American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century - Softcover

Callahan, Maureen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143129708 ISBN 13: 9780143129707

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2020

Inhaltsangabe

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

An Amazon “Best Book of 2019”
A Washington Post “10 Books To Read in July”
A Los Angeles Times “Seven Highly Anticipated Books for Summer Reading”
A USA Today “20 of the Season’s Hottest New Books”
A New York Post “25 Best Beach Reads of 2019 You Need to Pre-Order Now”
A Bustle “The Best New True Crime Books You Can Read Right Now”

“Maureen Callahan’s deft reporting and stylish writing have created one of the all-time-great serial-killer books: sensitive, chilling, and completely impossible to put down.” —Ada Calhoun, author of St. Marks Is Dead

Ted Bundy. John Wayne Gacy. Jeffrey Dahmer. The names of notorious serial killers are usually well-known; they echo in the news and in public consciousness. But most people have never heard of Israel Keyes, one of the most ambitious and terrifying serial killers in modern history. The FBI considered his behavior unprecedented. Described by a prosecutor as "a force of pure evil," Keyes was a predator who struck all over the United States. He buried "kill kits"--cash, weapons, and body-disposal tools--in remote locations across the country. Over the course of fourteen years, Keyes would fly to a city, rent a car, and drive thousands of miles in order to use his kits. He would break into a stranger's house, abduct his victims in broad daylight, and kill and dispose of them in mere hours. And then he would return home to Alaska, resuming life as a quiet, reliable construction worker devoted to his only daughter.

When journalist Maureen Callahan first heard about Israel Keyes in 2012, she was captivated by how a killer of this magnitude could go undetected by law enforcement for over a decade. And so began a project that consumed her for the next several years--uncovering the true story behind how the FBI ultimately caught Israel Keyes, and trying to understand what it means for a killer like Keyes to exist. A killer who left a path of monstrous, randomly committed crimes in his wake--many of which remain unsolved to this day.

American Predator is the ambitious culmination of years of interviews with key figures in law enforcement and in Keyes's life, and research uncovered from classified FBI files. Callahan takes us on a journey into the chilling, nightmarish mind of a relentless killer, and to the limitations of traditional law enforcement.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Maureen Callahan is an award-winning investigative journalist, author, columnist, and commentator. She has covered everything from pop culture to politics. Her writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, New York, Spin, and the New York Post, where she is critic at large. She lives in New York.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

One

 

On the side of a four-lane road, obscured by snowdrifts five feet high, sat a small coffee kiosk, its bright teal paint vibrant against the asphalt and gray big-box stores. Drivers passing by could see the familiar top peeking above the piles of snow, this cheerful but lonely little shack.

The night before, eighteen-year-old Samantha Koenig had been working this kiosk alone. Now she had vanished. She had been on the job for less than a month.

She was reported missing the morning of Thursday, February 2, 2012, by the first barista to show up at the coffee kiosk that day. That barista felt something was not right-Samantha was usually very responsible about closing the kiosk properly, but this morning things were out of place and the previous day's take was gone.

What little the Anchorage Police Department had learned about Samantha in one day left them with almost no leads. She was a popular high school senior who sometimes cut class and maybe had a history with drugs. She got along with everyone, not just the cool kids. She had two main people in her life: her boyfriend, Duane, who she'd been dating for almost a year, and her single father, James.

So: What to make of this scene? Yes, Samantha could have been kidnapped, but to investigators, it seemed more likely that she had gone off on her own. The police found no signs of a struggle. Inside the kiosk was a panic button, and Samantha hadn't hit it. She'd been using her cell phone before and after she had gone missing-fighting with Duane, texting him to leave her alone, fighting over her certainty he was cheating on her.

Then again, she had also called her dad, asking him to stop by the kiosk with some dinner.

Why do that if she was planning to run away?

To the sergeant of the Anchorage Police Department, this seemed like a good test run for field training a novice. He decided to give the case to Detective Monique Doll, a third-generation cop, thirty-five years old, working her first day in homicide. Doll had spent ten years in narcotics, four of those undercover with the DEA. She had a lot to recommend her.

Doll stood out, too, as one of the most glamorous officers in Anchorage. She looked like her name, blonde and beautiful, though she answered to the androgynous nickname Miki. She was married to another star at APD, the handsome Justin Doll, and they were something of a local power couple.

So the sergeant told Doll: You're lead on this. Suspicious circumstance, he called it.

