Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Killers Amongst Us: Teen barista Samantha Koenig kidnapped at gunpoint (Part 3)

Episode Date: April 28, 2020

Samantha Koenig is kidnapped at gunpoint from the Anchorage, Alaska, coffee stand where she works, February 2013. Former FBI Special Agent Bobby Chacon, who worked on the Koenig investigation, joins Nancy Grace describing how the abduction is caught on camera and a randsom note appears. The expert panel also includes Cold Case Research Institute Director Sheryl McCollum, Atlanta judge and lawyer Ashley Willcott, Los Angeles psycho analyst Dr. Bethany Marshall, Casey Grove with Alaska Public Media and Crime Stories Reporter Robyn Walensky. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Hi guys, Nancy Grace here. Welcome back to Killers Amongst Us, a production of iHeartMedia and Crime Online. The disappearance of a beautiful young barista, Samantha Koenig. She vanishes into thin air and into sub-zero temperatures. Joining us to help crack the case, investigative reporter Casey Grove from Alaska and FBI special agent Bobby Chacon, who's actually in on the FBI investigation. Joining us to analyze the clues left behind, Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute, and Dr. Bethany Marshall, renowned L.A. psychoanalyst. As you know by now,

a major break occurs in the hunt for Samantha and her kidnapper. Investigators tracking Samantha's debit card across the country. Detectives were kind of shocked because there was a withdrawal from an ATM in Wilcox, Arizona. Then there was another withdrawal in Lordsburg, New Mexico. The next withdrawal was March 10th in Humble, Texas. Nancy Grace, killers amongst us. 18-year-old Samantha Sammy Koenig vanishes on a Wednesday night from her coffee stand workplace. Surveillance video shows an armed man dressed all in black forcing her out of the coffee shop. What happened? This little girl, Samantha, goes missing in the cold night air of Alaska. At this time, after the ransom note comes in, the devastated father up the reward from $12,500 to $41,000. $41,000, he ups the reward. And still, no one can identify where is Samantha Koenig until a break in the case. A ransom note with a freaky photo of Samantha.

Her hair, obviously done by her kidnapper, in braids. With the chilling words, ain't she pretty, written underneath. And another fact to Cheryl McCollum is he didn't hide this. He actually posted it on the bulletin board, the photo of Samantha underneath the missing dog, Albert Flyer. He wanted people to see Samantha in distress. What about that, Cheryl? Of course, Nancy. The focus was not about the money.

The focus is about her. And every detail that he selected personally is even more sinister. The fact that he would use the phrase, ain't she pretty, trying to act like, oh, I'm ignorant, I'm a hillbilly. When that's probably not the case. The fact that he would choose any newspaper he wanted, but he selected the date the 13th, like it's bad luck for her. Everything he's doing, from the ski mask to being in all black to hiding it under the picture of a doll,

because that's about what she's worth to him. She's a doll. She ain't nothing. Everything is telling you a story from him. And I'm telling you, he's watching the news. He knows all the principal players, and he's playing a game. Police, community, family, her father on edge in a race against time, really. Could they get the money to the perp? Could they find the perp?

Could they save Samantha in the midst of this? A bizarre twist in the case. There were three withdrawals in the city of Anchorage of $500, the daily limit. In all of the ATM situations where he was using the debit card, as soon as the alerts came, we dispatched law enforcement there as quickly as we could, but we were literally minutes behind him. Then the account went silent.

And on March 7, detectives were kind of shocked because there was a withdrawal from an ATM in Wilcox, Arizona. Then there was another withdrawal in Lordsburg, New Mexico. The next withdrawal was March 10th in Humboldt, Texas. And then shortly after, there was a withdrawal in Shepherd, Texas. Each time this money was withdrawn, it was withdrawn by a person wearing a mask. In the ATM video footage, we're able to see footage of the vehicle the suspect is driving,

and we're able to determine that it's a white Ford Focus traveling eastbound. Just hearing from our friends at Oxygen, that gave me chills all on my arms and legs. Straight out to Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute, joining me, Dr. Bethany Marshall, Casey Grove, John Limley, and FBI Special Agent Bobby Chacon-Cheryl. You know why?

