Avi Keys

On 13 May 2004, four men drove out from Fairbanks, Alaska along the Steese Highway. High on methamphetamine, three of the men had been awake for days and were delirious by the time they pulled off onto a private road blocked by a no-trespassing sign. There, one of the men, Jason Fisher, murdered another, David Mason, in cold blood. The other two, Avi Keys and Josiah Thurneau, would help Fisher dismember and dispose of their friend's body…

2004 was a tumultuous year for methamphetamine in America. In the early 2000’s The United States Government and the DEA had begun heavily regulating the medications that contained the necessary ingredients to make meth, leading to a domestic shortage. Supply lines started coming in from Mexico, but it was slow going. To fill the shortage, dealers started turning to our other neighbor in the north. Canada had very few regulations on over-the-counter medications, so suppliers began buying up massive amounts of cold medicine and bringing it into the united states. In 2003 the Canadian Government finally cracked down, but illegal imports from Mexico were still too little to fill the demand. So meth production became largely a local affair. Dealers who could no longer get what they needed began to try and make their own, so 2004 was a year with an unprecedented number of inexperienced people getting into the business

Many people new to the scene who had no idea what they were doing began making and selling meth. Local labs started making risky, impure meth in small batches, where the meth was often cloudy and discolored to the point it resembled crumbled drywall. In addition to the dangers of impure drugs, these labs popping up so quickly, and run by inexperienced people, led to numerous fires and explosions.

In the northernmost state of Alaska, where this week's episode takes place, there were 80 meth labs shut down in the state in 2004 alone. In comparison, in 2002, before the Canadian supply line was cut off, there were only 29. With a smaller population, and being the state farthest from Mexico, meth production and use became endemic in some areas.

Fairbanks is the biggest city in the interior of Alaska, and as a large city, it has its fair share of drug use and crime. For four young men living in Fairbanks in 2004, who would end up involved in a gruesome murder, crime was already a way of life for them. Their names were Avi Keys, Jason Fisher, David Mason, and Josiah Thurneau. All four were involved in either using or selling meth right after they got out of high school, if not sooner, and all of them have a documented criminal record.

David Mason was the oldest of the group at 23. The others were all 19 or 20 in 2004. Mason had been a U.S. Army serviceman, who completed his training in 1999 at Fort Knox. He left in 2001 because he had opted to be discharged in lieu of a court martial. Whatever had led to this dishonorable discharge is not public information. While his criminal record was not as extensive as some of the people he kept company with, he had been charged with fourth-degree theft in April of 2003. He was fined, and given the option to perform community service in lieu of time served.

Jason Fisher was the ringleader of the group and he was still a child when he started stealing cars. In 2002 when he would have been 17 he was charged with four counts of car theft, for which he was placed on probation. During his probation, he failed drug tests six different times and was ordered to seek out treatment for his addictions. He never did, but he never faced any legal ramifications for failing to do so. He was eventually taken off probation in July of 2003.

The next year though, Fisher would run into trouble with the law again. On April 3rd of 2004, Alaska state troopers spotted Jason Fisher and an acquaintance of his named Phillip Ross Jolly hanging out near a freshly burned car. Police searched the car and the men and found two sawed-off shotguns, an automatic pistol, a double-edged dagger, and marijuana paraphernalia. Both men were charged with weapons misconduct. Fisher was once again placed on parole, but did not serve jail time.

Not much is known about the third member of the group, Josiah Thurneau except for his extensive criminal record. He had graduated high school without incident, but shortly after becoming an adult fell deeply into criminal activity. On October 2nd of 2003, Thurneau was arrested for six counts of forgery. He was out by January though and on January 19th of 2004 Thruneau was charged with second-degree burglary. He was not placed in jail and two days later he was charged with a DUI, and given a few days of jail time, community service, and a few fines. Just a month later on February 4th of 2004 Thurneau was charged with forgery once again. Though the newspaper reports of Josiah Thurneau’s criminal activity list long sentences, many of the sentences were allowed to be served on house arrest or otherwise dismissed later, so it’s tough to tell how much time he actually spent in jail.

