The King County (Wash.) Sheriff's Office released this nearly 10-minute video made by survivalist Peter Keller, who authorities say killed his wife and daughter before committing suicide as SWAT units moved in April, on Thursday.
By msnbc.com news services
BURIEN, Wash. --?Before he killed his wife and teen daughter and retreated to a remote bunker in Washington's Cascade Mountains, Peter Keller recorded a chilling video explaining his mindset: He was bored.
"It's 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," the 41-year-old survivalist said in a video clip released Thursday by the King County Sheriff's Office. "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'll be exciting."
Keller shot his wife, Lynnettee, and his 18-year-old daughter, Kaylene, at their home in North Bend, east of Seattle, in April. He set canisters of gasoline on the kitchen stove, turned it on, and headed to a fortified, camouflaged bunker he had spent the past eight years building into the steep, thickly forested slope of Rattlesnake Ridge. King County sheriff's detectives spent days trying to figure out where he was.
They narrowed down his hiding spot with tips from the public, who had seen Keller's red pickup at the Rattlesnake Ridge trailhead; a photo taken from the bunker that showed outlet stores in the distance; and the work of trackers who saw his boot-prints in the muddy ground. Keller killed himself as dozens of SWAT officers moved in ? an outcome he predicted in his video.
Keller, who believed the end of the world was near, had dubbed his bunker "Camp Keller," according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
PhotoBlog: Images show heavily fortified bunker of Wash. murder suspect
Sheriff Steve Strachan?said Keller shot himself on the bunker's top floor before falling to the lower level, the Seattle Times reported. Officers found a radio beneath Keller's body, suggesting that he had been monitoring news reports, the Times quoted Strachan as saying.
'At least it'll be exciting'
Looking down into a handheld camera, with his head wreathed by evergreen trees and the blue sky, Keller stated flatly in the video: "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. It's all up to chance at this point."
He added: "I do have my escape and it's death. Shoot myself. I'm OK with that. ... It won't be boring and I won't have to worry about Lynnettee or Kaylene. Everything'll be taken care of. It'll just be me."
The Post-Intelligencer cited investigation documents that showed Keller was controlling with money, which led his disabled wife to borrow cash from family members.
Lynnettee, who often stayed home and was a scrapbooker who posted scrapbooking videos on the web, had previously told relatives that her husband had established "fairly sizable" savings, the Post-Intelligencer said. She thought they were going to be millionaires when he retired, the newspaper reported, citing investigation documents.
The sheriff's office said it was releasing the video now because recent forensic tests recently proved that one of Keller's guns was used in the murders. There were no other suspects.
In a news conference, Strachan called the video?"breathtaking in its evil." It suggested that Keller had planned for weeks, months and maybe even years, to kill his wife and daughter, the Seattle Times reported.
Body found in bunker believed to be that of Peter Keller
Strachan also announced that tens of thousands of dollars was found bundled in the bunker, though he declined to specify how much. Lynnettee's family announced that they would use the money to establish a scholarship fund in Kaylene's memory (www.kaylenesfund.com ) for women who attend DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, where Kaylene had hoped to study video game design.
A tense standoff in Washington state ends after a man who was a suspect in the deaths of his wife and daughter is found dead in a bunker he had designed for the 'end of the world.' NBC's Gabe Gutierrez reports.
"The family didn't really find there was a problem with Peter," said Lynnettee's twin brother, Gene Rocha. He described Keller's relationship with his daughter as loving.
"We'd go there for holidays and it was like every father-and-daughter relationship," he said. "She'd look at her father and say, 'Daddy, can I have this?' And he'd say, 'Sure.'"
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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