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July 20, 2024

A Calculated Killer: The Disturbing Truth of Israel Keyes

A Calculated Killer: The Disturbing Truth of Israel Keyes

What if the person living next door harbored the darkest of secrets? Join us on Eastern Crime Zone as we uncover the harrowing tale of Israel Keyes, a seemingly ordinary man who led an extraordinarily sinister life. This episode brings you the chilling case of Samantha Tesla Koenig, an 18-year-old barista who vanished from her workplace in Anchorage, Alaska, sparking an emotional and relentless search by her father. We'll take you through the initial suspicions that fell upon her boyfriend and father, and the eerie surveillance footage capturing her last moments at the coffee kiosk.

Prepare yourself for an unsettling journey into the mind of Israel Keyes, a calculated and cold-blooded serial killer. We delve into his meticulous planning, his disturbing post-murder behavior, and the details of Samantha's abduction, torture, and murder. From his upbringing in a fundamentalist Christian household to his early criminal activities and military service, we paint a comprehensive picture of his descent into violence. Keyes' manipulative nature during interrogations and his interactions with law enforcement add another layer to this chilling narrative.

In a haunting conclusion, we examine Keyes' chilling confessions, his demands for an execution date in exchange for revealing his victims' locations, and his obsession with avoiding prison. We touch on the unresolved mystery of his potential eleven victims and the missed opportunities for closure due to the mishandling of his interrogation by prosecutor Kevin Feldes. This episode leaves you with a broader fear of the unknown, pondering the possibility of others like Keyes still at large. Stay safe, stay vigilant, and question everything.

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Chapters

00:00 - The Abduction of Samantha Koenig

14:20 - Israel Keyes

22:38 - The Dark Confession of Israel Keyes

28:27 - Unsolved Crimes of Abduction and Ransom

Transcript

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Israel Keyes, once a proud Army infantryman who served with honor at Fort Hood and in Egypt, appeared to embody the essence of a normal all-American life.

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Transitioning from military service, he ventured into entrepreneurship, founding a construction company in the remote expanse of Alaska and embracing fatherhood with his own daughter.

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Yet concealed beneath this veneer of suburban respectability lay a chilling enigma of darkness.

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Confirmed to have claimed the lives of three victims and suspected by the FBI of many more, keyes operated with meticulous cunning Across the expanse of the United States.

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He concealed macabre kill kits, ominous caches prepared with calculated foresight into future horrors.

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His secrets and atrocities unraveled only after his demise, a self-inflicted end that denied justice the opportunity to unveil the full extent of his monstrous deeds.

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Thus unfolds the harrowing tale of Israel Keyes, a figure whose presence in the annals of crime casts a shadow as one of the most prolific and unsettling serial killers and rapists of the early 21st century.

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Hello and welcome to the Eastern Crime Zone, a show about investigations of real, true crime cases.

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I'm your host, Cassie Millay, and every week I'll take you through new details about cases you're familiar with and completely new cases you've never heard of before.

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If there's a case you're interested in learning more about.

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Please head over to my website, easterncrimezonecom and leave me a voicemail or send me a DM on Instagram at easterncrimezone.

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So sit back, grab your detective hat and get settled in for another true crime case.

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This is Eastern Crime Zone Clink.

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Samantha Tesla Koenig was born August 30th 1993 in Anchorage, alaska.

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When she was a baby, her father was enamored with his baby girl and her giggle-snort laugh.

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She attended West High School and Avail High School and dreamed of one day working with animals or maybe joining the Navy to become a nurse.

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But Samantha was more than that.

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She was charming and sarcastic and funny.

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She loved animals, her friends, fishing, writing music and poetry and playing video games with her boyfriend, dwayne.

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When she was 18, samantha was working at a coffee kiosk called Common Grounds at 845 East Tudor Road in Anchorage, alaska.

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On February 1, 2012, the kiosk was obscured by five-foot-high snow drifts and motorists could only see the top of the small coffee stand.

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Samantha was working alone, as was typical, and it was pretty slow.

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She had texted her dad asking him to swing by with something for her to eat, but he wasn't able to make it.

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The next day, the morning shift barista clocked in only to discover the kiosk wasn't closed properly.