Because that means, at the very best, he, the kidnapper, is on the run with Samantha. And we also know which way he's going. He is now far, far away from home, apparently holding her hostage in the car. We've got an eye on a white Ford escort, but he's gone from Anchorage to Wilcox, Arizona to Lourdesburg, New Mexico, Humboldt, Texas, Shepherd, Texas. They are on him, but that has got to send chills down Samantha's father's spine. This guy is on the run with his daughter. What is she enduring? Nancy, this is what we call a money tree. Not only do we know the direction, we have his actual location in real time. So we not only know where he's at, we know how fast he's traveling with her. And another thing we know, Dr. Bethany Marshall, renowned California psychoanalyst, this guy is no idiot.

No idiot at all. Because he wears a mask when he goes to the ATM. He knows her ATM card, Samantha, is going to hit and they're going to pull that video and they still can't get an ID on him. He's outsmarting not only the cops, but no offense, Bobby Chacon, the FBI. Well, Nancy, this is what we call a spree, right? A crime spree where there's extraordinary energy put into withdrawing money from all these ATMs. What I would worry about at this point from a psychological perspective is, is he high? Is he using amphetamine? Is he in a manic state? Is he fragmented? He's very methodical because he wears a ski mask, but he is moving,

moving, moving. That extraordinary energy that goes into all those withdrawals and all that traveling could also be going into accosting her. So this puts her at greater risk, I think, than if he were just really low key and in one spot. You know, the cops call the dad and they go, we got good news. He used her ATM. Bad news is he's wearing a mask. We also know in the ransom note, he took the time to braid her hair for the photo. And that, I almost want to vomit because I'm thinking what he is doing to Samantha on the road, taking her from Anchorage to Arizona to New Mexico to Texas.

I mean, Bobby Chacon, no offense to the FBI. I am big fans most of the time. But Bobby, at this point, had you ever seen anything like this guy outsmarting everybody at every turn, still wearing a ski mask? He thinks to thwart you all the way into Mexico. Well, let's take a step back and understand what the investigators actually know at this point. So with an abduction like this, usually when there's a ransom demand, the victim is with one person and the ransom collector is with another. So we don't even know if there's a single person at work here or there's multiple people at work. Now, we know that abductions are hard. To abduct someone and keep them is even harder. To

abduct them, to keep them and travel with them is even more difficult than that. So we don't know at this point whether the person using this ATM card is in concert with other perpetrators who, you know maybe still have Samantha closer to Alaska where she was abducted we don't know any of that yet all we know is that card is being used we don't know who's using it if the if that card has been sold or transferred to someone else we don't know at this point all we know is the card is being used and we're following the card but there's a world of other possibilities that the investigators are still tracking

with abductions like this, which means the possibility is that she still could be with someone else closer to the abduction site. We just don't know at this point. You know, something struck me, Bobby Chacon, about what Dr. Bethany Marshall said. I'm going to throw this to you, Cheryl McCollum. The incredible energy he's putting into keeping up the chase. He is on it. He has managed to get this girl out of a coffee shop in a populated area.

Nobody sees a thing. You get the video. You can't tell who he is. You can't tell a thing about him. Now, he's caught on cameras all across the country in multiple jurisdictions. We still can't figure out who is he, what does he look like, put out an APB, all points a bullet on him. Nothing. I mean, apparently Bobby Chacon is not as worried about it as I am, but to me, that tells me this is a criminal mastermind. Nancy, there's no question. He's done a lot of preparation and a lot of planning,

even possibly mapping out where he's headed now. No doubt about it. Let me tell you this. Nobody ever accused the devil of being stupid. In fact, he's got to be brilliant to have his own kingdom, right? Ruling over evil throughout the universe. And here is this guy. He is no idiot, but I guarantee you he is nothing but pure evil. I can only imagine what Samantha's father is going through.

The phone rings. He's got caller ID. He knows it's the cops. He knows it's the feds. They say, good news. We got a hit. We know where he is. Oops, wait a minute. He's not in Anchorage anymore. He's in Wilcox. Wait, no, he's not in Wilcox, Arizona. He's in Lourdesville. No, no, he's not in New Mexico anymore. Now he's in Humboldt. No, no, no, no, no.

He's in Shepherd. I mean, and then to tell him the news, the guy who took your daughter still can't be identified. He's still outsmarting us. But then another break in the case. There was a Texas Highway Patrol corporal, and he saw a white Ford Focus. He thought, this looks kind of like the car they're looking for. The vehicle makes a traffic infraction,

and he's able to pull him over. The police officer is handed an Alaska driver's license. The corporal knew that this is the guy. In the search of this vehicle, they found clothing that matched the description of the clothing of the person who was using the various ATMs. There's a gun in the trunk of the car as well, but the big thing is Samantha's cell phone and then Samantha's debit card is also recovered. Okay, now we have a glimmer of hope.

Out of the blue in this, it reminds me so much, Cheryl McCollum, of Timothy McVeigh, the OKCity bomber, who had murdered so many people. And he gets pulled over because he has a rear signal malfunction on his car and then something didn't sit right with a cop and then they find out he is the Oklahoma City bomber that stole so many lives just ruthlessly. And remember the building, the federal building that had a daycare in it? Yeah. Little babies were there. Remember him?

Absolutely. Now, in this case, out of the blue, still don't have an ID, a visual of who this guy is that took Samantha. But then a cop across the country sees a Ford Focus, pulls it over on a traffic violation, and Samantha's things are recovered in the car. This gives them hope. Samantha is being stashed somewhere. Listen. They had him on a federal case of using a credit card illegally and could arrest him on that.

However, the one thing missing is Samantha. He did not say anything about the kidnapping other than denying that he had anything to do with it. When they found him, we had no clue who this man was. Never seen his face before. What, if any, is his connection with Samantha Koenig? Because Dr. Bethany Marshall's stranger on stranger abduction in this scenario is highly, highly rare. Less than 1%, Nancy. So the fact that this perpetrator could target Samantha, take her, go on a crime spree, procure her ATM, all the while having no links or no ties. That's unusual.

And what happens for the police in a situation like that is that they have absolutely no clues. Think about it. They cannot go through her computer or her cell phone and see if there's anybody stalking her. They can't look at people she went to high school with to see if anybody had some kind of an obsession or a preoccupation with her. This is literally, as you said earlier, pure evil staring her in the face. Somebody who targeted her, abducted her, took her ATM, went on a crime spree, and now she's nowhere to be found. If I were her dad, I would be so sick and so terrified.

I mean, wouldn't you hope at least when he was pulled over that she would be found in the path? Think, think, think, think, think. John Lindley, with me, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter John Lindley. The reality is we've got him. He's got her ATM card. He's got her stuff. Clearly he's not going to take her. According to her uncle, she was very feisty, in his words, not mine. You don't want to take a

feisty kidnap victim around locally when you're stashing her somewhere else because she could jump out of the car and it'd all be over, John. It's so true. And again, focusing on what they do have in the trunk of that car, Samantha's cell phone and her ATM card. As we've heard, you know, that gives the detectives a major shoe in the door because using an ATM card illegally, well, that's a federal offense, no matter what state the person is in. Casey Grove joining us with Alaska Public Media. Casey, weigh in. The first thing that we heard about any sort of suspect or arrest or anything in this whole thing, charges, was actually a TV station down in Texas called the Anchorage Daily News. And I talked to a reporter down there who just had a kind of a wild tip from, you know, some public safety official off the record saying that

this guy who had been arrested, something like, you know, just outside of Luskin, Texas, was connected to an abduction in Alaska. And everybody kind of knew in Alaska, like, which one that was, because it was the biggest case going on at the time that involved any kind of abduction. It took some time before there was any real news about the charges or any details from the charges. So they, you know, released this charging document. It goes up on the federal court system website, and it's not for, you know, murder or kidnapping or anything like that. It's for, you know, misusing this ATM card, fraudulent use of the access device,

I think is what they call it, but it's, you know, access device is an ATM card that he had stolen from her and had been, according to these charges, had been using this card to make withdrawals in, I think, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas. I think there was one withdrawal, you know, earlier on in Anchorage even, which was always a very strange part of this that, you know, he had been getting a few hundred dollars at a time and sort of gave the police a way to track him. Yes, you're right, Casey.

