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  In with the DEVIL

  In with the DEVIL

  A FALLEN HERO, A SERIAL KILLER, AND A DANGEROUS BARGAIN FOR REDEMPTION

  JAMES KEENE with HILLEL LEVIN

  St. Martin’s Press

  New York

  IN WITH THE DEVIL. Copyright © 2010 by James Keene with Hillel Levin. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Keene, James, 1963–

  In with the devil : a fallen hero, a serial killer, and a dangerous bargain for redemption / James Keene with Hillel Levin. —1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographic references.

  ISBN 978-0-312-55103-2

  1. Keene, James, 1963– 2. Hall, Larry Dewayne. 3. Serial murder investigation—United States—Case studies. 4. Serial murderers—United States—Case studies. 5. Informers—United States—Case studies. I. Levin, Hillel. II. Title.

  HV6529.K44 2010

  364.152'32092—dc22

  2010021661

  First Edition: September 2010

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Authors’ Note

  This is a true story, though some names have been changed.

  Dedicated in loving memory to my Dad,

  JAMES KEENE, SR.,

  for always standing by my side no matter what.

  For believing I could move mountains.

  In loving memory of Robert “Robbie” Varvel

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction: The Victims’ Pageant

  1. Fathers & Sons

  2. On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away

  3. Lost in the System

  4. Life in the Cemetery

  5. Breakfast with Baby Killers

  6. “I can’t see the faces, but I can hear the screams”

  7. America’s Most Wanted

  8. Innocence

  9. The Falcon’s Tale

  10. Closure

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgments

  This book is due to the many people who, through their loyalty and contributions to my life, have helped make it what it is today.

  I would like to thank all of the following, with a special thanks to Timothy “Timmy” Keene, my brother and partner in life through the good and the bad. My mother, Lynn, of whom I am very proud for overcoming all her setbacks and obstacles in her life and for standing by me in my darkest time. My sister, Terri Keene, for all the help and support she gave me throughout my whole ordeal. My grandmother, for her love and support throughout my life. My niece Sarina Keene.

  Jeffrey Steinbeck, my attorney and personal friend, who handled, set up, and negotiated the arrangements for the situation described in this book. Lawrence Beaumont, the assistant U.S. attorney who handled my case, made me this incredible offer for redemption, and now is a close personal friend. Edward Eckhaus, for introducing Hillel and me. Kathy Psikos, for all her loyalty and support through everything. Brenda Kelleher, for always being there for me. Film producer and my close personal friend Alexandra Milchan, for whom I have immense respect and owe gratitude for believing in me and all I could be. Scott Lambert, for all his moral support. Oscar-winning producer Graham King, who saw the great potential in my story and is now making it into a Hollywood motion picture. Nat Sobel, my literary agent, of Sobel Weber and Associates, for so passionately believing in my story. Joel Gotler of Intellectual Property Group, who I have great respect for and who was a very integral part of my story becoming a book and movie. Rob Wilson, Lee Froehlich, the editors at Playboy, and the entire Playboy organization for seeing this as a great story, and for all the creative design and editing they did to present this story in their magazine. Sally Richardson, president and publisher; John Murphy, vice president and director of publicity; Charlie Spicer, executive editor; Yaniv Soha, associate editor; Allison Caplin, assistant editor; and the entire St. Martin’s Press staff for all their creative design and additional feedback in the process of creating my book. Paul Desmarteau, Kevin Corrigan, Mark Capriotti, Steve Themer, Scott Themer, Carol Sperry, Michael Keegan, Robbie Wilson, Johnny Olshefski, and Jimmy Olshefski. The best friends a guy could ever ask for.

  Last, but not least, Hillel Levin, for all of his superior research and expert developmental skills in making my book possible. I have great admiration for Hillel and immense respect for his skill as well as his character.

  —James Keene

  This book was the result of generous contributions from dozens of people to whom I am most grateful. I offer my sincere thanks to each of the following:

  First and foremost to Jimmy Keene, who brought me his amazing story and was willing to share some painful memories in getting it told; Ed Eckhaus and Jeffrey Steinback for introducing us; my literary agent Nat Sobel of Sobel Weber Associates, who instantly saw the potential of Jimmy’s story for a book and for Hollywood; Joel Gotler of Intellectual Property Group who got us the best possible audience with film makers, and to producers Graham King and Alexandra Milchan, who responded so enthusiastically; Lee Froehlich and the editors at Playboy who provided the first platform for Jimmy’s story, which itself led to other major developments for our book; St. Martin’s executive editor Charlie Spicer for his patience and critical assistance with the manuscript, and to the assistant editor, Yaniv Soha, who also gave me valuable feedback and suggestions; Donna and Garry Reitler for their incredible kindness to me and for their willingness to reopen the darkest chapter of their lives; Gary Miller for his time and the guided tour of Georgetown; Lawrence Beaumont for setting Jimmy’s mission in motion; court reporter Toni Judd for her help in tracking down transcripts; the Rauh family for their introduction to Wabash and, in particular, to Ron Woodward, the town historian, who provided indispensible help with local history; former Iron Brigade reenactor Micheal Thompson for his memories and assistance in finding photographs, court records and old newspaper articles; former Wabash City policemen Ron Smith, Jeff Whitmer, and Phil Amones; the childhood friends of the Hall twins, Ron Osborne and Ross Davis; the excellent and thorough reference librarians at the Marion Public Library and the Springfield-Greene County Library; Randy Greer for his book, Echoes of Mercy, which provided me with important background on the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners from the perspective of its guards; criminologist Steven Egger for his writing on serial murder and reference to other research in the field; Marc Winkelman, Marc Brown, Wendover Brown, Mike Brown, and my coworkers at Calendars.com who helped me make the transition from business executive to full-time writer; Mark Coe and Coe-Truman Technologies for the technical help in designing and supporting the Web site InWithTheDevil.com; my friend artist Tony Fitzpatrick for the inspiration, each day, to get behind the mule and plow; my brothers Jay, Jonathan, and Wayne, for their constant support and encouragement; and finally, to my most important contributor, my wife, Mary Jo, who helps make everything possible, and to my sons Adam (always my best reader), Aaron, and Gabe, who all manage to put up with me.