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The money from the previous day was missing and Samantha had only been working there a month.

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But this wasn't normal behavior for her.

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So this barista was the first to report Samantha missing.

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Investigators immediately thought Samantha had taken the money for herself and run off.

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But Samantha didn't have her vehicle that night and run off.

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But Samantha didn't have her vehicle that night.

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She shared a truck with her boyfriend, dwayne, and he was driving it that night and was supposed to pick her up after her shift.

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So if she had no car, how did she disappear in 30-degree weather?

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Dwayne did go to the kiosk that night to pick Samantha up, but she had already left and the lights were off.

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He went back to the home he lived in with Samantha and her father, james.

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But both Dwayne and James felt something was off, even when Samantha sent Dwayne a text saying she was leaving for a few days with friends and to let her dad know.

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The text read F you asshole, I know what you did.

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I'm going to spend a couple days with friends.

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I need time to think.

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Plan acting weird.

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Let my dad know Now the couple had been having issues.

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But Samantha wouldn't just run off without at least calling her father, who she was extremely close with.

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Dwayne went to sleep that night hoping his girlfriend would just cool off and talk to him soon.

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But around 3 am he woke up and went outside to see a man with a mask going through his and Samantha's shared truck.

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This man walked off as soon as he saw Dwayne.

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What's interesting to me is that Dwayne didn't do anything when he saw this man going through his truck.

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He didn't call police, he didn't confront him, he just went inside and told Samantha's father, james.

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An hour later he went back out to the truck and realized that Samantha's driver's license was missing.

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He didn't call the police or follow this man at all.

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On February 2nd investigators looked at the surveillance footage from inside of Common Grounds from the previous day At 8 pm, only 30 minutes before Dwayne would arrive to pick Samantha up.

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Samantha is seen in a lime green t-shirt and her long brown hair worn down.

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She's relaxed, talking to a customer through the kiosk window and two minutes later her hands go up and Samantha turns out the light.

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A customer was only a shadow who may have been holding a gun.

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Samantha moves to the counter and gets on her knees for a minute, then moves to the register and takes out all the cash and returns to her kneeling position.

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At the 5 minute 19 second mark, a male figure leans in the window and seems to be tying her arms behind her back before coming through the kiosk window.

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After looking through Samantha's purse, he helps her up and walks her out of the kiosk into the snow.

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At this point anyone was a suspect, including Dwayne and James Koenig.

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James was doing everything he could to help find Samantha, making posters, pleading on Facebook for her return and holding candlelight vigils.

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One of the things he did was set up a reward for information about Samantha's disappearance.

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Some of this money, james used for himself personally, which a lot of people found suspicious.

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It's just an opinion, but I don't think it's really fair to blame James for using this money for himself personally.

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He had to have money to keep his home running when he was probably unable to work, considering that his daughter was missing.

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Some people found it suspicious that James would fixate on the reward money and be checking it constantly, but in his defense, checking the reward money constantly is the only thing he has control over.

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Of course, he would be checking it often.

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This reward money would eventually reach $75,000.

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On February 20th, apd pulled surveillance footage from the Home Depot across from the coffee kiosk from the night of Samantha's abduction.

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In the footage you can see a white Chevy truck pull up on February 1st at 745, and the truck had no license plates.

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The driver sat for 10 minutes, then walked across Tudor Road and out of view.

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After 20 minutes.

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The man reappeared with Samantha under his arm to a crosswalk.

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When the traffic light changed, samantha made a run for it.

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She was clearly in a panic and had her wrist still bound, and Samantha only made it a few feet before her abductor tackled her and said something into her ear.

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He walked her to his truck and put her in the passenger seat.

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There were people near the truck at this point, but whatever this man had said to Samantha squashed any ideas of her trying to escape again.

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At 7.56 on February 24th, dwayne got a text from Samantha's phone that read Connor Park sign under pic of Albert.

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Ain't she purdy?

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Dwayne, james and law enforcement all rushed to Connor's Bog Park On a bulletin board under a sign for a missing dog named Albert.

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They found a Ziploc bag.

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Inside was a ransom note and a photo of Samantha.

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The photo was actually a Polaroid that had been cut around the edges and then scanned and printed onto printer paper.

