Audio: Alaska serial killer wanted execution date

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Even before he was charged in the slaying of a young barista, Israel Keyes bluntly told authorities in Alaska he would talk about other victims, but only on his terms.

Among the demands issued by the confessed serial killer: He wanted an execution date, not to languish in a maximum security federal prison. During an April 6, 2012, interview, Keyes made his wish known after federal prosecutor Kevin Feldis asked him to specify what his demands were.

"Tell me what you want," the prosecutor said. "I don't know what you want."

Keyes said he wanted everything wrapped up one year from that date.

"If I went to trial on these and got convicted, no jury in the U.S. would not vote for the death penalty for me," Keyes said. "I already know that."

His driving motivation for his execution appeared to be protecting his daughter.

"I'll tell you about everything, I'll plead guilty to whatever, I'll give you every single gory detail you want, but that's what I want, because I want my kid to have a chance to grow up," he said.

"She's in a safe place now, she's not going to see any of this. I want her to have a chance to grow up and not have all this hanging over her head," he said.

Audio tapes of 13 interviews involving the FBI, prosecutors and Anchorage police were released this week after the Alaska Dispatch, an online news organization, asked the court to unseal them. The interviews were conducted between April 2, 2012, and late July.

In the end, Keyes didn't tell prosecutors everything.

Keyes, 34, committed suicide in his jail cell in December as he awaited a federal trial in the death of 18-year-old Samantha Koenig, who was abducted February 2012 from the Anchorage coffee stand where she worked. Alaska prisons officials say Keyes was a segregated inmate who had been mistakenly issued a razor before he slit his left wrist and tied a noose around his neck and right foot.

Keyes confessed to killing Koenig and at least seven others, including Bill and Lorraine Currier of Essex, Vt., and investigators believe there could be more victims.

Koenig and the Curriers were the only victims named by Keyes, leaving investigators with multiple unsolved cases.

FBI spokesman Eric Gonzalez said Tuesday investigators are still actively pursuing leads on possible victims, but there have been no major breakthroughs.

Investigators concluded Koenig was raped and strangled. Her body was left in a shed outside Keyes' Anchorage home for two weeks while he went on a cruise.

The kidnapping gripped the city as investigators held out hope that she remained alive. Unknown until later, Keyes texted messages from Koenig's cellphone.

Keyes was arrested in Lufkin, Texas, about six weeks after Koenig's disappearance. He had sought a ransom and used Koenig's debit card, and initially was charged only with access device fraud.

Three weeks after the arrest, Koenig's dismembered body was found in a frozen lake north of Anchorage.

Keyes was later charged with kidnapping resulting in death. By then, he had already told authorities about his execution wish.

In late May, Keyes attempted to escape from the federal courthouse after breaking out of his leg irons. He was quickly subdued with a stun gun in the federal courtroom.

The following day, investigators told Keyes the stunt did not go over well with authorities, including prosecutors.

"Why? Did they actually think I would get away?" he said, laughing. "That would be embarrassing for them, I guess."

After that, enhanced security measures were used on Keyes, including full restraints, a two-officer escort any time he was out of the cell, and restrictions on possession of razors and pencils.

He also was subjected to daily strip searches and cell searches.

In September, Keyes was found guilty of possessing an object which had been modified as a handcuff key.

A disciplinary board found him guilty, and he had to serve 60 days — with 45 days suspended — in punitive segregation.

That sentence began days before his suicide. At the time of his death, his access to personal property was restricted.

Keyes was in state custody in Anchorage because there are no federal prisons in Alaska.

The state of Alaska has no death penalty, but Keyes could have faced that outcome under federal law.

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Follow Rachel D'Oro at https://twitter.com/rdoro

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Head found in '89 IDed, linked to serial killer

Almost 25 years after her severed head was found on a golf course, the woman New Jersey police believe was the first victim of a notorious serial killer has finally been identified.

