Anatomy of Murder - Death Pact

Episode Date: June 16, 2021

A pregnant woman disappears after a day of boating. The mystery remains unsolved for years until a strange phone call is received. Hoax or homicide?For episode information and photos, please visit https://anatomyofmurder.com/. Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

After being interrogated Tuesday for more than six hours, something finally said to me, look it's time to come clean, I've had enough of this. Now whatever happens to me happens to me, but I had to admit that I was there, I saw what I saw and I knew what I knew. This is a scar that I'm gonna live with for the rest of my life. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder. For today's case, we're joined by a former colleague of mine from my law enforcement days in South Florida, Phil Amabile, a veteran homicide detective who supervised what was a very busy unit back in the 80s and 90s. And as you'll learn, this is a case that has stayed with him for decades and one that will likely have you

asking how callous and cold-blooded someone could be. South Florida and the Fort Lauderdale area is known as the Venice of America because of all its waterways and canals. And many of these homes that are situated on canals or deep water access canals. And many of these homes that are situated on canals are deep water access canals, which means they enter out into the Atlantic Ocean. It is a beautiful city. It is a great place, also very well known for spring breakers. And we are talking about the heyday, really, of South Florida, the early 80s. And that is in part what drew Anita Lopez and her family there. Anita was a good Cuban girl.

She was a young woman in her 20s. She was also an aspiring model. They were immigrants from Cuba. They had come to this country about 10 years before. She lived at home, and she was working as a receptionist at a warehouse. And that is how she met her soon-to-be husband, Michael Keene. Michael Keene is a salesman and he travels around and he comes to her place of business. So he starts flirting with her. He owned a sign company and Anita worked for a vendor and within a few

months of dating, he popped the question. They were married a short time later and they would also learn very quickly that she was pregnant. She was excited about being pregnant. She was close with her family, her mother and father and her brother. This came out of the clear blue sky. They were distraught and beside themselves over this. Then in November 1981, Anita is now five months pregnant. Police get a disturbing 911 call. It was a call where I don't think anyone really was believing the story, but they were not not believing it because no one really knew.

The call is a person named Kenny Shapiro, and he tells police that his friend, Anita Lopez Keene, has disappeared. Responding to the 911 call, first deputies on scene found a despondent Michael Keene and Kenny Shapiro, one of his employees. He told deputies that he, Michael and Anita all spent the day on Michael's boat, which was still docked out back. Michael Keene comes back on his boat to his house, which was on one of these deep water access canals. He comes with his buddy, Ken Shapiro, and they discover the wife, Anita Keene, is not on on boat. They do a cursory search of the boat. When they can't find her, the decision is made to call 911 and report her missing. And just to set the visual a little bit about the type of boat we're talking about, it was a 21-foot cabin cruiser. And for,

you know, the non-nautical folks out there, it's pretty much exactly what you're picturing. It's a boat that has the deck above board and there's a small cabin underneath. But we're not talking like a yacht or anything that, you know, people could be in 10 different places and you wouldn't really know what was what. After hearing the explanation that they were out on the boat all day, that's when the wheels started turning and the Coast Guard became involved. After learning the boat had traveled 12 miles into the Atlantic Ocean and back, the Coast Guard launched several of its assets to begin the search. Talking about a Coast Guard helicopter and several of the Coast Guard's boats as part of what they call a water-based search.

You know, they always lean on two important factors in determining their grid for their search, if you will. Nailing down the timeline of when the person's last seen and the weather and current conditions. And I mean current in the nautical sense, meaning the direction of the water flowing at the time the person's missing and also the current at the time of the search because they could determine which way the current would take a body. They pulled out all the stops searching for a person who possibly fell overboard. You know, this is a 21-foot bay liner, which is a very small vessel, and standing on any part of its deck, you'd see someone go overboard.

In fact, if the ocean is like glass, like was described, even with the engine on, you'd likely hear a splash. So I am pretty suspicious at the moment. The detectives that were involved, both are what I would consider top detectives, and they suspected something was amiss. They had crime scene come out and take photographs of the boat at the time. And there's no evidence of foul play. There's no blood spatter, no sign of any struggle. So obviously deputies on scene have two people that were on the boat, Michael Keene and Kenny Shapiro. So once they separate them, they talk to Kenny Shapiro and they really want to get his story of what he knows, what he saw.

When was the last time he spoke to Anita to determine, really, is this a missing persons case or something else? Ken was doing all the talking, Michael being too distraught to talk. And so if you're already like tilting your head, like, wait a second, they're on the boat, but now they're back and they're saying that now she's missing. How did they not notice? The details of this case were very simple. We were enjoying a day. We had a great day. Anita says she's not feeling well.