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The photo that I'm going to put up is a recreation of the photo, not the real one, and the real one has supposedly never been released.

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But people on Reddit kind of argue about that, saying this is the real photo.

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It's not the real photo the real photo.

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Officially this is not the real photo and supposedly her hair was braided in the real photo and this girl her hair is down.

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In case you're listening and not on youtube, in the photo samantha is wearing makeup and had her hair braided instead of down, like it had been at the time of her abduction.

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Her head was held by a man and you can see his arm.

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Also in the photo was a copy of the Anchorage Daily News dated February 13, 2012.

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The actual ransom note that accompanied the photo was typed by typewriter onto plain white paper.

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It implied that Samantha was in one of the lower 48 states and that she almost escaped her captor twice more, once in Anchorage on Tudor Road and once in a desert after she was transported south.

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The letter demanded $30,000 in exchange for Samantha's safe return in six months.

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This money was to be deposited into Samantha and Dwayne's shared bank account.

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After the ransom note was found, there was no more debate that Samantha had left on her own and the case was handed to the FBI, since kidnapping is a federal crime.

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On February 29th, five days after discovering the ransom note, it was decided that $5,000 would be put into the account instead of the whole $30,000 that the kidnapper demanded.

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The FBI believed this might frustrate them and push them into making further contact.

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Less than four hours after the deposit, samantha's debit card was used to withdraw $500 from an ATM in Anchorage.

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Two hours after that, the card was used to withdraw another $500 from an ATM across town.

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In the ATM surveillance footage you can see a man wearing glasses, a gray face mask, gray gloves and white shoes.

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Unfortunately, this would not lead them to their suspect or to Samantha just yet.

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The next ATM withdrawals were completely unexpected.

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On March 7th the card was used to make withdrawals in Arizona, then New Mexico, then Texas.

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In the footage from these cameras they discovered the suspect was driving a white Ford Focus, probably a rental.

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An officer was looking through hotel parking lots off of US-59 and found a white Ford Focus rental car parked in front of the Quality Inn.

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When the driver left, the hotel officers found a reason to pull the driver over.

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The driver was a white man in his mid-30s wearing wraparound sunglasses.

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When they asked for his driver's license, they found it was from Alaska, and this obviously was super exciting.

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On his Alaska driver's license was the name Israel Keys, born January 7th 1978.

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In Texas there is a probable cause exemption, which means if the police have reason to believe the vehicle was used in the commission of a crime, they can search it legally.

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Whenever a search is conducted, it has to be done legally, by the book, or any evidence found in that search would be thrown out.

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This is called the fruit of a poisonous tree doctrine.

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Since he had the right kind of car and his driver's license was from Alaska, they found this to be enough probable cause to search his vehicle.

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And after searching the vehicle, inside Israel's wallet was Samantha Koenig's driver's license.

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Obviously, israel was arrested and within two weeks, extradited back to Alaska.

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During interviews, israel made two demands One, that information about himself and his crime be kept away from the media as much as possible.

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He had a young daughter and didn't want her to be harmed by the media frenzy.

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And two, he wanted to receive an execution date as fast as possible.

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Besides that, investigators had another wrench in their plan.

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The top federal prosecutor was going to be running the interrogation with his deputy, frank Russo.

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Kevin Feldes was with the US Attorney's Office since 1999 and had a lot of power in the Alaska legal system.

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Everyone wanted to stay on his good side, but having Feldes lead the interrogation was a terrible idea.

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He wanted to move the interrogation to the US Attorney's Office, which wouldn't have the same intimidating effect as the FBI offices.

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Also, police and FBI agents are allowed to lie to a suspect to elicit a confession.

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Prosecutors cannot.

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This would be considered prosecutorial misconduct and could potentially ruin an entire case.

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Not to mention you lose all bargaining power when the person that police would usually use in a deal is sitting right across the table from the suspect.

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The biggest issue, however, with Feldes was that he had never interrogated anyone before, and it's actually insane that this was allowed to happen, especially because of how this case ends up going.

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Interrogations started on March 30th at 5.48 pm in the US Attorney's Office.

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Israel sat expressionless with a monotone voice.

