‘Wild Crime’ Season 4: What happened to Samantha Koenig?

Content warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of murder. Please take care while reading.

Wild Crime: Eleven Skulls, a four-part series streaming Dec. 5, examines the 2012 disappearance and murder of 18-year-old Samantha Koenig in Alaska. The Koenig investigation led the police to serial killer Israel Keyes. Keyes died by suicide in 2012 while in custody, and is thought to have murdered at least three people, among other crimes, according to the FBI.

Eleven Skulls is Wild Crime season 4, an ABC News production streaming on Hulu, focused on murders committed in the wilderness; season 2 focuses on Henry Lee Lucas, a serial killer who reportedly murdered several people at Yosemite National Park in the 1980s, though Lucas’ general truthfulness about his past crimes has come into serious question. Like Lucas, Keyes lived and murdered in remote locations like Alaska, and Koenig’s 2012 case brought attention to Keyes, a previously obscure and little-discussed serial killer whose total number of victims is still unknown.

The abduction

According to the FBI, in Feb. 2012, Keyes abducted Koening at gunpoint late one night from the Anchorage coffee stand where she worked, in what at first seemed like an attempted robbery. According to Alaska Public Media, then 34-year-old Keyes bound Koenig with zip ties and forced her from the coffee stand to his vehicle. At first, Keyes told Koenig it was a kidnapping and that he would ask her family for ransom money. If Koenig cooperated, she would be unharmed, Keyes assured her. Once he realized Koenig didn’t have her phone to send the ransom message, Keyes returned to the coffee stand to retrieve it. He then sent two text messages, one to Samantha’s boyfriend, and one to her employer, leading them to believe she’d gone out of town.

In a tragic irony, the same night Samantha was abducted, her boyfriend confronted Keyes face to face. He caught Keyes retrieving an ATM card from a vehicle parked at Koenig’s house, and tried to get help, but Keyes escaped before the police arrived. Keyes had left Koenig bound in a nearby shed, to which he returned after retrieving the ATM card. Keyes then sexually assaulted and murdered Koenig before leaving Alaska for a 10-day cruise departing from New Orleans.

The ransom ruse

After the cruise, Keyes returned to Anchorage, where Koenig was still considered missing, and took steps to make it appear like she was still alive, including a haunting staged photo, while demanding ransom from her friends and family. The money was deposited into an account Keyes could access with Koenig’s ATM card. At the same time, he dismembered and disposed of Koenig’s body under the ice at a nearby lake. Keyes was finally caught in Texas a couple months later, when his car was determined to be the same car driven by the person who withdrew the ransom money from Koenig’s account. He was also linked to Koenig through her ATM card and cell phone, both recovered in Keyes’ vehicle.

Investigators only discovered they had a serial killer on their hands once Keyes was arrested. According to the FBI, he admitted to killing at least two other people besides Koenig, but authorities think he killed several others across the U.S. beginning in 2001. Before he took his own life while in custody, Keyes suggested he may have killed as many as eight other people, and several of Keyes’ interviews with law enforcement before he died reveal the twisted lengths he went to prepare and cover up his crimes, including “murder kits” and details of how he traveled far and wide to find victims and hide their bodies.

Today, authorities are still asking the public for information about crimes Keyes may have committed. Referring to Keyes, Alaska FBI Special Agent Jolene Goeden said, “He talked openly about some of the homicides, but much of what he said only hinted at the things he had done. So we are trying to get information out there about what he did tell us. We are letting the public know the types of cars he rented, towns he visited, campgrounds he frequented. Anything that might spur someone’s memory could help us.”