True crime has been a guilty pleasure of mine for at least 30 years…I remember working in a public library and happily discovering the 364.1523 shelves (where even today I still browse, although TBH public library budgets often prevent a lot of trashy ephemeral reading material from making it to the shelves). These days, true crime has become a pop culture THING, and there’s no shortage of readily available books, movies, and podcasts dedicated to what used to be very much a niche market. I was very happy to receive an ARC of American Predator by Maureen Callahan from Penguin Group/Viking and NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.
The blurb for this book says most of us “…have never heard of Israel Keyes. But he is one of the most ambitious, meticulous serial killers of modern time.” Possibly coincidence, but I felt like I was WAY more familiar with the crimes this unspeakably evil man committed than I might like, because very recently I had listened to two podcasts covering Keyes and his exploits: Generation Why and Crime Junkie. (I totally recommend Crime Junkie. Host Ashley Flowers does actual research, has an excellent presentation style, and adds relevant material including photos on her website). – and, knowing this book was likely to invade my dreams (which it did), I dove right in. (BTW, I don’t reveal spoilers for fiction – but true crime info is already out there, so there may be some facts revealed here. )
Keyes lived (and died) in Alaska, where the book’s opening disappearance of teenage barista Samantha Koenig from her night shift work at a coffee kiosk sets off a hunt for her abductor that results in Keyes’ capture in Texas. Callahan writes well, and I loved her description of the Alaskan setting: “Never does this place feel so literally on the edge of the Earth, seesawing between the temporal world and some black chasm of the unknown phenomena, as the six months it sinks into near-total darkness. The isolation alone means anything goes. It is a rough place to be a woman.”
The book has extensive detail about the investigation and interrogation of Keyes, and reveals the incredibly serendipitous nature of his arrest. What set him apart from many criminals was his incredible planning, including scouting out locations for future crimes and burying a “kit” including things like weapons, duct tape, cable ties, gloves, etc. which he could return (sometimes years later) and dig up to have ready to go. This allowed him to fly in to a town previously scouted, commit his crimes and vanish without a trace.
Although there were a few awkward sentences (“Keyes was wrong to think a burner phone can’t be tracked but right about that.” – About WHAT?), the writing is good. This isn’t some quickie exploitative TC book, dashed off to cash in on a currently popular topic. Ms. Callahan’s years of experience as a writer and editor for the New York Post with a focus on popular culture is perhaps part of why she can cover a grisly topic and present it in a way that will likely appeal to a general audience.
The story is unsettling, partly because there were so many ways the agencies fighting over who got credit and who got to take the lead on investigating/prosecuting totally screwed things up. It’s kind of a miracle he was in jail, and that he confessed to several crimes…but it seems there were countless other incidents he was involved in, and we will never know the extent of his crimes. It’s also unsettling to think he lived with his daughter and girlfriend, committed grisly murder literally in his own backyard, and his friends, family and neighbors had NO CLUE that he was basically two people. His MO included the burial of his “kill kits” noted above (cash, weapons, and body-disposal tools) in remote locations across the country. Seriously, how creepy is it that over the span of fourteen years, he would repeatedly fly to a random city, rent a car, and drive thousands of miles in order to use those kits? He would break into the house of a complete stranger, sometimes abducting victims in broad daylight, kill and dispose of them in a few hours, then calmly return home and resume his “other persona” as a reliable construction worker who was lovingly devoted to his young daughter. (As Ashley Flowers’ co-host Brit would say, “Full. Body. Chills.”
To this day, so much of his activity remains a total mystery. Pretty much all we know of his exploits is what he chose to reveal during his interrogation, and that only happened due to a fluke traffic stop in Texas. It’s also odd that “…forty-five thousand pages of case files remain unreleased by the Department of Justice,” and that the circumstances of his death are so clouded in mystery (where did he get razor blades, and why did the guards not notice the blood flowing out of his cell the night he died?). For true crime fans in general and anyone interested in Israel Keyes in particular, five stars.