Keyes died in his jail cell on December 2, 2012, as a result of self-inflicted cuts on his wrist and strangulation. He left behind a blood-smeared, four-page suicide note that has been called an “ode to murder.” Dr. Stephen Montgomery, a forensic psychiatrist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, described Keyes’ chilling note, written partially in loosely rhyming meter, as showing “no remorse, no regard for human life.”

“It’s certainly not an ordinary suicide note,” Dr. Phil Resnick, director of forensic psychiatry at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, said after reading the haunting note. “He doesn’t talk much about his own dilemmas of being in prison or why he’s taking his own life.”

“It’s more of a final statement of contempt for the American style of life,” Dr. Resnick went on to say. “I think the other thing he emphasizes is his own superiority, that he has guile and can take advantage of people who are naïve and trusting of him.”

In his suicide note, Keyes, who was raised in a cultish survivalist family, heaps disdain upon what he perceives as the normal American way of life, and refers to one of his victims as “my pretty captive butterfly.” The skills that Keyes’ survivalist upbringing had instilled in him—along with a three-year stint in the military—proved helpful as Keyes committed his crimes while evading authorities.

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“He had zero victim profile,” Maureen Callahan told A&E. Callahan is the author of American Predator, a recently released book about the life and crimes of Israel Keyes. “I think of him as an analog killer in a digital world. All he did was buy a one-way plane ticket to a major city, rent a car, drive thousands of miles. In those drives, he’d be digging up ‘kill kits’ that he’d hidden all over the U.S. The kits were Home Depot buckets that he filled with guns, ammo, rope, cash, and Drano, which he used to accelerate human decomposition. The locations were only in his mind, never documented.”

Keyes partly funded his murderous hobby by committing strings of robberies and burglaries across the country. He has been connected to several bank robberies and is suspected of having burglarized 20 to 30 homes.

“If he could,” Callahan said, describing Keyes’ modus operandi, “he’d take the bodies to another location and dispose of them so expertly that he left no trace of them or his DNA behind.” This seems to have been what happened to Bill and Lorraine Currier, the Essex, Vermont couple who vanished suddenly in 2011. Keyes later confessed to killing them using a “murder kit” that he had buried near their home two years earlier.

Israel Keyes: The Vile and 'Meticulous' American Serial Killer Who Stumped the FBI

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