Serial killer Keyes’ suicide note was violent, angst-ridden poetry

Israel Keyes never told investigators about everybody he killed. And in the final bloodied, crumpled notes in his Anchorage jail cell when guards found him strangled with hands slit on Dec. 2, he didn’t say much else either.

Instead, Keyes -- who claimed to have killed at least eight people across the U.S. over a period of several years -- wrote angst-ridden, morbid poetry on the four pages released by the FBI on Wednesday.

“Turn a blind eye back to the screen, soak in your reality shows. Stand in front of your mirror, and you preen in a plastic castle you call home,” Keyes wrote. “Land of the free, land of the lie, land of scheme, Americanize! Consume what you don’t need, stars you idolize, pursue what you admit is a dream, then its american die.” [sic]

Keyes was a 34-year-old Alaskan construction worker with a secret double life as a serial killer -- which he relished detailing to investigators over months of confinement after one of his killings finally led to his arrest.

He could be cagey with giving out details. He had insisted he would tell investigators everything eventually -- but didn’t, killing himself first.

His interrogators said he got a rush from talking about how he’d pointed a gun at the ribs of Samantha Koenig, an 18-year-old barista he’d kidnapped, sexually assaulted and later dismembered.

Keyes’ death-note poetry was written in a sometimes illegible cursive, with a syntax occasionally lilted by rhyme and poetic inversion. He lingered over visions of a dark-haired woman that he both idolized and wanted to dominate.

“My dark moth princess, I would come often and worship on the altar of your flesh,” Keyes wrote. “You shudder now with revulsion and try to shrink far from me. I’ll have you lied down and begging to become my Stockholm sweetie.”

In a statement, FBI investigators said they had found no hidden codes nor secrets in Keyes’ final message. “Further, it was determined that the writings do not offer any investigative clues or leads as to the identity of other possible victims,” the statement said. “The FBI does not offer any commentary as to the meaning of these writings.”

“Okay, talk is over, words are placid and weak,” Keyes concluded. “Back it with action or it all comes off cheap. Watch close while I work now. Feel the electric shock of my touch, open my trembling flower, or your petals I’ll crush.”

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matt.pearce@latimes.com