She goes downstairs. Her being pregnant, her not feeling well, makes a lot of sense. She goes downstairs into a small cabin. They head back into port, which was behind their home. It's dark out. They start unloading, you know, the coolers, whatever they brought on boat that day. And they call for Anita and she's not there. You know, when you think about the initial possibilities, it's going to go one of multiple ways. And remember, nobody knows too much at this time. I mean, did she just on her own leave the boat? And did she

take off for some reason? Maybe there was some reason she didn't want to be around them. Maybe there was some argument or some discord that we just don't know about, at least not yet. Or is it that, you know, she, something happened when they were on the boat and these guys, the music's blaring and they're partying and they just don't notice? Or is it something much worse? Scott, where does your head go when you think about the various possibilities of what might have happened at this point? Their story really doesn't sound very realistic to me, but we have no evidence of the contrary. So you have to continue the search, but you also have to continue your investigation. Talking to them individually, does their stories match? Although thinking that they had all that time coming back 12 miles from the middle of the Atlantic back to his home, could they have time to put a story together?

I mean, I am super suspicious, there's no doubt about it. And that is really where this investigation actually stalled. You know, they spoke to Kenny Shapiro at length, They spoke to Michael Keene. But at the end, they just had a missing young woman. They did a pretty extensive search until they ended it, which was two days later, they called the search off. Really, the days just began to tick by and the pages of the calendar began to turn.

With the absence of any information, the case would remain open as a missing persons case until one day Phil Almobil would be notified by his supervisor the case was now assigned to him. I got involved in 1984. As a new homicide detective, I think I had a case under my belt. So the sergeant, he wanted us to get familiar with the folders, the way the cases are set up in a case file. The case was this case. People that were left reeling, besides the ones that called it in, the Kenny Shapiro, the husband Michael Keene, was Anita's family.

I would describe them as very nice, warm, loving people who are thrust into something that's really out of their wheelhouse. And now I'm coming into it three years later. They've been three years without their daughter and they've never really gotten any justice, but they didn't get any answer. So they don't know the answer. So they don't even know what their justice should be. They were left just, you know, relatively new to this country, really not understanding the system all that well, except they just knew that she was missing.

And to them, there couldn't be any reason except that something bad must have happened. They just want their daughter. That's all they want. You know, after grabbing the box of files and going through all the materials of the original interviews, going through the search materials that the Coast Guard provided to locate Anita Lopez Keene in the water, Phil Amabil was setting himself up to really dig into this case. And then, quickly, he got his first big break. It just so happened at the time, a insurance agent investigator contacted the sheriff's office to tell us that they received a phone call from an individual who had information on the case and could save the company a large sum of money. And it was quickly determined that Anita had a life insurance policy. Not one, but two. The insurance investigator told Detective Amabile she was contacted by a man who knew exactly what happened to Anita.

And she wasn't just missing. But he wanted a finder's fee of $25,000. So just to get a little bit more into what's going on here, a few things. So the insurance company is basically being offered information in exchange for money by this caller. If they would pay, he would tell them what happened. And so they think the incentive to the insurance company would be, well, hey, if you want to avoid the payout, it's giving me a lot of money, but it's a lot less that you're going to have to pay out. I mean, we all know that insurance companies don't easily write checks.

So you can imagine in a death investigation, they're going to go through everything to make sure that that check really deserves to be written. And they are certainly not going to pay out for this information. They were looking for direction as to what to do. And the next scenario is I'm on the phone with them. And let me tell you from my own experience, I know that a lot of these insurance investigators are former members of law enforcement. So they really know how to begin an investigation.

They also know how to end an investigation by reaching out to the right people who have the ability on the ground to determine if the facts are real. A decision is made that I'm going to go interview the caller. So I drive up to Orlando and I contact the Orange County Sheriff's Office. I get put in touch with a detective there who's going to assist me because I am out of my jurisdiction and I do want to have somebody with me with local knowledge. You know, this is common procedure when you leave the county to another county to affect an investigation, to take someone within their jurisdiction. You're leaving your jurisdiction to to affect an investigation, to take someone within their jurisdiction. You're leaving your jurisdiction to open up an investigation or to talk to somebody.

