Speaker 1: This is a studio both and production.
Speaker 2: I think we already talked about this.
Speaker 3: But even though you were never questioned by law enforcement
about why you were ever at any of these places.
Speaker 4: Or anything, well, like I said, casually, by law enforcement, yeah,
like they would see you at a trailhead and just
right small talk with your Yeah.
Speaker 2: Why you here to fish or you hear to eye
those kinds of things. Right, let me see your fishing license, right?
And I usually had everything. Yeah, I always had all
that stuff. I honestly a lot of times. That's what
I was. Yeah, first far back because.
Speaker 5: I can remember, you know, that's where I get a
lot of the ideas either fishing or out hunting.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I don't know, I just that's always that
was always the most comfortable scenario for me because it's
win win situation.
Speaker 5: I'm not hunting or fishing, and if the opportunity comes up,
then take it.
Speaker 2: If it doesn't, it's not like it's you're out anything.
Speaker 1: This is true crime bullshit. I'm your host, Josh Hallmark,
and this is a serialized story of Israel Keys. Approximately
two thousand hikers are reported missing each year in America,
and according to Search and Rescue about thirty five of
those hikers are pronounced dead. But when you take a
look at overall deaths that occur within the national park system,
that number goes up quite a bit. Somewhere between one
hundred and twenty and one hundred and forty people typically
die within national parks every year, not counting suicides, according
to the National Park Service, and while that may sound
like a lot, it's actually less than point zero zero
zero zero zero zero one percent of annual national park visitors.
That means if you go to a national park, your
odds of dying there are roughly one in two million.
The majority of those deaths are from drownings, car accidents,
and falls, meaning your chances of dying while hiking or
visiting the park system are incredibly low, and your chances
of being murdered there are so minuscule that they're usually
not even worth mentioning, unless, of course, we're talking about
Israel Keys in his early years in Na Bay, when
his murders began, is with go to the woods and
wait for his victims to come to him. His murders
weren't based on a profile, but on who was around
and easy to kill. He also made it clear in
his interviews with the FBI that the majority of his
Washington state murders took place on state and federal land.
Speaker 6: You seem adamant that there's no possible federal lexus to
the Washington cases.
Speaker 2: And I'm just.
Speaker 6: Shocked because, knowing the peninsula like we do, there's so
much federal land out there.
Speaker 2: Especially of the national forest, national.
Speaker 6: Parks, and you know, my understanding then would be that
nothing's happened on those type of lands.
Speaker 2: Would we correct him understanding that? Or no, I just didn't.
Speaker 5: I didn't know that would qualify it as a federal crime.
Speaker 2: Well, if it's a national park.
Speaker 6: Or some national park or national forest, we could have
jurisdiction on a felony.
Speaker 7: So see, that's all this stuff was the legal details
all the US. But that's a good moment. That's okay.
Speaker 3: And keep in mind the federal nexus that we talked about,
the national parts, Well, I'll.
Speaker 2: Have to do some research on that. We could do that.
Just give me a couple of.
Speaker 5: Us in Washington is I don't even remember. I mean,
I know all the places I went, and I know
that they are all public areas, but I don't know
which ones were staying which.
Speaker 2: Ones were federal.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I never really paid that much attention.
Speaker 1: This m O played a huge part in his ability
to conceal his earlier crimes. In fact, it was his
eventual straying from this that would ultimately lead to his arrest.
Over time, he lost patience, he lost control, and his
crimes became less organized, more frenetic, and eventually as public
as kidnapping Samantha Koenig from a coffee stand on a
busy street in a major city. Picking people out of
the woods is about as low profile as it gets
for a serial killer, and is wasn't the first to
use the National park system to stalk and kill people.
There are multiple other serial killers who hunted people in
parks and on trail sides. Gary Michael Hilton was known
as the National Forest serial Killer and is believed to
have committed at least five murders in wilderness areas, some
involving hikers, between two thousand seven and two thousand eight.
David Carpenter, better known as the trail side Killer, killed
at least ten people in the late seventies and early
eighties on hiking trails and state parks in the Bay area.
Randall Lee Smith hunted and killed at least two hikers
on the Appalachian Trail in the early eighties, and after
only serving fifteen years for that, he was released and
later attempted to kill two fishermen less than two miles
from where those murders were committed. Ivan Malot killed at
least nineteen backpackers in Australia between nineteen eighty nine and
nineteen ninety three, and Robert Garow attacked multiple campers in
the Adirondack Mountains in the sixties and seventies. These men
were all eventually caught because they either killed someone they knew,
one of their victims got away, or they had a
localized dump site. As far as we know, is never
made any of these mistakes. Murders enforested areas, national and
state parks and trail sides are actually quite rare, and
while I couldn't find any overall statistics, there have only
been eleven reported murders on the Appalachian Trail since nineteen
seventy eight, and not a single one on the Pacific
Crest Trail ever, but that can't account for deaths misattributed
as accidental or bodies never recovered, of which only one
of Israel's victims ever has been.
Speaker 2: I might say, oh, it looks like a boating accident,
but you knew voting accident. My hiker disappears, fire fires.
Speaker 5: Because of the things that I've done that have been
in the news, I've known that, like what you read
that happened, and what I know that actually happened. Sometimes
it's almost not even recognizable really, So I never took
it for granted. I always assumed that if a body
was found, that they were somebody who's gonna be after
me for it.
Speaker 2: I was always prepared for that, and I always had
I always.
Speaker 5: Thought I had alibis and stuff like that was always
in the back of my mind.
Speaker 8: That's what I think you're talking about, of somebody who
you know, they're not gonna suspect. I'll play if I think, well,
they had a heart attack, they're old, and you found
a me year later, or.
Speaker 3: They think he was climbing a mount marathon.
Speaker 2: And well that's what I'm telling I don't know what
you tell me. Yeah, out was.
Speaker 3: Hiker's body at the bottom of the canyon.
Speaker 5: Can you tell me, Yeah, that's definitely a wonder way
to do it.
Speaker 1: Shortly after Iz was captured, Paul Lameter went missing while
competing in the Mount Marathon race near Seward, Alaska. His
body has never been recovered, nor are there any clues
as to what happened to him. The FBI has since
stated that most of Key's earlier victims will likely resemble
the disappearance of lematter, people who vanished from state in
national parks without a trace and for no apparent reason.
The other thing we know when it comes to identifying
Keys' as victims is that most of them, particularly in
the beginning, didn't receive a lot of media attention.
Speaker 9: Computers. You mentioned when computers first came out and started
doing searches and looked just wanted to see what was
up with the military guys. When you would you talked
before with us about there were a couple of times
that you would go on your computer and do a
search just to see if a body even found or
I don't know, arsenal bankrubber or whatever it is. When
you were doing it, how would you.
Speaker 2: How would you do that?
Speaker 9: I mean, did you know names of everybody? Or would
you do just no Google search a town and or
how would you do it?
Speaker 5: I was, with the exception of the computer that you
guys got, I generally wouldn't do it on the home computers.
Speaker 2: I had another computer that I did.
Speaker 5: Use for a while, but for the most part.
Speaker 2: It was a computer that I was planning on having
around for a while. I would never do searches on it.
Search as I did do were usually pretty generic.
Speaker 5: I would type in an area or a newspaper of
an area, type in a keyword.
Speaker 2: I would never type in a specific.
Speaker 9: Name the name of the newspaper from the area, like
if I.
Speaker 2: Don't I would do.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: So, yeah, I would do a search of news from
an area I guess, and then pull up either a
newspaper or news channel online news, type in a keyword
of something, and just scroll down the different stories so
I found the one I was looking for. If I
was doing it from an anonymous computer like an airport
or a library or something, I would do I would
just type in what I wanted right away.
Speaker 2: Bring it up. Did you know the names?
Speaker 9: Did you remember the names.
Speaker 2: Of most of the people? Yeah, well, yeah, on the
major things. Yeah.
Speaker 5: So there's not going to be as many details that
anybody knows aside from there's just not.
Speaker 2: There's just not.
Speaker 5: And like I said frankly, on some of the stuff,
I was shocked at the fact that I had never
heard anything about it, virtually nothing. And that's not to
say that there isn't an investigation or whatever, but it
was just never nothing was ever high profile like the
stuff that happened more recently.
Speaker 1: From two thousand and one to two thousand and seven,
more than forty people went missing in or around American
forests and parks within five hundred miles of Nea Bay.
And we can't say for certain the exact number because
a lot of missing people never make it into national
databases or media coverage, generally because they're living at risk
lifestyles or Native American A recent study conducted by the
Urban Indian Health Institute found that there isn't a single
federal agency that has comprehensive data on how many Indigenous
people are murdered or missing. It also found that of
five thousand, seven hundred twelve Indigenous women and girls who
were reported either missing or murdered in twenty sixteen, only
one hundred and sixteen were ever logged into the Department
of Justice database. There are over three million acres of
reserved tribal lands in Washington State alone, with a population
consisting of close to sixty thousand, which creates a lot
of space for missing Indigenous people to go unreported, not
to mention that many of these areas are incredibly remote
and unpoliced, and that through his job with the Macaw Tribe,
Is had unrestricted access to about thirty thousand acres of
this land, and the Callville Indian Reservation where he grew
up consists of one point four million acres land that
Is was very familiar with.