The last member of the group, Avi Keys at first glance comes up with a clean record when searching through the local paper, The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, which detailed the criminal activity of the other three men. But an article featuring Jason Fisher also has one Avie Keys mentioned, but they misspelled his name and added an E to the end. On June 17th of 2003, Avi Keys and Jason Fisher were arrested for assaulting a 17-year-old girl. They were both charged with 4th-degree assault after the girl called 911 and Keys was also charged with hindering the prosecution. It’s important to clarify that although assault charges are typically associated with being sexual in nature, 4th-degree assault is typically a physical altercation or even sometimes just a verbal assault.

Though Keys and Mason had no documented history of drug use, they were both addicted to meth by 2004 when Keys was 19 and Mason was 23. Fisher had been using hard drugs since the age of 14.

Things came to a head for all four men in late April of 2004 when Jason Fisher started a bender. He kept it going for weeks, and in the second week of May, Keys and Thurneau joined him. After a few days of all three being high on meth constantly, they picked up David Mason on May 13th to join them. Mason got in a car with them and the four went for a drive. Mason may have been close with Keys and Thurneau, but to Fisher, he was a casual acquaintance at best, and an annoyance at worst. Fisher was friends with Mason’s girlfriend, and there were local rumors that Fisher didn’t like the way he treated her in their relationship.

The group drove about 40 miles along the Steese Highway, before pulling off onto a private road blocked off by a no-trespassing sign. Keys and Fisher walked around for a bit, while Thurneau and Mason tried to fix the car’s stereo, as it had been acting up. When Keys and Fisher got back to the car, Fisher gave Mason a cigarette. As Mason grabbed his lighter, Fisher walked behind him, and without preamble, shot him twice in the back of the head. He then said to Mason “Are you dead yet?”

Keys and Thurneau were no doubt surprised by the murder, but both had been high on meth for days, and how they may have reacted to the murder is not documented. Nevertheless, whether out of fear, or meth-fueled apathy, when Fisher asked them to help dismember David Mason’s body, they both agreed. Fisher told them they needed to chop Mason’s body up so that it would sink, and suggested they dispose of it in the nearby Tanana River. But when they went to the river to dispose of it, Fisher decided to keep the head and showed a special interest in Mason’s ear that had an earring in it. He separated the ear from the head so he could put the ear in a jar. He also carved away a piece of Mason's skin that had a distinctive tattoo. He decided to keep these parts of the body as trophies. The rest of Mason’s body did indeed sink, and has never been recovered.

Had Fisher laid low and tried to cover up his crimes, the murder of David Mason might have stayed unsolved. But, Jason Fisher was not the type to lay low in the best of times. He opted to continue his meth bender.

Two days after David Mason was murdered on May 15th of 2004, Alaska State troopers spotted a car driving erratically with no front license plate. The car was piloted by Avi Keys, with Jason Fisher in the passenger seat. They were driving along the Old Steese Highway just before 12:30 AM at night. Keys had been swerving in and out of different lanes, so troopers tried to pull the vehicle over. When they turned on their lights, Keys sped up, going through stop signs and numerous red lights, and swerving, narrowly missing other cars. Key’s floored the accelerator, traveling at around 90 miles per hour during much of the chase. The pursuing police vehicle fell back to discourage an accident, hoping that if they backed off then Keys would slow down and mitigate the danger to the public. When police backup arrived ahead of Fisher’s car, they blocked off an intersection to lay down spike strips. Keys ran over the spike strips and blew out the front two tires of the car, but kept driving. He swerved into the shoulder of the road to pass the flow of traffic.

The chase went farther into the city and soon Keys turned into the local university campground, which was fenced off by a small wall. He rammed into the wall at full speed, breaking through, but this was the last straw for the car, it finally came to a halt. Fisher and Keys both fled the scene before troopers caught up to the vehicle, but Keys didn’t get far enough. A trooper spotted him nearby and thought he looked like the driver of the car. Keys tried to pretend that he was just a hitchhiker, but the police were not buying it. When police detained him, he then tried to say he’d only been a passenger in the car. Police didn’t believe his story and he was arrested and charged with felony eluding police, driving under the influence, and third-degree criminal mischief. He was visibly drunk and may have also been high on meth. Police may have given the car a quick search, but they did not bother to open the trunk, and it’s not stated in any reports that they searched the vehicle at all before bringing it to a local impound lot. Witnesses later claimed that Fisher had talked about trying to sneak in and steal the car back or burn it, but he never actually made any serious attempts to get the car out of impound.