He did give them a way to track him, like Hansel and Gretel, leading breadcrumbs across the country. But every time he thwarted them by going to a new location before they could catch him and covering up his face. But bizarrely, when they do get him for a traffic violation of all things, nobody's ever seen him before. He has no criminal history, nothing. And it's hard for me to believe that you go from zero to 120 MPH in one fell swoop. So who is this guy? We get a name, Keys, to FBI Special Agent Bobby Chacon joining us. Bobby, now is the time that this guy that nobody knows, nobody recognizes,

no fingerprint on file, nothing in AFIS, nothing in CODIS, nothing, needs to cough up, where is Samantha? How do we get it out of him, Bobby? Well, the first thing we do is get him from Texas back to Alaska, where the case resides, and get him into the hands of the agents and detectives who are most familiar with Samantha's case. And so that's what happens. He is basically extradited from Texas back to Alaska within a day or two and then is made to sit down with the people most familiar with the case who can then start interrogating him on why he had her card, who is he, is he the initial charge that we have on him, right? As a prosecutor, you know, you can only charge what you have right now. We only have the fact that he used her ATM, which is the federal crime. So he is extradited back to Alaska on that particular

crime. And then we can start looking into his connection to Samantha and what those threads are that we can find. You know, it's amazing to me that he never says a word. And when he's pulled over for the traffic stop, when he's being held for extradition, he never says a word. The entire extradition process, which is either driving in a paddy wagon or by plane, where you literally are handcuffed to the chair, to the seat, or to the federal agent, never says a word about Samantha. He doesn't reveal where he's hiding her. Is she being fed? Is she being tortured? Does some other guy have her? Shockwaves through the community. Take a listen to law enforcement, Anchorage police and the feds speaking to KTUU. The strongest words yet from investigators looking into the abduction of Samantha Koenig. APD Chief Mark Mews says they think Israel Keys,

a man arrested in Texas for allegedly using a stolen debit card, is involved in her abduction. Channel 2's Jason Lamb joins us now from outside the federal courthouse in Anchorage where that man, Israel Keys, faced a judge today. Jason, what did Keys have to say in court today? Well, Maria, Mike, nothing specifically related to the abduction of Samantha Koenig. He spoke very briefly, short phrases, yes, your honor, no, your honor, things like that. He did plead

not guilty to the charge of access device fraud using that stolen debit card to try and get money. Keyes sat in the courtroom today facing the judge as he read off that charge against him. The most we heard from Keyes was him explaining why he didn't have enough money for a lawyer, his voice quivering during that explanation. Afterwards, at a press conference with investigators, they said they want more information about the truck Keyes was driving at the time of Koenig's abduction toward the beginning of last month. They say they think a large utility rack on the truck might have been removed at the time of Koenig's abduction

and they want to know if anyone helped remove that utility rack off of Keyes' car. And Police Chief Mark Mews said in the strongest way we've heard so far that APD thinks Keyes is involved in Koenig's abduction and the U.S. Attorney's Office backed that up today. By giving you the significance of the connection between the investigation of Ms. Koenig's abduction and not only the charges that were issued today in which Mr. Keyes was arraigned upon, I think it lets people know the seriousness with which everybody here is taking it and it gives people a reason to call and provide the information that they may be aware of associated with that truck or with Mr. Keyes. Now beyond that, investigators wouldn't answer many more questions about anything, including what the connection is between Israel Keyes

and Samantha Koenig. They say they have to keep that information close to their chest. To Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute. Cheryl, we've got the guy in our grasp. Still no Samantha. How do you get somebody like this guy to talk? Nancy, you're going to want to get him by himself with just maybe one interrogator and let him talk. Let him brag.

Let him talk about what he's done the past several days, how he got her card, how he got her cell phone. The best thing you can do is keep him talking and ask him very few questions. Well, here's the problem. You can't beat him. You can't torture him. You can't give him sodium pentothal under our constitution. The truth serum can't do it. If you do it, that confession, that statement will be thrown out. Then you'll have nothing. Everything you gain as a result of that statement, i.e. the location of

Samantha and all the evidence, that will be thrown out of court under the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine because you got it from an illegal confession. So the cops, there's really no nice way to put it, are screwed. He won't talk. He's got the car. He's got the mask. He's got Samantha's stuff. Only thing missing, Samantha. So how does a candy bar and a cigar play into this? First, he makes a few demands. The mood significantly changed once we first got to hear from Israel Keys. It was clear just how cold and calculating he was. I can give you the rest of the story, like, you know, everything that happened.

