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.
Also Tonight Thursday after the show at nine pm Eastern, join me and
the researchers on YouTube for a live stream discussion about the episode. The link
to the live stream is in the show notes. This is a studio both
and production and all that leads us to let's talk about the photo, but
also, you know, and I kind of want to go into this call
begrudgingly being open my mind. And I think it would be a great exercise
if we all pretended we didn't know anything about Keys, because I think we're
going to have to have a few tough conversations about our research and our theories
and everything we think we know. So why, Yeah, we're about to
drow up on us. This is true grime, bullshit. I'm your host,
Josh Hallmark, and this is a serialized story of Israel Keys. I
think one of the most compelling and frustrating things about the Keys case is how
little we actually factually know. Our investigation over the years has taken us quite
far. We've learned a lot about Israel. We've developed some very strong theories
about potential victims. We've gathered very compelling, circumstantial evidence. We've uncovered a
lot of new information about Keys, who he was, his relationships, how
he operated. But when we look at the absolute facts of the case,
particularly back when I started my work on it, we had very few.
Back in twenty sixteen, we had three confirmed victims and the key's confessions,
and from there we cautiously built a thorough investigation. The Courier confession in particular,
informed much of that investigation those few absolute truths. But what if those
truths weren't so absolute after all? Over the past year, multiple things have
come up that brought us back to Vermont. Kim Kay had found multiple sightings
or encounters with a man believed to be Keys at both the University of Vermont
Burlington and Saint Michael's College in Colchester. In October of twenty twenty three,
I was approached by two women who had photos of a man they believed could
be Keys creeping into the Colchester woods. In November of twenty eleven, five
months after he killed the Couriers. It's around that same time that Jordan started
going back through the Courier confessions and began to notice inconsistencies in some of Keyes's
statements, and I returned to the Essex files to start digging back through both
the phone records and the witness interviews. Over the last eight months, we
each started independently developing some seemingly controversial theories, and after a research trip back
up to Burlington, we all got together on zoom to share what we'd been
working on. We or I don't know if took some and Shanaka HOSTI on
this have a theory about the Vermont caches. So, as Keys tells it,
on the Debra Feldman trip, he buried one in the woods behind his
hotel, which is the Hampton Inn in Colchester. Then he went back at
some date later decided it wasn't sealed properly and moved it down to Windowski by
the couriers. And then after he committed those crimes, he essentially emptied it,
left it in the woods with a shovel and took everything either to Maine,
somewhere in New Hampshire or Blaitfel's reservoir. But there are a few things
that stand out with that. One is there items that he talks about that
were never recovered, including the courier's phones, which I don't think he could
just completely burn at a campsite. The second is why take all of that
shit to Maine and then just to bring it back to Blake Falls Reservoir.
Like he's leaving the area with significant mileage and then bringing all the evidence back
to essentially his own backyard. It doesn't make a ton of sense. So,
you know, we were talking to these gals who took the picture that
they believed to be keys, that like I immediately thought was keys, was
convinced and now I'm like sixty forty on and we can talk about that in
a sec But whether it's Keys or not, the area that this guy was
going into are the woods behind the Hampton In hotel. It's basically you can
walk less than a mile from where this photo was taken to where he was
staying, and we know that the first cash is somewhere within that mile.
So Bill Currier's phae pings right there. The the cell phone tower is actually
directly next to where this woman worked at seven twenty six am the morning after
he abducted them. According to Keys, he's already on the road at this
point. But what we do know is like the phone is there in Vermont,
it gets an incoming call, it pings, But then this next incoming
call at eleven fifty seven am comes in and his phone has been turned off
at that point. So either Keys returned to this area where the first cash
that allegedly doesn't exist anymore was with Bill's phone and Barry is it there,
or he returns there for some reason unclear before going on the road to Maine.
We then have other sightings of him there going way past the Courier's death,
so October of twenty eleven, that alleged photo is November one, twenty
eleven. We have him in the area January third, twenty twelve. So
what I'm wondering is if all the items that were never recovered are in that
cash and he never actually moved it and it's still in the woods out there.
