In their final minutes of life, Lorraine and Bill Currier fought valiantly for their lives against a cold and calculating serial murderer with no obvious modus operandi and who targeted them for no other reason than the random circumstances of where and how they lived.
In a compelling and at times emotional press conference in the federal courthouse in Burlington this afternoon, Vermont authorities released new and previously undisclosed information about the abduction and murder of the Essex couple first reported missing on June 9, 2011. Those details included the fact that both Curriers nearly escaped their kidnapper and that Lorraine Currier had been sexually assaulted before being strangled to death.
Police also explained why authorities withheld from the press these and other critical details turned up in their search of the Curriers’ home. According to U.S. Attorney Tristram Coffin (pictured), those details helped confirm for investigators that the Curriers had been abducted and murdered by Israel Keyes, a 34-year-old self-employed carpenter and Army veteran.
Keyes was being detained in Alaska on charges related to the murder of 18-year-old Samantha Koenig of Anchorage. At about 11:15 Sunday morning, Alaska authorities informed authorities in Vermont that Keyes had been found dead in his jail cell of an apparent suicide. Keyes’ method of suicide had not yet been made public.
According to Coffin, Vermont investigators were first contacted in April by authorities in Anchorage who became convinced that Keyes had committed other murders around the country. In the course of the Alaska investigation, Keyes confessed to murdering four people in Washington State and one in New York State as well as Koenig. In subsequent interviews, Keyes also confessed to killing the Curriers in Vermont.
“Keyes provided substantial, non-public information regarding the deaths of Bill and Lorraine Currier,” Coffin said. “Although searches in Essex and Coventry, Vermont were unable to locate the Curriers’ remains, investigators obtained enough details to confirm that Keyes did murder the Curriers.”
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Absolutely horrific and gruesome. It’s also sad to note that if the Free Press had had its way in its maniacal zeal to know everything the police knew, at every step of the way, this double murder might never have been solved.
Good piece, Ken Picard. But please know that “strangle to death” is a redundancy. To strangle is to kill.
A one man Clockwork Orange
Bellevance: a word if I may: What would you call it if someone is manually choked by hands and does not die from it? There is no requirement that the act of strangulation end in a death for the word to be used. ‘Erotic strangulation’ is a good example of a non-fatal act described by the word.