Speaker 5: I can uh like I say, it is anything more
than a year ago. With stuff kind of runs together, I.
Speaker 2: Can. That's why it's this is like New York and Washington.
There places that I went through a lot, so.
Speaker 5: I can remember specifics and high points, but I can't
attach dates or address this necessarily.
Speaker 2: There's a good chance that.
Speaker 5: Washington easier because I've lived there for so long, so
you know the area better.
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As I started combing through all the reported missing persons
cases in the area between Isisnea bay arrival in July
of two thousand and one and his departure in March
of two thousand and seven, I noticed an interesting trend.
Most of the people who have gone missing in national
and state parks were men, and large percentage of them
are believed to be suicides. As it turns out, according
to the CDC, the fourth leading cause of death in
American national parks is suicide. There's an average of forty
one suicide attempts in the park system each year, sixty
eight percent of which are successful, and eighty four percent
of those suicides involved men. The majority of these cases
occurred in the summer months, and the mean age of
the victims was forty three. These statistics drastically muddy the
waters when it comes to identifying potential keys victims. Of
the six people who best matches MO of abducting victims
through the park system and his timeline, five are men
and four cannot be ruled out as suicides. One of
these cases has gotten quite a bit of attention as
a possible keys victim. Gilbert Gilman was forty seven when
he went missing during a visit to the Olympic National
Park on June twenty fourth, thousand and six. He was
last seen in the park listening to music in his
parked car, wearing shorts and flip flops, carrying only a camera.
Gilmot had an extraordinary career with the Army. He was
a paratrooper who served in Panama, East Africa and Israel.
He received two Bronze Stars for his combat experience with
the eighty second Airborne. He also had degrees from the
London School of Economics, Union College in New York and
the Solvey Business School in Brussels. So not only was
he incredibly wilderness savvy, who was also a very smart man,
smart and savvy enough not to go hiking in shorts
and flip flops. So it's believed by those close to
him that he was likely just in the park for
a leisurely stroll that day, making it highly unlikely that
he got lost off trail somewhere in the mountains. Gilbert
was reported missing when he failed to arrive at a
scheduled meeting the following day. That same anath afternoon, his
car was found at the Staircase Ranger station in the park.
Searcher spent ten days looking for Gilbert in the Staircase
area and found no trace of him. They used tracking dogs,
a helicopter, and a plane with heat seeking equipment, along
with sixty two on ground searchers. After those ten days,
Gilman was declared lost by the US Forest Service. It
wasn't until after Israel's suicide, when details of his crimes
became public, that people started linking him to Gilman, including
an episode of the ID Channel's Dark Mines which aired
in twenty fourteen. The only eliminating reason I've been able
to find is from an interview with author Molly Koneski,
who stated that on the day Gilman went missing, izz
was running a marathon where he placed ninetieth in Port Angelis,
which is about eighty miles and a two and a
half hour drive from where Gilbert's car was found. Interestingly enough,
I was able to find the race records for or
that particular marathon, and Is did place ninetieth, with a
runtime of three hours and fifty seven minutes, which would
make it impossible for him to get to the staircase
area and back to Port Angelus in time. However, that
marathon was on June eleventh, not June twenty sixth, and
hotel receipts placing Is in Port Angelus on the night
of the eleventh corroborate this. The FBI, though, has made
it clear that they don't think is Is a viable
suspect in the Gilman disappearance. They've publicly never released what
this opinion is based on, but I did stumble upon
several notes about the Gilman case in their Israel keys files.
The first indicates that Gilman was possibly a suicide. The
second is a lot more fascinating, and I hate to
be a buzzkill, but I'm not comfortable discussing it for
reasons I'm not really at liberty to state. But regardless,
I tend to believe the FBI's analysis of this based
almost soul on something else. As far as the case
files indicate, they didn't spend very much time looking into Gilman,
but they spent a lot of time and energy looking
into a similar missing person's case. Del Mar Wayne Sample
was last seen at around eleven am on March fourth,
two thousand and five, at a gas station in Centralia, Washington.
Sample had told friends and family that he planned to
spend the day hiking in Tillamook, Oregon, near deep Ot Bay.
