Alaska Serial Killer Attended Racist Church, Knew Terrorists

Confessed serial killer and bank robber Israel Keyes, who committed suicide in an Alaska jail this December, attended a Washington state church with his parents that proselytized the racist and anti-Semitic Christian Identity religion, reliable sources told the Intelligence Report.

The same sources, who have personal knowledge of the situation, said that Keyes and his family had been “neighbors and friends” with the notorious Kehoe family, who lived half a mile away in the same area of Washington state during the 1990s. The Kehoe sons, white supremacists Chevie and Cheyne, are now serving lengthy prison sentences in connection with a deadly rampage they conducted in the name of their Aryan Republican Army, including Chevie Kehoe’s 1996 torture-murder of a family of three in Arkansas.

In addition to living close together in Stevens County, Wash., the Keyes and Kehoe families both home-schooled their children and occasionally attended a Christian Identity church called the Ark, the sources said. Pastored by Dan Henry — who told the Report that he didn’t remember the Keyeses attending but said that they might have — the Ark taught that white people are the superior race and that the Bible is their story. Hard-line Identity followers believe that Jews are biologically Satanic, although many see Jews as merely cursed by God.

Both families also attended another Christian Identity church, the Christian Israel Covenant Church, headed by Henry’s neighbor and former acolyte, the late Ray Barker, the sources said. Barker later facilitated Chevie Kehoe’s 1997 surrender to law enforcement officials in Washington.

It’s not known what Israel Keyes’ beliefs as an adult were, or if they had any relation to the eight people Keyes confessed to murdering after being arrested in March 2012 for the slaying of an Alaska barista. There is no obvious evidence of a racist or anti-Semitic motive in the killings, which took place in Alaska, New York, Vermont and Washington. In interviews that went on for months as officials sought to foment his cooperation, the imprisoned Keyes only identified three of his victims. Officials are not sure who the others are, although they do believe those killings — and, very possibly, several more — did occur.

Another possible sign of Keyes’ religious upbringing is his first name. Although the Keyes family was originally Mormon, they named their elder son Israel. Identity believers often describe themselves as the true “Israel,” meaning that they, not today’s Jews, are the real descendants of the Bible’s Hebrews.