Israel Keyes Family Life

While we finish putting together the rest of Israel Keyes Life in Full Detail, we thought some of the files that wouldn’t make it into the documentary itself might be of interest to you.

They reveal a dimension of Keyes life that has received little attention while at the same time being subject to much speculation and conjecture. They also undercut the mythology that’s built up around Keyes regarding his ability to compartmentalize different aspects of his life.

Among the files we received from the state of Texas were audio interviews of Keyes conducted by Texas Rangers, as well as images of pages from a notebook kept by Keyes daughter, Laney. Before we get into the images and recordings, we would like to briefly address the true crime community on the subject of journalism and true crime.

Although her name is common knowledge, there has been some confusion regarding Laney’s actual name due to the decision of a podcaster to arbitrarily change her name to Sarah. They also refused to broadcast interviews of his girlfriend, Kimberly, which motivated us to publish what are commonly known as the “Kimberly interviews” in May of 2024.

Police Interviews of Israel Keyes Girlfriend

In a unanimous 1979 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the First Amendment protects the right of journalists to use the names of minors in newsworthy stories as long as the information was obtained lawfully and reported truthfully.

Likewise, the First Amendment protects the right of journalists to publish information obtained through public records such as the “Kimberly interviews.” That’s the whole point of having public records. These are the true hallmarks of ethical journalism; truthfully reporting lawfully obtained newsworthy content in the public interest.

The same podcast also forbids members of their Facebook group from discussing these things, as if they don’t even exist, under the guise of respect towards the people in Keyes life who are victims of the circumstance of their relationship to Keyes.

This performative moralism is disrespectful to the victims that Keyes assaulted, raped and murdered, most of whom remain unidentified and unknown to this day, as well as the people who volunteer their time to painstakingly comb through evidence in an effort to identify and locate victims so that their families can put them to rest.

These volunteer citizen sleuths deserve access to all of the newsworthy public records on this case, and they deserve to be able to discuss the case openly and in full truth, as none of us knows what detail or discussion might lead to something relevant.

It is not the place of content marketers to decide what evidence is insightful in regards to either understanding the narcissistic psychopathy that motivates people like Keyes or to decide what evidence might provide a clue that could lead to yet unidentified victims. It is also not their place to demonize legitimate journalism, which is about reporting facts and evidence.

It isn’t entirely clear whether the notebook in question was a diary kept by Laney privately or part of a school project, but it was heartbreaking to discover these among the files. Heartbreaking or not, the entries inside add a new and important dimension to understanding Israel Keyes and those like him.

Based on his interviews with the Texas Rangers, Keyes was seemingly unaware his daughter had her notebook with her in his rental car over 4,000 miles from home.

In an interview led by two Texas Rangers - one being the arresting officer, Ranger Steven Rayburn - on March 17, 2012 at 11:04 PM, Keyes is asked about his daughter after her journal was recovered via a search warrant on Keyes rental vehicle, as you can hear in the audio clip below.

He is asked to read a passage from the journal presumably as a way to soften him emotionally leading up to their questioning of his involvement in the disappearance of Samantha Koenig. At the end of this audio clip, it appears that they give him photos of his daughter to keep while in custody.

The Rangers ask Keyes if her journal is a school assignment, and he says “not really.” Page one of the journal is a list of assignment prompts and there are grading marks in the journal, and the journal appears to be a school assignment that Israel Keyes was not paying close attention to, although it is also possible that it served a dual purpose.

Most of the entries in this journal are not newsworthy. However, many people have commented about Keyes ability to compartmentalize the different aspects of his life, and some of the entries are relevant to understanding the way that Keyes psychopathy impacted his relationship with his daughter.

These journal entries demonstrate that this understanding of Keyes ability to compartmentalize and still be a good father was less a reflection of reality and more a reflection of image management.

Narcissistic psychopaths often engage in calculated image management to project an image of grandiosity and control, cultivating a carefully crafted image to appear charismatic, successful, or even victimized, depending on the situation.

Driven by a need for admiration and validation, as a group they are known to use manipulation, gaslighting, and other deceptive tactics to maintain this image. One of the reasons that those who knew him called him a devoted father was that he would sometimes do things like bring his daughter to job sites with him, as she mentions in the page below.

While those who knew him believed him to be a doting father, Keyes also once lost track of time while in his shed violating a corpse. Keyes laughed to the FBI as he told them about his daughter knocking on the shed door to get his attention during this incident.

He reported that he told her through the door to go back inside and that he’d be in soon. This is reminiscent of another journal entry where Keyes’ daughter writes that sometimes she has to feed the dogs because her “dad is sooo busy.”

After his daughter was accepted into a gifted student program, Keyes had a meeting scheduled with the school to discuss and sign off on plans to shift her into the new curriculum. He missed the meeting because he was preoccupied disposing of the remains of Samantha Koenig.

Not only was he preoccupied, but he realized he was running late while he was out on the lake… and his phone was disassembled so that his location couldn’t be traced while he was disposing of his victims remains. He had to wait until he finished the job to call his daughters school to reschedule the meeting.

This entry also begs the question: where did a child get the idea that her dog could be “evil sometimes”? Is it simply that sometimes kids say the darndest things or evidence of the influence that a parent who is a narcissistic psychopath brings to the table?

At the end of the interview, Rangers show Keyes the ransom photo he took of Samantha Koenig after he had killed her. They ask him what would happen if he received such a photo of his own daughter and Keyes tells them, “I’m not gonna look at that.”

Overall, despite many people stating that Keyes was a loving and devoted father who cared very much for his daughter, it is clear that his personal interests were getting in the way of his parenting. He was clearly unable to compartmentalize the way that many believe.

To Keyes credit, he did keep his daughter away from the Church of Wells, which is widely alleged to be a cult, and has been accused of drugging and brainwashing young men and women. They deny these claims. Dr. Phil has covered this church and other podcasts, such as Cultish, have interviewed people about their experiences with this church.

Church of Wells ‘Elder’ Jacob Gardner - 2014 Mugshot (Gardner ironically gave the sermon at Israel Keyes funeral)

Investigators found a piece of paper with an image of a black woman in lingerie and on the back three numbers were written down. When asked about them, Keyes says that he is embarrassed and that they are numbers for transgender escorts in Louisiana.

He originally planned on leaving his daughter in Wells with his mother so he could spend a few days in Louisiana to blow off some steam. When he discovered that his mother was a member of the Church of Wells, he decided to stay in town at a hotel with his daughter instead. Keyes had left his daughter in the care of his brother when the Texas Rangers arrested him; no one is sure where he was going.

We’ll end with this page where his daughter says that one of the ways she’d make the world a better place would be to “make all of the [criminals] stop doing bad deeds.”