I agree, I think that's probably the most likely scenario. The initial
thought here was that Keys's timeline following the Courier's murders wasn't exactly as he presented
it, and that he likely returned to the Colchester cash and not the Wenuski
cash, the one that was never found, despite Keys leading the FBI there
to deposit some of the items he stole from the Couriers and other evidence from
that crime. He confessed that he took and saved the courier's jewelry, but
it hasn't shown up anywhere. As you may recall, Keys confess to burying
a cash in Colchester, Vermont on the same trip as the Tupper Lake Bank
robbery and the abduction and murder of Deborah Feldman. The hotel he stayed out
on that trip, the Colchester Hampton Inn, backs up to the same woods
that the man in the photo was creeping into in November of twenty eleven.
Incidentally, Saint Michael's College, where we have multiple reports of Key sightings,
also backs up to those same woods, and the last cell tower Bill Currier's
phone ever pinged at is also adjacent to those woods. Now, when we
first saw these photos of the man in the woods, we were all pretty
convinced it was Keys, But in the time since some of our opinions on
the photos had changed, and all that leads us to let's talk about the
photo. But the photo. So again, the this is what I hate
is where like something unsubstantiated is used to substantiate something else that's unsubstantiated. Yeah,
so Lisa says that this guy looks exactly like him, and before she
even sees the picture, which has never been made public, she id,
she says, like, the only thing about it that made me feel like
it wasn't Keys was he looked way too young, and he had this black
pike. And then so here's this photo where the only thing that makes us
skeptical is he looks way too young, and then he has this black pike
and he's in the area where the cash was and so like, circumstantially,
there's a lot of evidence, But the more I looked at that photo,
I just it didn't I wasn't as certain that it was Keys anymore. And
I know Shana Intooks had different journeys with this. Yeah, I'm more of
a skeptic. I think Shana, you're the one who's the most convinced it's
Keys. To me, Like, whenever I look at it, my gut
tells me. And I know you can't always but go by your gut,
but I'm like, there's just something off about it, Like I can see
the resemblance. But then I'm like, and maybe you wouldn't get one hundred
percent even if we did see a real picture of Keys at like a robbery
that we were to uncoquer. But for some reason, it just I can't
believe it one hundred percent, that's for sure. Well, I wouldn't bet
my life on it. Yeah, I know you, but you're convinced,
I guess, But I he looks too young, which is really interesting.
He The way I'm thinking of it is, we don't know Keys. We
don't know how his face looks from different angles. We don't know how it
looks when it moves like. He's not our peer, He's not somebody whose
face we've looked across at for years. I would love to be able to
show it to somebody who knew him and see what their thoughts were. The
more photos of Keys that I compare it to, the more I do think
it's Keys. If you were to take away all the circumstantial things about it
being, you know, in Essex or Colchester during a time when he was
there pretty frequently, in a spot where we know he admitted to having a
cash, if we were to take that all away, I would probably be
sixty forty with Josh. But adding all that in, I'm more like ninety
ten sure it's him. Now, this is something that does not help us
decide whether it's him or not. But whenever I look at the picture,
it looks to me like that person. And I don't mean this disparagingly,
but it looks to me like there's someone who's on drugs, which could be
Keys, of course, because there's that whole meth angle, but that's just
a look. It looks like someone who's like, I don't know, just
has that look about them. I don't know if you guys noticed that either,
but I just put the photos, and she gave us her original report
that she sent to ESSEXPD. I just put them in the chat so you
can look for yourselves. Never reveal her name. She's a very private person
and she does not want her name revealed. Yeah, I made some comparisons
that I put in Lark. I don't know if you saw them, Josh,
I did not. Okay, the more I see them next to pictures
of Keys, the more I do think it was him. But again circumstantially,
that's what makes this a stronger case for me for it being him than
the photos, just based on how this person looks. I would love to
hear Jordan and Kim's thoughts on these photos, because I don't think we've heard
them I am like the polar opposite of your super recognizer, Like that is
like the one thing I'm really terrible at is trying to make faces out.