 

Across town, FBI Special Agent Steve Payne was tying up a drug case when a friend at the police department called. This is common practice in Anchorage, a big city that runs like a small town. Cops, FBI agents, defense lawyers, prosecutors, judges-everyone knows everyone. It is the paradox of being Alaskan: This state is home to rugged individualists who nonetheless know there will come a time, amid the cold, unpitying winters, when they will need help.

Payne was told that an eighteen-year-old girl had disappeared early the night before and had sent some angry texts to her boyfriend. One emerging theory had Samantha stealing the day's take to fund a day or two off on her own. Happened in Anchorage all the time.

Yet Payne wasn't so sure. Planning to disappear requires long-range strategy and sophistication. Samantha seemed like a young girl with very little money. Payne was a regular at these roadside coffee kiosks and could only guess how little the baristas were paid, these young girls who often worked alone, were made to wear bikinis in the summer. It was not an easy life.

Besides, where would a teenage girl go by herself on a dark and freezing Wednesday night? The weather had been brutal, just over 30 degrees, snow covering the ground. Samantha didn't have her pickup truck that night; her boyfriend Duane did. Anchorage isn't a walkable city. Samantha just wandering off, alone and on foot, made no sense. If she had gone to a friend's house, as she'd told Duane in texts last night, chances were the police would already have found her.

He offered to help.

"We've got enough people," came the reply. "We think we know what this is."

Payne hung up. This didn't sit right. As he well knew, the first rule of any investigation was to keep an open mind. You didn't try to fit a personal theory to a possible crime.

He had heard that the police never even taped off the kiosk earlier that morning, when Samantha was reported missing, and her fellow barista then spent the morning serving customers. If the kiosk was in fact a crime scene, it had already been contaminated.

Unbelievable, Payne thought. This was basic stuff, knowing that the first hours of an investigation are everything, presenting as they do the freshest leads, the most telling witness interviews. Crucially, investigators themselves are at their most curious and engaged, confronting a brand-new mystery with brand-new players. This sets the tone for everything to come. With missing people-especially a child, and Payne considered Samantha a child-these earliest moments, handled correctly, will give investigators the best chance of finding them alive and well.

He didn't want to overstep, but he couldn't help himself. He called APD, leaving messages, waiting all afternoon for a reply.

 

Finally, at eight o'clock that night, Payne's phone rang. It was Detective Doll.

"Some things have changed," she said.

Payne made the twelve-minute drive from the FBI's Anchorage field office over to APD. He was six years older than Doll and had been with the Bureau for sixteen years, born and raised in Anchorage, a rarity. Most folks who live here, like Doll, are expats from the Lower 48. Payne understood the psyche of the city. He understood the bias police can have when it comes to Anchorage's poor and troubled, the lost causes. He didn't want to see Samantha dismissed.

 

Payne's outward appearance gave little hint of his mettle. No one would ever guess he was a special agent who had worked drugs and violent crime his whole career. Small features, slight frame: He looked like an accountant. Yet Payne was a born investigator, a self-described obsessive-compulsive whose devotion to casework cost him his first marriage. He was a perfectionist who always fell back on the homicide investigators' credo: Do it right the first time. You only get once chance.

He got teased at the Bureau for a few of his favorite sayings-"cause for pause" whenever he found a clue or some kind of useful information, "Murphy's Law" when a case was on the verge of resolving only to fall apart. Payne thought of Murphy as his personal boogeyman.

Doll gave Payne a quick overview of what she'd learned so far. They had just gotten a look at the surveillance video from the kiosk, which the kiosk's owner, nearly twenty-five hundred miles away, had obtained eight hours earlier. This was shaping up to be what Payne had feared-the low prioritizing of an at-risk teenager. Samantha's father had spent the past night calling Samantha's cell phone to no avail, and spent that next day standing outside the kiosk during his daughter's next scheduled shift, from 1:00 to 8:00 p.m., hoping she'd come back.

"Show me the video," Payne said.

 

Just before eight oÕclock, Samantha appears on-screen in her lime green top, her long brown hair worn down. She is relaxed, chatting with a customer through the kioskÕs window as she makes coffee.

She looks like a sweet girl, Payne thinks. Happy.

Whoever is outside remains out of camera range. Samantha works very casually and then, two minutes and six seconds into the tape, she suddenly turns off the lights.

There's no audio.

Samantha's hands go up. Now, all that's visible outside the kiosk is a shadowy figure and what might be the muzzle...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2020
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0143129708
• ISBN 13: 9780143129707
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland