Israel Keyes's Suicide Note

Restructured and Formatted

Israel Keyes was found unresponsive in his jail cell at Anchorage Correctional Complex on the morning of December 2, 2012. It was a gruesome scene, but one that has already been described by several media sources... this article from Anchorage Daily News also discusses the chain of events leading up to his death. Two sheets of paper torn from a yellow legal pad were found underneath his body. Keyes had written on both sides of each sheet, for a total of four pages. They were written in both pencil and pen, which could suggest that they were written at different times. The documents are collectively referred to as his "suicide note" because of how and when they were discovered.

The contents appear somewhat nonsensical at first glance, but the reason for this may be largely stylistic. There are far more rhymes (or near-rhymes) than you could expect to encounter organically. Rhyming text is commonly used in poetry or song lyrics, and Keyes's daughter's mom, who we will call "Neah Bay girlfriend" on this site, remarked that it seemed like it could be a song. Keyes did not have a formal education. He was likely unfamiliar with the standard conventions used in different forms of writing. Out of curiosity, our researchers reformatted the words based on contextual clues. The result is surprisingly cohesive. 

Keyes had 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 death metal imagery, and this is pretty much what you would get. The 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) gives the impression that 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, and Joshua brought up a compelling point: the words on the first sheet sound 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 his 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 untimely ends through crushing or other means. Keyes calls his muse "vermin" and "you clever little worm," and tells them "crushed like a bug you still die." On the second sheet, he refers to them as "my pretty captive butterfly" and "my dark moth princess." This sheet is written in a decidedly different style. The rhyming scheme is simpler, there is no refrain, and the parallels between Keyes's writing and Intensity are even more pronounced than they were on the first sheet. 

One of Koontz's victims has "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." Koontz: "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: "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 research hobbyists like ourselves who are fascinated by the question of what it means to be human.