So I've been kind of unsure on it. I think it probably well could
be, but I think that my opinion on it's been more performed by context
than my actual visual ability, So I can't really say for certain one way
or another on it based on Yeah, yeah, I'm kind of with Jordan
on not being able to recognize very well. But I keep looking at the
photos ear lobe and hairline and chin, and I just didn't feel like they
matched keys. But I know, like I showed it to my husband and
he was like, yeah, that looks like Keith. So like I don't
know, like he's not really into He's stuff at all, so like he's
not like studying pictures of him, but from what he's seen, I think
I showed him pictures of keys with short hair and he's like, yeah,
I think that is him. So yeah, I mean you might know about
this, Like I haven't gone down this rabbit hole enough, but would there
be some kind of AI software that especially this photo where you see him standing
by the bike and it's so blurry that could like sharpen that up. Yeah,
definitely, Yeah, I wonder if we could run that through there,
And just does that one I feel like would make or break it? Yeah?
And that one, like looking at I I don't think I saw that
one earlier, And that one looks more like Key's to me. So yeah,
But is it just because it's blurry, or is it really because we
get a fuller picture of this person what they look like, because he looks
a lot taller here too, because obviously he's in a different position. But
yeah, I'll see what I can do now. First and foremost, these
aren't just photos that appeared out of the ether after the podcast came out.
They are photos that are actually referenced in the original FBI files. On December
twenty sixth, the twenty twelve, a woman called the FBI tip line to
report that she saw a man who looked like Israel Keys in Colchester in November
of two thousand eleven. Here's the details from the FBI files. She called
and stated she worked on Troy Avenue in Colchester, Vermont, and was working
late one night in November two thousand eleven and saw a man walking out of
the woods nearby. She thought that man looked odd, so she took photographs
of the mail. She stated he had a cell phone in his hand when
he was exiting the woods. She witnessed him from her office. Unfortunately,
there's not much context there. There's nothing about it that screams keys other than
a man entering the woods late at night. Fortunately, though, she also
reported this to Ssex PD when it happened, and we were able to obtain
a copy of that report, which reads. On one November twenty eleven,
at about four forty five p m. I was sitting in my office on
Troy Avenue in Colchester and saw a man ride by on his bike, somewhat
slowly, wearing a black jacket with white stripes on the arms and blue jeans.
I got up and opened the window to look at him. He was
looking into the woods. I see a lot of people come by my office,
but I have never seen someone who seemed to have an interest in the
woods below, although I know the trail is sometimes used. When I put
my head out, I saw him going slowly along the woods and looking into
them. Then he turned around and came back by my window. I'm on
the second floor and turned over toward a path across the street from my office.
He stopped at the top of the path and I got out my cell
to try to take a picture. He got off his bike. It looked
like he did something with his back break and then got back onto his bike.
By then I had my cell camera on. I took a picture of
him heading down the bike path on his bike. I saw him ride into
the dingle, going pretty slowly down the hill, and I didn't see him
stop. About a minute later, I saw him walking over towards the left.
He was easy to see because most of the leaves have come off the
trees. I saw him walking back and forth a few times, going slightly
up and down along what I think is a swampy area. After about five
or seven minutes walking back and forth, I thought it looked like he was
looking for something. He went back in toward what I think is the bottom
of the trail, and then he started walking the opposite direction to the right
a few more minutes, but less than on the other side. He stayed
at the bottom in the middle for a few minutes, then walked his bike
back up. I tried to take a few pictures of him coming up the
hill, but I couldn't get the camera to focus. When he got out
of the woods at the top of the trail, I took a picture.
He went to the road and looked at what looked like a foam for about
thirty seconds. He didn't make a call, but put it away, then
was looking back at the woods. He then got back on his bike and
left the opposite direction from the way I saw him come in. It was
around five PM or so when he left. A few things to note.
One, the direction he was originally walking is toward the Hampton Inn. Two,
as she noted, he appeared to be looking for something in the woods.