You want to have somebody with you who has a knowledge and has the ability to get on the radio and call for backup if you both think it's necessary. And not to mention, you don't have authority once you're out of your jurisdiction. So you really have all these moving parts, which make it such a great partnership with an investigating detective to now also have the benefit of local law enforcement. Now, as it turns out, here is a very big turn in this case. When Phil Amabile and his local backup arrived at the apartment to talk to this caller, they were quite surprised to really learn who he was. The caller was a guy by the name of Patrick Keene. And yes, it's the same last name as Michael Keene and his brother. We drive over to the house and I knock on the door and he's kind of surly at the time and flash my tin. Sheriff's office, Detective Amabile, I'm here to discuss Anita.

And I was able to work into the very first sentence that I said, I'm here on behalf of the insurance company. And I felt that was very, very important because it established the fact that I knew he had called. Phil Amabile is really using Patrick's greed to his advantage. Just think about what he's thinking at this point. He thinks that payday is about to hit for him. So he is more than happy to say whatever it is that he knows or says he knows at least about Anita's disappearance. Phil really needed to keep his eyes on the prize,

in his sights, and get this guy on the record. So we get to go into the house and he kind of looks at me and goes, so you got my money? I said, oh, hold on a second. Hold on a second. I said, the insurance company is not going to pay any money until I get to verify any information. You tell him, I said, any money they pay you is purely between you and I. I can't broker a deal, but they want to make sure you have the information. I knew the insurance company wasn't paying any money. They couldn't pay any money. They can't be party to a crime, but I needed to get him to tell me something. So he starts hemming and hawing. He tells me,

okay, look, I'll tell you what happened, but I'm not going on tape and I'm not going to testify to anything. I said, sure, sure. I said, don't worry about any of that. I said, that's not important. He starts telling me that he gets a phone call from his brother, and his brother basically tells him, you should have come in on it. Now you're not going to get anything. You should have been involved. And he says, what happened? He goes, I did it. Did what? Got rid of Anita. Killed Anita. Got the insurance money. I mean, to me, what comes to mind really is cold-blooded. I mean, let it sink in for a moment of what he's saying his own brother was planning on doing.

He goes on to tell me that all three of them were living together. Shapiro, Patrick, and Michael. They were all living together in Fort Lauderdale and they're looking for a score, you know, for money. And Michael Keene comes up with the plan to find a girl, the right girl, an unsuspecting girl whose family has no obvious means to court the girl, marry that girl, insure that girl for a sum of money, and subsequently kill that girl and collect the insurance money. Patrick declined to get involved. This is a plan before he ever even met Anita Lopez, soon to be Keene. I mean, it's almost like there was this

pact of death before this couple even ever met. I mean, that is pretty twisted, Anastasia. If what Patrick Keene is saying is true, then Kenny Shapiro is a potential accomplice, you know, and somebody that Detective Sergeant Amabile really needed to sit down with and find out whatever he could from him. Again, 1984 now, computers were in its infancy in law enforcement. I get the bright idea, well, let's run a driver's license check. You know, that'd be a good place to start. And lo and behold, I find he's living in Margate,

Florida. We go to the condo and it's a senior condominium. It was his grandparents who allowed him to stay there. Knock on the door. Lo and behold, he answers the door. He comes to the door, and he's dressed in a bathrobe. Now, you know, someone staying with a grandparent and a senior condominium, maybe it's just a life circumstance that someone found themselves in.

I mean, that could happen. Or are they someone that just, based on their own makeup, is always going to have that need to rely on others? Picture an unfunny George Costanza. I mean, that's the picture of this guy. I said, Ken Shapiro? He looks at me and goes, yes.

I said, I'm Detective Amabile. This is Detective Shep. We've reopened the Anita King case. The look on his face, his head fell through his body. There was a giant gulp. When it comes to talking to potential suspects, you've got to read their body language. And clearly, Phil Amabile knew right from the start with Kenny Shapiro what he was dealing with. So we go in, and he goes, well, what's this all about?

I have a shtick that I've always said. I said, Ken, Ken, Ken, I know you have a hundred questions for us. However, I can't answer them here. I said, so why don't you throw some clothes on? I said, why don't you come with us? We'll come to my office. We'll sit down in an office. We'll have coffee.

We could talk like gentlemen. So he hands and he haws, but the bottom line is he says, OK, I'll drive there. So he goes to get dressed. As Shapiro leaves the room, Phil casually looks around like any investigator should or would do. And then he notices something so telling about Shapiro. He had trapped a cockroach in a glass and he left it. Anybody else, you would kill the cockroach and clean it up. I'm sure there's a psychologist out there who can tell me what the meaning is. I just have, you know, detective 101 skills. And I was thinking, unmasculine, beta dog. What an interesting observation. You know, listen, Phil Amabile is one of the best of the best at what he does. It really shows you the

importance of building theories through effective observation. Here's a guy that to me, at least, is at least squeamish. And remember, he's investigating a homicide. So when I look at that, I'm saying, is this a guy who has the potential of actually killing another human being if he's too squeamish to even actually kill a bug? He gets in the car and he follows us and we get to the sheriff's office. So he goes in there and I bring him into the interview room. So I run into my sergeant and he goes, so what do you think? I said, give me a couple of minutes. I'll tell you everything.

