Alaska serial killer researched mass murderers

But Israel Keyes told Anchorage authorities his ideas were his own. And most of all, he never called himself a serial killer, Anchorage homicide Detective Monique Doll said.

"In fact, that was one of those things that he wanted very much, as this investigation progressed, to keep from being identified as," she said.

Those details were among information Anchorage police and FBI investigators released about Keyes, who authorities said never showed any remorse, but spoke of getting a rush out of hunting for victims and killing them. He also tortured animals as a child, investigators said.

Keyes, 34, was found dead in his jail cell Dec. 2 after slitting a wrist and strangling himself with a rolled up bedsheet. Bloody, illegible notes found in his cell have been sent to the FBI lab at Quantico, Va.

Keyes was set for a March trial in the February slaying of Anchorage barista Samantha Koenig, who was abducted from the coffee stand where she worked. Investigators say the 18-year-old was raped and strangled, her body left in a shed outside Keyes' Anchorage home for two weeks while he went on a cruise.

Investigators said Monday that Keyes told them he was losing control and that his time between killings was getting shorter, which could explain why he broke his own rule of traveling long distances to find his targets.

"Israel Keyes didn't kidnap and kill people because he was crazy. He didn't kidnap and kill people because his deity told him to or because he had a bad childhood," Doll said. "Israel Keyes did this because he got an immense amount of enjoyment out of it, much like an addict gets an immense amount of enjoyment out of drugs. In a way, he was an addict, and he was addicted to the feeling that he got when he was doing this."

Before he killed Koenig, he had targeted others in Alaska. In a close call in April or May last year, he set his sights on two people at an Anchorage park to try out a silencer he had put on a rifle that would soon be put to use in Vermont. In the Anchorage case, a police officer arrived and told the intended targets the park was closed. Keyes told investigators in an audio recording released Monday that he almost pulled the trigger on all three, but another officer arrived.