State police said Wednesday Heidi Balch is believed to be the first of 17 women killed by Joel Rifkin during a four-year spree that ended in 1993 when he was pulled over for a missing license plate with a dead women's body in the back of his pickup.

Authorities have long believed the woman whose severed head was found in March 1989 on a golf course in Hopewell Township, near Trenton, was the first woman Rifkin killed. He all but admitted it after his arrest, providing details on where he disposed of her head and legs.

Rifkin was eventually sentenced to more than 200 years in prison for the killings. But Balch's identity remained a mystery for more than two decades.

State Police Det. Sgt. Stephen Urbanski said Balch's parents didn't initially list her as a missing person and Balch, who worked as a prostitute in New York City, used numerous aliases and Social Security numbers.

"It's very rare that you have a story like this," Urbanski said. "The first thing is to ID the body, and then you move on with the investigation, you look at acquaintances and things like that. In this one, the answers were there all along, we just had to put them together."

Rifkin had told police he killed a prostitute he'd known as "Susie," Urbanski said. The search led to New York where investigators focused on a prostitute who'd gone by the name Susan Spencer — and about 15 other names. Some of the bogus Social Security numbers she'd used were traced to Ohio and Florida, so Urbanski went to those states to check missing persons reports.

Finally, investigators learned the woman had once used the name Heidi Balch, who had been listed as a missing person in New York by her aunt in 2001. Even that discovery was complicated by the revelation that the last sighting of Balch was in 1995, six years after the remains were found on the golf course. Urbanski said it was later revealed Balch's aunt hadn't actually seen her niece but that someone had mistakenly told her they had seen Heidi.

The big break came earlier this month when Balch's aunt identified her niece from an arrest photo of Susan Spencer. Subsequent DNA tests of Balch's mother and father, who live in Maryland and Florida, respectively, confirmed the identification.

Balch's parents "expressed shock," Urbanski said. "They knew in their hearts something bad had happened to her, but not to this extent. I don't think they ever imagined she was the first victim of Joel Rifkin."

Urbanski said state police are in the process of reviewing cases of unidentified bodies found in New Jersey from the time Balch's remains were found up until Rifkin's arrest.

John Byrne, a spokesman for the Nassau County district attorney's office, which prosecuted Rifkin, said it was too early to make a determination about whether it would seek to prosecute Rifkin in this case.

"We are still very much in the fact-finding stage," Byrne said.

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Ohio judge postpones sentencing of convicted Craigslist killer

By Kim Palmer

AKRON, Ohio (Reuters) - An Ohio judge on Tuesday postponed the sentencing of Richard Beasley, the former street preacher found guilty earlier this month of murdering down-on-their-luck men who responded to an ad on Craigslist for a non-existent job.

Summit County Common Pleas Judge Lynne Callahan set a new sentencing date for Thursday, April 4, at 10 a.m. The delay was necessary because defense attorney James Burdon was ill, Callahan said.

Beasley, 53, was found guilty on March 12 of kidnapping and killing David Pauley, 51, of Norfolk, Virginia; Ralph Geiger, 56, of Akron; and Timothy Kern, 47, of Massillon, Ohio.

He was also convicted of the attempted murder of Scott Davis, 49, a South Carolina man who answered a Craigslist ad and was shot in the arm while escaping after meeting Beasley and a teenage accomplice, Brogan Rafferty.

Jurors unanimously recommended the death penalty for Beasley, granting the judge the option of sentencing him to death.

Prosecutors said Beasley was the mastermind and triggerman in a scheme to rob the victims and steal their identities. He and Rafferty, now 18, were convicted in separate trials of promising men a bogus $300-a-week job as a ranch hand in rural Ohio.

Rafferty was 16 when the murders were committed and ineligible for the death penalty. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole and plans to appeal his conviction.

(Editing by James Kelleher and Bob Burgdorfer)

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Russian serial killer sentenced to life for nine murders

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian serial killer who butchered his nine victims with a knife and hammer, and said he ate the hearts of two of them, was sentenced to life in prison on Friday.