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When he did speak, israel is recorded telling the story of Samantha's kidnapping.

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For several evenings that week he had driven the same route at the same time of day to check out the Common Grounds kiosk before he decided to rob it.

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He parked at the Home Depot down the street and walked west toward the kiosk.

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He put a tiny police scanner in his ear and with him he brought a coffee mug, a pair of plastic zip ties, a headlamp and a .22 Taurus revolver.

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He'd never met Samantha or planned to target her in particular.

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He only picked this kiosk because it was partially hidden from the road and only had one person working at a time, usually a young girl.

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Israel arrived at the kiosk at 7.55 and ordered an Americano from Samantha.

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When she handed him the cup, he pulled out his gun and said this is a

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robbery.

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After they left the Common Grounds kiosk, israel found a camera on the ground, a brand new Canon camera, and he said he thought it was a good omen.

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When he bent over to pick up the camera, samantha made a run for it.

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Unfortunately, like I said, israel was able to tackle her and scare her back into submission.

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They walked back to Israel's truck together with him, telling Samantha to lean on him like she was drunk.

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To Israel's truck together with him telling Samantha to lean on him like she was drunk.

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A few people were lingering around a Chevy Suburban in the Home Depot parking lot, but at this point Samantha was too afraid to make a second escape attempt.

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He told Samantha this was only for ransom and that he wouldn't hurt her.

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Obviously, this is a

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lie.

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They made a few more stops that night, including to a park and to get gas, all of these being completely by mistake and good opportunities for someone to see Samantha or for someone to say something.

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There was even a period of time where a police cruiser pulled up next to his truck and he looked at Samantha and knew she wouldn't say anything.

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As soon as Israel took Samantha's debit card and cell phone, he didn't need her alive anymore.

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Around 2 am he finally took her from his truck and moved her to his tool shed where he tied her up by the neck.

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Then Israel went inside to check on his daughter and his girlfriend and make sure they were still asleep.

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He poured himself a glass of wine and returned to his shed.

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There Israel sat drinking it while he told Samantha how he would rape her before strangling her to death with the rope he'd already tied around her neck.

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And that's exactly what he did.

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He left Samantha's body in the shed, went back into his house and packed his bags for himself and his daughter.

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At 5 am sharp he called a cab to the airport to fly to New Orleans for two weeks of Caribbean cruising that he'd planned with his family.

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After he returned from this trip, he took the ransom photos of Samantha's body for proof of life.

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He did her hair, he put makeup on her and used fishing line to sew her eyes open.

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And then he also raped her body one last time.

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And then he also raped her body one last time.

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When he no longer needed Samantha's body, he dismembered her and disposed of her remains in the Matanuska Lake just outside of Palmer,

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alaska.

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Israel was not forthcoming with details going forward.

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He wanted to use his knowledge as leverage to get what he wanted.

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He had made several allusions to other murders he committed without outright confessing to anything.

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If Kevin Feldes wasn't in the way, who knows what an experienced interrogator would have gotten out of

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Israel.

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Here is what we do know about Israel Keyes.

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He said he was born in Cove, utah, to a large Mormon family.

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He was the second oldest of 10 children.

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When he was three or four, the family settled in the woods outside of Colville, washington, a remote hamlet in the northeastern part of the state.

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His parents had then become fundamentalist Christians, moving from churches Keyes described as Amish to a more militant militia sort of church.

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When he was a teenager, the family at times would go without electricity and and homeschool the children For years.

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Some of the kids would sleep in a tent.

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The kids earned money through under-the-table jobs, cutting firewood or working on farms.

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He said he spent time in the woods and hunted anything with a

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heartbeat.

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Israel was obsessed with guns from a very young age.

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As an adolescent, israel said he shot at houses with BB guns, broke into homes and started fires in the woods.

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Later he slipped into the cabin of a neighbor to steal guns which he secreted in a cache outside the family home.

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When his parents found out, they made him apologize and return the guns.

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In an already isolated family, israel said he kept to himself.

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He talked about a need for control, a theme in his interactions with investigators, as well as his killings.

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In his teenage years he renounced the Christian faith which displeased his

00:17:34.631 --> 00:17:34.951
father.

