One On the side of a four-lane road, obscured by snowdrifts five feet high, sat a small coffee kiosk, its bright teal paint vibrant against the asphalt and gray big-box stores. Drivers passing by could see the familiar top peeking above the piles of snow, this cheerful but lonely little shack. The night before, eighteen-year-old Samantha Koenig had been working this kiosk alone. Now she had vanished. She had been on the job for less than a month. She was reported missing the morning of Thursday, February 2, 2012, by the first barista to show up at the coffee kiosk that day. That barista felt something was not right-Samantha was usually very responsible about closing the kiosk properly, but this morning things were out of place and the previous day''s take was gone. What little the Anchorage Police Department had learned about Samantha in one day left them with almost no leads.
She was a popular high school senior who sometimes cut class and maybe had a history with drugs. She got along with everyone, not just the cool kids. She had two main people in her life: her boyfriend, Duane, who she''d been dating for almost a year, and her single father, James. So: What to make of this scene? Yes, Samantha could have been kidnapped, but to investigators, it seemed more likely that she had gone off on her own. The police found no signs of a struggle. Inside the kiosk was a panic button, and Samantha hadn''t hit it. She''d been using her cell phone before and after she had gone missing-fighting with Duane, texting him to leave her alone, fighting over her certainty he was cheating on her. Then again, she had also called her dad, asking him to stop by the kiosk with some dinner.
Why do that if she was planning to run away? To the sergeant of the Anchorage Police Department, this seemed like a good test run for field training a novice. He decided to give the case to Detective Monique Doll, a third-generation cop, thirty-five years old, working her first day in homicide. Doll had spent ten years in narcotics, four of those undercover with the DEA. She had a lot to recommend her. Doll stood out, too, as one of the most glamorous officers in Anchorage. She looked like her name, blonde and beautiful, though she answered to the androgynous nickname Miki. She was married to another star at APD, the handsome Justin Doll, and they were something of a local power couple. So the sergeant told Doll: You''re lead on this.
Suspicious circumstance, he called it. Across town, FBI Special Agent Steve Payne was tying up a drug case when a friend at the police department called. This is common practice in Anchorage, a big city that runs like a small town. Cops, FBI agents, defense lawyers, prosecutors, judges-everyone knows everyone. It is the paradox of being Alaskan: This state is home to rugged individualists who nonetheless know there will come a time, amid the cold, unpitying winters, when they will need help. Payne was told that an eighteen-year-old girl had disappeared early the night before and had sent some angry texts to her boyfriend. One emerging theory had Samantha stealing the day''s take to fund a day or two off on her own. Happened in Anchorage all the time.
Yet Payne wasn''t so sure. Planning to disappear requires long-range strategy and sophistication. Samantha seemed like a young girl with very little money. Payne was a regular at these roadside coffee kiosks and could only guess how little the baristas were paid, these young girls who often worked alone, were made to wear bikinis in the summer. It was not an easy life. Besides, where would a teenage girl go by herself on a dark and freezing Wednesday night? The weather had been brutal, just over 30 degrees, snow covering the ground. Samantha didn''t have her pickup truck that night; her boyfriend Duane did. Anchorage isn''t a walkable city.
Samantha just wandering off, alone and on foot, made no sense. If she had gone to a friend''s house, as she''d told Duane in texts last night, chances were the police would already have found her. He offered to help. "We''ve got enough people," came the reply. "We think we know what this is." Payne hung up. This didn''t sit right. As he well knew, the first rule of any investigation was to keep an open mind.
You didn''t try to fit a personal theory to a possible crime. He had heard that the police never even taped off the kiosk earlier that morning, when Samantha was reported missing, and her fellow barista then spent the morning serving customers. If the kiosk was in fact a crime scene, it had already been contaminated. Unbelievable, Payne thought. This was basic stuff, knowing that the first hours of an investigation are everything, presenting as they do the freshest leads, the most telling witness interviews. Crucially, investigators themselves are at their most curious and engaged, confronting a brand-new mystery with brand-new players. This sets the tone for everything to come. With missing people-especially a child, and Payne considered Samantha a child-these earliest moments, handled correctly, will give investigators the best chance of finding them alive and well.
