Body of fugitive found in survivalist’s bunker

Suspect in murder of wife, daughter dead of self-inflicted gunshot.

Authorities in Washington state blew open a survivalist bunker Saturday to find what they believe to be the body of a man suspected of killing his wife and daughter — the culmination of a lengthy manhunt that drove officers into the sludge-packed foothills of the Cascade Mountains.

Since Friday afternoon, SWAT officers in King County had surrounded the elaborate, underground structure where they believed the man, Peter Keller, 41, had gone into hiding. Keller is suspected of killing his wife and 18-year-old daughter, then setting his house on fire last weekend and retreating into a bunker he began constructing in 2004, authorities said.

Around 10 a.m. Saturday, of- ficers found a body inside the bunker with an apparently selfinflicted gunshot wound. “We believe it to be Keller,” Sgt. Katie Larson of the King County Sheriff ’s Office said in a telephone interview.

On April 22, Larson said, a fire at Keller’s home in North Bend, Wash., east of Seattle, led responders to the bodies of his wife and daughter, who had both been shot to death.

Keller tried to burn the house down but was unsuccessful, Larson said, allowing authorities to recover a computer hard drive with photographs. They discovered one grainy image that appeared to have come from the bunker, which authorities believe Keller had been working on for eight years. A detective enhanced the photograph, Larson said, then used triangulation to estimate where the bunker might be.

Interviews with people who said they had seen Keller’s pickup truck parked near the head of the trail, at Rattlesnake Ridge, also helped lead authori- ties to the correct location, Larson said. But officers, fearing that Keller was armed and that the bunker could be outfitted with traps, did not enter right away. Authorities traded shifts over nearly a full day, sloshing across the slick, steep terrain outside the bunker.

“It’s mud, it’s rain, it’s felled trees,” Larson said.

This image from Peter Keller’s hard drive helped lead police to a bunker near Seattle where the 41year-old fugitive was found dead.