Sample was living in on Alaska, Washington at the time,
which is south of where he was last seen but
north of Tillamook. It's unclear why he would have traveled
north to get gas for a southbound trip, but most
assumed that he just had a change of plans, especially
considering his abandoned car was eventually found at Lake Quinault.
All of his belongings were in the car, except for
a red mountain bike he's believed to have taken with
him on that trip. Elmar, who went by Dell, was
sixty six at the time of his disappearance. Friends and
family vehemently stated that Dell wasn't depressed or suicidal, and
it was very uncharacteristic of him to just abandon his
life and not check in with the loved ones. The
police did an extensive search of the area where his
car was found, and there were no signs or sightings
of sample, nor were there any bicycle tracks nearby. When
Isa's case went public, several of Dell's family members contacted
the FBI to see if it was possible Keys abducted him,
and the FBI took these leads very seriously. They did
DNA analysis on swabs taken from Dell's car, they worked
with local law enforcement, and they examined Isza's timeline. Unfortunately,
the only DNA found in Dell's car was Dell's and
they could find no additional sightings of Dell following his
appearance on surveillance in the gas station. And there's a
hole in Izza's timeline from March second through March eighth. However,
is did go canoeing on March first at Lake Quinault.
Speaker 8: And then what about planning like the Washington State when
you had your boat out? Were those highly planned and organized?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: The FBI has never been able to rule is out
as a suspect in the disappearance of del Mar Sample,
but they've also never publicly named him as one. His
case remains unsolved. The third of these possible Keys cases
is the most mysterious park disappearance and the most frustrating
because what makes this man a likely key's victim. Is
also what makes it so challenging to connect him to
is there's literally no information or coverage on his disappearance.
All we know is that Gregory Seamans Brown went missing
from the Rachel Lake trailhead in the Okanagan Winatchee National
Forest near Ellensburg, Washington, on July fifth, two thousand and five.
I haven't been able to find who reported a missing,
when he was reported missing, or why he's believed to
have gone missing on that date from that location, and
July fifth also falls into an information gap in Izza's timeline.
What I do know is that Gregory was forty eight
at the time of his disappearance. He was also a
slight man, believed to be between five foot five and
five foot nine and weighing between one hundred and twenty
and one hundred and fifty pounds, and that his disappearance
occurred just two weeks after Iz had his maiden voyage
celebration with his new boat. The other two disappearances that
could be keys or could be suicides are Stephen Michael
Mason and Celia Darlene Barnes. Stephen Mason went missing on
June twentieth, two thousand and six. He and his wife
had been camping at a Dungeness Forks, US Forest Service
campground in the Olympic National Forest. They got into an
argument and his wife eventually left the camp site. The
following day, Stephen went to a friend's house and asked
that friend to return the Mason's vehicle and his wife's
purse back to her. The friend agreed and then drove
Stephen back to the campground and left him there. He
was never seen or heard from again, and he wasn't
reported missing for nine days. Following that last sighting. A
two day search of the forest turned up no sign
of him, only a cash of food. Mason, who was
fifty two at the time, was an experienced camper and
fisherman who knew the area very well and had camped
there for extended periods previously. Is camp be placed anywhere
on the date Stephens was last seen, but he had
been camping at Lake Ozette three days prior and traveled
to Ridgefield, Oregon to buy an ATV two days following.
On June twenty second, Celia Darlene Barnes was last seen
while hiking with her sister near the House of Mystery
in gold Hill, Oregon. On September one, two thousand and two,
Celia and her sister separated while looking for aluminum cans
and trinkets and planned to meet later in the day
at her sister's car, but Celia never arrived and has
never been seen again. Barnes had been reported missing once before,
when she got lost while hiking. She was eventually found
safe that time. However, the incident became a source of
contention amongst Celia and her family when she made it
clear that she was both embarrassed and angry that they'd
reported her missing. So when she went missing on this hike,
her family waited thirty hours before informing the authorities. Tracker
dogs were eventually able to trace her scent to an
Interstate five off ramp, and a week after her disappearance,
a man in gold Hill found the bronze ski pole
she used as a walking stick. That man passed a
polygraph and isn't considered a suspect in her case. Celia
was fifty seven, a veteran and receiving cancer treatment at
the time of her disappearance, and there's no information about
Izza's timeline for the entire month of September that year
the sixth of these national and state park disappearances that
could have been keys as Roy Lauren Stevens, and There's
so many factors that go into Roy's case that it
makes it nearly impossible to determine why he went missing.