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In 1987 or 1998, the family moved to Maupin, a high desert town in the Deschutes River in central Oregon.

00:17:42.834 --> 00:17:46.142
He and his brothers helped their dad build a house there.

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In an interview with FBI investigators, israel said that by his late teenage years he decided he could rape and kill and get away with it.

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He was also interested in Satanism at this time and began to plan a satanic ritual killing involving a young woman.

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The area where Israel was working was a popular place for inner tubers to float the Deschutes

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River.

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Israel told investigators that one day he stood on the beach along the river, waited out and grabbed a woman who was the last in her group, a teenage girl with sandy blonde hair.

00:18:15.392 --> 00:18:27.346
He dragged her to a remote campground bathroom, tied her up with ropes and raped her Keyes, planned to strangle the girl and dump her body in the toilet pit where he thought it wouldn't be discovered for a long time.

00:18:27.346 --> 00:18:30.579
He brought knives with him to use for a satanic ritual.

00:18:30.579 --> 00:18:37.702
The girl was only a teenager, between the ages of 14 and 18, he told investigators and she was really scared.

00:18:37.702 --> 00:18:42.115
He said she kept saying she wasn't going to tell anybody.

00:18:42.115 --> 00:18:45.385
He told her to shut up but she kept talking.

00:18:45.385 --> 00:18:46.990
She was pretty smart.

00:18:46.990 --> 00:18:47.830
It worked.

00:18:47.830 --> 00:18:55.436
He said things never really got violent like they could have if she had been fighting me and thank god he let her go.

00:18:55.436 --> 00:18:59.807
I was too timid, he told investigators I wasn't violent enough.

00:18:59.807 --> 00:19:03.537
I made up my mind I was never going to let that happen again.

00:19:03.537 --> 00:19:10.857
He said he was never charged with this crime and it's unclear if investigators even located the

00:19:10.877 --> 00:19:11.157
victim.

00:19:11.157 --> 00:19:17.198
After Oregon, at age 20, israel took a high school equivalency test and joined the army.

00:19:17.198 --> 00:19:20.530
He liked the survival skills aspect of military training.

00:19:20.530 --> 00:19:30.750
Israel made friends among the soldiers and drank a lot, he said he was stationed for six months in Egypt where he and his friends took trips to Tel Aviv to patronize prostitutes.

00:19:30.750 --> 00:19:35.547
During this time, israel resolved to act on the fantasies of killing strangers.

00:19:35.547 --> 00:19:38.134
He decided he was also an atheist.

00:19:38.134 --> 00:19:39.700
He said.

00:19:39.700 --> 00:19:55.615
I guess you could say I came to terms with myself and the reasons I wanted to do it.

00:19:55.615 --> 00:20:05.722
After his deployment he was stationed at Fort, he said, most of the next six years living on the reservation with her and their child, working in the parks and recreation department for the tribal authority.

00:20:05.722 --> 00:20:13.991
He spent a lot of time in forests and mountains of the Olympic Peninsula and made long trips to eastern Washington where he'd spent most of his childhood.

00:20:13.991 --> 00:20:17.934
He suggested to investigators that this was when he began killing people.

00:20:17.934 --> 00:20:23.772
I just accepted it was a matter of time, time and opportunity before I did something.

00:20:23.813 --> 00:20:24.094
Again.

00:20:24.094 --> 00:20:27.413
Investigators pressed for clues about other victims.

00:20:27.413 --> 00:20:32.194
Had the crimes possibly taken place on national parkland State parkland?

00:20:32.194 --> 00:20:33.637
Israel wouldn't say.

00:20:33.637 --> 00:20:35.309
They searched his boat.

00:20:35.309 --> 00:20:38.994
He said he had made a homemade anchor that might be of interest.

00:20:38.994 --> 00:20:43.115
He and his daughter's mother broke up and he began dating a new woman.

00:20:43.115 --> 00:20:47.453
When this woman moved to Anchorage around 2007, he and his daughter

00:20:47.534 --> 00:20:47.934
followed.

00:20:47.934 --> 00:20:53.290
Israel told investigators he traveled widely Until the Koenig abduction.

00:20:53.290 --> 00:20:56.665
He said he followed a rule about never killing too close to home.