If I get a cigar. He wanted an Americano, and he wanted a peanut butter Snickers bar, and he wanted an opportunity to smoke a cigar, which at the time we thought were pretty silly. But if that's what it was going to take for him to talk with us, we were willing to do that. That was when he began relating details of the kidnapping of Samantha Koenig. He had a shed in his driveway,

and ultimately he put Samantha in the shed, and she's bound in the shed. There he was drinking alcohol and smoking cigars and then turned up the music so that any sounds that were irregular wouldn't be heard by his girlfriend and daughter who were in the house or the neighbors. And he sexually assaulted her through the night. Considering the horrific ordeal Keyes claims to have enacted right outside his home,

the FBI is shocked to find out that Keyes has a live-in girlfriend and a 10-year-old daughter. His girlfriend and their child had absolutely no clue about what he was up to. He indicates to Samantha that his goal is to get money, and if he gets money, that he intends to let her go. And while she's in the shed is when he goes back to the coffee stand both to get her phone, get her debit card, and actually goes to an ATM to see how much money is in her account account and then returns to the shed. What a cold-blooded devil this guy is. He puts Samantha Koenig in a shed and rapes her, turning up the music high, high, high, so neighbors and his girlfriend and daughter

cannot hear her screaming. Well, of course, the feds make a beeline racing to the shed. Casey Grove joining me, Alaska Public Media. Tell me about the shed and the cops, the feds descending upon it. I got a call from one of the neighbors on Israel Keys Street, where he lived with his girlfriend. And like we had before, you you know me and other reporters went down and kind of just stood there on the street watching FBI agents mostly working right around a shed right in the front yard we had seen them there before kind of searching around generally in that on the property but they were real focused on his shed and kind of became apparent that they were digging it out.

You know, we thought at first maybe they were, like, digging in the ground. It was frozen ground, you know, and, like, digging, maybe trying to dig something up. So, you know, definitely just standing there for, I don't know how long, a couple hours at least. And then what they were actually doing was they were digging up the entire shed. They dug out around it, got it loose from the ground, and then they used a forklift to pick it up and put it on the back of this flatbed truck. And they strapped it all down. I mean, it was a real

precarious situation. It seemed like on snow, everything was just shed balance, not forklift, but they got it on there and took it downtown. Me and a couple other reporters, you know, following them, following the flatbed truck with a shed on it downtown to the FBI building. Bobby Chacon, FBI special agent on the scene. Bobby, now we've got the shed. We've got the shed where he kept her, where he raped her repeatedly, turning up the music so nobody could hear. We've got her clothes, but where is she being held? You give him a candy bar, Snickers. You give him a cigar. The guy is so chill. Did you hear him? He was actually laughing, asking for a cigar as everybody's on pins and needles about Samantha. And then what happens? Well, you know, as much as that sounds like bad news that he's

so cold and calculating and wants the cigar and things, in some respect as an interrogator, you know, this guy is so narcissistic that he wants to talk. He wants to be in control. And you have to assess each person you're interrogating differently. Determine what their wants and needs are. This guy wants to talk. He wants to be in control. He wants to show us what a professional he is. And so he's not trying to deny.

He's not trying to hide. So that's actually for us a good thing, the fact that he wants things and he's going to in turn give up something for the things that he gets that he wants. So in some respects for us as interrogators, that's a good sign. We know he wants to talk now. He hasn't talked yet, but the indications are that he wants to be in control and he wants to talk. He knows that won't last forever. So he knows he'll have to give up something to get something and to keep this thing going. And so we know that it's only a matter of time, that as long as we can be,

you know, as we can give him a little bit of what he wants, we can start demanding things that we want. And so that's the process they're in right now. Dr. Bethany Marshall, what does it mean to you that at this juncture, at this point, he's actually the puppeteer. He's playing federal agents like puppets. They're running around getting him cigars and candies and whatever he wants to try to find out where Samantha is, and he still hasn't coughed up. Nancy, he's a pig in dirt. He's rolling around, rooting around, and loving this. Now, remember when they first arrested him and put him in the so-called paddy wagon, he had nothing to say. The reason for that is he felt diminished, inferior, and as if he had lost his power. But the minute he asked for the candy bar, the cigar,

