Peter Keller, the North Bend double-murder suspect who killed himself in April to avoid capture, may have had doubts about murdering his family, but he had none about the outcome.
In a video that he made of himself in the weeks before the April 22 murders of his wife Lynnettee and daughter Kaylene, Keller was frank about killing himself, if necessary.
Talking into the camera, a disheveled Keller described how wet the winter had been, and how he was waiting for the weather to change so he could finish supplying his bunker and “… finally do what I have to do, get it out of the way.… At this point, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I may get caught right away. Basically, if I get caught, I’m just going to shoot myself. I could be dead in two weeks, or three weeks, I don’t know.”
Keller didn’t specify what he had to do, but he knew police would be looking for him after he did it. He also suggested that he had no other choice.
“I don’t think anyone knows where I’m at, but if they put it together,” he pauses and looks around the woods he’s hiking through. “At this point, I have to take that chance… I do have my escape, and that’s death (he laughs). I can always shoot myself, and I’m OK with that.”
Keller is believed to have murdered his family by shooting both women in the head with a silenced weapon, then setting fire to their North Bend home to cover the crimes, before fleeing to an underground bunker he’d been building for years on Rattlesnake Ridge. He was found dead inside the bunker on April 28, the morning after King County Sheriff’s Office SWAT team members had surrounded the bunker and attempted to force him out.
The video was part of the evidence officials recovered at his home, but it offers few answers to the many questions surrounding the three deaths. Keller says he used to question his plan, but then decided it made sense, never referring to anything specific.
“Just the more I’ve thought about it, the more I understand it. I don’t really feel bad about it. It’s just the way it is. Certain things happen that cause this to happen.”
In other excerpts released today, Keller describes his stockpile of supplies, gives a tour of the bunker and lists the load being taken up the hill to his bunker, sometimes referring to himself, sometimes using the word “we.”
At the start of what he claimed would be his final video, “about two weeks before the end,” he interchanged “I” and “we”, and referred to “this project.” He said he was beginning to “come to terms with it,” too.
“I’m getting to the point where just trying to live, and pay bills, and live as a civilian, and go to work, that just freaks me out. It’s actually more comfortable for me to think about living out here, robbing banks and pharmacies, just taking what I want for as long as I can. At least it will be exciting. It won’t be boring. And I don’t have to worry about Lynette or Kaylene, and everything will be taken care of. It will just be me.”
• You can view the videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/KingcosoPIO