Meaning I was going to go in there and this guy was going to fold like a cheap suit. Oh boy, was I wrong. Once Phil Amabile and his partner had the opportunity to talk with Kenny Shapiro, they were hoping to confirm what Patrick told them, that Michael Keene murdered his wife Anita and their unborn child, and the motive was to collect an uninsurance policy. But that would not be the story Shapiro offered up. He didn't give up anything. I'm going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Look, we know the truth. We know the story. I've spoken to Patrick. Now this is what happened.

This is what happened. This is what happened. All right, fast forward eight hours later. So I come walking out and Tony's there, my sergeant. And he goes, well, what do you think? I said, look, maybe he don't know. And Tony looked at me, he said, well, go get a cup of coffee. He says, you're saying all the right things. Give it one more try. I said, all right. You know, we've all seen on TV and in the movies how interrogators wear down a defendant until they break. I can tell you from personal experience, that is not how it works. You know, it's developing some sort of trust with your subject.

It's about reading his or her body language. And that's exactly what begins to churn here. I put my hand on his leg. I said, Ken, I don't in there. Physically, I'm very close to him. I put my hand on his leg. I said, Ken, I don't believe you. I just need you to tell me the truth. He looks at me. He exhales deeply. He hangs his head.

And he says, okay, okay, you're right. Just by letting it breathe and not rushing, not pushing the subject of his interview too much, he got that where he may not have if he had pushed and pushed and pushed. So he tells me the whole story, how this was a plan. Naturally, why did you go along with it? And Michael had promised him if he helped him, he would wipe out the debt, whatever he owed him. So knowing what we know now, Anastasia, how do you see the relationship between Kenny and Michael Keene?

What's your take on it? While these guys claim to be friends and certainly probably were in some aspect, it also seems like a very controlled relationship. To Michael Keene, Ken Shapiro was a employee, a roommate, and a partner in schemes. Willing or unwilling, he participated in almost all the schemes that Michael came up with. There was no questioning who the alpha was in that relationship. It was Michael Keene. He is someone that always owed something to Michael Keene, and very often that was money. He was kind of a quasi-employee of Michael Keenenes also. And after the marriage of Michael to Anita,

this guy, Kenny Shapiro, he actually moved in with them and he became a bit of a hindrance, if you will. You know, picture any relationship any of you have ever been in. When you're in that relationship, especially a new one, do you really want a third party with you all the time? But that's kind of what they had here. So it's this interesting dynamic

that seems to really play very well into what Kenny Shapiro is saying, if he's telling the truth. You know, Scott, when you think about Kenny Shapiro, what would his motive be in being involved in all this? Kenny Shapiro looked to Michael Keene as being someone who was successful. He owned his own business. He had a nice house on the water in Fort Lauderdale. And maybe his ticket to success for some reason. And, you know, Michael Keene would show Kenny some success. He'd lend him money. He even bought him a Cadillac at one time and really kept him on a short rope in case he wanted to use him in any capacity that he may need him. The plan was, whatever day was beautiful, he was going to let him know, I'll get her on the boat, we're going to leave the boat, we're going to go over to the marina.

They go in to get a bite to eat. By a chance meeting, Ken Shapiro would appear, and Ken Shapiro got invited to go out on the boat with them. Much to the dismay of Anita, who wanted to spend the day with her husband on the boat together. They go about 10 miles out. They're listening to the dolphin game on the radio. So it's a Sunday afternoon. And so there comes a point in time when both Anita and Michael are on the bow deck of the boat, the front of the boat. And in a split second, Michael pushes Anita overboard.

This is nothing less than sickening. You picture this young woman literally in the middle of the deep, dark sea, the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. And she literally can see the person who was supposed to love her and protect her clearly there to just watch her die. And I cannot think of many more things more cruel than that. Anita was afraid of the water. She did not swim. And he's watching her. She's flailing her arm. And here she is in the vast nothingness of the Atlantic Ocean, bobbing up and down and seeing your husband and probably figuring out he's not coming back and you can't catch your breath. And they circle her while she's bobbing in and out of the water,

trying to stay afloat until she goes under and doesn't resurface. You know, this is the part of the story which really makes me think about this case often now. I mean, a wife pregnant with his child pushed overboard and he watches her take her last breath. It's just incredible in a bad way. Just think about it. Anybody who's ever been in a body way. Just think about it. Anybody who's ever been in a body of water at any point, I don't care if you're a great swimmer, I don't care if you're a novice swimmer,

I don't care if you hate the water. I mean, hell on earth. I mean, it had to be somebody's worst nightmare. And I also think about Kenny Shapiro and whether he thought about even ever saving her. He answers me. I thought about jumping in myself. But if I had done that, Mike would have taken off on me. And then there'd be the two of us out there with no help. I didn't know what to do. I felt like I was really caught in the middle.