the Americano, now he was getting them to serve his needs and not the other way around. In a way, he was recreating the crime scene, right, where he was smoking a cigar, he was drinking alcohol. He's back to like, it's his world and everyone's living in it. Now, remember, sociopaths are quite grandiose. So if you appeal to their narcissism, you can get them to talk about almost anything. Once in my office, I said to a grandpa who had molested his grandchild and I was afraid he was going to continue to molest. I said to him, think about how everybody's going to look up to you and admire you if you never touch a child again. In fact, you could be the most important person in your community. You

could be a great man. Everybody will revere you. That was, I felt, the only deterrent to him molesting again was to appeal to his narcissism. That's what these investigators are doing. And boy, it really works. I mean, he folded and he just started to talk and talk and talk because now he's in his glory days. Oh, yeah. He is basking, basking in the attention from the federal agents, especially from female agent, Bobby Chacon. You get the shed. Obviously, Samantha's still not in there. Then we find out after he has Samantha in the shed, raping her,

getting her ATM card, stealing her money. He goes off on a two-week cruise. He leaves Samantha in the shed two weeks to go on a cruise. What did the fans learn from the shed, Bobby? They dig the whole thing up, put it on a truck, strap it down, and take it away. What did they learn from the shed? You know, the first thing I learned when I stepped into that shed and looked at it, what I learned was it was already outfitted for an abduction. And so it had restraining devices already screwed into some of the beams in it. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. See, you got to talk, not FBI talk. You've got to talk regular people talk. What do you mean by restraining devices? Keys had already put things in that shed that would make it easier to restrain somebody to tie them down. It had what looked to me like U-bolts into the walls of the shed that could

be used to tie ropes through and that you could restrain somebody in there. So we already know that no one is going to survive in a shed like that in February for two weeks in Anchorage, Alaska. I mean, you'd freeze to death. And so we knew that Samantha had been probably in there and tied up in there. You know, but now it's anybody's guess as to where she is currently. How far was the shed from the house where his girlfriend and daughter were? It was basically in the driveway of the house. When I stepped into it, it had already been removed to the FBI office in the garage of the FBI office. That's when I first saw it.

But it had been dug up from what was basically right next to his house. And the girlfriend and the daughter never heard a thing. All they could hear was music blaring. Even the neighbors could hear it and in the midst of you examining the shed you get a call you get a call about of all things the ransom note and the photo the photo of Samantha clearly taken in the shed after he had braided her hair and in that phone call what do you learn? So the phone call or the report from the forensic photography unit at Quantico

determined that in looking at the photograph and examining it very closely, it appeared that Samantha's eyes were somehow artificially held open, probably through the use of some kind of sewing of string to keep those eyes open. Of course, then it was, in the photograph, it looked like it was then covered up with makeup. Let me just interpret what Bobby Chacon, FBI special agent, has just laid on me. Cheryl McCollum, my longtime friend and colleague, he stitched her eyes open, then covered them with makeup, then blurred the photo. Cheryl?

She's dead. She's dead. Absolutely. She's dead. She's dead. She's dead. If you stitched her eyes open, she's dead. The level of horror that that would serve for that family is, is astronomical. I mean, there are absolutely no words to describe what this monster has now done to their child. And what Bobby's going to be faced with at this point, we have a crime scene at the coffee shop, one in his truck, and now one at the shed. And Bobby's got to find the fourth crime scene. You know what, Cheryl, I don't know how you just did that, how you can talk about finding the crime scene, because all I can think about is him hunched over her body that he's raped, probably in life and postmortem, then braiding her hair in life or postmortem,

and then stitching, hunched over her with the light on in the shed with the music blaring and his girlfriend and the daughter 50 feet away and he has a needle and thread and he's actually holding her eyelids to her brow and stitching her eyelids open. All right? Now, I just, I've prosecuted a lot of murders. I've seen a lot of horrible things. I've seen torture. I've seen buried people buried alive, children buried. I've seen it all, I think. And now here comes Israel Keyes and he does this to this girl in a shed,

in a shed, just feet away from people that could have saved her if they dared. Bobby, I mean, what do you do with that? When you find out from the Federal Photography Unit in Quantico, her eyes are stitched open. Then he puts heavy makeup on her to try to make her look alive, and that was used in the ransom note. Well, you know, as investigators, we remove ourselves from the emotional elements that that entails, at least at the time, and you have to tell yourself what this tells us about this person because everything you can learn about this person can be used basically

back in the interrogation of the person. So we now know how cold and how calculating and how brutal, how evil this person is. So now we know with the planning that we know went into it, with the brutality that's been carried out during it, we know that there's a lot more to this evil person than what we know. This took a lot of time, a lot of forethought, a lot of planning. And God help me, I hope not a lot of practicing before he did this thing to Samantha Koenig.