Prosecutors said Alexander Bychkov targeted alcoholics and the homeless out of disdain for their way of life, lured them into deserted areas, killed them, dismembered them and hid the body parts.

They said he described all nine killings in a journal with the words: "The bloody hunt of a predator born in the year of the dragon," state-run news agency RIA reported.

A court in the Penza region convicted the 24-year-old, who sometimes called himself "Rambo", of nine murders between September 2009 and January 2012.

Bychkov was arrested last year on suspicion of stealing 10,000 roubles ($320) and merchandise from a hardware store, but was charged with the murders after investigators found evidence.

RIA said he told authorities he had eaten the hearts of two victims, but he was not charged over that because there was no evidence to prove it. ($1 = 30.8955 Russian roubles)

(Writing by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Timothy Heritage and Pravin Char)

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Impostor's lawyer points to missing wife as killer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A defense attorney told a Los Angeles jury Monday that the missing wife of a man slain a quarter century ago could be the real killer, rather than the Rockefeller impostor now on trial.

Attorney Brad Bailey, disclosing his defense for the first time, made his assertion after a prosecutor said he will prove a cold-case murder allegation against Christian Gerhartsreiter, a German immigrant who spent years moving through U.S. society under a series of aliases, most notoriously posing as a member of the fabled Rockefeller family.

The prosecution's opening statement offered no suggestion of a motive for the 1985 killing. It focused instead on the many identities and fabulous assertions of a man who posed for decades as Clark Rockefeller.

Bailey responded that every piece of circumstantial evidence outlined by Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian could point to Linda Sohus as the killer of her husband, John.

She vanished at the same time that he did in 1985 but no trace of her has been found. John Sohus' bones were dug up from the backyard of a home where Gerhartsreiter lived as a tenant on Sohus' mother's property.

Bailey said there are no witnesses to the killing or burial of Sohus and prosecutors have little more evidence than the bizarre behavior and multiple identities of Gerhartsreiter to paint him as a murderer.

"It's just as reasonable to conclude that John Sohus was killed by someone else...his still missing wife," said Bailey.

If jurors accept that theory, he said, that provides reasonable doubt of Gerhartsreiter's guilt.

He acknowledged that the defendant was "a strange guy," but he said Linda Sohus also acted strangely and may have had a motive to kill her husband.

The prosecution's outline, however, offered a web of circumstantial evidence.

Balian told of how Gerhartsreiter came to the United States, began inventing new identities and charmed his way into the lives of people from coast to coast.

At issue is what happened to the Sohus couple who befriended him in 1985 and vanished shortly afterward. The young husband's bones were eventually unearthed from his backyard decades later, but his wife has never been found.

Gerhartsreiter,52, has pleaded not guilty to the killing of John Sohus, a 27-year-old computer programmer.

Anticipating the defense theory, Balian told jurors: "Ladies and gentlemen, the evidence will show that John and Linda Sohus are dead."

The most mysterious evidence is a series of postcards from Linda Sohus sent to friends and family from Paris after she disappeared. The handwriting was analyzed as hers, but the stamps — which were subject to DNA analysis — were licked by a man who wasn't Gerhartsreiter, the prosecutor said.

Balian said that police earlier this year found a storage locker rented by Gerhartsreiter in Baltimore. Inside, they found postcards from international cities.

A possible explanation, said Balian, is that "the defendant has someone in Europe who mails postcards for him."

The prosecution's case is based on a bag of bones found buried at the property and the fuzzy memories of residents of San Marino, a wealthy Los Angeles suburb. The residents knew the defendant as Chris Chichester.

Testimony was to begin Tuesday.

A gaunt, bespectacled Gerhartsreiter listened quietly on Monday as Balian connected the dots of the defendant's later life.

Balian depicted him as a fabulist, a liar who made up extravagant stories about being a famous film director, the heir to a South African fortune and a descendant of British royalty. The defendant passed around business cards announcing himself as the 13th Baronet of England and once used the name Mountbatten, he said.