I don't know. I was totally frozen and unable to think. That's from his statement. But I also come to Michael Keehan. You know, often when murderers take a life, it is within an instant. It is with the stab of a knife or the firing of a gun. Here, she is in the water and he is literally circling around. And there is a sadisticness in that that I cannot get away from. And it really just says so much more about him and the level of homicide this truly was. They head back into port, which was Michael's house. And that's where they come up with the story. Once they got to the house is when Ken

called 911. And that was at Michael's direction. He said, no, you call. It'll be more believable coming from you because I'm going to be destroyed. And a couple of things here, because you may be wondering, well, OK, so she drowned in the ocean. Why didn't the Coast Guard find her body? Well, remember, they are literally out in the middle of the Atlantic. So one, we don't know if the coordinates were accurately given by Kenny Shapiro and Michael Keene when they first called it in. There's also currents, you know. So while often they do find people after they have drowned, that's not always the case.

So Phil Almobil is really building his case now and deciding how to utilize his witnesses. He has statements from Shapiro and Patrick Keene as well, but it's unclear how cooperative or uncooperative he will be in the prosecution. As Detective Amabile dug deeper into Patrick Keene, an interesting and incredible bit of intelligence came to light. Patrick Keene had an interesting criminal past. In the state of North Carolina, he was arrested for attempted murder of his wife for the insurance money. They were living in Florida at the time, and they were out on a motorcycle ride. And so when Patrick tried to kill her by smashing her head in with a rock, she saw Michael standing there. Again, it was pre-planned for Michael to be there.

Based on what we hear about this plot and collecting the insurance money, I mean, this couple had only been married a few months. Why put this plan into action so quickly? It wasn't supposed to happen for at least a year, but it got sped up because of her pregnancy, and he didn't want any kid around. So while there has not been a homicide actually declared at this point, it really is more of an administrative fix at this point, because now they take the various circumstances

and now they can say that while we don't have her body, we believe that Anita's been murdered, it is a homicide, and so that kind of moves them along that way. But there still are additional steps to go. Now, we got a statement from him. He's a co-defendant in a murder. We now have corroborating evidence from somebody who was there firsthand about a murder. I'm looking at risk. OK, now what the hell do we do? Do we lock him up? You know, you can't arrest somebody for something that some law hasn't been broken. So we said, all right, let's call the state attorney's office. So it's late at night, about 11 o'clock. We're told, OK, this is what we do.

Bring him to the state attorney's office tomorrow morning, and I'll take a statement from him, and I'll offer him use immunity. You know, Anastasia, this is a question I hear you're asked all the time, and I always find your answer equally compelling. We often call it king or queen for a day. It basically means that you bring someone in who says they have information. And while we have never spoken to them, we don't know if they're being accurate or honest at this point. We say, look, tell us what you have to say. We will not use anything you say again today for this one day against you

while we then go look at it. Again, the one thing we never say is that perjury can always be a crime, no matter what in there. But you come in, so this use immunity is really for the day while you talk about the specific crime, and then investigators and prosecutors need to go and see if they can corroborate what you say. Do we send him home?

Do we spend the night in the car out watching his place to make sure he doesn't leave and all that? Based on the conversations that I had with him and based on the fact that we had trust built in with each other, I told him we're going to send him home and Rich and myself are going to pick him up tomorrow morning at, you know, nine o'clock in the morning. So he leaves our office on his own accord. I probably didn't get

much sleep that night wondering when we get there in the morning, if he's going to be there or did I just make a major screw up decision? You know, many of you may be asking why not just hold him for the night or why not just keep your eyeballs on him to make sure he doesn't flee? You know, I think that's a valid question. Of course, it is risky. Like, you don't know if this guy's going to take off. But it also comes down to if this guy can't even make it for one night without changing and deciding to run the other way, well, then you're not going to have much of a case. Sergeant Phil Amabile has been right all along in this case, and he's got a sense of his case. He's got a hold of this case. So I'm not going to question his thinking of it. And as it turns out, it's exactly what he expected.