But now we know she's dead. And we know that because photography experts at Quantico have somehow figured out from this Polaroid, it was a Polaroid, as I recall, that her eyes had been stitched open. And, you know, when I was trying cases, Dr. Bethany, I couldn't remove myself from the facts. And sometimes to get through it, I would have to just not think about it, which became very handy in life, the ability not to think about something. But I made my juries think about it. And when I would make them think about it, I had to think about it because holding her eyelid, her dead eyelid open,

and stitching through it to her brow. Nancy, he turned her into a human, non-living, dead human doll, stitching her eyes open, braiding her hair, putting makeup on her, and that's just what we know from the neck up. I don't even want to think what he did to the neck down. He's probably a necrophiliac. He probably desecrated her corpse. He had the ultimate triumph and the ultimate control over her to do whatever he wanted with her body and she wouldn't protest. That shed, Nancy, was his party pad. He was obsessed with the shed.

He had been outfitting it, I would imagine, for months. He probably chose that house because the shed was in front. I can't even imagine the equipment on the walls, chains, things to hide people, to restrain them. And then restraining them in life is not enough. Now he has to restrain them in death. It's the ultimate power. It's the ultimate degradation and triumph over the love object. That's what it is.

Bobby Chacon, the FBI, now are on the mission not to save Samantha, but to recover her body. Did Keyes ever divulge where her body was? Yes, he did. He let the agents know in the interrogation that he had taken her to a lake about 40 miles north of Anchorage. Remember, this is still the winter. And he went out onto this frozen lake that's used, ice fishermen use it all the time. So you see these tents that are put up by these ice fishermen so they can sit around a fishing hole in the cold and fish. So he got himself one of these tents.

He put it up. He drilled a hole through the ice, and he put Samantha's body through that hole to rest on the bottom of that lake. Listen to this. The FBI dispatches their cold water dive team. Special Agent Bobby Chacon is tapped to lead the recovery efforts. BOBBY CHACON, It's still late winter in Anchorage, and the conditions we're going to be operating under are extreme.

We get to Lake Matanuska, and some FBI agents, they're kind of standing watch over a spot on the lake that Keyes had directed them to. There was a fishing hole that was frozen over. I looked at that, and I said, if she's here, we're going to find her. We put our underwater robot in. And soon as the video camera went on, we saw obvious human remains. And I could turn to the detective and the case agent and say, tell your bosses we've found a body. You're hearing our friend Bobby Chacon speaking with Oxygen, and he is with us now.

Bobby, FBI special agent, you can find me at bobbychacon.com. Bobby, just imagining you looking out at that frozen lake, trying to figure out where is she, knowing her body is under all that ice somewhere i mean what did he do go out there and pretend he was fishing and then cut a hole and stick her body down there as gruesome as that sounds you're exactly right that's exactly what he did um because we know his meticulous planning, he did exactly what you said. He pretended he was fishing. He got himself one of these ice fisherman tents that would basically hide him from any outside eyes. He had Samantha's body on a sled. And everything he was doing at

that point looked just like a number of other fishermen that would be doing the same kind of activity, except that he had Samantha's body under a tarp on his sled. And when he took her into that ice tent that he had set up and drilled a hole, you know, inside the tent through the ice. I want you to hear the killer, Keys, describing how after he puts this girl's body in that icy water, he actually catches fish. He goes fishing, and he brings the fish home to his girlfriend and daughter, and they eat the fish. He tried to find a deep lake near the Anchorage area, and he had found Matanuska Lake, and he actually went to where on the map he felt one of the deepest areas was in the lake. A lot of ice fishermen out there so he used that as a ruse to cut a hole in the ice and ultimately disposed of her

