his sentence. and at first the prosecutor was willing to negotiate. initially, we tried to flip him to see if he would give us other drug dealers at the time. and i think he refused so our reaction was to make sure he gets the maximum penalty. beaumont got his way, and keene got ten years. it knocked the life out of him and broke his father s heart. any hopes and dreams he had had for me at that point in life were gone. he was crushed. i mean, he was very crushed. jimmy keene couldn t imagine a way out nor guess that a man he had never met might some day provide him one. november, 1994, wabash, indiana. it had been two weeks since larry hall recoiled from a photo of jessica roach. and investigator gary miller had
careful. we don t want you to approach him for at least six months because he is a very cagey individual. if he senses one thing wrong he goes into his shell like a turtle and you will never get him back out once he is in. but keene didn t have time to wait. he needed to get home to his ailing father. so hours after becoming a springfield inmate, he spotted larry hall and made his first move. i made it a point for us to bump shoulders together, and as we gently bumped shoulders, i said excuse me, i m new here, you wouldn t happen to know where the library is, would you? hall offered to show him the way. and i slapped his shoulder, i said thanks a lot, i appreciate that from a cool guy like you. keene watched his every move from his cell across the hall. and i walked up and said hey, i m here, you in this area right here? he said yeah, i m right there, i
credit. sitting in his prison cell, jimmy keene desperately hoped he had done enough. are they going to be fair and give me what is justifiably right on this, or are they just going to say here is six months? it was a crap shoot. without a location for reitler s body, beaumont had a decision to make. i made him take a polygraph test just to verify what he was telling us, was it true, and he passed. and he did make a legitimate effort to do what we sent him down there to do. so beaumont made a plea to the judge to let him become a free man. and keene returned home to his aging father. what did you feel like when you were finally released? i was happy as could be. it was a very bizarre roller coaster i went on. it was redemption at its best. keene had five more good years to be with his father
body, no early release. keene would have to serve the rest of his ten-year sentence. but beaumont believed keene could do it. he is smart, he is articul e articulate. he is not afraid and i knew he wanted to get out. for keene, it was a chance to redeem himself and restore his family name. and, from author hillel levin, to get his family name back. this was a way for him to do good, to take this bad thing he had done and to somehow turn it inside out and to make it something that would solve a crime. but it wouldn t be easy. fair to say he was risking his life. he could have been killed? it was dangerous, absolutely. it was highly risky. these people in those type of places have nothing better to do than to try to hurt you and kill you, too. keene was unsure. but a phone call home put his doubts to rest. keene s stepmother said his father had suffered a stroke.
road map i wanted to follow to try to figure out what happened to tricia reitler. tricia would have left this supermarket parking lot walking, just a couple of blocks back to campus. somewhere along this road hall told keene he got tricia into his van. when she fought off his advances he said he choked her to keep her quiet. hall told keene he blacked out. when he woke up tricia was naked and lifeless. days after her disappearance, investigators found her blood-soaked clothes here. just one block from the supermarket. hall s own notes indicate what might have happened next. exactly a week after tricia s disappearance hall wrote, cut out stain carpet.