Lo and behold, we knock on the door and he's all ready for us. And I noticed a little change in his attitude. And I've seen this before, after someone gets something off their chest, they feel a little bit better. He gets in the car with us and we drive over to the state attorney's office, homicide division. He gives them the statement, sends them back out to us and say, okay, Ken's free to go. He knows he's going to stay in touch with us. And now with Kenny Shapiro's statement to the state attorney's office, Phil Almobile has a plan, and that plan is to find Michael Keene. We learned that Michael Keene now goes by the name of Michael Kingston,

and he lives in Orlando, Seminole County, which is just the county just above Orlando. They find out that he is living with another girlfriend, soon to be married, and he has another lackey, basically like Shapiro. And this girlfriend soon tells them that she, too, had recently taken out a life insurance policy with Michael Keehan as the beneficiary. The scenario is the same. If first you don't succeed, try, try again. He was putting into place another scam. And now the question is whether they have enough to arrest Michael Kean. And now what you really need to do is document all of that material and bring that to someone who makes the final decision, who is a judge or magistrate, to agree with your findings and put an arrest warrant together. The issue becomes, now there's people out there, you know, Patrick and now Ken Shapiro.

They know we're coming after Michael. So we don't know if Michael's going to get tipped off, if someone's going to break down and pick up the phone and call him. We're working against the clock. So now you've got to go find the judge to sign off on your warrant. And like all things I ever do in my life, nothing seems to be easy. The duty judge has already gone for the day. So I go all the way to his house. He reviews the warrant. He doesn't have the circuit court seal. He takes out a silver dollar from his pocket and he draws a circle using the silver dollar and he writes circuit seal on it and he signed. Oh, yeah, this is great. We're driving up to Seminole County. I'm going to present a warrant with a seal that's drawn on there and a judge's signature that you can't read. And they're supposed to believe me. I said, oh, well. I mean, I look at it as one of those funny real life moments that

we have. You know, it's not always exactly what you see in the movies. Shoot over to the Seminole County Sheriff's Office and we hook up with a detective and we find out where he's working. He's the CEO and president of a home renovation business. There's a young female receptionist at the front. And I said, I'm here for Michael Keene. She goes, he's in a meeting right now. I said, is that his office? She goes, yeah, but he's in a meeting. I said, thank you. And I just walked into the office. He was sitting behind a desk. There were two other people there. And I said, Michael Keene? And he said, yes. And he starts to stand up and I could see his face. And I said, I'm Detective Allenville, Broward County Sheriff's Office. I

have a warrant for your arrest for the murder of Anita Keene. And the next words out of Michael Keene's mouth was not what investigators were expecting. And it's like, well, what's this all about? So we start laying everything out to him and we tell him, look, Mike, it doesn't look good for you. And he asks us what the penalties are. In the state of Florida, first-degree murder is punishable by the electric chair. But, you know, there's also life imprisonment. So he makes a statement, well, I can't see any strategic reason to confess. You know, I love that word that he uses, strategic, and that really

sums this guy up to me. Everything he does is thought out and plotted and just that strategic. So he's already thinking and also saying out loud, by talking to you, could anything I say help me in any way? Think of the mindset of what he's thinking there. Self-preservation, right? Why would I cooperate if I'm facing something and my cooperation doesn't help me? On the ride back from Orlando to the low rise, we're discussing the case. You could see the wheels turning in his head of, okay, how am I going to get myself out of this? So he wants to know what Kenny told him. He wants to know what Patrick told him. You know, he's dying to find out what we know.

We're playing up to that. We know how great that's going to be. We're throwing him little, little tidbits every now and then just to keep him on the line. He's really trying to determine, I think Keene is, is how open Phil Amabile and his partner would be to talk about these other potential theories. And, you know, he knows that when he gets back

to the sheriff's office low-rise, he's going to have an opportunity to tell his story if he's willing to be as honest as possible as another case. When we arrived at the sheriff's office, the sheriff at the time had already announced the arrest before we got there. So as we pull up, there's a gaggle of reporters waiting. We don't do what's commonly known as a perp walk because I still got to talk to this guy. I got to get a confession out. But he looks over at the reporters and he sees all the cameras and the video cameras going off at the time and we're trying to get into a side door. And he goes, wow,

that all for me? It was kind of a cocky, is that for me? It was like, look how important I am. That to me, it really does fit into this portrayal of Michael Keen that we're hearing. This guy who really, I picture him with a swagger and thinking that he's got it all figured out and that life is going to go exactly the way that he plans it. And in a sick way, kind of relishing the attention right there. We put him in the office and we start talking to him again and we start going through all the questions and answers there comes a point in time when i bring in a tape recorder and i play a segment of shapiro's statement to me so he could hear the voice and he could hear that i'm not bluffing what i say so he hears it and he's shaking his head. He goes, that's not right.