Once police finished questioning Avi, his father, David Keys bailed him out of jail. David later told the News-Miner that ”When I bailed him out, he didn’t tell me anything. He said, ‘Dad, don’t worry if I don’t come back for a few days.”

With that, Avi Keys vanished.

The next week on May 22nd of 2004 it was announced that Avi Keys was officially charged with driving under the influence, failure to stop for a police officer, and fourth-degree misconduct involving a controlled substance. When he failed to show up for court, state troopers issued a warrant for his arrest. But neither his father nor his friends had heard from him. For all intents and purposes, Avi Keys had vanished. Police assumed he was hiding to get out of facing the DUI charges, and were not actively considering foul play. But as the days, and then weeks passed, Keys failed to contact his father or any friends to let them know that he was alright. If he was in hiding, it seemed like he would at least reach out to let them know he was okay.

Whether or not Avi Keys was ever seen again after he told his father he was going to lay low is a bit unclear. As we’ll get to later, it’s possible there may be more to his disappearance than meets the eye, and it’s also possible that some people did in fact know where he was.

A month after the car chase, on June 22nd of 2004, Jason Fisher was stopped for speeding, and troopers found marijuana in his possession. He was later charged with misconduct, then let go. He’d been driving a different car at the time, the one that he and Keys had been arrested in was still at the impound lot. Three days later on June 25th, the impound lot called the police to complain about a foul smell coming from that car.

When police finally decided to search the car, they opened the trunk and found what was left of David Mason. There found the bits that Fisher had elected to keep as trophies: Mason’s severed head, a jar that held the ear with an earring, as well as the skin with his distinctive tattoo. These parts had all been rotting in the trunk for a month and a half. There were also numerous weapons in the trunk, including several knives, a hand ax, a machete, the tip of a spear, and a battle axe.

In the passenger seat of the car was a backpack full of bullets, but whether this was found before or after the vehicle was impounded is unclear. It may have been sitting in the impound lot the whole time. Police quickly suspected that the body parts might belong to Mason, as he’d been missing and was last seen getting into Fisher’s car. The fact that this was known information to them makes it even more unclear why the car was not searched when it was detained.

Whatever the reason, once police were finally on the case, authorities decided to keep the investigation secret so as not to alert Fisher. They sent a tooth off to the FBI soon after discovering the corpse, but it would be nearly a year before DNA testing confirmed that it was Mason. The investigation largely stalled during the testing.

The following month on July 23rd of 2004 Fisher was given a few days of jail time and fined for misconduct involving a controlled substance. While on probation, officers tried to question him without alerting him to the impending investigation. At one point during the investigation, one of the officers called Fisher to ask about why he hadn’t claimed his car and also asked him if he knew where David Mason had gone. Fisher claimed that the vehicle was no longer his, as he’d sold it. Fisher told the officer that he knew Mason casually, but didn’t even know he was missing, and certainly didn’t know where he was.

Less than a month later, on August 20th of 2004 state troopers spotted a chevy Camaro without a front license plate. They pulled over the car and discovered Jason Fisher behind the wheel. Inside the vehicle, police found a fake plastic uzi gun, as well as a .38 smith and Wesson, a pocket knife, a lock pick set, and meth. Since Fisher was already a felon, and not allowed to have a firearm, he was given additional weapons charges as well as drug charges.

Fisher went to trial for these charges on December 31st of 2004 where he was given a sentence of four years in jail, with orders to get treatment for substance abuse, as well as get his mental health evaluated. This sentence gave police the time needed to investigate without fear of Fisher finding out they were onto him or intimidating any witnesses. But police may not have let the courts in on their investigation, or communicated that Fisher could be a flight risk.

Just a few months into his sentence, Fisher was placed in a halfway house program and on June 9th he was allowed to sign out to apply for jobs, but he never returned. Despite the ongoing murder investigation, there were no serious effort made to find him and keep him on probation.