Three. A woman named Lisa reported to us that she had seen Keys
several blocks from where this sighting occurred, with a bike that exactly matched the
bike in the photo. When she mentioned this, she hadn't known about the
photos, let alone the bike included in them. When I showed her a
picture, she said, yes, that's the man, and that's that fucking
bike. Four. Keys told the FBI that he was concerned about the Colchester
cash not originally being sealed properly and that items inside it might get wet and
rust, and as the woman stated the area the man seemed to be searching
in was a swampy area of the woods. But based on Keys's account of
his time in Vermont and the date November one of twenty eleven, we couldn't
make sense why if it was him, he'd be going back to the cash
so long after the murder of the couriers. And that's when Jordan shared with
us his theory that he had quietly been looking into. Now, Jordan,
what's your theory about him moving the couriers? Well, this is based off
of a few threads I've just kind of been pulling and following through the FBI
interviews, and then I buried it up with some of the notes from the
from the case file from the Essex. We know that Bill's glasses were found
in the yard outside of the house. Now it's not to say they maybe
couldn't have fallen off outdoors when they were getting out of the car, but
I find it very hard to believe that if they were in the basement with
Bill when the house was demolished, they would be in pristine conditions, sitting
in the front yard and the grass to the point where they could analyze the
prescription on them the match them back to Bill. That makes zero sense to
me whatsoever. And what really said it together kind of tied it together for
me. Was reading through the Essex files. There's an interview with the home
for the farmhouse and in October of twenty eleven, she sent a guy to
clean the house out, take the foundation stone out of the basement because it
was a family property. And he said basically did that a week before they
signed off on the sale of the house for it to be demolished. He
went there, he was there for two days in October twenty eleven. Now,
this guy does not have a sense of smell, so this is kind
of the weirdest coincidence ever. With that, he said he can't smell anything
at all and therefore would not have noticed any odor in the basement, but
said there was nothing out of place down there. The detective asked about garbage
bags. He said, there were a couple of garbage bags. He said
he kicked them and they were full of old jars and cans. He said,
if you entered the basement from the driveway by the propane tanks through the
red bulkhead doors, you would see the bags right in front of this fuel
tank. So and he drew a diagram which is included in the file of
right where these bags were. So he said nothing, there was nothing out
of the ordinary in the basement, nothing out of place in the house when
he went there. And I mean Key's admitted to what kicking the door in.
It wasn't very well secured. There were a few locks, but there's
like four or five different ways to get in to that and it was the
basement one of them. The basement access was one of the ways. And
there was basically the front door. I think that door was locked, but
I think I kicked it in at the time and basically ran attacking the place.
And then we have in his April thirtieth interview, he was talking about
building a silencer for his rifle and taking it with him to Essex, and
he told the athf he built a fabric brass catcher to catch shellcasings, but
didn't take it to Essex, and explained that that's why he took the bolt
and barrel from that weapon and threw it in the reservoir, because he left
the showcasings behind after shooting Bill. But the caretaker would have noticed a bunch
of showcasings on the floor, correct, I would think, at least so
trying to round up all the shell casings that were all over the basement.
But then it was like it was too big of a mess, so I
just gave up on that and just figured i'd throw the bolt of the gun
away too, and I had him back in the corner, and there was
all kinds of trash over on the other side of the basement, like shelves,
old shelves and ducting, mostly wood debris and stuff. And by then
it was too late in the morning. I didn't want to torch the house
because there were too many people going by. There. Had a brass catcher
that I had made. I didn't have the as catcher on it when I
kind of shot mister Career, which is why I threw away. I had
to throw away the bolt and the extractor and everything too, because there was
twenty two shells all over the basement of that house. And but yeah,
I had the brass catcher so that I could so that all I have to
toss was the barrel. The barrels pretty, they're pretty cheat, like thirty
or forty. Well, the home owner didn't mention that there is a septic
tank and a well on the property, and it looked like from what she
could see in the photos and the videos on the case, that those hadn't
been disturbed, so it didn't look like maybe the police had even searched them.
But as far as where they could possibly would have been, I don't
have a good answer, a good lead on that, but I do think
that the more I the more I look at it, the more I think
about it, the more things I find they kind of connect with it.
It feels more like Keys knew they weren't there and was just getting off on
messing with them, searching and doing this whole search knowing they weren't there in
the first place. Now, it's important to note when and how Keys confessed
to the abduction and murders of the Couriers. On April sixth of twenty twelve
is when he first told the FBI that he killed a couple in Vermont.
Throughout the course of that interview, he eventually named the couple as the Couriers
and said they could be found in a farmhouse in Essex, and then they
let him use Google Maps to lead them to the exact farmhouse. On April
twelfth. He said that he didn't want to discuss the couriers that day,
but later in that same interview, the FBI told him that the farmhouse in
Essex had been demolished. Then on May eighth, after they've told him the
farmhouse has been demolished, he starts providing details about what happened in the farmhouse
after he knows or believes at least that most of what he says about what
happened in that farmhouse can never be corroborated or refuted. All that said,
I don't think it's the first time that he learned about the demolition of the
farm house. But more on that in a second. First, let's take
a look at the statements from the home owner and a man that she hired
to go through the house before they closed on the sale of the farmhouse.
