Biography

Israel Keyes was born on January 7, 1978 in Cove, Utah, USA. He died on December 1, 2012 in Anchorage, Alaska, USA.

American burglar, bank robber and serial killer. He was the second of 10 children in a family whose parents were Mormon religious fanatics who didn't believe in secular government, schools, or modern medicine. They raised their family in an isolated section of a forest in rural Washington with no heat or electricity. The parents later left the Mormon church and joined a white supremacist church, in rural Oregon, then moved across the country to rural Maine. He had begun breaking into houses when he was 14 but didn't begin committing his murders until after he got out of the army in 2001. He picked his victims not because they met any particular criteria, but because they presented the opportunity--he would find them in campgrounds, parks, cemeteries, etc., walking or sitting alone, and then rob and kill them. He was arrested in Texas in 2012 when he was caught using the ATM card of a young woman he had murdered. Extradited to Alaska, he eventually confessed to murdering at least 11 people, although authorities suspect the number is much higher than that. On 12/1/2012, he slit his wrists in his cell with a razor he had acquired, and also strangled himself with a sheet while lying on his cot.