Crime & Courts

FBI looks for clues linking confessed serial killer Israel Keyes to missing New Jersey woman

The FBI on Wednesday said that they were seeking the public's help in the disappearance of Debra Feldman -- last seen at her home in Hackensack, N.J. on April 8, 2009 -- and that they believe confessed serial killer Israel Keyes may be involved.

Keyes killed himself in an Anchorage jail cell in December of 2012, awaiting trial for the kidnapping and murder of 18-year-old Anchorage barista Samantha Koenig earlier in the year. While in custody, Keyes admitted to killing Koenig and a Vermont couple in 2011, and alluded to numerous other murders -- as many as 11 people in total. During his time in jail, investigators had a number of meetings with Keyes, hoping to find out more about who his other victims may have been, while Keyes pushed for a quick trial that would result in the death penalty.

It was in one of those interviews that investigators first suspected that Keyes may be tied to the disappearance of the then-49-year-old Feldman.

"Keyes admitted that on April 9, 2009, he abducted a female victim from a state on the East Coast and transported that person over multiple state lines into New York," the FBI said in a statement. "Keyes murdered the victim and buried her in upstate New York near the Tupper Lake area. Investigators do not believe this victim is buried on the property Keyes owned in Constable, New York."

Given the timeline of events, with Keyes admitting to a murder on the East Coast one day after Feldman was last seen, the FBI is hoping more information might become available that would more definitively link Keyes to the disappearance.

"Initially what led us to Debra Feldman was the fact that she went missing around the same time that we know Israel Keyes was in (the area)," said Special Agent Barbara Woodruff, based in the FBI's Newark, N.J. office. "He also admitted to robbing a bank in Tupper Lake, N.Y., which we corroborated, so we knew he was here."

Special Agent Eric Gonzalez, a spokesman with the FBI's Anchorage bureau, said that investigation had determined Feldman was "really the only person who was reported missing and who had not been recovered during that timeframe."

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Woodruff said investigators in Anchorage were the first ones to pick up on the possible Keyes-Feldman connection. During an interview, authorities showed Keyes pictures of Feldman. The way Keyes reacted piqued their interest.

"He made interesting comments when shown her picture in interviews," Woodruff said. "He didn't come out and say 'I don't know her,' but he made interesting comments."

Gonzalez said that Keyes had been shown numerous photos of missing people, including people that authorities knew he would have no connection to. Keyes roundly dismissed the photos presented to him, but paused when Feldman's photo came up.

"When he hit Feldman's photo, he hesitated and looked at it for a while and at that point said, 'I don't want to talk about her yet'," Gonzalez said.

Authorities continued to press Keyes on the possibility that Feldman was among his reported victims, but eventually Keyes just came to deny it, though Gonzalez said "it wasn't a real emphatic denial."

"The thing about Keyes was he really wanted to be in control, and he wasn't ready to talk about that, and it was really on his timetable," he said.

Keyes traveled extensively around the U.S., flying into a location and then driving rental cars hundreds of miles, making his path difficult to track. He buried "murder caches" -- kits with guns, money and body-disposal equipment -- around the country, and committed arson and robbed banks along the way, the FBI has previously reported. Earlier this year, the FBI released an updated timeline of Keyes' known or suspected whereabouts from 1997 to 2012. Here is the full timeline.

Anyone who thinks they may have information about Debra Feldman's disappearance, or about Keyes' other alleged crimes, is asked to contact 1-800-CALL-FBI.

Contact Ben Anderson at ben(at)alaskadispatch.com

Ben Anderson

Ben Anderson is a former writer and editor for Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2017.

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