She said that she hired a man named Larry to go to the house and
jack hammer out of foundation stone that she wanted to keep, and that Larry
had been a caretaker for the house since around two thousand six. Larry was
on the property for two days in late October of two thousand eleven, and
most of his time there was spent in the basement. Larry said there wasn't
really anything in the basement. When asked about garbage bag he said there were
a couple. He said that he kicked the bags to see what was inside
of them, and that they were just full of old jars and cans.
He said that the garbage bags were in a pile with some old tires and
hosing, and Larry said that other than the bags and the pile that they
were in, there was nothing else in the basement other than storage. The
short version is, as you know, we don't have the courriers' bodies in
hand yet the house was demolished. We thought that they were probably in the
basement when the house was demolished. They didn't wind up being the case.
Among the things, we had canaverdogs out there. They alerted on the same
corner of the basement, of the southeast corner of the basement that you told
us about, So they alerted there. We talked to a number of folks
on the demolition crew. I think it was about three or four folks on
the demolition crew, and they all ironically said, yeah, we smelled this
horrible odor. Smelled essentially like a dead body or dead animal. That type
of thing and know who you talked to, and yet none of them,
much to our shock and on, decided it might be a good idea to
go in and walk through the house. So apparently they didn't do that,
otherwise the bodies would have been discovered. They just went ahead with their demolition.
I don't know why they did that, it doesn't matter, but they
did. We went we did some additional research on how the house was demolished.
It was very similar to what you described in one of the interviews a
while back, by the way, and our best guest, frankly, is
they were using a huge crane to basically excavate the site and stuff, and
it would go in and basically pick up the better part of half a dump
truckload of stone. One yeah, I mean huge, and our bucket.
Our best guess at this point in time is Murphy's law. They scooped up
the bags without basically splitting them open, that type of thing, and put
them in the dump truck. We've tracked them down to the to the dump
in Vermont, and we actually have folks there right now today searching it and
we've got it narrowed down to a pretty small area of the debris taken from
that house and they got their work cut out for them. And I mean
just to uh again, your courriers glasses were found, yeah, and we
were able to match those to him, So they were found at the scene.
So we do have a connection to the scene and to the couriers and
stuff, and we've been able to corroborate the information that you're that you're giving
us on this. It's just not going as quickly or as smoothly you would
all alike, and frankly, the way that it usually goes in most cases
is just not going that well. Every time. Every once in a while
there's a hiccup, and that's really what this is. So now that the
people out there in Vermont are in the dump and they're looking for your black
bags, you know so, and I think you told us four bags.
Are they separate bags or you put a bag on the bottom and a bag
on the top, that's how it was separate bags or bag on the top
bag? I mean with two bags on each body. That's that's what I
thought you had said. How did you secure them? I mean I don't
think they were secured, just not at them on top, like, not
at the two bags together. But the main I mean I have main the
main reason I had for putting the bags on was just so that people wouldn't
they would have to actually pull the bag off to see what it wasn't and
and also to hold the drain on the bodies. I had some draino that
I brought with me. Okay, So so when they're looking for these,
if there's any if it was there, just did you dismember them. So
now they're looking, so they're they're they're contact So if we find partial,
we need to keep looking. Yeah, they're should they're yeah, if they
If I'm guessing it sounds like they brought in a big excavator or something.
I'm still sounds like a really big one. Yeah, yeah, I would
have had there been a really big one because because like I said that,
the bags weren't tied together, so it seems like they would have been the
bodies would have although it's only it's been less than a year or so,
the bodies probably weren't even you know, they were probably only about halfway to
skeletal, so they're probably even with all the moisture of the bags, le
trap and stuff. Well, it depends how busy the bugs got. But
and what did you put the draino in there? Is that what you said?
