Peter and the Apocalypse Plan

On April the 23rd, 2012, Lynnettee Keller and her teenage daughter, 18-year-old Kaylene Keller, were found dead in their family home. Both victims had been fatally shot. Their killer had also shot the Keller family pets to death, and then, gasoline was poured through the house, before being set on fire. Firefighters were able to extinguish the blaze before it destroyed too much of the evidence at the scene, and although the house was damaged, it didn’t burn down.

From the moment that the victims were identified as Lynnettee and Kaylene, one thing stuck out to investigators. Every member of the Keller household, including the dog and cat, were dead…except for one. There was no sign of Lynnettee’s husband and Kaylene’s father, 41-year-old Peter Keller.

Peter worked at a computer repair shop in the area, and during the last shift he had attended, he’d told one of his coworkers that he might not be coming back. That same week, he had withdrawn a total of $6200 in cash.

Everybody who knew Peter knew that he was passionate about two things: firearms, and surviving in the wilderness. That’s not to say that Peter had a lot of friends - in fact, he had a reputation for being a loner who preferred to keep to himself. Kaylene’s boyfriend talked to Peter on several occasions, and told the police that Peter had personally shown him his collection of guns, including multiple rifles. Kaylene had talked to her boyfriend about her father, saying that he had created a kind of bunker in the wilderness that he liked to go to on the weekends.

A search of the Keller family home revealed a series of photographs that appeared to have been taken in an area of nearby wilderness called Rattlesnake Ridge. The photos were left in an open safe in the home, and it was clear that Peter had meant for them to be burnt beyond recognition in the fire.

Enhancing the pictures revealed some identifiable buildings, including an outlet mall and a series of power  lines. When multiple hikers also reported seeing Peter’s car parked near Rattlesnake Ridge, investigators believed they had identified the location where Peter might have fled to. A team of trackers from the King’s County Sheriff’s Office visited the location shown in the photos, and off the side of the trail, they found a boot print that was a match to Peter’s.

Now, investigators knew that Peter was in the area surrounding Rattlesnake Ridge - and they also knew that he was heavily armed and desperate. They became increasingly concerned about the safety of any civilians in the area, because the surrounding Cascade Mountains foothills were popular with hikers and nature enthusiasts.

A team of Seattle-based tactical specialists were recruited, and they arrived in the Cascade Mountains foothills in armored carriers. They spent hours painstakingly trekking through dense foliage and difficult terrain, following the smell of smoke from a camping stove, until finally, they found an opening in the mountainside. The entrance had been carefully hidden with branches and ferns, but the tactical officers were confident that Peter was inside. In full camouflage, the officers spent time observing the bunker’s entrance. On multiple occasions, they had saw that the lights had been turned on and then off again, confirming that somebody was in there.

Based on the information that they had found in Peter’s home, as well as the testimonies from people who knew Peter, the officers were aware that he wasn’t a rookie. He was highly knowledgeable about weapons, and he also had the resources he needed to survive in the bunker - or in the wilderness - for an extended period of time. If he did decide to leave the bunker, he would be armed and dangerous, and wearing bullet-proof body armor that would make him difficult to take down.

They called Peter’s name repeatedly and when there was no response, they filled the bunker with tear gas, hoping that there was only one entrance and the gas would cause Peter to flee into the open. The hours passed, and there was no sign of Peter. The officers suspected that the gas was failing for one of two reasons: either the structure of the bunker meant that the gas wasn’t reaching the area where Peter was hiding, or Peter had prepared for this scenario and was equipped with a gas mask.

Finally, after almost 24 hours of Peter being on the run, the team made the decision to use explosives on the top of the bunker. It wasn’t a decision that they made lightly, but at this point, the team had exhausted their resources. The hillside was muddy and wet from a heavy downpour of rain, and one of the officers had suffered from a broken ankle, while several more had needed to receive intravenous fluids to combat dehydration.

“The gas didn’t work,” said the Sheriff of King’s County about the decision to use explosives. “We’ve got fresh people here…it was time to take the next step. Our people are out safe, and the trails are now safe for the community to use.”

It turned out that their efforts didn’t matter. When they entered the bunker, the officers found that Peter was already dead. There was a bullet wound in his head, and one of his guns was lying next to his body. He had taken his own life. 

From the contents of the bunker, which Peter referred to as “Camp Keller” it was clear that Peter had spent countless hours preparing for some kind of confrontation, or maybe even the apocalypse. Camp Keller was fitted with a functioning generator and contained full body armor, a scope, and multiple rifles with boxes and bags of ammunition stacked on shelves. There were more than enough gas cans and propane tanks for Peter to survive in the bunker for months without ever going outside.

Investigators painstakingly searched the bunker for answers about Peter’s motives, and while they sorted through piles of homemade explosives and ammunition, they recovered a videotape recorded by Peter. Although the tape didn’t explicitly discuss his motives for murdering his entire family, the recording showed Peter going into detail about how he was planning for the end of the world. It was clear that, to Peter, the apocalypse hadn’t just been a distant possibility - he had believed that it was coming soon, and he needed to do everything he could to prepare for it.

“I’m getting to the point,” Peter confessed to the camera, “Where just trying to live, and pay bills, and live as a civilian, go to work…it 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.” It was also clear from the contents of the tape that Peter had accepted that his own death was a possibility, and even though he planned on surviving as long as he could, he had made peace with that. “I do have my escape,” he said, “And that’s death…can always shoot myself. And I’m okay with that.”

Investigators also recovered some of Peter’s earliest planning for the bunker. A notebook dated from almost a decade prior showed Peter meticulously planning out the kind of structure he wanted to build, and from that point forward, he had carefully documented the process. Inside, the bunker was even less rudimentary than it looked. Peter had used an efficient pulley system to move heavy logs into place on top of the bunker’s cement foundation, and he had diverted the flow of water from a small creek nearby to provide Camp Keller with running water.

In his apocalypse tapes, Peter had only briefly mentioned his wife and daughter to state that he “wouldn’t need to worry about them.” Although Lynnettee and Kaylene had been aware that Peter liked to spend his weekends in nature, and that he was building some kind of survivalist building, authorities believed that neither his wife or daughter had ever been to Camp Keller, or even knew where the bunker was located.

Peter had become convinced that the end of the world was imminent, and he had spent almost a decade investing his time and resources into surviving it in his bunker. However, when he decided it was time to retreat into the mountains, he hadn’t taken his family with him to what he believed was the only safe place in the world…instead, he had killed them without a second thought, deciding that the only person who he would try to save from the apocalypse was himself.