Latest / 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories / Peter and the Apocalypse Plan
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- 0:08Dispersions. On April to twenty third, twenty twelve, Lynette Keller and her
- 0:41teenage daughter, eighteen year old Kayleene Keller, were found dead in their family
- 0:46home. Both victims had been fatally shot. Their killer had also shot the
- 0:52Keller family pets to death, and then gasoline was poured throughout the house before
- 0:57being set on fire. Fire Fighters were able to extinguish the blaze before it
- 1:02destroyed too much of the evidence of the scene, and although the house was
- 1:06damaged, it did not burn down. From the moment that the victims were
- 1:11identified as Lynette and Kayleen, one thing stuck out to investigators. Every member
- 1:17of the Keller household, including the dog and cat, were dead except for
- 1:22one. There was no sign of Lynette's husband and Kaylene's father, forty one
- 1:27year old Peter Keller. Peter worked at a computer repair shop in the area,
- 1:33and during the last shift he attended, he told one of his coworkers
- 1:37that he might not be coming back. That same week, he'd withdrawn a
- 1:41total of sixty two hundred dollars in cash. Everybody who knew Peter knew that
- 1:47he was passionate about two things, firearms and surviving in the wilderness. Now,
- 1:53that's not to say that Peter had a lot of friends. In fact,
- 1:56he had a reputation for being a loner who preferred to keep to himself.
- 2:01Kaylen's boyfriend talked to Peter on several occasions and told the police that Peter
- 2:07had personally shown him his collection of guns, including many rifles. Kaylen had
- 2:13talked to her boyfriend about her father, saying that he had created some kind
- 2:15of bunker in the wilderness that he liked to go to on the weekends.
- 2:21A search of the Keller family home revealed a series of photographs that appeared to
- 2:24have been taken in an area of nearby wilderness called Rattlesnake Ridge. Those photos
- 2:31were left in an open safe in the home, and it was clear that
- 2:35Peter had meant for them to be burned beyond recognition in the fire that he
- 2:38set. Enhancing the pictures revealed some identifiable buildings, including an outlet mall and
- 2:45a series of power lines. When multiple hikers also reported seeing Peter's car parked
- 2:51near Rattlesnake Ridge, investigators believed they had identified the location where Peter might have
- 2:55fled. To a team of trackers from the King's County Sheriff's Office visited the
- 3:00location shown in the photos, and off the side of the trail, they
- 3:06found a bootprint that was a match to Peters. Now investigators knew that Peter
- 3:12was in the area surrounding Rattlesnake Ridge, and they also knew that he was
- 3:15heavily armed and desperate. They became increasingly concerned about the safety of any civilians
- 3:22in the area. Because the surrounding Cascade Mountains foothills were popular with hikers and
- 3:28nature enthusiasts. A team of Seattle based tactical specialists were recruited, and they
- 3:34arrived in the Cascade Mountains foothills in armored carriers. They spent hours painstakingly trekking
- 3:40through dense foliage and difficult terrain, following the smell of smoke from a camping
- 3:46stove, until finally they found an opening in the mountain side. The entrance
- 3:51had been carefully hidden with branches and ferns, but the tactical officers were confident
- 3:57that Peter was inside in full camp camouflage. The officers spent time observing the
- 4:01bunker's entrance. On multiple occasions, they saw the lights had been turned off
- 4:06and on confirming that somebody was inside there. Based on the information that they
- 4:14had found in Peter's home, as well as the testimonies from people who knew
- 4:17Peter, the officers weren't fully aware that he wasn't a rookie. He was
- 4:23highly knowledgeable about weapons, and he also had the resources he needed to survive
- 4:27in the bunker or in the wilderness for an extended period of time. If
- 4:31he decided to leave the bunker, he would be armed and dangerous and wearing
- 4:38bulletproof body armor that would make it difficult to take him down. They called
- 4:42Peter's name repeatedly, and when there was no response, they filled the bunker
- 4:46with tear gas, hoping that there was only one entrance and the gas would
- 4:50cause Peter to flee out into the open. The hours passed and there was
- 4:56no sign of Peter. The officers suspected that the gas would failing for one
- 5:00of two reasons. Either the structure of the bunker had meant that the gas
- 5:04wasn't reaching the area where Peter was hiding, or Peter had prepared for this
- 5:09scenario and was equipped with the gas mask. Finally, after almost twenty four
- 5:14hours of Peter being on the run, the team made the decision to use
- 5:17explosives on the top of the bunker. It wasn't a decision that they made
- 5:23lightly, but at this point the team had exhausted their resources. The hillside
- 5:28was muddy and wet from a heavy downpour of rain, and one of the
- 5:31officers had already suffered a broken ankle, while several others had needed to receive
- 5:36IV fluids to combat dehydration. The gas didn't work, said the Sheriff of
- 5:43King's County about the decision to use explosives. We've got fresh people here.