What's that for? Uh? The draino was an idea I had in
case they were found right away. I didn't want there to be in the
DNA on the outside of the bodies. I had heard that the lie and
the draino destroys like scrambles up all the DNA. I don't know. And
also it was I was singing to keep it like if you leave it on
saw it like if you leave the draino I was using. I'd used it
before, and I noticed that they got splash on me and it'll actually burn
through your skin if you leave it on there long enough. And so that
was the other thought I had, that it would start the decomposition and they
would, you know, break them down a little bit faster, keep them
from bloating and stuff. And you didn't tape the bag shut at all or
do anything. No, I know they weren't taped. There was possibly they're
possibly knotted. Would they be knotted with a zip TI or no? Just
they may have been seems like the bags might have been the kind with the
flaps like extended portions of the bag on the top of the mouth of the
bag. So what I may have done is pulled them together at the at
the waist, at the torso, and then just done a knot on top,
But I don't think I did. It was dark and I was in
a hurry at that point, so it's more like it how early in the
morning. How close was it to get in daylight? It was daylight,
it wasn't. It was probably about six in the morning when I had everything
wrapped up. So while the FBI can corroborate that the couriers were there,
or at least that Keys was there, they can't corroborate Keys's claims about what
took place there, and more so, we can actually refute some of those
claims. Now. In his statement, Larry went on to say that when
he did some work on the farmhouse back in two thousand and seven or two
thousand and eight, he placed a chain and lock on the basement bulkhead doors.
But anyway, I took him down through the outside basement access. There
were those two big steel doors into the basement, and I walked him down
there and found h there was like an old stool and cable tie his hands
down to the stool so he couldn't stand up, and then had the stool
backed up against the wall and thought, I had it pretty well secured.
And uh, well, I mean, there must have taken you longer than
I thought, because I came out of the basement and she was standing right
there by the door she had got out of the car. But Larry said
that when he returned in October of twenty eleven to remove the foundation stone,
the chain and the lock were still intact on the basement bulkhead doors. Larry
also didn't mention the front door being completely kicked in, nor finding any let
alone five to eight shell casings on the basement floor, where again he spent
most of his time over those two days. And as far as Keys knew,
because the FBI told him before he fully confessed, the house sold and
was immediately demolished. But like I mentioned earlier, I think he's I knew
the house had been demolished long before he was even arrested. For one,
we know that Keyes returned to the area at least twice between the murders and
his arrest, and as Bobby Chaconne, doctor Cuncle, and doctor Ramsland have
all agreed. Keyes was the type of offender who would return to the scenes
of his crimes, so it's highly unlikely that he'd be in the area and
not check on the farmhouse. But more than that is how Keys found the
house in the first place. He found it in a real estate listing,
specifically a real estate listing online on a real estate website. So this is
the place that was ultimately demolished and that we searched and did not find the
bodies in do you have it? Were there any interior pictures like from the
real estate listing agent or something. That's all we were able to find with
that, because they know, if they ever want I don't know, if
they ever want the interview of you know, like what happened inside the house,
that might be Actually that's probably good enough just to picture the outside.
Yeah, Like I said, I really jumped the gun on that, But
I had no idea. Oh man, what the hell? So looking at
that house, I knew there was like a ten percent chance that the owner
was either going to pay to have it demolished or just throw a match.
It was that the house, well, I knew it. I just knew
from what I knew about houses. I knew it wasn't something anybody would try
to have a more sales sign out in front of it. Was Yeah,
so apparently there wasn't too many people looking at that house to purchase it after
you were there. No, well, this is off of our real estate
website. That's why I was curious. I'm not surprised though, that whoever
had it listed didn't take pictures of the inside, because it was pretty bad.
Wasn't impressive, it was it just looks like letter for the so Keys
could have at any time gone back to that website to see if the farmhouse
had sold or not. And that takes us back to the key sighting on
November first of twenty eleven. And while we've already discussed the sightings placing him
there that October, this new one with these photos of him potentially looking for
or going to an old cash in Colchester would line up quite well with him
finding out that the old farmhouse had sold and returning to move the courier's bodies
or any evidence left behind before the new owners took possession of it. While
the movement of the couriers remains and the use of the Colchester cash in relation
to their abduction homicides impossible cover up our strong theories that were still developing theories.
But in addition to the lies that we know Keys told about the farmhouse,
we've caught him in some other lies regarding that trip. According to Keyes's
timeline of events following his murder of Bill in the Rain Courier, he left
the farmhouse at some time between six and six thirty a m. On June
ninth. From there, he at first says that he drove directly to the
Home Depot parking lot across the street from the Handy Suites where he was staying.