  —Hillel Levin

  INTRODUCTION

  The Victims’ Pageant

  In life, people can take a few wrong turns that destroy them. I’m one of those people. But I was given a second chance—not only to save myself but to redeem society for the wrong choices I made.

  If you had shown up in my hometown of Kankakee, Illinois, and asked about me in the early nineties, most people would have told you that Jimmy Keene could do no wrong. I was considered to be some golden child with a handsome, heroic father, who had been both a police officer and a firefighter, and a beautiful mother, who h
ad her own popular restaurant. In high school I lettered in three sports and was the star running back when our football team went all the way to the state championship game. The caption for an article about one victory read, “Keene in control.” As far as everyone was concerned, I was just as successful when I got out of college. After my father retired from the fire department, we ran a bunch of businesses together, ranging from trucking and construction to frozen food. Besides the house I built for myself in Kankakee, I had a couple of others in Chicago, including one in the ritzy area they call the Gold Coast. Wherever I stayed, the latest Corvette was always in the driveway, with a crotch rocket and a Harley in the garage and a hot girl in the bedroom.

  But all my good fortune was never as good as it seemed. My parents may have looked great together, but actually they never got along well, and their divorce, when I was eleven, put an end to my happy childhood. While I was in high school, they struggled with their finances, too, more than anyone else knew, and it was rough keeping up with the fast crowd I was hanging with. But back then I discovered a way to put more money in my pocket than the richest kids had—selling drugs. I was kind of a natural for it with the charm I inherited from my parents, and the fearlessness that I felt from my experience in sports and martial arts. Instead of going to a big-name university where I could play football, I went to a community college in a suburb of Chicago where I could keep expanding my business. I stopped going to class after two years so I could deal full-time. I had all the cash you could ever want—to buy stupid stuff, but also to help my dad when he got into financial trouble. He never wanted to know where all my money was coming from, but the businesses we started together were also a way for me to earn a legitimate income. Only those businesses never worked out the way we hoped. In fact, they lost money, which put me back on my dealer treadmill, running that much harder to stay in place—until the Feds came “knocking” in 1996. Along with my front door, they shattered every dream I ever had, and every dream my dad had, too.

  I took a plea, not knowing I would get a sentence of ten years to life in return. After ten months I had just started to settle down to do my time in a Michigan federal prison when I got yanked back to Illinois again. Now my prosecutor was ready to make me an offer. It was strange beyond belief and it would change my life more than any prison sentence.

  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. The jail dated back to the nineteenth century, but more recent renovations were practically a monument to indifference, grafting two mismatched brick buildings to the original limestone structure with as much thought to design as a pile of toddler’s blocks. On the inside, the hodgepodge design continued through a warren of cramped, oddly shaped cells that stank of urine and body odor. 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. After his arrest, some narcotics detectives even asked him to give up damaging information about his father—also named James Keene and known as Big Jim—a popular former ranking officer in the Kankakee police and fire departments who had influential friends in the highest reaches of state and local government. “They wanted me to cooperate in the worst way,” Jimmy says, “but I always refused to testify against anyone in court, and I wasn’t going to start, no matter how many years they kept me locked up.”

  For the meeting with the prosecutor, a sheriff’s deputy put Keene in handcuffs and shackles, 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 his 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 other pictures were of smiling, attractive young women. They could have come from high school yearbooks. The file also included terse police reports from Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin; even states as far away as Utah. Some of the teens had been found dead and, like the girl in the cornfield, with signs of strangulation. Others were still missing.

  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, but his cherubic face—framed by slick strands of hair, a trimmed mustache, and bushy muttonchop sideburns—could have been snapped a century earlier. His strangely placid eyes stared off into the distance as though stuck in an interminable pose.

  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.”

  Hall’s bizarre grooming was a key element that tied him to many of his suspected victims. Their abductions coincided with “reenactments” at nearby historic battlefields. A dedicated Civil War buff, Hall traveled throughout the country to portray a Union foot soldier and even appeared as a period extra in two films. His muttonchops, emulating those of a Union general, were intended to make his face look as authentic as his uniform and rifle.

  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.

  Still stunned, Jimmy stared at the photos of the girls and listened to Beaumont talk about Hall, barely absorbing the details. Finally he blurted out, “What does this have to do with me?”

  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 previously been publicized, 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.

  Jimmy was still confused. Why did the prosecutor want him to go undercover? “Why don’t you take some FBI guy and send him in?” he asked.

  “Hall would smell him a mile away,” Beaumont replied. “He’d be too polished, and Hall would sense that and clam right up. But you’re perfect. You can mix with anyone—from the street level to the board level.” As the prosecutor described Jimmy’s qualifications for the job, Keene realized that during all the years that they had tried to put him away, Beaumont and the narcotics squads had observed Keene’s social skills with grudging admiration. He says, “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.”