It would be months before there was another break in the case. In September of 2005, a witness came forward to tell police that Fisher was behind the murder, then in early October, a second witness came forward. The first witness would later be identified as Josiah Thurneau, the identity of the second witness is up for debate. These witnesses told authorities that Fisher had been bragging about the murder and that he and his friends had made jokes about dismembering the body.

A month later on October 12th of 2005, the DNA testing came back, and Alaskan authorities called David Mason’s surviving family to tell them that they’d confirmed he’d been the victim of a homicide. That same day police were able to track down and arrest Jason Fisher. Troopers found him walking around town around 2:00 pm. He briefly tried to run away but they caught him after a short chase.

At the time of his arrest, Fisher had a gun and meth on him. When police started questioning him, he quickly denied having anything to do with Mason’s murder but did admit to being the passenger in the car when Avi Keys led troopers on a high-speed chase. They hadn't been sure that he’d even been in the car that day until he admitted to it. He did also admit to bragging about killing Mason but said that he’d been lying and only claimed he did it to make himself look big, and get a reputation as someone not to be messed with.

Meanwhile, Josiah Thurneau continued to rack up DUI and traffic violation charges. He was banned from going to places where alcohol is sold and was to be on probation for two years but never faced jail time. Authorities would later confirm that at this point, Thurneau was a protected witness in the Mason murder case, but this may or may not have affected his lenient sentencing.

Whether or not Avi Keys also tried to come forward as a witness is unclear but there are bits and pieces of information that seem to hint he may have spoken to authorities before he vanished. During the trial of Jason Fisher, more clues would be revealed to possibly shed some light on Avi’s disappearance.

The first formal hearing was held on January 24th of 2007. Both the defense attorney Marcie McDannell and the Prosecutor Scott Mattern asked for a continuation. This was because neither party had yet received the video and audio footage of the arrest of Keys after the high-speed chase he led with Jason Fisher. State troopers had apparently been under the impression that the trial was already resolved due to some kind of miscommunication and hadn‘t released the footage in time. During this meeting, McDannell also said she had not been given any of the witness information and had no way to contact them. Mattern agreed to supply her with that, but did not say the names of the witnesses during the trial. Whether or not the footage of Keys’ arrest was ever released is unclear.

On November 5th the court convened once again and Mattern provided a statement that seemed to hint they may have spoken to Avi Keys at some point before he vanished. He read out loud a statement that had been approved by Fisher that claimed that one witness said Fisher shot Mason once, but that the other witness would likely claim that Fisher shot Mason twice. Fisher would later go on to say that Avi Keys shot Mason after he did, implying that Avi would have been the witness to say that Fisher shot Mason twice, but that Thurneau would have backed up that Avi had fired the second shot. But when Thurneau’s testimony later came out, he never accused Avi of shooting Mason and backed up that Fisher shot Mason twice.

Before the conclusion of the trial on August 8th of 2008 the defense and prosecution cut a deal for Fisher to plead no contest, and face between 10-90 years for second-degree murder.

During the hearing, Fisher’s defense attorney played a video his family had made to speak to his character about who he was before the murder.

Fisher’s mother and two sisters spoke about him being a good kid, who loved them, and the rest of his family deeply. They said he was nice, loved animals, and that things had only gone wrong when he’d gotten into drugs. His mother talked about him getting into smoking weed around 14 and how she wished she’d done something sooner. One of his mother's fondest memories of him had been when she went into labor unexpectedly with Jason’s youngest sister, and there were no adults home so Jason tried to tell her he was going to drive her to the hospital even though he was only seven.

Mattern repeatedly criticized the video and its relevancy, before and after it was played. He said, “[Jason] may have been a good kid once who loved animals, but he sure didn’t love his fellow man.”

McDannell argued that the meth was a large factor as well, and tried to argue for a lower sentence of 40 to 60 years, with parole after 20. Both the judge and prosecution seemed annoyed with how long the defense’s testimony went on, as well as the relevancy of the testimony given they’d already struck a deal for jail time.