Later, he says he might have stopped at the hotel first to unload
items from the Courier's trunk which were used in the crime. He says he
believes he may have placed them in the hotel dumpster, then driven the car
back across the street and left it in the Home Depot parking lot, but
either way, after parking their car at the Home Depot, he walked back
to the Handy Suites to pack and swort through items he stole from the Courier's
house, some which he kept and some which he stated he also put in
the dumpster. He then says that he checked out of the hotel by eight
a m. At the very latest, because he wanted to be up in
Johnson before the banks opened at nine. After checking out, he drove his
rental car across the street to a different parking lot, then walked back to
the courier's car at home depot and started driving Route fifteen towards Johnson. As
we all well know by now, At some point en route to Johnson,
Keys claims that he started having doubts about the courier's car making it all the
way, so he turned around, drove back to Essex Junction, and abandoned
the courier's car at apartments at two forty one Pearl Street. Then from there
walked back through a wooded area to his rental car and decided instead of robbing
the banks, he would just head straight to his brother's house in Bangor,
Maine. Assuming that this is all true and accurate, that has him on
the road to Maine by nine thirty at the very latest. Then he says
he was about halfway to Maine when he remembered that the courier's phone were still
long, and so he pulled over to turn them off. We've obviously always
had some suspicions about his timeline of events here, but now we can say
with little hesitation that not a single word is true. First off, according
to the hotel registration that Keys signed at check in, which we got from
the Essex files, Keys had only registered to stay at the Handy Suites for
one night, the night of June seventh, but we can confirm that he
was billed for two nights, so at some point after registering he extended his
stay, which is more an interesting tidbit than it is evidence of his timeline
lies. The most glaring evidence of his lies are the cell phone records.
First, we have Bill Currier's seven to twenty six a M ping, which
placed his phone near the Troy Avenue cell tower and not at the Susie Wilson
Tower, which is within one block of the home depot, the Handy Suites
two forty one Pearl, and the alleged sight of the Wenooski Kill Kit.
The two towers are approximately two miles apart. Additionally, if Keys were somehow
still at the farmhouse, there are at least six other towers closer by,
including the Essex Town Center tower just two blocks away. Now we'll get to
that eleven fifty seven incoming call on Bill's phone in a second, but first
we have to go to the home depot parking lot, well, a different
home depot parking lot in nearby Williston, Vermont. By now, you've probably
all seen the police sketch of keys that was created from an eye witness who
saw keys backing the Courier's car out of a parking space in that home depot
lot. He told police that while he was pulling into the parking lot,
the man in the Courier's car sped out of his parking space and nearly hid
his car. That's why the encounter was so memorable. Well, that witness
was actually a retired Vermont Police officer. Now, there have been some comments
from ESSEXPD regarding the accuracy of the composite sketch, and it was ultimately decided
it could not be used to rule sightings in or out. After the witness
eventually told police that he never got a clear sighting of the man's face from
head on, solely a quick view of his profile. However, he accurately
described the Courier's car and confirmed that the driver was a tall, white male
with shoulder length hair, all of which accurately describes Keys at the time,
and the sketch included a Roman nose, which would have been even more clear
in profile than head on. In a later interview, ESSEXPD asked if the
witness could provide any information or documentation proving when or when about this occurred,
and he pretty quickly provided a receipt from from his trip to home depot that
day, and sure enough, the receipt is dated June ninth of twenty eleven,
but it's the timestamp that brings Key's entire account into question. The receipt
is timestamped two fifty three PM, more than five hours after Keys claimed he
left the Burlington area. Additionally, while Williston is close to Essex Junction,
just four miles south, it's in the opposite direction from Johnson and the banks
that Keyes told the FBI who was planning to rob that morning, and so
that brings into question the second relevant piece of cell data. When the eleven
fifty seven am call came into Bill's phone that morning, the phone had already
been turned off or potentially could have died, but according to Keyes, he
was halfway to Maine when he remembered to turn it off, so either his
entire departure story is bullshit, or at some point on his drive to Maine
something happened or occurred to him that caused him to turn around and drive all
the way back to the Burlington metro area and then pick the Courier's car back
up, which makes no sense and would be incredibly high risk and stupid.
