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To supplement his contacts with butchers and maniacs, Keith stayed in touch with criminologists, journalists, TV producers, detectives, high school students, lawyers, teachers, researchers, distant relatives, doctoral candidates, celebrities, “jailhouse Annies” and other aficionados of bloody murder. On the phone it never took him long to launch into his well-worn accounts of resentments, angers, slights, injustices, favors unreciprocated, justice denied, paydays when he was shorted, undeserved punishments, grasping females, males who cheated him or let him down.

He answered all letters in a free-flowing artistic hand with rounded Os and Cs and his trademark Happy Face symbols to verify authenticity. He generously volunteered suggestions to investigators who were working to solve murders, and he often corrected experts in the voodoo art of profiling.

He was careful to alter his tone to suit his audience. To a teenaged gunman in Georgia, he wrote: “Now it is your duty to tell the public why you went to school to shoot it out. Thank God you didn't kill anyone!”

He had no hesitancy in offering advice about such matters as habeas corpus, Miranda, rules of procedure, courtroom style and decorum. As though he were running for national office, he prepared position papers on capital punishment, religion, law enforcement, the psychology of crime, and fired them off to the media under catchy titles: “From Being to Prison and Beyond,” “The Fears of Murder,” “The Gimmes of Law,” “Who Really Are They? Morons?,” “The True Power of Confessions,” “The Glove of Justice That Covers the Hand of Deceit,” “A Tale of Two Tails….”

 

Certain privileged correspondents were treated to book-length versions of his life and hard times. Since Oregon prisoners were denied access to copying machines, he had to handwrite each new version. A manuscript to journalist Robert Ironside was scrawled across two thousand pages, which were soon followed by a scathing twelve-hundred-page satire titled “The Adventures of King Pin Trisani and Johnny Foreskin Forwood” (variations on the names of Wyoming prosecutors who had sought his execution).

He provided a 900-page version of his life story to a fellow prisoner who immediately put it up for sale but found no takers.

He sent a 60,000-word “novel” to his father, explaining that the fictional form provided more latitude for the real truth about his life. Besides, the novel might be a commercial success and he could use the money. The tone was tasteless and lurid:

One book-length manuscript after another kept the prison censors busy. Keith explained that he intended to continue committing his insights and discoveries to paper “till I get it right.” In a version written in mid-2001, he summed up his most recent conclusions about his favorite subject:

Much of his incoming mail came from social scientists with a professional interest in his case, but some letters were simply exercises in bad taste. He tended to laugh off threats and seldom took unsolicited criticism to heart.

An angry woman sent an oddly punctuated inquiry about his fourth victim, Laurie Pentland:

Keith told a friend: “The woman who wrote that letter was Laurie's pimp. I knew her very well. When Laurie wasn't around, she used to blow me in the truck-stop parking lot. She was as big a whore as Laurie. She has a hell of a nerve criticizing me.” His attitude seemed to be that pimps and prostitutes deserved what they got.

On most days he spent his yard time on the phone, endlessly reciting the minutiae of his life to anyone who would accept his collect calls. Like his father he was his own font of knowledge and wisdom, offering detailed ruminations about family relations, parenting, marriage, “driving truck,” education and his all-time favorite subject: how he outwitted his prosecutors and cheated the executioner. Some of his contacts listened with interest and even egged him on, but by 2001 most were declining his dollar-a-minute calls.

Journalist Robert Ironside maintained the relationship longer than most. “Keith seemed so needy of notoriety and attention. He sent me interminable letters and phoned me four or five times a week. I honestly felt a strong rapport with him. But sometimes he made me feel odd, offbeat, as if I'd touched something evil. He liked to mock the last sounds of his victims, gurgling and blubbering with their last breaths. He cried once, reverting into a little girl's voice, imitating a victim begging for her life. It reminded me of one of our politicians mimicking the voice of a woman he was about to execute. One night he said in this very flat voice, ‘You know, Rob, it's harder to kill people than you think.' He sounded like he was talking about stepping on a roach.”

Keith logged his mail in a notebook—a habit left over from his truck driving days. In 1999, he sent 372 letters. After tightening his stamp budget so he could buy art supplies, he mailed only 242 letters in 2000 but received 465. Some of the letters were to and from his three children and two sisters. He had no contact with his brothers.

He estimated that he made five hundred collect calls a year. His father was steadfast in his semiyearly visits, and his older sister, Sharon, made three trips to the penitentiary. Keith kept a long list of names on his official visiting list, including every member of his family, but no one except Les and Betty showed up after 1997.

 

He often had to fight off black moods. “My nighttimes in prison are spent dreaming of seeing my kids one more time. Would I escape if I was let out by accident? Damn right I would. Back to Canada, to Chilliwack. I should have gone there thirty years ago. Dad never should have made us leave.

“Now my life is over. Sometimes I hope for death. If the state had offered the death sentence, I might've taken it—
if
I could have been executed the same day. But I didn't want to sit in a cell for twelve or fifteen years waiting to die.

“I often think of my attempted suicides. Maybe I succeeded! Maybe this prison is the hell where I was supposed to go! Think about it. Nobody's ever come back to describe hell. How can I be sure I didn't die when I took those pills?

“My future is to survive, that's all. To die an old man inside these walls. I keep trying to feel better. I polish my story. I write letters to vampire friends like Nicolas and crazy friends like Angel. I draw with colored pencils. I watch TV or take long walks on the track or lift weights or play miniature golf on our putt-putt course. I work, I visit, I play cards. There aren't many inmates who play cribbage, though. I do miss crib. Dad and I used to have some hot games.”

 

At forty-seven Keith told a counselor that he'd stopped thinking of suicide and was beginning to feel at home with his surroundings. In his one-man cell the sharp geometric edges of the outside world began to blur and fade in his mind. Like other lifers, he stopped watching newscasts. “None of the news on that screen will ever have the slightest effect on our lives.”

In the prison society he no longer felt excluded, exiled, an object of snickers and ridicule. Nor did he tremble in fear. His size had always made him feel different, but it also afforded protection. Prison personnel reported that his inner rage seemed diminished, or under better control. He spent less time feeling sorry for himself and attacking his detractors. In some ways he seemed to be living the best years of his life.

 

Since he would never be returned to society, he was offered only token psychotherapy, but he tried to gain insights on his own. “People say I killed for no reason. I think there was a reason, but I'm not sure what it was. I keep trying to figure it out.”

He still refused to trace his sexual sadism to his great-uncle Charlie or other genetic factors. He realized that he lacked feeling for his fellow humans and regarded this as a moral defect. He was curiously impersonal about matters like sociopathy and narcissism, empathy, bonding, attachment. When he discussed such subjects, it was in terms of others, never himself. He expressed a rote sort of remorse about his victims, but only when prompted. He seemed to view the eight murdered women as minor supporting actors in the drama of his life.

The conflict with his father appeared immutable. In correspondence and conversation, he continued to refer to Les as “that prick” and “that son of a bitch.” But kinder comments revealed his ambivalence. “I still love my dad,” he said. “I love him for his talents, his sense of humor, for all the things he taught me.” He quickly added, “Dad is a fuckup to the family. I really didn't want to be like him.”

 

On rare occasions he seemed willing to accept some blame for his crimes. Early in 2001 he wrote a friend: