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Lester Holt
reporting |
Dateline NBC
A newsmagazine dedicated to investigative reporting
mysteries and social justice
Episode: The Inside Man
Aired on September 15th, 2012
A popular, superstar high school athlete, Jimmy Keene, seemed to have it
all growing up in the river city of Kankakee, Illinois. But then, he
began selling drugs and moved to Chicago, where his business boomed but
a danger lurked 150 miles south that would change his life forever. |
Federal Prosecutor Beaumont |
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In with the
Devil: A Fallen Hero, a Serial Killer, and a Dangerous Bargain for
Redemption
Keene, James (Author) and Levin, Hillel (Author)
272 p. St. Martin's, hardcover, $25.99. |
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The Ford County jail was an unlikely place for Jimmy
Keene to find deliverance. Located in Paxton, barely a smudge of a city
in the great expanse of central-Illinois farmland, it sat practically
hidden behind the squat courthouse. For Keene, any time he spent in the
jail was a special kind of torture. “I’d rather be in a hard core prison
and have to worry about getting stabbed,” he says, “than be confined in
that little, nasty ancient history shit hole.”
Unfortunately for him, Ford County jail was somewhat centrally located
on his road to ruin. An hour up the highway in one direction was his
hometown of Kankakee, where he was busted for conspiracy to distribute
cocaine. Down the highway from Ford County in the other direction, was
the U.S. Courthouse in Urbana, where he took a plea on the drug charge
and was sentenced to ten years. Then he was held at the jail a few days
longer until he was transferred to the custody of the U.S. Bureau of
Prisons. He did not relish returning to Ford County yet again in 1998,
even though he would be closer to family and friends, and he certainly
didn’t look forward to seeing Lawrence Beaumont, the assistant U.S.
Attorney who had summoned him from his federal prison in Michigan.
He blamed Beaumont most for his crushing sentence. The prosecutor had
worn a full beard then − shot with gray − and Jimmy remembered how he
stared down on him in the courtroom from a terrible height, like some
Old Testament prophet, eyes blazing and voice booming. When Keene’s
lawyer, Jeff Steinback, told him that Beaumont was ready to talk about a
deal for an early release, Jimmy says, “I immediately thought it was
some kind of trap.” |
| Keene had not been any small-time dealer. In the fifteen years
before his arrest, he had built one of the biggest independent drug
empires in the Chicago area. Along the way, he had dealt with a tempting
array of targets for the Feds. His suppliers included a Mexican drug
lord and Chicago-area Mafiosi. Among his customers were porn stars,
yuppies, cops, doctors, lawyers, club owners and the adult children of
prominent politicians. |
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For the meeting with the prosecutor, a sheriff’s deputy put Keene in
handcuffs and shackles and then marched him into the jail’s tiny,
windowless conference room, where his lawyer, Steinback, was waiting.
Although Keene was cuffed, sheriff’s deputies still crammed in around
the table to watch over him. Soon the prosecutor himself entered and
stared down at him again. Only this time he was accompanied by Ken
Temples, a benign, balding FBI agent Jimmy hadn’t seen before. Beaumont
then sat opposite Keene and with a typical dramatic flourish, slid a fat
legal file across the table.
Jimmy nonchalantly grabbed it with his cuffed hands and lifted up the
flap, putting on his best poker face to mask a reaction to whatever he
saw inside. Still, nothing could have prepared him for the first glossy
photograph he pulled from the folder. This was not a picture of a drug
dealer or local big shot. Instead, he saw the battered naked body of a
young woman, sprawled between rows of standing corn. Her skin was torn
and discolored. As best he could with the cuffs, Jim turned over photo
after photo of the grisly scene, first thinking, "Are they trying to pin
this on me, too?"
He looked up expecting to see a scowl from Beaumont. But the
prosecutor’s gaze was no longer as hard or even accusing. Keene
continued through the file. One photograph was of a second naked victim
in a ditch, but there were other pictures of smiling, attractive young
women. |
The pageant of beaming victims finally stopped with a man’s mug
shot. Notations at the bottom of the photo indicated that he’d been
booked in an Indiana county jail back in 1994. His name was Larry
DeWayne Hall. Beaumont had prosecuted him as well, and he explained to
Keene that Hall was serving a life sentence for abducting the girl in
the cornfield. Pointing to the thick folder, Beaumont added, "We think
he’s responsible for more than twenty other killings."
Although Beaumont and the FBI were convinced that Hall was a serial
killer, he had been convicted for killing just one victim, Jessica
Roach, the girl in the cornfield, and it took two trials to do it. The
guilty verdict from the first was overturned on appeal and now an appeal
was pending on the second conviction. A basis for both appeals was that
Hall’s confession had been coerced by wily investigators. If the
government lost the second appeal, Beaumont would have to try Hall yet
again and he might go free. |
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Beaumont was prepared to make Keene a deal. He would transfer Jimmy
undercover to the maximum security penitentiary and psychiatric hospital
in Springfield, Missouri, where the federal Bureau of Prisons kept its
most mentally ill inmates. There Hall had been serving a life sentence
as a model prisoner, attending to the building’s boiler room and carving
finely crafted falcons in the arts and crafts shop. Only the warden and
chief psychiatrist would know Jimmy’s objective ― to befriend the serial
killer. If Jimmy could get him to confess to his crimes and disclose
details that had not been publicized previously, then the prosecutor
would have Keene testify the next time he tried Hall. In return,
Beaumont would ask the judge to give Keene an early release. |
“It seemed like a dream. One minute, I’m sitting in Michigan on the
hot dime of a ten-year sentence with a long way to go. Then Beaumont
pops up out of nowhere with this serial killer thing and like tomorrow I
could be out.”
If Hall told Keene where he buried her and they found the body, then
there would be no doubt about Hall’s guilt. This was to be Keene’s
objective in addition to obtaining a confession. “If you don’t get us
the location of that body,” Beaumont told him, “you don’t get released.
No body, no release.” Any confidence Keene felt about accomplishing
Beaumont’s crazy mission suddenly melted away. No body, no release? It
was one thing to hear Hall confess. It was quite another to get inside
his head and get him to reveal a burial place that he may have repressed
or even forgotten. It all seemed so impossible ― like capturing the
witch’s broomstick in The Wizard of Oz.
Keene would learn as much about his own inner demons as Hall’s—an
experience that would sear his soul far more than a lengthy sentence—and
help him emerge from prison a truly changed man. |
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