That's not right. That's wrong. So he says, okay, let me tell you what really happened. So there was so much to unpack here because this story, Michael Keen's version of events, is so different than we've been hearing all along. So this is the first admission of anything from him, from I don't know what happened to Anita, to okay, let me tell you what really happened. He tells me almost the exact same story that Kenny Shapiro tells me.

Naturally, he has to put his own twist in it. He's painting Kenny in a bad light. Kenny was jealous of Vanita. We used to be good pals, and now I'm a married man, so my time is with Kenny. You know, he was jealous of the baby. You know, I was going to be a father. Now he's shifting the focus away from himself to Kenny Shapiro, who he already knows is cooperating with investigators. And Kenny kind of forced his way onto the boat. Oh, come on, it's a beautiful day. Let me go out with you and so forth and so on,

as opposed to Kenny saying it was prearranged. So they're out on the boat. They're about 20 miles out. He says the two of them are on the deck. He's hugging her. And all of a sudden, he feels a push from behind. And both he and Anita get into the water. And Kenny Shapiro is at the steer bridge of the boat, gives it the gas,

and speeds away. And he speeds away in a circle, leaving both of them in the water. Michael then gets back on the boat, and Kenny is frozen at the wheel. So he wrestles the steering column away from Kenny, and he goes back to look for Anita, and he can't find Anita. If it was an accident, why not get on the ship-to-shore radio and call for help? I'm going to go there. I mean, this guy is cold and calculated in even his retelling of this story. Okay, did Kenny push you both in the water on purpose or was it an accident? I don't know.

I think it was on purpose, but okay, was it done maliciously? It was plain because we said, well, it sounds like Kenny wanted to kill both of you. No, no, no, no. It was plain. It had to be an accident. Okay. But now look at the story. So you have this guy no, no, no. It was plain. It had to be an accident. Okay. But now look at the story. So you have this guy who has nothing to gain. He feels jealous, so he's going to murder her by throwing her in the water. The person who was the beneficiary on the life insurance policy is Michael Kean. And while many people have life insurance policies

with their spouse or loved ones, here's an interesting fact that twice during this time period, this three year time period, Michael Kean had tried to go to have Anita Lopez Kean officially declared dead so he could collect on that a policy that in no way benefits Kenny Shapiro. You know, he even made fun of his own brother who didn't come in on the plan. He's obviously willing to try to do one thing and one thing only, save himself. I said, okay, Michael, you've been very honest with me. I want to make sure I capture everything you told me and that I don't forget anything. So I said, I'd like to go on tape. He goes, Phil, Phil. And at this time, I'm Phil. I'm not Detective Amabile. I'm Phil. He's Mike. He goes, Phil, Phil. And at this time, I'm Phil. I'm not Detective Amabile. I'm Phil.

He's Mike. He says, Phil, Phil, look, I trust you, but I don't want to go on tape. I'm too tired. Every move that Phil Amabile made in this case was well thought out and just pure skill. And the one thing that he knew is that he wanted to, in some way, document this statement. So I said, all right, Mike. I said, if you're not going to go on tape, I said, I'm going to handwrite your statement. I said, I'm going to do it out here in front of you. And while I'm writing, I'm thinking, he's not going to sign this. Let me make some errors in this thing.

Let me make some blatant mistakes. And I'll have them corrected. And I'll give you a for instance, the question, what happened at the marina? He answers me, sat down, I had a few beers and Anita had her favorite drink. He says, screwdriver, that's all she ever drank. So I made an obvious error. So I wrote down Brandy Alexander and that may have been because that's what my mother drank that one or two times she ever had a drink in her entire life. So I made a for us to use it in court. It can be an oral statement, so it can just be the spoken word. It can be written by the detective, and then that's an oral statement. It can be written by the subject of the interview, or it can be recorded.

So any of them are good, but obviously each level of documentation by the person making the statement makes it all that much better and easier to have a jury hopefully believe it in the end. I get to the end of it. I said, here, Mike, why don't you read this and sign it again? So I'm too tired. So I start reading it to him. And he says, that's not right. That's not what I said. So I said, Mike, I'm like you. I'm tired, too. I threw the pad at him. I said, you fix it. And he took the pen and he started making the correction on his statement, his handwritten statement. By going through it and making those actual corrections, whether it's by crossouts or changing words or phrases, and then his initial there, he is acknowledging that this is the statement that he wanted to get out.

