Prepisode: 0708 | In Eastern Washington

Josh Hallmark (0:03)

On June 13th of 2026, we are going to Iceland. And when I say we, I mean you, me, and Shayna Entooks from the research team, and Sydney Kopp, who helped identify Christopher Roof. For as long as I can remember, Iceland has been number one on my travel list. And it still somehow eluded me for all these years. So I'm inviting you to come experience Iceland with me for the very first time. We'll visit secret geothermal lagoons, waterfalls, geysers, the continental rift, and black sand beaches littered with icebergs. We'll take a private boat tour, see the glaciers, see puffins, and hang out in Reykjavik. It will be, I'm sure, a life-changing six days. Tickets go on sale at noon Eastern today. But because of presale, there's actually only a few tickets left. So reserve your spot ASAP. Check out the link in the show notes or on Instagram. I cannot wait to see you in Iceland.

This is a studio both and production.

It's impossible to deep dive Hunters, Washington, and its importance to Keyes and his crimes. Without further exploring the Keyes family, the Christian Identity Movement, and Keyes' childhood girlfriend Annie.

Let's begin with the Christian Identity Movement as a whole, and how and when the Keyes family became involved. You may recall all the way back in Season 1, Episode 5, I briefly examined some of the tenets of the Christian Identity, and the two Colville churches that the Keyes family were members of during their time there. The Ark, and the Christian Israel Covenant Church. In this episode, we'll be taking a look at the histories of these churches and their contemporaries, and how multiple factions of the same teachings coalesced in Stevens County, Washington, and shaped how the Keyes family came to be who they were, and where they were.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Christian Identity Principles started to become a more widespread movement around the early 1950s, when Ku Klux Klan organizer Wesley Smith founded the Church of Jesus Christ Christian in Lancaster, California. The church was founded largely in response to the civil rights era. According to the Anti-Defamation League, they believe that whites of European descent can be traced back to the lost tribes of Israel. Many consider Jews to be the satanic offspring of Eve and the serpent, while non-whites are mud peoples created before Adam and Eve. Almost immediately, the Church of Jesus Christ Christian had ties to racially motivated terrorism. In the 1960s, Wesley Smith's right-hand man, William Potter Gale, recruited Aryan Nations founder, Richard Gert Butler, and Gale was suspected to have been involved in multiple bombings of African American churches in Alabama. By the 1970s, the church inspired other religious leaders to preach its abhorrent beliefs, including street minister, Peter Pete Peters. In addition to racism and anti-Semitism, Peters believed gay people should be exterminated. He took those beliefs and his Church of Jesus Christ Christian tenets to the La Porte Church of Christ in Colorado, where he became pastor in 1977 In short order, that church transitioned from a more traditional Christian ministry to one of Christian identity. And despite losing the majority of its parishioners, Peters rebuilt.

Peters worked to build the congregation by hosting a radio show, largely airing in rural areas of Texas, California, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Utah, and touring with road shows. And those road shows would take him to Torrance, California, where both Heidi and Jeff Keys and Ray, the eventual owner of the Hunter's Farmhouse, were living at the time.

Due to his extensive background in schooling in farming, agriculture, and agro-economics, Peters used the farm crisis of the 1980s to reach vulnerable farmers and rural workers who were seeking both leadership and advocacy. And so by supporting a vulnerable and terrified population, he was able to manipulate and eventually utilize them to spread his ministry of hate. Peters toured specifically Southern California, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, and eventually Washington.

And while this may seem like a history lesson in fucked up Christianity, I promise this is all going to converge in some very familiar places. While Pete Peters was spreading hate up and down the West Coast, former Baptist and ex-communicated Mormon Art Bulla was self-appointing himself a leader of the fundamentalist Mormons in Northwest Utah, the religion that Israel Keyes was born into. Some of Bulla's more controversial beliefs included plural marriage, that Adam of Adam and Eve was actually a reincarnated deity with multiple wives, that black people could never comprehend nor preach the spiritual truths of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, and that he himself was a prophet of God. Like Peters, Bulla was also devoutly homophobic. Bulla's sister Anne would marry a man named Barry Bird around this time, and together they founded the Marble Fellowship Community Church in the ghost town of Marble, Washington, the town immediately north of Colville. The Marble scripture was largely inspired by and interpreted from that of Pete Peters and Christian identity. In fact, Peters frequently spoke at the church. In 1988, Peters, Bird, and Brad Bulla, Art and Anne's older brother, banded together and wrote The Remnant Resolves, a Christian identity manifesto later used by Clive and Eamon and Ryan Bundy in the Bundyville Saga. I highly recommend the Oregon Public Broadcasting Podcast called Bundyville, The Remnant, to learn more about them. Clive and Bundy identified as both a sovereign citizen and a member of the Church of Latter-day Saints, aka Mormonism. As it relates to all of this, the Bundys are well known for their confrontation with the BLM, that's the Bureau of Land Management, which led to an armed standoff. So whether you're with Black Lives Matter or the Bureau of Land Management, these people hate you. And then, of course, there's the Ark. The Church, the Keyes family, and the Keyhoe family were part of while living in Colville. The Ark, too, was based on Christian identity in the ministries of Pete Peters, who also occasionally spoke at the Ark. Pete Peters would go on to be involved in the standoff at Ruby Ridge, and lead the subsequent Rocky Mountain Rendezvous in Estes Park, Colorado.