On Thursday, February 2, 2012, Samantha Koenig was reported missing by her fellow barista at an Anchorage, Alaska, roadside kiosk. An obscured figure captured on security footage appears to have held the 18-year-old daughter of a local pot dealer at gunpoint for 17 minutes around 9 p.m. the previous night. "But what was really happening? It was too dark to really see. Why was the conversation taking so long?" Due to Samantha's father's criminal past, the ensuing investigation first grapples with the possibility that her disappearance was staged for ransom money, before diving headlong into an anxious manhunt in the Lower 48.
Maureen Callahan, the investigative journalist who first pursued this story for the New York Post, crafts a riveting true crime saga in American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century. With an even hand, she details the power struggles between the Anchorage criminal justice system and the FBI as their cooperative efforts close in on the insidious Israel Keyes, who seems to have materialized out of thin air. No criminal history, hardly any record of his existence at all. In an age of quantifiable Internet footprints, Keyes was the closest thing to a ghost that investigators could track down. Their only leads came from dumb luck.
And once Keyes landed in custody, luck was all law enforcement had on their side as departmental frictions increased and egos began overstepping protocol in pursuit of national glory for bringing Samantha home.
The lion's share of American Predator places readers in the tense interrogation room as Keyes recounts his chilling crimes, teasing investigators with the far-flung locations of bodies he buried, in exchange for better treatment in prison and protection for his 10-year-old daughter. For years, Keyes cached his trademark "kill kits" around the country, for whenever and wherever his murderous urges came to climax. In a gripping psychological game of cat-and-mouse, he seems to remain three steps ahead of the police team as they stumble over one another to solve each missing-person case he puts before them.
Callahan doesn't elide the truly gruesome nature of the violence in Keyes's wake; however, she still manages to maintain the dignity of those who lost their lives to this cruel individual's secret mission. American Predator reveals a horrifying truth about the human capacity for bloodlust. --Dave Wheeler, associate editor, Shelf Awareness
Shelf Talker: The 21st century's most meticulous serial killer baffles investigators with his forethought and ruthlessness in Maureen Callahan's riveting true crime narrative.