Mattern’s testimony during this trial proved to be very interesting. An article in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner says that Mattern told the courtroom that “Witnesses who helped dismember the body but were offered immunity from prosecution claimed that Fisher was angry that Mason was incapable of selling drugs or that he disliked how Mason treated his girlfriend.'' This article does not name Keys or Thruneau by name, but they were the only two witnesses present during the dismemberment, and given that it says “witnesses '' this seems to imply that, before he vanished, Avi gave some kind of statement.

Interestingly, Mattern also had numerous inconsistencies within his arguments so it is possible he just misspoke. Though Josiah Thurneau was the only named witness, Mattern repeatedly forgets Josiah's name and calls him Jason, though he’s very clearly not talking about Jason Fisher. A much more glaring inconsistency was when Mattern denied that Thurneau was ever offered immunity. Mattern claims Thurneau was just told to tell the truth and the police would see what they could do (you know, like you see in the movies). In response to this, Mcdannell promptly brought up a recorded transcript of Thurneau speaking with police officers. On the transcript Thurneau asked if he was going to get “Everything they talked about” to which the unnamed officer said “excuse me?” to which he responded, “immunity and everything” to which she simply responded, “okay.” After the tape was played Mattern put on a show of pretending not to know about that transcript and tried to hint that he didn’t believe the tape was real.

The trial ran for about two hours in total. Near the end of the hearing Fisher was asked if he had anything to say, and he read the following prepared statement:

“Standing before this court today I willingly accept responsibility for my actions that led to me being here. I was out of my mind with meth when the murder happened. I had been up for weeks and was having hallucinations. The meth also made me paranoid but I cannot blame the meth. What I did was my fault. I know that I have to decide never to take drugs again, especially meth. It has hurt my family, hurt other people, and hurt myself. I understand this. While I have been in jail I’ve been going to reformer's anonymous meetings in jail and it has helped me understand a lot. Every day I feel grief and regret for what I have done. I want to apologize, and I want to ask for forgiveness because I don’t forgive myself. I want to apologize to everybody involved, especially my mom, I’ve caused her so much pain. I never meant to be such a disappointment. Thank you.”

Judge Olsen acknowledged points made from both sides in his conclusion. He told Fisher that his youth and lack of a violent history showed great potential for rehabilitation, but dismembering the body and keeping trophies brought Olsen very close to sentencing the maximum. In the end, Judge Randy Olson sentenced Fisher to 80 years for the murder of David Mason, and two years for the previous weapons charges. He told Fisher he would be eligible for parole, and that Olsen would not put in any stipulations about that if the parole board found him reformed before his sentence was up. He would be eligible for parole at age 48 with good behavior.

A year later on May 13th of 2009, Jason Fisher went to court to appeal his sentence. This was five years to the day since he’d killed David Mason. In this case, the review board decided that the mutilation of the corpse and lack of remorse after the fact did justify such a harsh sentence and chose to uphold it.

Some of the newspaper articles covering Fisher’s appeal present some interesting and conflicting information about Avi Keys. A Fairbanks Daily News-Miner article from May 16th claims that Keys and Thurneau had both been witnesses to the prosecution. And an Associated Press article from May 19th of 2009 claims that Avi Keys and Josiah Thurneau had been the witnesses to come forward and tell police that Fisher had killed Mason. The article says “Keys and Thurneau received immunity after becoming witnesses for the state. The pair told authorities that Fisher killed Mason because he was angry that Mason was incapable of selling drugs or that he disliked how Mason treated his girlfriend.” This article also says that Keys was the one who handed Mason a cigarette right before he was shot though, so it’s possible that this article may have just gotten a few key points wrong. An article that would later come out in the Anchorage Daily News presented the narrative that Keys had been a protected witness for the state as well, but it’s also possible the associated press article and the Anchorage Daily News article were just pulling from the initial Daily News-Miner article, and that they had not independently verified the information for those other articles. Wherever this information came from, later articles would go on to discount the narrative that Keys was a witness and the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner said that the second witness was just someone that Fisher told about the murders later on.

With the publicity surrounding the trial of Jason Fisher, the disappearance of Avi Keys finally gained some media attention. Avi’s father, David, spoke with the Media to tell them more about his son.

