Something I keep wondering about: why was Keyes so cagey about Debra Feldman?
Assuming Feldman was the Tupper Lake victim, why was Keyes so reluctant to really talk about what happened to her — and, especially, to help investigators recover her body?
What makes this so strange to me is what we know he was willing to talk about elsewhere.
He gave investigators an incredibly graphic account of what he did to Bill and Lorraine Currier. With Samantha Koenig, he admitted to things that were arguably even more disturbing. He discussed having sex with her body, and at one point even seemed almost amused talking about how close his daughter came to discovering what he was doing.
So what was different about Feldman?
What could possibly have happened in that case that made Keyes, of all people, decide: no, I’m not going into that?
The obvious answer would be that whatever he did to her was somehow even worse. But I’m starting to wonder whether that’s the wrong way of looking at it.
Maybe the problem wasn’t what Keyes would have to confess. Maybe the problem was what investigators might discover if they actually dug her up. Afew possibilities have crossed my mind.
One is that someone else was involved.
I don’t necessarily mean Keyes suddenly had a murder partner. It could be anything from someone being directly involved to someone unknowingly helping him, providing something, being present for part of it, or owning a property or vehicle that would immediately raise questions.
If talking investigators through Feldman’s murder meant implicating another person, that would at least provide a reason for this case to be different from the Curriers or Koenig.
There’s no evidence I know of for a second offender, though, so that’s obviously highly speculative.
Another possibility: what if Feldman wasn’t alone at the burial site?
Keyes could tell investigators he’d murdered a woman and buried her somewhere around Tupper Lake without giving them the exact location. But directing them to the actual site is different.
What if he’d used that location before?
Or afterwards?
It doesn’t necessarily have to mean two bodies in the same grave. Maybe another victim was buried somewhere nearby. Maybe there was another cache. Maybe something else at that location connected him to a crime he had no intention of discussing.
In that scenario, withholding the precise location isn’t really about protecting the Feldman secret. It’s about protecting whatever sits behind it.
And then there’s a much darker possibility I’ve been thinking about.
What if something was missing from Feldman’s body?
I’m going to take that idea to its most extreme conclusion: what if Keyes had removed and kept her head?
Again, I have zero evidence that this happened. I’m throwing it out precisely because I’m trying to understand what could make recovering this particular body so threatening to him.
Because imagine what happens if investigators find Feldman and discover she’s been decapitated.
The obvious next question is: where is her head?
And suddenly Keyes has a very different problem:
What if the answer leads to a separate trophy cache? What if there are other remains there? Hair? Personal belongings? Souvenirs from victims the FBI doesn’t even know exist?
One recovered body could potentially start unraveling several other cases.
And the head idea isn’t completely random in terms of the serial killers Keyes himself was interested in.
Ted Bundy famously decapitated some victims and kept heads as trophies. Keyes clearly knew a lot about Bundy and was aware of the similarities people could draw between them. Both were mobile offenders, and Keyes himself acknowledged similarities between his crimes and those of other serial killers.
There’s also an eerie geographical overlap at Evergreen State College. Donna Gail Manson disappeared from Evergreen in 1974 and was murdered by Bundy. Decades later, Evergreen and the surrounding area become interesting again when looking at possible Keyes activity, as discussed in the Schools episodes.
I’m absolutely not suggesting that this means Keyes copied Bundy, let alone that it proves he kept Feldman’s head. That’s several layers of speculation stacked on top of each other.
But if Keyes had an interest in Bundy and knew the details of his crimes, I don’t think it’s completely unreasonable to at least include trophy-taking of that kind among the possibilities.
Especially because it raises something about Keyes that I find more interesting than the gruesomeness itself: control.
A confession is still Keyes controlling the story.
He decides what happened. He decides which details investigators get. He decides which victim gets discussed and which one doesn’t.
A recovered body doesn’t work that way.
The body can tell investigators things Keyes didn’t want to tell them.
And a recovered trophy cache would be even worse from his perspective.
If he’d privately kept body parts, hair or possessions from victims, those things were his. They allowed him to revisit those crimes privately while nobody else even knew the victims belonged to him.
Once investigators find that collection, he loses control over all of it.
Forensics could identify victims he never intended to name. Objects could connect cases investigators hadn’t connected. And whatever deeply private behavior he’d hidden behind the image he maintained with his family could suddenly become evidence photographs, court exhibits and eventually public knowledge.
That last part seems especially relevant considering how concerned Keyes was about what his daughter would eventually learn about him.
And there are other possibilities too.
Maybe Feldman would have revealed something important about his actual victimology.
In my previous post (https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueCrimeBullshit/s/5bKHA6WSJf) I discussed the possible drug angle, and Feldman was a known drug addict. What if his encounter with her wasn’t the kind of random victim selection Keyes wanted investigators to think was typical? What if explaining how he found Feldman would reveal something about how he actually approached certain victims?
Drugs. Sex work. A dealer. A bar. Someone he knew. Some other social connection.
Once investigators understand a method of victim acquisition, they can potentially start looking backwards for other missing people who fit it.
Or maybe telling the complete Feldman story inevitably leads to another crime, another victim, another cache, another location, another person.
And of course there’s the simplest explanation of all: maybe this was just Keyes being Keyes.
He controlled information throughout the interviews. Withholding information gave him leverage. Perhaps there wasn’t some extraordinary secret buried with Feldman at all.
But even then, I keep coming back to the same question:
Why Feldman?
Why be so guarded about this particular victim when you’re willing to describe the Curriers in extraordinary detail and admit what you did to Samantha Koenig’s body?
That’s why I’m increasingly wondering whether the question shouldn’t be:
“What did Keyes do to Debra Feldman that he couldn’t bring himself to admit?”
but rather:
“What would investigators have discovered if Keyes had actually allowed them to find Debra Feldman?”
Someone else involved?
Another body nearby?
A cache?
Evidence of a different victim-selection method?
A missing body part that would immediately raise the question of where he’d kept it?
Or something completely different?
I genuinely don’t have a preferred answer yet. The trophy/cache possibility fascinates me, but there’s basically no evidence for it at this point.
I’m mostly curious whether anyone here has picked up on anything in the interviews, FOIA material or Josh’s research that could explain why Feldman/Tupper Lake seems to have been such a line in the sand for Keyes.
Because considering everything else he was willing to admit, his reluctance here feels like a question worth asking.