When police began asking questions about him, linking him to a truck owned by the Sohuses, he abandoned his $100,000 a year job as a Wall Street bond trader and went into hiding.

He was close to the end of a prison term for the kidnapping of his young daughter in a Boston custody dispute when the murder charge interrupted his chance to regain his freedom.

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Forget Dexter: Today’s Most Dangerous Serial Killer Is Coal

The title of a new report from Greenpeace India and the Conservation Action Trust pretty much says it all: “Coal Kills.” But there’s also plenty of dirt in the details.

The Conservation Action Trust commissioned Urban Emissions, an organization dedicated to sharing scientific information on air pollution, to conduct the analysis for the study. They note that while there have been comprehensive investigations in the United States and parts of Europe into the health impacts of particulate air pollution attributed to coal power plants, similar data is hard to come by in India.

What they found was pretty shocking: From 2011 to 2012, emissions from Indian coal plants resulted in 80,000 to 115,000 premature deaths and more than 20 million asthma cases.

And the study estimates the monetary cost associated with the health impacts—including hundreds of thousands of heart attacks, emergency room visits, hospital admissions, and lost work days caused by coal-based emissions—exceeds $3.3 to 4.6 billion per year.

“The health impacts of major coal projects are never really dealt with in the process of environmental clearances,” says Debi Goenka, the executive trustee of the Conservation Action Trust. “Given the fact that there are a huge number of new coal plants proposed to be set up in India—more than doubling the existing capacity—we thought it was important that this issue be looked at in greater detail.”

In the U.S., the statistics aren’t quite as bad, but a 2010 report from the Clean Air Task Force noted that over 13,000 deaths each year are attributable to fine particle pollution from U.S. power plants. 

Further, according to EPA, while coal power plants “are regulated by federal and state laws to protect human health and the environment, there is a wide variation of environmental impacts associated with power generation technologies.”

These include carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury compounds that are released into the air, as well as pollutants that build up in the water used in power plants’ boilers and cooling systems.

The EPA also notes that, “If the water used in the power plant is discharged to a lake or river, the pollutants in the water can harm fish and plants. Further, if rain falls on coal stored in piles outside the power plant, the water that runs off these piles can flush heavy metals from the coal, such as arsenic and lead, into nearby bodies of water.”

The news is also pretty bad for coal miners.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that the prevalence of coal workers' pneumoconiosis (CWP), often referred to as Black Lung Disease, has been increasing in mines of all sizes since 1999, and a more serious disease called Progressive Massive Fibrosis (PMF) has become more prevalent among miners from underground mines with fewer than 50 workers.

All of these findings make the data revealed in the Conservation Action Trust report especially important in India, where industry regulations are looser than in the U.S.

“The fact that health impacts are not addressed in the EIA process indicates the great weakness in the methodology followed by the Ministry of Environment & Forests in the manner in which they deal with the environmental clearance,” says Goenka.

“Project proponents invariably get away with statements to the effect that their projects will have no adverse impacts on human health, or on the environment, and that the technologies that they propose to install will address all these concerns,” he adds. “The fact that the Ministry of Environment & Forests doesn’t really enforce the environmental clearance conditions is the harsh reality that we have to live, or die, with.”

“If we are not in a position to monitor compliance of environmental clearance conditions, and we cannot even enforce our very lax standards, the only other options are to look at cleaner fuels—or even better, zero fuel renewable energy options.”

Do you think enough is being done to monitor the adverse effects of coal-fired power in the U.S.? Let us know in the COMMENTS.

Related Stories on TakePart:

• Coal Miners Pick a Fight With Girl Scouts. This Will Not End Well

• One Region's Pollution Becomes Everyone's Problem

• EPA Finally Gets Tough on Soot

Lawrence Karol is a writer and editor who lives with his dog, Mike. He is a former Gourmet staffer and enjoys writing about design, food, travel and lots of other stuff. @WriteEditDream | Email Lawrence | TakePart.com

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