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Israel Keyes's Suicide Note -
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Israel Keyes committed suicide in his jail cell on December 2, 2012 after being imprisoned for 265 days. He left behind a four-page suicide note that has been called a vague and rambling "creepy ode to murder." It is our assertion that it was far more structured and logical than the general consensus acknowledges. This article will examine the contents in further detail.
Keyes's suicide note was written on two sheets of paper, front and back, for a total of four pages. They were scanned in the order in which they were found. However, looking at contextual clues, it seems that the first sheet might have been flipped over... this would explain why the last few sentences on "page number 1" are written vertically in the margin of the page. It looks like he wanted to fit it all on one page but ran out of space. If you shuffle the order of pages by flipping over the first sheet of paper, his rhyming (or near-rhyming) scheme is surprisingly consistent.
The reason it appears disjointed and rambling could be largely stylistic. He lacked formal education. It looks like he was trying to write poetry but didn't know the conventions. So he wrote without any regard for meter, using paragraphs instead of stanzas. Our researchers separated the text into stanzas based on near-rhyme, color-coded the text for easier reference, and corrected minor spelling errors. There are noticeable differences between the two sheets, suggesting that they could have been meant as two different “poems.”
Sheet 1 (reversed) - Pages 2 & 1
The first two pages read like song lyrics, which was the immediate response his daughter's mom gave when she read the note. The “land of the free, land of the lie” section is indented and italicized here since it repeats like a chorus or refrain. It is worth mentioning that Keyes had quite an eclectic taste in music. He liked Insane Clown Posse, and these lyrics (if that is indeed what they are) seem to be an attempt at horrorcore. Start out with hip hop, throw in some anti-consumerism and dark imagery for good measure, and this is pretty much what you would get.
There is an unusual change in the rhyming pattern between stanzas 1 and 3 (death/best, screen/preen, fast/ass, smarts/are) and stanzas 5 and 7 (appears, beat, roll / tears, meat, Soul). It looks like there could be two different “speakers,” one for the first half and one for the second, engaging in a sort of call and response dialogue.
Our researchers were discussing this theory with the team from Somewhere In The Pines recently, and Joshua brought up a very compelling point. This sheet sounds so incredibly similar to Rage Against The Machine's song "No Shelter" that once you hear it, it is impossible to ignore. "No Shelter" includes the lyrics "American eyes, American eyes, view the world through American eyes." Could Keyes have misheard the lyrics and thought they were singing "Americanize?" He was a fan of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who were highly influential in the music of Rage Against the Machine. It requires no stretch of the imagination to believe that he (mis)heard this song and was paying homage to it in this writing.
Keyes's suicide note is also highly reminiscent of a book he described as his first experience reading from the killer's point of view: Intensity by Dean Koontz. This book includes several intentional car crashes, a character who believes "there's a worm in every butterfly," and countless references to insects and spiders meeting a gruesome end through crushing or other means. Keyes refers to his subject as "vermin" and "you clever little worm," and tells them "crushed like a bug you still die." The parallels between Keyes's writing and Intensity continue onto the next sheet.
The second sheet is written in a decidedly different style. The rhyming scheme is simpler and more direct, and there is also no refrain. However, it does continue the "worm in every butterfly" metaphor in the sixth and seventh stanzas by referring to his subject as "my pretty captive butterfly," then "my dark moth princess."
Intensity describes a victim as having "eyes as liquid as oil and deep as wells," and "they don't suspect for a second that they're both going to be dead in a minute... how dramatically their eyes will widen in the instant when the shotgun roars." Keyes calls his subject's eyes "dark warm and trusting as though you had not a worry or care. The more guiless [sic] the gaze the better potential to fill up those pools with your fear."
Sheet 2 - Pages 3 & 4
Koontz writes of his villain: "anyone can smell a rose and enjoy the scent. But he has long been training himself to feel the destruction of its beauty when he crushes the flower in his fist." Keyes tells his victim, "open my trembling flower, or your petals I'll crush."
It is impossible to state with certainty what Keyes's true intention was in writing these pages. Were they meant to be his suicide note? Or was it just the last thing he happened to write... on paper, at least... before he died? The only man who could have answered this question is dead. The best we can hope for at this point is speculation by psychologists, criminologists, and amateurs like our researchers who are fascinated by the question of what it means to be human.