He didn''t want to overstep, but he couldn''t help himself. He called APD, leaving messages, waiting all afternoon for a reply. Finally, at eight o''clock that night, Payne''s phone rang. It was Detective Doll. "Some things have changed," she said. Payne made the twelve-minute drive from the FBI''s Anchorage field office over to APD. He was six years older than Doll and had been with the Bureau for sixteen years, born and raised in Anchorage, a rarity. Most folks who live here, like Doll, are expats from the Lower 48.
Payne understood the psyche of the city. He understood the bias police can have when it comes to Anchorage''s poor and troubled, the lost causes. He didn''t want to see Samantha dismissed. Payne''s outward appearance gave little hint of his mettle. No one would ever guess he was a special agent who had worked drugs and violent crime his whole career. Small features, slight frame: He looked like an accountant. Yet Payne was a born investigator, a self-described obsessive-compulsive whose devotion to casework cost him his first marriage. He was a perfectionist who always fell back on the homicide investigators'' credo: Do it right the first time.
You only get once chance. He got teased at the Bureau for a few of his favorite sayings-"cause for pause" whenever he found a clue or some kind of useful information, "Murphy''s Law" when a case was on the verge of resolving only to fall apart. Payne thought of Murphy as his personal boogeyman. Doll gave Payne a quick overview of what she''d learned so far. They had just gotten a look at the surveillance video from the kiosk, which the kiosk''s owner, nearly twenty-five hundred miles away, had obtained eight hours earlier. This was shaping up to be what Payne had feared-the low prioritizing of an at-risk teenager. Samantha''s father had spent the past night calling Samantha''s cell phone to no avail, and spent that next day standing outside the kiosk during his daughter''s next scheduled shift, from 1:00 to 8:00 p.m.
, hoping she''d come back. "Show me the video," Payne said. Just before eight oÕclock, Samantha appears on-screen in her lime green top, her long brown hair worn down. She is relaxed, chatting with a customer through the kioskÕs window as she makes coffee. She looks like a sweet girl, Payne thinks. Happy. Whoever is outside remains out of camera range. Samantha works very casually and then, two minutes and six seconds into the tape, she suddenly turns off the lights.
There''s no audio. Samantha''s hands go up. Now, all that''s visible outside the kiosk is a shadowy figure and what might be the muzzle of a gun pointed at Samantha through the window. The aim is high and the window is low to the ground, so whoever this is must be tall. Samantha moves gingerly to the counter, her back to the figure outside. She gets on her knees. She stays that way for over a minute, fidgeting, and then, three and a half minutes in, she gets up, walks over to the register, and scoops out money from the drawer. The video is so grainy it''s hard to tell if she hands it over or puts it down.
She returns, calmly it seems, to a kneeling position. Then something else has clearly been said because Samantha wobbles to the window, stops, then turns her back to it. Here, at the 5:19 mark, a large male figure leans halfway inside. It''s hard to see for sure, but it looks like he is tying her arms behind her back. Two more minutes elapse, which sounds like nothing until you realize that a man with a gun is outside a very popular kiosk that sits between the parking lot of a huge gym and a well-trafficked road. In this context, two minutes is extremely long. Whoever this is, Payne thinks, either knows what he''s doing or knows Samantha. This kiosk is tiny, maybe nine feet by five feet, barely propped up off the ground.
The wide-open serving window makes these young girls extremely vulnerable. How odd that no one ever noticed that before. Seconds later, Payne watches as the man pounces like a cheetah, pushing his way through the window in one swift movement, stomach arcing inward, arms extending, landing gracefully on Samantha''s right. It happens so fast. Now it is clear: The man is very tall. He is also very composed. He looks out the window, seems to shut it, and talks to Samantha. Things seem fairly normal between them.
He picks something up and opens it, showing it to Samantha. It looks like her purse, and it looks like it''s empty. Now, at 8:55, he is kneeling. His broad back is to the cam.