Hello?

Okay, there we go.

I always love when you're early and the crowd is in here and you're on stage and you have to pretend that it's not an entirely awkward thing.

I am Josh Hallmark and the host of True Crime Bullshit.

Thank you for being here.

I always have anxiety that I'm going to be talking to like two people and have to pretend I'm not, so this is great.

So 10 years ago, I heard about a case, a serial killer who operated all over the country, targeted men and women who had been arrested and died in prison before anyone even knew he existed and I became obsessed.

And now 10 years later, these are the FBI's words, not mine, I'm the foremost expert on Israel keys.

Which is strange considering I was in like healthcare marketing before this.

So who has listened to the show?

Okay, so some of this I'm going to try to like talk to everyone. It's basically a keys for dummies, but also keys for experts presentation, so bear with me.

So Israel keys.

Thank you for participating. Is this making it so easy for me?

So keys was born in Utah to a fundamentalist more than family in January of 1978.

His mom kind of trafficked in cults, they bounced around from cult to cult and lived like an Amish adjacent lifestyle, so they lived off the grid.

They lived in homes that they built homesteads out in the woods, no electricity, no plumbing, and they only communicated with other people who were in their cult or religion.

So very isolation, very isolationist.

Keys decided when he was about 17 that he was going to denounce God, which created a rift in the family.

At that point, they had moved down to Oregon and basically said, well, we don't really want you with your brothers and sisters.

Why don't you go build us a house on this plot of land, and we're going to live 20 miles away, and we'll see you when we see you.

So that was his first time on his own, and that is when he decided he was going to commit his first violent crime.

He abducted a girl on the deshoots river, took her to an outhouse, tied her up, assaulted her, was going to kill her, and then chickened out.

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