- 5:46It was time to take the next step. Our people are out safe and
- 5:50the trails are now safe for the community to use. It turned down to
- 5:56their efforts didn't matter. When they entered the bunker, the officers found that
- 6:00Peter was already dead. There was a bullet wound in his head and one
- 6:04of his guns lying next to his body. Peter had taken his own life
- 6:10from the contents of the bunker, which Peter referred to as Camp Keller.
- 6:14It was clear that Peter had spent countless hours preparing for some kind of confrontation
- 6:19or maybe even the apocalypse. Camp Keller was fitted with a functioning generator and
- 6:25contained full body armour, a scope, and multiple rifles, with boxes and
- 6:30bags of ammunition stacked on shelves. There were more than enough gas cans and
- 6:34propane tanks for Peter to survive in the bunker for months without ever going outside.
- 6:41Investigators painstakingly searched the bunker for answers about Peter's motives, and while they
- 6:46sorted through piles of homemade explosives and ammunition, they recovered a videotape recorded by
- 6:51Peter. Although the videotape didn't explicitly discuss the motives for murdering his entire family,
- 6:59the recording showed Peter going into detail about how he was planning for the
- 7:02end of the world. It was clear that to Peter the apocalypse hadn't just
- 7:08been a distant possibility. He had believed that it was all coming soon and
- 7:13he needed to do everything he could to prepare for it. I'm getting to
- 7:16the point, Peter confessed to the camera. We're just trying to live and
- 7:20pay bills and live life as a civilian, go to work. It just
- 7:25freaks me out. It's actually more comfortable for me to think about living here,
- 7:29robbing banks and pharmacies, just taking what I want for as long as
- 7:32I can. It was also clear from the contents of the tape that Peter
- 7:36had accepted his own death was a possibility, and even though he planned on
- 7:41surviving as long as he could, he had made peace with that quote.
- 7:46I do have my escape, and that's death. Can always shoot myself,
- 7:49and I'm okay with that. Investigators also recovered some of Peter's earliest planning for
- 7:56the bunker. A notebook dated from almost a decade prior showed Peter meticulously planning
- 8:01out the kind of structure he wanted to build, and from that point forward
- 8:05he had carefully documented. The process inside the bunker was even less rudimentary than
- 8:11it looked. Peter had used an efficient pulley system to move heavy logs into
- 8:16place on top of the bunker's cement foundation, and he had diverted the flow
- 8:20of water from a small creek nearby to provide Camp Keller with running water.
- 8:26In his apocalypse tapes, Peter had only mentioned briefly his wife and daughter to
- 8:31state that he wouldn't need to worry about them. Although Lynnette and Kayeleen had
- 8:35been aware of Peter and his need to spend week ends in nature, and
- 8:41that he was building some kind of survivalist building. Authorities believed that neither his
- 8:45wife or daughter had ever been to Camp Keller or even knew where the bunker
- 8:50was located. Peter had become convinced that the end of the world was imminent,
- 8:56and he spent almost an entire decade investing his time in resource or says
- 9:00inter surviving it in his bunker. However, when he decided it was time
- 9:05to retreat into the mountains, he hadn't taken his family with him to what
- 9:09he believed was the only safe place in the world. Instead, he killed
- 9:13them without a second thought, deciding that the only person who he would try
- 9:18to save from the apocalypse was himself. It's actually more comfortable for me to
- 9:24think about living out here. Robin Banks Pharmacies. Just taken what I want
- 9:33for as long as I can. At least it'll be exciting, won't be
- 9:37boring, and I don't have to worry about Lynette or Kayleen, and everything
- 9:45will be taken care of. It just be me. I used to sit
- 9:48here and think, you know, this whole thing is just crazy at times,
- 9:52and then I think about it and it would make sense, and it's
- 9:56like, Okay, this is what I gotta do. I'm getting to the
- 9:58point where just trying to live and pay bills and live as a civilian and
- 10:05go to work that just freaks me out. Basically, if I got caught,
- 10:09I'm just gonna shoot myself. So I mean I could basically be dead
- 10:15in two weeks or three weeks. I don't know. It's all up to
- 10:20chance. At this point, I do have my escape, and that's death.
- 10:24Can always shoot myself and I'm okay with a That's today's episode of ten
- 10:39Minute Murder, Brief and binge Able True Crime. I'm Joe, that's my
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