Israel Keyes confessed to the murders of at least eight people

Dec 3, 2012 07:35 GMT  ·  By

Law enforcement officials are investigating the death of serial killer Israel Keyes, found dead in his jail cell on Sunday, December 2.

Keyes had been imprisoned in Alaska since confessing to the murder of 18-year-old Samantha Koenig in Anchorage, in February this year.

He was scheduled to face trial on murder charges in March, with a conviction leading to the death penalty. According to a spokesman for the Alaska State Troopers, Keyes was alone in his room at the time of his death, with everything pointing to a suicide.

As he was being interrogated in the Koenig case, Keyes admitted to having murdered at least seven other people, during interviews that went on for days.

Two of the victims were referred to by name – Bill and Lorraine Currier, a couple that went missing in 2011 in Vermont. The others remain unidentified, and the U.S. Attorney's office believe the killer might have withheld information on several other murders, the first of which occurred 14 years ago.

Authorities "developed information that he was responsible for multiple additional victims. [...] To our knowledge, there are no other victims here in Alaska. They were all in the Lower 48," FBI Special Agent Mary Rook clarifies.

So far, police only located Samantha Koenig's body, the Anchorage Daily News writes. In February, she vanished from Anchorage. She was last seen in the coffee shop where she worked as a barista. Keyes was apprehended after using her debit card in Texas, not long after.

Her body was found in a frozen lake in Anchorage, in April, as police searched the spot indicated by Keyes himself. He also described how he had dumped it there. He then supplied information on where to find the remains of the Currier family; however, the lead didn't pan out.

During the interrogation, 34-year-old Keyes also confessed to two bank robberies, and would have gone on trial for those as well.