body there. So I asked him kind of like it's apropos of nothing I just well did you catch any fish and he said yeah I caught fish. What'd you do with them? He goes I took them home and ate them. So that really kind of turned my stomach as well that this guy would you know kind, he's disposing of a body, catching fish and going home and serving them to his family. Cheryl, I'm imagining the moment that he gets her body. He's got it all planned. He's outsmarted everybody. He gets her body. He's cut the hole in the ice. Looks like he's fishing. And the moment that body, Samantha, goes into the water. It's almost like flushing a commode or throwing the trash in the dumpster. Nancy, she would slowly sink and just fade away, I guess. And here's what is so astronomical for me, again, is the level of twisted evil that it would take.

Again, transporting her body, the preparing to transport, the in plain view, having her under this tarp, but still people can see him. And then going into something that he again has taken great time to prepare. And he's very meticulous. And I agree with Bobby. That to me is the most unbelievable thing, is the time that he has taken before the crime has actually happened. Again, twisted and sick beyond anything that I think we've seen. To Bobby Chacon, you're out there on the ice. There's no sign of where he drilled, nothing.

How do you figure out where to start? How did you recover? You, Bobby Chacon, recover her body. Well, we went right to the edge of the water, well, the edge of the lake where Keyes said he entered the lake. So he described in detail by the investigators had him draw a picture of the lake and where he actually set foot on that ice, what direction and approximately how far out he went. The thing is, after he said he was done, he had a piece of wood, a small piece of plywood that he, for some reason, set on fire, and probably because it had blood on it.

And he left it there, and that small piece of plywood melted itself into the ice, which then refroze over it. But the agents in Alaska had located that. They followed this path. We followed this path that he told us. And we found this half-burnt, frozen piece of plywood in the ice. And we realized we're at the point. And then we saw a frozen over fishing hole. You see these plugs of ice that have frozen over where the fishermen have used. We found a plug of ice frozen over very near that piece of burnt plywood, and we realized this is the hole he probably used. And so let's start looking right here. And as Cheryl McCollum just pointed out, again, it's a race against time.

First it was a race to find Samantha. Then it was a race to hopefully save her and get her out of the shed she was in. Then it's a race to find her her and get her out of the shed she was in. Then it's a race to find her body before her remains, just as Cheryl said, vanish, just fade away, get fed on by fish and other creatures underwater or degenerate to the point that she can no longer be recovered. So how do you go about it? You dig a hole in the ice and then what do you do i mean i've a diver but i've never dived and all the hundreds of times i've dived in that kind of cold water how do you and it's got to be murky how do you find her and in the middle of this giant massive ice

covered lake so what we do is we we employ, and this is not an uncommon scenario for us looking under ice, and the water under ice is normally more clear because there's less fish life. Everything is dormant in the winter. So what we do is once we drill a small hole, we put a sonar device down, and it starts looking at objects on the bottom to give us an idea of, you know, is this a rocky bottom? Is there a lot of debris down there? And what we learned from the sonar is that it was a very clean, flat bottom at about 50 feet of depth. And so after the sonar gives us really five individual targets, targets being shadows.

Sonar gives you shadows of shapes. So we have five different shapes on the bottom in this general area below this hole that we think he used. We put our underwater robot in. We drill another hole bigger to fit the underwater robot. The underwater robot, we pilot that very close to one of these objects that we saw on the sonar. Now, there's a lot of pressure on the dive team to identify because the entire city and

the investigative reporters have done a good job, and they know that we're on that lake. And the police chief and the mayor and the FBI boss are all telling me that the minute I can confirm that it's her, I have to let them know because they're about to give a press conference and let the community know. But I will not confirm that it is a person or human remains until I am 100% sure because the last thing I want to do is give people some kind of bad information. And so it isn't until I put the second of our three methods to work, and that is the second method is the robot,

and then once the dust settles, basically the silt on the bottom kicks up when the robot lands, we have to wait a few minutes and then that silt ultimately settles. And I can turn on the video camera on my robot and then I can identify it positively as human remains. I still can't say it's Samantha, but what I can tell them is we have a body. Or you have something that looks like it could be a body. For all you know at this point, it's a tree limb. It could be rocks. It could be some sort of debris.

You don't know yet. It could be Samantha. Nancy Grace, signing off. Goodbye, friends.