cell, but by then, the map and falcons, items jimmy believed could lead to tricia, were gone. what were you thinking telling larry hall you re out of here and dressing him down? people probably wouldn t understand the mounting pressure, that kettle is ready to boil over at any time, you know, and it felt good to unload on the guy. the problem as i see it, you ve unloaded on him, he knows you re against him, but nobody has that map. right. i am disappointed i didn t wait another day or two at least. i should have waited a few more days. i wish i could have done more for them, but i did all i could do. i feel in my being i did all i could do. meantime, the people who would benefit the most from a successful mission, tricia s parents, only learned about the secret operation ten years later in 2008 when the story came out in a playboy magazine article. the reitlers are thankful for jimmy s courage and corroborating details he said he
reitler? i had to slowly keep prodding, i didn t want him to think i was carrying on. he plotted the next move. days later, he thought the time was right. he tried that hometown newspaper ploy again. i said the newspapers say you killed this girl from the college over here. i says what happened there? jimmy couldn t be sure how hall would react. had he been too blunt, too direct? no. it was all clicking. according to jimmy, hall began to open up about tricia and said he drove his van right up to her that day he saw her outside school. he said he tried to kiss her and when he did, she started fighting very violently. he said she was a very strong girl and she fought stronger than anybody had ever fought before. did he admit it? he said he had killed her and he knew he had done it again, these are his words, that he knew he had done it again, and he said he went way out in the woods and buried her way out in the woods. hall gave a general location for tricia s body, near
that event. after ward, he staunchedly defended him as retaliator, not instigator. i became his new best friend and hero. jimmy could sense his heroics brought him closer to hall. he was ready to make a bold move. in the prison library, jimmy figured out a strategy to draw hall out on tricia reitler. i noticed he was reading his hometown newspaper. and that was really important eventually for me to crack into his psyche. even though the goal was tricia s body, jimmy decided to ask first about something already public knowledge. hall s conviction in the jessie roach case. jimmy fibbed his mother lived near wabash and read about jessie s case and other stories involving hall. she gets that newspaper from
fbi about it, right? i did. i went to the hotline i had for the fbi girl. i called. i got some type of voice recording, it was after hours. so jimmy left a message for his fbi contact to come get him, the map and the falcons. his freedom and the answers to tricia s parents prayers were now just hours away. i was elated. i felt i wrapped this up. you re expecting troops to come marching in. expecting troops to come marching in. didn t quite work that way. what he couldn t know was his fbi contact didn t get his voice mail, and his one inside contact, the chief psychiatrist, was on vacation. then you got full of yourself, didn t you. i did. i went back to my cell, was happy. 24 hours they said they would have me out of here, i got what they need, this was it. i went across to his cell there. impulsively, jimmy decided he
two co-eds there a week after tricia went missing. so in the summer of 1995, a month after convicting hall for jessie roach s murder, beaumont was leading a search for tricia. it was in those same indiana backwoods where hall had told indiana authorities he dreamt he killed and buried tricia. i wanted to feel like i did everything i could to see if we could find her body. but after two days searching in sweltering heat and humidity, tricia s body didn t turn up. we couldn t find anything. doesn t mean it wasn t there. then beaumont decided to try something completely different. i came up with the idea of putting somebody in the prison cell with him to see if we could get him to tell us what he did with tricia reitler. you wanted to plant a snitch. exactly. they didn t think you were crazy? most people did think we were crazy. i was able to convince them we should do it anyway. enter jimmy keene, the drug dealer beaumont had just convicted and sent to a low security