Investigators Say Matanuska Lake Scene Related to Samantha Koenig
By Carolyn Hall Jensen and Chris Klint
Channel 2 News
4:49 PM AKDT, April 2, 2012
ANCHORAGE, Alaska
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Investigators say a Matanuska Lake crime scene investigation Monday is related to the abduction of 18-year-old barista Samantha Koenig.
The Anchorage Police Department, Alaska State Troopers and the FBI were at Matanuska Lake, off the Glenn Highway near the Palmer-Wasilla Highway interchange and the Matanuska-Susitna Regional Hospital, since mid-morning Monday. FBI spokesperson Darrin Jones confirmed that authorities were conducting an investigation that was related to Koenig’s Feb. 1 abduction.
Steven Hebbe, APD’s deputy chief of operations, told Channel 2 that officials were following up on leads in the Koenig case, and are searching for evidence.
Access to the lake was blocked off, but several undercover APD vehicles and a U-Haul van that may or may not have been related to the investigation were present.
A wide area was roped off with crime-scene tape, and several marker cones had been placed on the ground.
Koenig has not been seen since the night of Feb. 1, when APD says surveillance video from Common Grounds Espresso shows Koenig being abducted by an armed man. At several points in the investigation, officials have said that they were proceeding under the assumption that Koenig was still alive.
Prior to Monday’s crime-scene investigation, the last major breaks in the case were related to the March arrest in Lufkin, Texas of 34-year-old Israel Keyes, described by APD as “the main player” in the Koenig case, on a federal access-device fraud charge.
Keyes is accused of using a debit card taken from a man’s vehicle on the night of Koenig’s abduction at locations across Anchorage, as well as in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas prior to his arrest. He is being held at the Anchorage Correctional Complex, after U.S. Marshals transferred him from Texas.
Late Friday night, FBI and APD officials seized a large shed from the Turnagain home on Spurr Lane where Keyes lived, which was subsequently taken to the FBI’s Alaska headquarters in Downtown Anchorage for examination over the weekend..
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