UPDATE:
DEER PARK, Wash. (AP) - The family of confessed serial killer Israel Keyes remembered him at a private funeral service in Deer Park Sunday. Keyes grew up in the nearby town of Colville.
Keyes confessed to killing eight people across the country before he committed suicide recently in a jail cell in Anchorage, Alaska.
The Keyes family pastor, Jake Gardner, told reporters that Israel Keyes is now in a place of eternal torment.
Keyes slit his wrist and strangled himself with bedding last Sunday. He was facing federal murder charges in the kidnapping and death of 18-year-old Samantha Koenig, who was abducted from an Anchorage coffee stand on Feb. 1.
(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
Previous Coverage:
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Authorities deduced from hours of interviews with an Alaska serial killer that he took lives for pleasure and that he may have killed close to a dozen people.
Israel Keyes confessed to killing eight people before he committed suicide last weekend in an Anchorage jail. But FBI and Anchorage Police Department investigators said Friday they think he may have had up to three additional victims.
FBI Special Agent Jolene Goeden acknowledges authorities don't know for sure because Keyes took that information with him when he killed himself Sunday. Three of the eight people Keyes confessed to killing have been identified, but he provided few details about the other five.
Goeden and Anchorage Police officer Jeff Bell conducted up to 40 hours of interviews with Keyes after his March arrest in Texas. Goeden says the interviews revealed Keyes enjoyed killing and got a "rush" from it.
Meanwhile, the Texas pastor presiding over Keyes' funeral on Sunday in Deer Park says Keyes ranted at his sister's March wedding about how he didn't believe in God.
Keyes was found dead last Sunday in his Anchorage jail cell after he killed himself.
Gardner says Keyes attended a sister's wedding in March in Texas, where he ranted about how he didn't believe in God. That would have been shortly before his arrest.
Pastor Jacob Gardner told the Anchorage Daily News that he was traveling with Keyes' mother and other relatives for the killer's funeral Sunday in Deer Park, Washington.
The pastor says some of the preaching there had targeted Keyes to get him to "denounce his atheism." But Gardner says the ceremony ended with Keyes raging against God.
(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
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