00:20:56.665 --> 00:21:02.801
Keyes also told investigators that he would often stash murder kits near future crime scenes.

00:21:02.801 --> 00:21:10.667
These kits contained weapons and supplies to dispose of his victims' bodies, including duct tape, shovels, guns, rope, drano and lye.

00:21:10.667 --> 00:21:14.336
It seems like he put these kill kits inside of Home Depot buckets.

00:21:14.336 --> 00:21:21.489
Unlike most serial killers, israel traveled thousands of miles to stalk his victims and learn their habits before killing them.

00:21:21.489 --> 00:21:31.336
He told authorities that he would leave his home in Anchorage, alaska, under the guise of visiting distant friends and family members and that no one suspected he was going on a multi-state killing

00:21:31.355 --> 00:21:31.576
spree.

00:21:31.576 --> 00:21:40.092
In the interviews, israel confessed in detail to killing a middle-aged couple, bill and Lorraine Currier, in Vermont in June 2011.

00:21:40.092 --> 00:21:45.486
He chose the Essex-Vermont couple to kill for no reason beyond the design of their home.

00:21:45.486 --> 00:21:49.119
They lived in a house with an attached garage that would be easy to enter.

00:21:49.119 --> 00:21:55.987
He cut phone lines before bursting into the bedroom where the animal hospital technician and medical practice worker slept.

00:21:55.987 --> 00:22:04.211
He let them put on slippers rather than walk across broken glass as he led them to their own vehicle, which he would use to take them to an abandoned farmhouse.

00:22:04.211 --> 00:22:10.048
Calmly he told investigators that he bound the woman and then he bludgeoned her husband in the basement.

00:22:10.048 --> 00:22:12.935
The man called out where is my wife?

00:22:12.935 --> 00:22:15.122
And then Keyes shot him.

00:22:15.122 --> 00:22:18.954
He said the woman was feisty and that she tried to fight him.

00:22:18.954 --> 00:22:23.414
He described pouring Drano on the bodies before packing them into garbage bags.

00:22:23.414 --> 00:22:29.855
He stopped in the middle of this crime to smoke a cigar in the backyard, wet from a rainstorm.

00:22:29.855 --> 00:22:33.431
He noted that he was in Vermont on the trip to kill the couriers.

00:22:33.431 --> 00:22:37.288
He had also gone fishing and he'd made sure to buy a legal fishing

00:22:37.327 --> 00:22:37.709
license.

00:22:37.709 --> 00:22:42.224
Beyond this confession, israel didn't describe any other killings in detail.

00:22:42.224 --> 00:22:43.586
He had refused to give up any more bodies without an execution date.

00:22:43.586 --> 00:22:44.586
He didn't describe any other killings in detail.

00:22:44.586 --> 00:22:46.829
He'd refused to give up any more bodies without an execution date.

00:22:46.829 --> 00:22:53.737
He didn't want to sit in prison for the remainder of his natural life, but it was impossible to get him what he wanted fast enough.

00:22:53.737 --> 00:22:57.140
There was a lot of red tape to cut through for a legal

00:22:57.240 --> 00:22:57.840
execution.

00:22:57.840 --> 00:23:07.417
As hours piled up in the interrogation room, keyes grew more at ease discussing how he fantasized and planned killings in the midst of an otherwise ordinary-seeming life.

00:23:07.417 --> 00:23:14.098
When he talked about things that got him excited, he began to tap his legs and almost vibrate with the excitement.

00:23:14.098 --> 00:23:24.756
He talked about Israel Keyes, who lived with a nurse practitioner girlfriend and his school-aged daughter on a street in the Turnagain neighborhood where neighbors, included a superior court judge.

00:23:24.756 --> 00:23:33.395
When FBI agents searched this home, they found the couple's well-behaved pugs and a little ramp that Israel had built for them to get into the backyard.

00:23:33.395 --> 00:23:45.635
He talked about his hobbies fishing boats, hiking, camping and kayaking at Eteluga Lake Regular things Alaskans do, but Keyes' motivation wasn't regular.

00:23:45.635 --> 00:23:51.194
He said you go fishing or out hunting, stalking through the woods.

