Title: American Predator Pdf The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century
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"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 14 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.
This book confirmed all my suspicions about why LE at large tried to bury the Keyes case .... Maureen Callahan has done the public a service with this book. It reads like an expose of all the things we should be taking different LE and legal agencies to task for.***This review starts with a semi-rant about how this case was screwed up. My analysis of Maureen’s writing and the book overall is titled separately below if you want to skip the complaining. ;-) ***The Rant:If you’ve never heard of Keyes, he’s likely the most terrifying serial killer we’ve ever had, and one of the least known. Least known because authorities deliberately hid the info they had on him. If you DO know the Keyes case, and you haven’t been pissed about how it was handled, you should be, and will be, after reading this book.(Side-note: For years I’ve been complaining to anyone who’d listen, online and everywhere possible about the FBI withholding info on this case. I’ve been screaming, “Cover up!” like a conspiracy theorist. BECAUSE IT WAS. You bastards! I knew it!! Lol).Bravo, Maureen! Seriously. This book demonstrated clearly how ego and bravado screwed up a massive case, and the subsequent cover up. There were a few good agents, great periphery LE with their hearts in the right places ... and idiot “big shots” who bungled everything and made rookie mistakes with Keyes, subsequently losing valuable info.Now, this case is one I followed extensively, and was completely infuriated by the investigation. I watched all the FBI interviews (that were released anyways), multiple hours of them — and wondered what the hell a US Attorney’s office prosecutor was doing playing interrogator ... how did he think that would turn out for a trial ...?I followed Maureen Callahan’s multi-year long battle in court to get the FBI and US Attorneys office to release all the info they had on Keyes. And boy, did they fight it. And I wondered ... why? What are you hiding? Keyes is dead, there’s no investigation to protect, you won’t be prosecuting him. So why protect his info now that he’s gone? Why keep a no-publicity promise to a serial killer when there’s still friggin victims unidentified out there! (As Keyes himself said, most will just be straight missing persons cases. No real press, no muss or fuss. Just another person ghosted in a sea of missing people.) Or were they protecting themselves? Yep. ALL the agencies involved buried their mistakes. As Callahan points out, the interview where Keyes correctly predicts an underwhelming response to Samantha’s kidnapping from the outset by APD was buried for years. Until she dug it up.The public should be outraged over this case. Yet barely a blip, certainly the LE involved we’re not held accountable following Keyes death. I hope they realized how incredibly bad they effed up and have since made changes, but ...This entire case is a study in missed opportunities. Now we have a victim count we’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of, and little to no info or follow up post-Keyes suicide. To be honest, I think Keyes only gave them a count of bodies he thought might eventually be found and/or possibly connected to him. There’s more out there. And we don’t know who they are. IMO, the US Attorneys office & APD, (and possibly the FBI for allowing all the bungling), wanted this case to vanish as much as Keyes did. Obnoxiously, it did.I was excited for Maureen’s book, but thought there wasn’t much new info I would get out of it. In fact, there was quite a bit. This peeled back the investigation, a glimpse into the mindset of the investigators. Quick nod here to Texas, you guys are THE SH*T. Keyes himself was amazed at how on guard ordinary people in Texas were, how observant and well armed. Plus your LE? As I believed before, the LE people who did best in this whole mess of a case, who were most on top of it all ... were the Texas Rangers and State Police. These guys knocked it out of the park. They took vague info and turned it into an arrest. If only they could’ve run the rest of it! No, not exactly fair. Had the FBI agents who’d been tracking Keyes taken the lead on questioning and the rest ... maybe we’d have a different outcome.My analysis of Maureen’s writing and style:I saw reviewers point out they didn’t feel Maureen could extrapolate feeling and tone from transcripts. That’s true, EXCEPT, there’s video to go along with those transcripts — the tone is VERY easy to sense. Along with the power struggles and silent battles. Her interpretation of the power dynamics and missed opportunities in questioning were exactly what I got out of those tapes. So everyone else, please understand, she’s not making things up here.There were a few times I thought, “Ok, you can’t know what he was thinking here so writing this investigators innermost thoughts is a ballsy writing move.” Yet, those few occasions were logical thoughts anyone would’ve had. She used them as teaching moments, i.e. times where quotes from interrogation transcripts showed clear questioning errors on the prosecutor’s part, and another investigator would think, “That’s a mistake.” Stuff like that. Not a stretch. But I still think some leeway should be given here; Maureen mentions extensive interviews with individuals involved at the beginning of the book. So we have to give some latitude for that. I didn’t see anything in this book I thought ventured towards the fictional.Now, in the interest of fairness, Maureen had to fight the US Attorney/DOJ for years in court to get the info for this book. So it’s possible she had a resentment bias while writing in regards to Feldis screwing up this case. BUT, I thought her treatment of him was fair — bc he WAS the main screw up point in this case. Everything she wrote I agreed with.This book is extremely well written. It’s VERY in-depth, piecing together so much info on Keyes, it felt like a goldmine to someone like me who’s been frustrated by the info blackout. I read the only other book on Keyes and found it lacking. This is a result of years of fighting the government for their records, and meticulous research. Yet it’s not dry or boring. This was a fully engaging page turner. It keeps you totally immersed in the investigation and Keyes in general. Very well done, I was impressed.I read this book in one day, it was a page turner.Spooky killer, excellent book Israel Keyes was beyond belief in his weirdness, capacity to torture and kill. And his planning: he planned his murders, in broad outline, years in advance. Then took advantage of immediate opportunities.The book is clear and easy to follow. I especially enjoyed the parts about his family and growing up years. I wish there had been more. But I get the impression family and friends weren't anxious to talk about being close to a depraved serial killer.If you like true crime, this is for you.don't get murdered in Anchorage AK This book shows the failure of law enforcement bureaucracies to work together. The few dedicated cops and feds were constantly undermined by their co-workers. The federal prosecutor should be disbarred. The most informative information in the book was Roy Hazelwood's admission that he no longer trusted his former employer - the FBI - to be honest about the number of stranger abductions/murders. Israel Keyes was the product of religious fanaticism and survivalism growing up which only encouraged his psychopathy.
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