And that is pretty good evidence that these were his words when hopefully he kept this in front of a jury. So Michael Keene is arrested and booked into the Broward County Jail. And Phil Amabile figured that one thing may be likely to happen is that Michael Keene would reach out to Kenny Shapiro, call him from jail. So what they did was they set up a plan to have Kenny record his incoming calls on the day that Michael Keene was arrested. And on that day, a call did come in, and it was from Michael Keene. After being interrogated Tuesday for more than six hours, something finally said to me, look, it's time to come clean.

I've had enough of this. Now, whatever happens to me happens to me. But I had to admit that I was there. I saw what I saw and I knew what I knew. At any rate, Kenny, it was an accident. Yeah, it was an accident. It was such an accident that the day we got on the boat, we knew. No kidding.

We knew what was going to happen unless I was able to stop it, and I did. It was just an accident. Mike, we went three long years together under these circumstances. Why? Why? Because they happened. That's why. The dynamic between the two on the phone, I find to be extremely interesting. Well, you know what he never said in that entire call?

He never said if his version that he had given to the police was true. Kenny, you know that you're the one that killed my wife. So why am I sitting in this jail cell? There is no anger. There is no confrontation. If he's going to make that call and if it is accurate what he told the police, he would have chosen very different words. So what I hear, while not an admission, is a guy who is trying to get Kenny back under his thumb. But now Kenny Shapiro has gone from the beta to the alpha and he just wouldn't budge. So Michael Keen was brought to trial, and as no surprise to most of you out there, he was convicted. And in that case, he was sentenced to the death penalty. And the reason I say in that case

is because on some legal, whether it was a technicality or some issue that arose during the trial, that case was reversed and he had to be tried again. In fact, this case went to trial four different times. He was convicted at each trial of the first three. There was a reversal for various reasons. It was retried again.

But now let's move on to at the fourth trial, the dynamic very much changed in that courtroom because Michael Keon decided to act as his own attorney. That was pretty unique. You know, when you deal with all first degree murder cases, there's not too many cases where a defendant will defend themselves. The judge has to allow it. You know, there is this saying that some of you may have heard before that a person who is his or her own attorney has a fool for a client. And that, you know, I think it originated saying that if you weren't a real lawyer, you shouldn't be doing that. But I think it has a much broader meaning and actuality. And that is that you're so close to it that you shouldn't be acting as

your own counsel. But, you know, Michael Keen thinks that he knows better than everyone. And it was proof in just the way that he decided to act in his own defense. And the way that actually works in the courtroom, you still have to have a lawyer there. One is appointed to be there kind of as your counsel. They sometimes sit at the table with you. Sometimes a defendant doesn't even want that. And then they sit in the first row in the gallery. But they are there to guide you if necessary. But just picture this for the various people testifying during the trial. The Patrick Keene, the brother of Michael Keene, the Kenny Shapiro, the Detective Amabile, the parents and family of Anita Lopez Keene.

They are all being questioned by none other than the person accused of this heinous crime. I asked the brother about the family, you know, how his mom and all that, and he had told me that she never really recovered from Anita's death. You know, there's a residual effect, you know, just because the police get involved and get to make an arrest and have a successful prosecution, there's a big residual effect. You know, and as it turned out, Patrick Keene recanted his original statements to Phil Amabile and basically said he never said those things. Those were not his accurate statements. In the end, though, once again now in trial number four, Michael Keene was convicted.

This time, the sentence was ultimately life without the possibility of parole. At that time, the law allowed even someone sentenced to life to go before the parole board after 25 years. So in 2008, he went before the parole board and parole was denied. And he was told that he would need to serve at least 175 years. So he is not going to be eligible for parole again until 2159. So I think it's fair to say that the remainder of his days will be spent in prison. It is impossible to put in perspective how little Michael Keene felt for his wife and the life of his unborn child and what it was worth to him. He told

Kenny Shapiro that the murder would help him achieve his goal to retire by age 40, it goes back to a statement that I think of, which is, for the love of money is truly the root of all evils. And when I look back and think about what I learned about this case and this crime, I come down to why Anita was targeted and that she seemed to be targeted because she didn't come from a family

of especially large means and a family that wasn't very savvy in the system and that to him, that somehow made her less likely, perhaps, for investigators to look deeply into this case and how fortunate for Anita that he was very, very wrong. Tune in next Wednesday when we'll dissect another new case on Anatomy of Murder.

Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original, a Weinberger Media and Forseti Media production. Sumit David is Executive Producer.