00:23:51.194 --> 00:23:53.626
You see someone through the woods, they don't see.

00:23:53.626 --> 00:23:55.991
You Sit there and watch them for a

00:23:56.011 --> 00:23:56.292
while.

00:23:56.292 --> 00:23:59.098
He wasn't picky about his victims.

00:23:59.098 --> 00:24:03.596
He said he preferred them to be lightweight because they were easier to dispose of.

00:24:03.596 --> 00:24:10.357
And after he became a father he tried to avoid situations that might end with him hurting a child.

00:24:10.357 --> 00:24:15.115
Israel said his retirement plan was to build a dungeon in the basement of his home.

00:24:15.115 --> 00:24:22.288
He told investigators about a cache of potential body disposal tools he had secreted along the bank of Eagle River.

00:24:22.288 --> 00:24:25.891
I only left that stuff there because I was planning on using it eventually.

00:24:25.891 --> 00:24:30.286
I don't like to litter, which is just actually insane.

00:24:30.286 --> 00:24:38.509
That the serial killer's big qualm is with littering, not, like you know, murder or rape or robbing or arson.

00:24:38.509 --> 00:24:41.234
He actually was suspected of arson a couple times

00:24:41.295 --> 00:24:41.474
too.

00:24:41.474 --> 00:24:45.394
As interviews went on, keyes was spending 23 hours a day in a cell.

00:24:45.394 --> 00:24:47.872
The guards were watching him like a hawk.

00:24:47.872 --> 00:24:54.798
He complained he wanted the death penalty and told investigators he had no long-term interest in survival in prison.

00:24:54.798 --> 00:24:57.833
How long am I going to sit in jail, he asked.

00:24:57.833 --> 00:25:01.974
By October, agents told Keyes they were losing patience with him.

00:25:01.974 --> 00:25:05.994
Their bosses believed that the agents were being played by him.

00:25:05.994 --> 00:25:10.976
They were under pressure to produce names and locations of the people Keyes claimed to have

00:25:11.016 --> 00:25:11.297
killed.

00:25:11.297 --> 00:25:14.251
The ground is freezing, israel said.

00:25:14.251 --> 00:25:20.457
Steve Payne, an FBI agent, if you want to be involved in helping us, it was 18 degrees outside yesterday.

00:25:20.457 --> 00:25:23.914
We don't have a lot of time to play with and it's a long, cold winter.

00:25:23.914 --> 00:25:30.912
Maybe it's because I just started watching Game of Thrones, but that definitely gives Game of Thrones vibes with the.

00:25:30.912 --> 00:25:32.095
It's a long cold winter.

00:25:32.095 --> 00:25:33.657
Winter is coming, I don't know.

00:25:33.657 --> 00:25:39.449
They repeated the proposition you give us information, we go out and look for

00:25:39.469 --> 00:25:39.769
bodies.

00:25:39.769 --> 00:25:43.433
But Israel was not interested.

00:25:43.433 --> 00:25:48.316
His biggest concern was the details of his crimes would be made public in the media.

00:25:48.316 --> 00:25:50.833
He wanted to shield his daughter from that, he said.

00:25:50.833 --> 00:25:55.575
Israel talked again to interviewers on November 29, 2012,.

00:25:55.575 --> 00:25:59.807
For the last time, a few days later, he was found dead in his cell.

00:25:59.807 --> 00:26:02.809
He was found dead in his cell On December 2nd 2012,.

00:26:02.809 --> 00:26:10.296
Keyes asserted his final act of control, strangling and slashing himself to death in his cell at the Cook Inlet pre-trial facility.

00:26:10.296 --> 00:26:16.582
He left 12 skulls on the wall drawn with his own blood, with we Are One written underneath.

00:26:16.582 --> 00:26:25.190
Because of this and a few other allusions he made during interrogations, investigators believe that Israel Keyes has a total number of 11

00:26:25.270 --> 00:26:25.771
victims.

00:26:25.771 --> 00:26:33.198
There are a lot of online theories about who these additional victims were, but he made a lot of allusions to different states.

00:26:33.198 --> 00:26:37.990
He had traveled all across the United States, visiting way more states than me.

