Skyway to the Indiana Toll Road
to Interstate sixty five, but this seems unlikely because even if Keys hit that
first toll at exactly midnight, he wouldn't get into Bloomington until five to forty
in the morning, which is more than an hour after Lauren Spear was reportedly
last seen leaving Rosenbaum's apartment at four thirty a m. On June third,
three, Keys landed in Chicago and then drove a smaller highway to Bloomington,
where he spent the day staking out the area, as he did in the
two days leading up to his abduction of the couriers. He then abducts and
murders Lauren, then heads back to Chicago, so he can be traced driving
from the city through northern Indiana on June third, he's really, do you
bring your cigars when you do? You buy him there? I usually buy
him wherever I am, And where do you buy your cigars? Vermont?
Well, on that trip I had him with me. Oh, I bought
him in Chicago, Chicago or Indiana, I don't know, somewhere down there.
It's that same brand you usually smoke. Yeah, I mean it's not
as they're kind of a little more difficult to find certain areas. And while
option three seems the most outlandish, there's something that Keys said in an unreleased
interview that lends some significant credence to it. The general rule for reporting on
something is that it requires two independent sources for verification. It's a rule I've
tried to employ throughout the podcast, and when I've wavered, I've tried to
be clear on what level of integrity the single source may have. But with
big things, if I've only had one source, I've generally kept them to
myself. Well, since my original reporting on Laurence Spier's disappearance back in twenty
nineteen, a few things have happened. One Maureene Callahan's American Predator was released,
and two someone came forward with some information that I had received from an
entirely different person, And we'll get into that in a little bit, but
I want to start with Callahan an American Predator. American Predator is a book
about Israel Keys that is incredibly well sourced. Callahan talked to and got access
to all the right people and files, but how she presented some of that
information, in my opinion, was a bit tenuous. That said, the
facts in the book have thus far been factual. It's merely her opinions and
speculation that I often find flawed. And based on her sourcing, the information
presented as fact, which she obtained from the FBI is pretty iron clad.
One such tidbit is something I'd received from a reliable source long before her book
came out. So her book and its sourcing makes two. The name is
forty five is a list created off of images found on Kimberly's computer, just
images. There's also a list of Google to search terms which has never been
made public, but we know that Deborah Feldmann spelled incorrectly, was on that
list, and according to my source, and now Callahan's book, there was
another relevant phrase on that list missing persons Indiana, June two thousand eleven.
That's right, Keys googled missing persons Indiana June two thousand eleven, and according
to Callahan's book, during an unreleased interview, the same interview where my source
reported that Keys got visibly upset when scented with Spears's photo, agent Bell asked,
did you do this? People are going to think you did this?
You were in Indiana that night. Keys laughed and then replied, that's how
hard it's going to be for you guys to figure it out. According to
those tolls paid in very traceable credit, it looks like Keys was in Chicago
on the night of June second. Another interesting thing that we've paid more attention
to is Keys's return to Indiana following the abduction and murder of the couriers,
which is something he also did in Essex. After murdering Lorraine and Bill.
He created an immediate distance between himself and the crime scene by driving six hours
to his brother's house in Bangor, but then he returned to Essex days later
to check on the crime scene, drove that car, drove their car up
north and only made it about halfway, and then I started just like a
whole, a whole bunch of things. I realized that there was their car
had issues, and I think it was also almost out of gas, and
I was still resently and I didn't really addrest myself to roll the bank because
I hadn't slept all night and I was kind of shaky, and so I
decided to scratch that. I was thinking I would just park the car.
I was going to torch the car. There was an area down back down
where I buried the guns from before in Vermont, and I was going to
drive their car down there and torch it after the bank robberies. But but
then for some reason, I was thinking I could still use the car.
I just you know, I was going to go up to Maine and will
out for a few days and then come back through Vermont. And I was
thinking if the car was still there, then I would take the car and
maybe still do some bancoveries with it and then torchhip. But yeah, I
wasn't by the time he got by her for please. Then, on his
way back to Chicago following the murder of the couriers, Keys inexplicably stops in
Harlan for two to three days, and unfortunately, we don't know much about
the time he spent there. This is all that came up in the FBI
summary of their interview with Heidi on February twelfth or twenty thirteen, when they
discussed that particular trip regarding the murders of William and Lorraine Courier. Heidi recalled
that Keys visited her in Indiana between June third and fifth of twenty eleven.