Roy was last seen in the early hours of November sixteenth,
two thousand and five, in Crescent, Oregon. After spending the
evening at the Odell Lake Lodge, where he worked as
a chef, Roy met with some friends at a local
bar for drinks. At eleven PM, he called his wife
to say he was on his way home. Roy never
arrived and was never heard from again. Nine days later,
his car was found abandoned on the Waldo Lake Access
Road on a mountain in the Willamette National Forest, about
thirty five miles from where he was last seen. His
wallet and paycheck were found inside the car, and a
puddle of vomit was found nearby. Roy's family tried to
rally a community search and rescue effort, but were told
by local law enforcement that they wouldn't be able to
go up to the mountain because it wasn't safe and
nobody else in the local community offered or volunteered to
help do anything. Three different law enforcement agencies had been
involved in the case. Lane County, Klamath County, and the
Willamette National Forest. Roy lived in Klamath County. His car
was found in the Willamette National Forest, which was also
in Lane County. The multiple jurisdictions didn't help in the search,
and in the end, only four hours of searching were
ever conducted and cadaver dogs were never sent to the
area that Roy vanished from. There were rumors that Roy
was involved in local drug trade, which is why people
believe his case wasn't taken more seriously. At the time
of his disappearance, Roy was forty eight years old in
caring for his terminally ill wife. While this m O
was quite successful for Keys, some big life changes and
new experiences forced him to adapt and evolve his methods
for murder. In early two thousand and five, he met
a woman we'll call Kristin, who would eventually be his
living girlfriend at the time of his arrest. Kristin was
also close to a decade older than is, but otherwise
couldn't have been any more different from Tammy. She was
incredibly independent and enjoyed doing her own thing, and I
know at one point.
Speaker 2: In time you told us that was oblivious to Yeah,
you use that word, I think to what was going
on and stuff.
Speaker 3: Do you think that there was you know when you
met her, was there a tom tub type of attraction
like that that you perceived that it would be an
easy relationship to carry on because she wouldn't be suspicious?
Speaker 2: Was Tammy the same way? No, there's.
Speaker 10: Yeah, there was certain personality types that I would work
harder at having a relationship with because.
Speaker 2: You know they would have For example, she has pretty.
Speaker 5: Hectic career and her own she has her own social life, and.
Speaker 2: She's I guess I could say, like a self contained person.
Speaker 5: So we had a good relationship, but it was easy
to separate myself from it.
Speaker 1: Kristen worked in remote medical training, which had her frequently
traveling the country for work, and as she and i
Is began dating and getting more serious, she started inviting
Is and sometimes Sarah on these work trips with her.
She was using her Alaska Airlines Frequent Flyer miles to
cover the cost of Izza's trips, and so suddenly Is
found himself traveling to remote corners of the country with
no financial records, spending the majority of his days unoccupied
while Kristin taught people how to save lives in the wilderness. Eventually,
Iz began tacking family visits and vacations onto these work trips,
which had him taking multi destination flights and racking up
rental car mileage all over the country. And it's on
many of these trips that the FBI believes he committed murders,
bank robberies, and arsons. And that makes sense. It was
harder to connect him through financial records to any of
these places. He always tried to keep a tight timeline
while committing crimes, and as he became a more sophisticated
serial killer, he made certain there was always a great
and immediate distance between himself and his crimes. But there
was one thing that didn't add up to me. You know,
we talk a lot about Israel using travel to conceal
his crimes, and these convoluted methods of travel he used.
The FBI files show that the FBI strongly believes on
a trip he took to Sacramento, he may have committed
a murder. And the one thing I have been struck
by is that on that trip his girlfriend was with him,
and in fact, on about fifty percent of his crazy,
you know, multi destination travels, either his girlfriend or his
daughter were with him. Do you think it's possible that
while he was traveling with family on these vacations, he
was capable of actually murdering people.
Speaker 11: I know it was possible. Gary Richway, the Green River Killer,
talks about the time he went out to getting prostituted
as his young son in the truck with him. He
did kill the woman, raped her, killed or strangled her,
and was asked what would have happened if your son
would have seen what you were doing? And he said, well,
I would have had to kill him too. So yeah,
it's absolutely possible for them to go out and commit
these acts while also with their families acting like normal
human beings. They do it all the time. I don't
think he would have necessarily planned to have done something,
but if he would have seen an opportunity, he might
have gone for it. Like you know, he burglarized a
lot of homes too. That might have happened while he
had family with him. You know, we'd have to really
know if there were long stretches of time that they
didn't know where he was, and I don't know that
we have that information.