00:26:37.990 --> 00:26:42.358
He'd been to Vermont, texas, new Mexico, oregon, arizona.

00:26:42.358 --> 00:26:47.047
He'd been to Vermont, texas, new Mexico, oregon, arizona, california, and the list goes on.

00:26:47.047 --> 00:27:04.023
He had been to so many different places that all these missing persons cases from that time period that he would have been in these states it really is too many to go through and figure out which ones he's involved in and which he happened to be nearby and wasn't involved, which he happened to be nearby and wasn't involved.

00:27:04.023 --> 00:27:10.915
Not to mention there were a couple times during interrogations that he mentioned that several of his murders had been attributed to accidental deaths or suicides.

00:27:10.915 --> 00:27:13.333
So that opens another can of worms.

00:27:13.333 --> 00:27:19.070
So I would not be surprised if they never find out who these additional victims are.

00:27:19.070 --> 00:27:20.871
Not that I wish that at all.

00:27:20.871 --> 00:27:30.396
I obviously want these things to be found out and reported upon, but I don't think there's much chance of that if we're being very realistic.

00:27:30.396 --> 00:27:38.071
Obviously there are lots and lots of theories and I highly recommend going down that rabbit hole, but it will invade your

00:27:38.112 --> 00:27:38.333
brain.

00:27:38.333 --> 00:27:46.751
For this case is incredibly frustrating, especially because the book I read, american Predator, which I will try to remember to link in the description.

00:27:46.751 --> 00:27:53.413
It went on and on about Kevin Feldes, the prosecutor, who insisted on being the head interrogator.

00:27:53.413 --> 00:27:55.939
He just pissed me off.

00:27:55.939 --> 00:27:57.628
You had no reason to be there.

00:27:57.628 --> 00:27:58.711
That's not your job.

00:27:58.711 --> 00:28:24.346
He just wanted more power and notoriety and to have his name in the paper, which to me means nothing, because one day history will forget us all, but those families who could have potentially had a little bit more information if the right interrogator had gotten a hold of his real keys, if another family could have had answers to what happened to their loved one, that would have been remembered, and I hope he thinks about that.

00:28:24.346 --> 00:28:26.875
I really do, because it's fucked

00:28:26.915 --> 00:28:26.996
up.

00:28:26.996 --> 00:28:39.551
It's honestly also one of the scariest true crime cases ever to me, because the only reason he was caught is he got sloppy and committed a crime near home and wanted ransom and all of these things.

00:28:39.551 --> 00:29:03.917
If he had just continued with his pattern of attacking people in the lower 48 states, or even if he had abducted Samantha and not used her debit card for ransom, we still wouldn't know who he was and he would have killed countless other people, and that's terrifying, especially considering how many other people could potentially be doing the same thing and we have no idea.

00:29:03.917 --> 00:29:07.471
The world is just such a scary, scary place.

00:29:07.471 --> 00:29:12.269
Anyway, if you made it to the end of the episode, it means the absolute world to me.

00:29:12.269 --> 00:29:13.814
You could be anywhere on the internet.

00:29:13.814 --> 00:29:15.747
So thank you for spending your time with

00:29:15.887 --> 00:29:16.107
me.

00:29:16.107 --> 00:29:18.314
I'll be back soon with another case.

00:29:18.314 --> 00:29:20.018
I haven't decided which one yet.

00:29:20.018 --> 00:29:26.097
So if you want to put in your case suggestions down below, I'm always looking for another rabbit hole to go down.

00:29:26.097 --> 00:29:31.614
I hate promising that an episode is going to be out soon, because it makes me out to be a dirty dirty liar when I don't.

00:29:31.614 --> 00:29:35.355
So no promises, but hopefully it's out soon and I pick a good one.

00:29:35.355 --> 00:29:38.028
So you should join me for that Subscribe.

00:29:38.028 --> 00:29:40.151
It's free, no charging anything.

00:29:40.151 --> 00:29:46.425
In fact, I don't make money off this at all.

00:29:46.425 --> 00:29:47.625
So I'll see you again very soon with another case.

00:29:47.625 --> 00:29:52.189
Until then, stay safe, stay kind and remember question everything.

00:29:52.189 --> 00:30:06.877
Bye you.