The two fifty three siding also coincides with sightings at two forty one Pearl Street,
the apartment complex where the Courier's car was eventually found. The earliest their
car can be placed in that parking lot by residents and eye witnesses is four
PM, an hour after the siding at the Home Depot parking lot. Now
that doesn't mean it couldn't have been there earlier, just that no one saw
it there until at least four p m. But it's worth noting that four
people confirmed they did see it, and all four confirmed they saw it at
some point around or after four pm. Interestingly, an employee at the Williston
best Buy commented on a Keys YouTube video that he had seen Keys at his
best Buy on either June eighth or June ninth of twenty eleven, that Keys
was rude to him, then tried to intimidate him by staring and scowling at
him for close to ten seconds. Keysen entered the store, roamed around for
a while, used the bathroom, and left. The Williston Best Buy is
just two blocks from the Williston home depot. Another man on Reddit described encountering
Keys asleep at a bench in a public wooded area around this same time,
again in Williston. And while Williston is not en root from Essex to Johnson,
it is, however, in root from Essex to bangor Maine, a
long route two the best and most daunting. Some of all this came from
Kaz. If Jordan's theory is correct, or even partially correct, then that
changes everything. The story from the beginning with the couriers has always been so
nice and neat, And what I feel like I want to do at this
point is go back and listen to how that compares to the story of Samantha
Koenig. The brutality of the way that he described what happened to the couriers
and the way that he did it. And then you're talking about taking two
people into a house and putting them in separate places in that house. And
you're only one person, so you either have to immediately incapacitate one person so
you can commence with committing crimes against the second person, or hope that that
one person doesn't get out of any restraints you've put on them. It just
seems riskier. You're putting people into a structure that has more room to move
around than what he did with Samantha, which was put her into a very
small and contained area. He sent these detectives on a wild goose chase right
before he died by suicide as his final fuck you. We have to keep
an open mind about all this, but in doing so, we also have
to keep an open mind about how this could change how we view anything else
that he said that we think we may have corroborated or relied on. And
as we began to try to make sense of what these lies and discoveries might
mean, we quickly stumbled onto two even bigger lies and discoveries in New England.
And they both start in Constable, New York. Why do I come
here? Why do I keep returning? It's not you haunting me, it's
my mind disturbing Why do I come here? Why do I keep returning?
It's not you haunting me, It's my mind disturbing, disturbing peace, disturbing
peace, disturbing mood, dreams, disturbing dreams. Why do I come here?
Why do I keep Britton? It's not you haunting me, it's my
mind disturb Why do I come here? Why do I keep Britton? It's
not you haunting me, It's my mind disturbing, disturbing pea. This episode
was written, researched, edited, and produced by me Josh Hallmark, with
additional research by Kim k, Jordan Taylor, Shana Lensky, Michelle Tooker,
and Kaz. This episode featured Jordan Taylor, Shana Lensky, Kim Ky,
and Michelle Tooker, and it was made possible by the following Patreon producers Amelia
Hancock, Amy Basel and Marie Cash and at El, Ash Fish, Benjamin
Choppa, funk Zy, Jensen Richardson, Drew Vipond, Hallie Reed, Heather
Horton, Wheedon, Jessica, Ali Hodsig, Jillian Atollig, Jordan good Night,
Kathleen Studter, Kendall c Charisma Rodriguez Kimberly, k Lona, Lauren f
Lindsay Curtis, Lindsay Lucifer, Linley, tuscoff Manolas Bulakos, Nicol and Dennis
Henry, Sarah King, s C. Shelley Brewer, Sherry D Tuesday Woodworth,
Vicky Russell, Zachignadowitz, Warren, Beth McNally, John Comery, Jordan
Taylor, Sarah C, Shawna. Harden and Lydia Fiedler. Thank you to
Studio Both Anne's newest Patreon supporters kim Y, Janis b Teresa H, Michael
j S. Megan O, Emily B, l, Jmie P, Dylan
b Addie, m Jena Kay and Patricia L. 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, Sarage, Cherramisonov, jaaskel Res,
Mike Vinola, and Radical Face with featured music by Alpero del Mar. Why
do wor keep greaton to something that's long gone, to something that's all does?
Why do I come here? Why do I keep returning to something that's
long gone, to something that's all does? All dust, oldest all dose
oldus ohes Ah does all, does oh,