When Keys left Indiana, he told missus Keys that he was going to the
New York property to plant trees. Keys had no camping equipment, so she
purchased for him. When he returned to Indiana, he told Heidi that the
New York property was very overgrown, so he only planted six trees. He
also told her that he visited Vermont during that trip. It was after he
returned to Indiana from that trip that he took a long walk in the woods
with his sister. She reported that Keys was visibly upset and very broken during
their conversation. As I mentioned earlier, since my initial coverage of the Spear
case and its many links to Israel, Keys, someone has come forward with
information that had previously been shared with me confidentially. Now this new information was
shared on Reddit, which I avoid at all costs because anyone can go on
there anonymously and claim anything, and so I wouldn't even be guessing this had
much of that information shared there not matched what my source shared with me back
in twenty nineteen. And for the sake of transparency, I will say that
we were able to identify the person who wrote the Reddit post, and they
have not responded to multiple inquiries, and I've yet to be able to suss
out how exactly they would have received this information. So without explicitly sharing what
my source shared with me, I'll simply share the Reddit post and say that
much of it was corroborated by my source, and the most damning part was
also corroborated by information found in the Courier files. The first of two posts
reads as follows. If there's one thing I'm certain of in the world of
keys, that he killed Spear. I am very close to someone who is
extremely involved in this case. All the points here are valid and well thought
out. It's an odd case because you can think hard about it and feel
it's likely he wasn't involved, or you can think hard about it and think
it's likely he was. That's true of a lot of Keys cases, but
this case is probably the most fifty fifty on the board. I can tell
you there is a reason Josh had such extreme confidence in season two of the
podcast that Keys was responsible, to the point that he proclaimed, I believe
an announcement is forthcoming that Israel Keys raped and murdered Spear. There was an
announcement coming. It was all set. At the last minute. They called
off the announcement after a call from the FBI, but it didn't dissuade them
from being certain that it was Keys, just from making an announcement. I
don't have much special knowledge of any other Keys involved cases. This one I
do, and Keys is responsible. It will eventually come out, and I'm
not certain why it hasn't already. There's a ninety eight percent probability of Israel
Keys, even despite a lack of physical evidence. With the scope of more
info, it'll make perfect sense that it was Israel Keys in hindsight. The
person posted again when pressed for specific details, and the information in this post
is the information of more interest to me. Multiple pings from an anchorage number
that traces nowhere, a ka burner phone within a very tight radius of where
Lauren was last known to be during the exact time she was purportedly there,
pings headed toward a very deep lake outside of town in Brown County, a
report of a man fitting keys description in the area that night, toll road
times lining up the things pointing to Keys. Aren't just trying to make him
fit so they can mark the case resolved. There's zero evidence of anyone else,
and more than a few pieces of evidence pointing to a serial killer with
a specialty in making people vanish, who they can almost certainly place in the
area during the moments Lauren vanished. There's a few other things I don't feel
comfortable posting because it could reveal hold back evidence if it's ever warranted. I
don't know if that's what the police consider it, but I could see it
being considered such. It's significant, and it points to Keys as well,
but you never know, so it's best left held back. There isn't and
has never been any evidence against these boys or anyone else. The only evidence
at all, besides the boys being the last ones with her, points to
Israel Keys. As far as the first question on why no announcement. I
don't know for sure. I know these two things. It was because of
a call from the FBI. Bloomington police are no less convinced that it was
Keys after the call, and the indications are the FBI believes it was likely
him as well. So I don't know. The FBI has been strange about
their handling of keys since day one, and what I can say about that
last part is that it lines up with our own experiences trying to obtain the
case files and Lauren's disappearance. Here's an email from Jordan, a former police
officer who does independent research on keys. Did I tell you about the foyas?
FBI sends a letter on a Friday saying it was going to take longer
than normal. Then the following Monday, I get a response that the records
are all in the vault and they'd have to look elsewhere if I wanted them.
Bloomington said they needed to confer with their legal department, then acknowledge that
records do exist, but refuse to release them for investigatory purposes. When I
asked if I could speak with someone about the connection, they said they would
forward my info to the detective, but nothing further has come, which in
my opinion, lines right up with the FBI stepping in. You may recall
that an Anchorage phone number which traced back to a Burner phone pinged off of
the same tower in Essex Junction at the same time as the courier's cell phone.
Here's where I'll close. This is all very compelling circumstantial evidence in a
case that is still active, involving both local law enforcement and the FBI,
but more importantly involving a family who is still desperate for real and actual answers.
So as often as we talk about police tunnel vision, it's important that
we also don't exercise tunnel vision. We don't know that Israel Keys killed Jimmy
Tidwell or Susanne Lyle or Cammi and Jean or Lauren Spearer. We have very
compelling circumstantial evidence, but their families deserve way more than that same mag Sadams
Now. This episode was written, researched, edited and produced by Me Your
Host, Josh Hallmark, with research assistants by Ben Lamb, Shana wa Lensky,
Michelle Tooker, and Jordan Taylor. The episode featured Marina Turner. This
episode was made possible by the following Patreon producers Amelia Hancock, Amy Basel,
Annette Benjamin Choppa, Thong, Casey Jensen, Richardson, doctor Jill Cooper,
Drew Vipond, Holly Read, Gillian Natale, John O'Leary, Kendall, C,
Kimberly, k Lauren f Lindsay, Curtis Linley, Tuscoffmanolas Bullachus, Megan
cap Seawell, Mike Sherman, Nicole and Dennis Henry, Sarah c sc,
Shannon Foster, Shelley Brewer, Tuesday Woodworth, Zach Ignatowitz Warren and Lydia Fiedler.
Thank you to True Crime Bullshit's newest Patreon supporters Britney H, Tina S
Elegant cow, Gabrielle Kay, Ashley H, Laura Athena, j Sidney Stryder,
H, Tanya H, Robin H and Crystals. To support the investigation,
go to patreon dot com slash true crime BS. This episode included music
by William Helfeyer, Radical Face, Sergei chermisanov Ittai, Argamon Oakfield, and
Den Hollander, with featured music by Van Steel Eat. You around to say
good bye. Nothing leaves here Consar Answer give out, Mbomber, Movember slack,
and I don't know