Avi grew up in Fairbanks and only left Alaska once when he was three years old to visit family in Miami. He played on the wrestling team in high school. He did not end up graduating from the high school he attended, but he did earn his GED. He worked a few jobs, one cleaning buses, and one at a pizza hut.

David Keys had raised Avi as a single father, as Avi’s mother left when he was a baby. David told the Daily News-Miner that he desperately wanted answers: “I need to know what happened. I raised my son the best I could. He got close to some of those bad people, and I feel very sorry for that. I was hoping he was hiding. But now, after five years, I think somebody killed my boy. I want to know.”

Local trooper Jeremy Rupe spoke with the Daily News-Miner as well and told them that police certainly suspected foul play could be responsible for Avi’s disappearance.

David has hung up flyers all around town and spoken with all of Avi’s friends that he knew, including visiting Jason Fisher in jail to get answers. But Fisher just told him that he didn’t know where Avi was, and all of the other leads he tried to follow turned out to be dead ends. At one point David got a tip that someone had seen a man who looked like Avi working at a hotel near Denali national park. David made the trip up there and found only a man who had a slight resemblance to Avi. Another dead end.

There have been virtually no other developments or sightings in Avi’s case since then. Jeremey Rupe said “We haven’t had any new information on him come in for quite some time. Our primary concern is his well-being. I’ve got some grave concerns that he is not OK. Best case scenario is that he is hiding and he is OK. The possibilities are endless”

Avi Keys' case hasn’t really seen any major publicity. His missing person poster on Facebook only has a few shares, and aside from the 2009 articles written about him, no other papers really wrote about his disappearance. After 2009 the case stalled.

2009 also brought about a small silver lining to the whole affair though. After serving time for a DUI in 2009 Josiah Thurneau stopped showing up in the papers. It appears as though he finally turned his life around, and his criminal record completely stops after he got out. He’s never spoken to the papers and doesn’t really have social media, but whatever he is doing he appears to have gotten out of the criminal life he was in.

There are two likely possibilities about what happened to Avi Keys; that he is either on the run to avoid charges, or that he’s been killed. He was still clearly on good terms with Jason Fisher after the murder of David Mason, so Fisher of course needs to be considered a suspect, as the two were spending time together. But they were both involved in the turbulent world of meth during a time when it was largely being run by amateurs who were in over their heads. It’s possible he could have been a victim of foul play by another person involved in the meth business. Or it’s possible he did talk to the prosecution and Fisher had reason to suspect this. The prosecution and media heavily hint at this, and as a criminal, he may have been offered no protection.

Avi was a meth addict and possible accomplice to murder, and if he’d vanished before he could give testimony, police may not have cared to look very hard to find him. When the prosecution and defense struck a deal in Jason Fisher’s case, they didn’t even need any witnesses to testify at the hearing. And if authorities had been talking to Avi, and he then became a victim of foul play, they may not have wanted to advertise their potential part in his disappearance, and complicate a murder trial.

Mattern often hints at having spoken to multiple witnesses who were there, and the media seemed to think Avi had at one point been a witness. It is interesting that the media initially claimed Keys had been a witness, then it was in a paper that came out later that interviewed local officers where this claim was denied.

The possibility that Avi ran away is also very likely. He knew a body was in the trunk of the car he’d been driving, and that he could very well be blamed for the murder. And it’s curious that the media portrays conflicting statements about whether or not he would be prosecuted as an accomplice if he ever turns up. Mattern claims he participated in the murder, and it’s possible local authorities have not mentioned any suspicions they have to the media because they do want him to be found, but don’t want to mention he will likely be arrested. Local police said that they are only interested in his safety, and that the charges have been dropped, but that could just be a ploy to get him to come forward.

If Avi Keys is dead, perhaps someday someone who knows something will come forward. The scene he was involved in clearly had people who were involved in the meth business but were not okay with murder, as evidenced by the numerous witnesses that came forward to report Jason Fisher. If he’s alive and in hiding it’s hard to say what would happen to him if he ever did come forward. Certainly, his father David would have some peace, but he would finally need to answer for his part, whatever it may have been, in the murder of David Mason. Until any more leads come up, or until a body is found, the disappearance of Avi Keys will remain Unresolved.