Keith and Wilkins had a complicated history. Chris Vasiliow, a longtime friend of Keith’s, told deputies that the two men had been involved in a love triangle with Wells. Wilkins, who was separated from his wife, knew Keith was dating Wells, and vice versa. Wells told sheriff’s deputies that King and Wilkins were “friends” with no issues between them. But Wilkins’ estranged wife apparently felt her husband was dangerous. On May 15, eight days after Keith went missing, Patty Wilkins came into the sheriff’s office substation in Seligman. She’d learned her husband was seeing Wells, she told depu- ties, and he’d become angry. If Patty disap- peared, the sheriff’s office report says, she “wanted to make sure we knew where she lived and that we would not stop looking for her.” Holes also began to form in Wells’ account. She told deputies she’d retrieved King’s wallet from his truck, only to later claim that he left his wallet, cell phone and checkbook in his RV. Wells, who had done two years in prison in the early 2000s for multiple drug violations, also claimed others had seen Keith since he vanished. Those sightings never panned out. Not long after Keith disappeared, a heli- copter search was conducted. It turned up nothing. Later, a search and rescue team scoured Seligman and beyond with cadaver-sniffing dogs. No body was found. According to the police report and rela- tives, the King family tirelessly drove up to Seligman to paper the town with posters and even employed psychics to aid in the search. These efforts proved futile. In 2009, three years after anyone had laid eyes on Keith King, the sheriff’s office declared the case closed. Closed it has remained, gath- ering dust in the files of the county sheriff’s Cold Case Unit. Then, 12 years later, a private investi- gator began frequenting The Main Ingredient. Enter the shamus Kelley Waldrip was just looking for a place to bend his elbow. A Phoenix native, the 72-year-old Waldrip had enjoyed a long and distin- guished career in law enforcement. He’d been an investigator for the U.S. Navy’s Naval Criminal Investigative Service and had served as an intelligence analyst for the FBI. He then worked as a private dick in Los Angeles for many years before semi- retiring and moving home to Phoenix. Rail thin, with a hang-dog look that belies a biting wit, Waldrip has seen it all, doing investigations for NCIS in places like Thailand, Haiti and Saudi Arabia. He started his career as a cop with the Glendale Police Department and later became a deputy at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, where he came to loathe Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Before leaving the sher- iff’s office for NCIS, Waldrip became a whistleblower, alerting the press to the corruption of Arpaio’s reign, earning him a permanent place on the sheriff’s enemies list. Seeking an alternative to his preferred watering hole, Durant’s, Waldrip stumbled upon the bar at The Main Ingredient, where Lindsey managed the restaurant and sometimes filled in as bartender. “I was a regular customer at The Main Ingredient,” Waldrip told New Times. “Word got around, probably because I mentioned it, that I was a private investi- gator. And one night, Lindsey approached me and said, ‘Hey, maybe you could find my missing father.’” Lindsey had been haunted by her dad’s unknown fate. She’d learned of his disap- pearance while a senior in high school, when a cousin told her Keith had been missing for two weeks and was presumed dead. Lindsey’s family wanted to keep the news from her until after graduation. As an adult, she asked for and received the fami- ly’s file on the disappearance, waiting on the right bit of information — or the right person — to crack the case. Waldrip was that person. He craves a challenge and took on the case pro bono. His first move was to obtain the county sheriff’s report on the disappearance. King’s family also supplied him with infor- mation, including notes from another private detective, Jack Locarni, whom the family hired in 2006 out of frustration with the official investigation. Locarni’s notes added some shading to the mystery. Vasiliow, Keith’s good friend, had told the P.I. that it wasn’t unusual for King to take off for weeks at a time without telling anyone. Given that, Vasiliow thought Wells “was very quick” to report Keith missing. Locarni also interviewed Wells and Wilkins at the Seligman discount store where they worked. They acknowledged they’d been “seeing each other” for several weeks, but Wilkins claimed their relation- ship was platonic and “hinted he was inca- pable of having sex.” Both repeated versions of what they’d told deputies. Locarni later talked to Wilkins’ estranged wife. Patty Wilkins said she’d put up missing posters for King, but that Wilkins had told her to remove them because Keith was in touch with his family. (Keith was not.) Wilkins told Locarni that his wife was mistaken — he told her to take down the posters because no one would recognize Keith from the photos they featured. Locarni came to no conclusions. But according to the sheriff’s office report, he told deputies that he believed King died “due to suspicious circumstances” and that he had a “bad feeling” about Wilkins. Waldrip had a similar impression, at least initially. A year ago, he traveled to Seligman to speak with Wilkins. In his report, which he shared with New Times, he described Wilkins as hostile and said his recollections relating to Keith’s disappear- ance were contradictory. But that might be explained by Wilkins’ dementia, a condi- tion his daughter confirmed to New Times. Wilkins died earlier this year at 81. Patty Wilkins is still alive but not well enough to be interviewed, her daughter said. Wells is also dead, having succumbed in 2023 to emphysema, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and pneumonia. But Waldrip spoke with her daughter, Brenda Lindsay, by phone. She remembered Keith, she said, who her mother told her had “just disappeared.” Later that same day, Brenda called again. Crying, she claimed she had just learned the truth. But she couldn’t speak freely in Seligman, she said. Waldrip made plans to meet her in Phoenix. Septic tank sayonara Sitting in Waldrip’s apartment days later, Brenda served up the first new lead the case had seen in years. After first speaking to Waldrip on the phone, she’d told a longtime friend of her mother’s that a private detective was sniffing around. The woman suddenly asked if Keith’s body had been found. The woman then told Brenda about a tearful, “out of the blue” confession Wells had made to her while they watched TV one night in the months leading up to Wells’ death. The woman later repeated the story to Waldrip. Wells allegedly confessed the following to her friend: The night before Keith disap- peared, Wells was in her home south of town when she began arguing with yet another boyfriend — a married man, but not Wilkins. Keith heard the commotion and walked from his RV into the ruckus. Keith threatened to out the man to his wife and then turned to leave. The man then shot Keith in the back, killing him. He then forced Wells to help him chop up Keith’s body and dispose of it in a septic tank on the property. New Times interviewed Wells’ friend, who asked not to be named out of fear for her safety. She claimed Wells had sworn her to secrecy until after her death. Wells maintained a relationship with Keith’s alleged killer, the friend said, but was “scared” of him. The friend claimed to have once heard Wells and this man arguing about money, with Wells threatening to expose their relationship to his wife. Asked if she would repeat her story to the police, the woman said she didn’t know. She didn’t want the man “coming after me, chopping me up.” Brenda was also aware of her Lindsey King doesn’t feel that the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office is acting with enough urgency to solve her dad’s disappearance. (Danielle Cortez) Keith King and Karen Wells in the mid-2000s. (Karen Wells’ cellphone) >> p 12
