Dateline NBC - The Inside Man

Episode Date: August 26, 2020

In this Dateline classic, Jimmy Keene, a popular, superstar high school athlete, 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. Lester Holt reports. Originally aired on NBC on September 14, 2012.

I go, what are these things anyway? He says, they're these little falcons. And he goes, they watch over the dead, Jimmy. He goes, they do. What if someone asked you to risk your life? What if I get shanked? What if I get killed? To go undercover into one of the country's

most dangerous prisons. Once they stepped out the door, I was on my own. To help catch a killer. She had such a zest for life. Young girls were being murdered. I can't imagine sending my daughter off to school and never seeing her again. And investigators needed help to get a confession.

If anybody could pull it off, he would probably be the one to be able to pull it off. If it worked, he could win his freedom. If it didn't, he could lose his life. They had your back. They had my back. At least you thought. That's what I thought.

The Inside Man. Two enemies who didn't trust each other faced off across a table. One of them, in handcuffs, was a clever con named Jimmy Keene. The other, a hard-charging prosecutor. In court, he called me the John Gotti of Kinkakee. The prisoner was worried sick. The prosecutor, who had just convicted Keene and put him behind bars suddenly wanted to talk. A top secret meeting,

no less. What more could he do to Jimmy? He was the last person I expected to hear from. He was my biggest fear. But Keene's fears went off the charts when the prosecutor, Larry Beaumont, slid an accordion file in his direction. On top was a grisly photo of a dead girl. And I flipped to the next page, and here's another young, dead, mutilated girl. And I'm thinking, whoa, wait a second. He's probably thinking at this point that you're about to charge him with something else. Yeah, because, you know, I mean, it's been pretty rough on him in the initial prosecution. Jimmy was in the dark.

He had no idea of the crazy scheme Beaumont had in mind. He says, Jimmy, he says, listen, he goes, this is something that we have another person on. He has killed many, many young women. And I personally think you're the one that can help us with this. This turned out to be an investigation to try and catch a suspected serial killer. Beaumont, an outside-the-box thinker, believed this convict, Jimmy Keene, was the one who could somehow crack the case, taking on a unique and deadly mission. I realized how serious it was, and I also realized the danger of it. But what he couldn't know was how such a daring mission would change his world and the person he was forever.

If this all seems fodder for a Hollywood movie, Brad Pitt would agree. The megastar who was Benjamin Button, then Moneyball's Billy Bean, was interested in playing none other than Jimmy Keen. Brad Pitt likes the fact that this guy, Jimmy Keene, risked his life to try and find what he could find. Clearly, this guy is one of a kind, charismatic, conceited, courageous, and complicated. From an early age, he had the personality, charm,

and cockiness that made him dream that a Hollywood star might one day want to play him in the movies. His first big brush with fame came on the football field. I heard they called you the assassin in football. That was a good thing, I take it. Yes. I was taught by my dad at a young age. He said, son, if you don't hit that guy first, he's going to hit you and hurt you first. A superstar athlete and Mr. Popularity in high school, Jimmy seemed to have it all as a big fish in the river city of Kankakee, Illinois, a blue-collar town south of Chicago. I was most valuable player. I was captain of the team every year that I played. Jimmy grew up in the shadow of his father, Big Jim, a giant of a man who was a cop, fireman, and hero to his son.

He was my best friend. He was my backbone in pretty much everything I did. But all of Keene's grand potential would be put in peril by a terrible choice he made. As a teenager, he began selling drugs. He started small, peddling bags of marijuana here in this Kankakee Park. Then he expanded to cocaine, and at the tender age of 17, he moved to Chicago, where the business and profits exploded. He was now a big fish in a bigger pond,

Lake Michigan to be exact. He was his own in crowd, fast cars, faster women, and souped up living. All the hot spots, all the big nightclubs, all the owners I was in tight with, I would come in there and have carte blanche in every place that I went to. Were you feeling invincible? Yeah, there was a certain point where I would say there was an invincible feeling. Did your pop know what you were doing? Did he suspect? He didn't suspect it until much, much later. It would be a rude awakening for both his dad and Jimmy that day in 1996 when Jimmy was just relaxing at one of his Chicago homes. All of a sudden, kaboom, the whole door just blew off the hinges

and came flying into the house. And all of these DEA, FBI, and locals all came in in single file line with their automatic weapons, pointed at me, freeze, get on the ground, get on the ground. He had been caught in a drug sting, spearheaded by that hard-nosed federal prosecutor, Larry Beaumont. We scooped him up in an operation that I ran. We call it Operation Snowplow. And in court, Beaumont showed Keene no mercy. He was coming at you on all fours, though, wasn't he?

Oh, yeah. He was a bulldog. Jimmy was convicted and slapped with a 10-year sentence. It was a pretty stiff sentence, and I knew he didn't expect to get 10 years in that case. Your father was in the courtroom. Right. I knew I'd let him down, and probably one of the biggest ways you can let somebody down. Keene's future was bleak. He faced 10 years away from his glamorous life, the fast women, the fancy cars, the big bucks. But in 1998, just when all hope seemed lost, his old nemesis, Beaumont, came to him with an offer of freedom

attached to that accordion file he'd slid across the table. In return, Keene would have to agree to risk everything and become an undercover informant in one of the roughest prisons in the country, the Maximum Security Lockup in Springfield, Missouri. It was a psychiatric prison with both hardcore killers and the criminally insane. These people all have life sentences. They're all in there in their crazy loons, and they have nothing better to do but to try to hurt you or kill you just for some fun. If he accepted Beaumont's offer, Keen's target would be the suspected serial killer, a mysterious man in a van.

Coming up, every picture tells a story. When I put the picture down, he flinched, raised his arm up, and refused to look at the picture. When The Inside Man continues. Several years before Jimmy Keen's arrest and conviction, his drug business was booming, and his personal life, as he tells it, was nonstop fun and games.

There were a lot of hot clubs here in the 90s. This was a place where you were doing business as well. I lived, worked, and played right here, yes. And it was a good time. Back then, he had no idea about the danger lurking 150 miles south and a lifestyle away that would change his life forever. Rural, tranquil Georgetown, Illinois was where Terry Roach and her husband, Lauren, were raising their 15-year-old daughter, Jessie, and two other children, far removed from big city crime. Everybody knew who everybody was,

so they were more conscious of what was going on usually. You could count on somebody to get after your kids if they needed it. In 1993, Jessie was a high school sophomore devoted to home and family. Jessie was really very much of a homebody, so one bike ride up the road and back, she was done, and then she would be watching Gone with the Wind. One Monday in September, Jessie went out for a bike ride. But just minutes later, her sister noticed Jessie's beloved bike down on its side in the middle of the road. Not on the side of the road, middle of the road. Yeah. She would put the kickstand down and stood the bicycle up.

She would never lay the bicycle down. And I immediately went down there and there was the bicycle. And it's like, I knew something was wrong. Deputy Sheriff Gary Miller was dispatched to the scene. The more we learned about the family and the girl's background, we just didn't feel that she was staying away by choice. The haunting image of a bike tipped over and abandoned terrified all the investigators and, of course, Jesse's family. I mean, you never lose the hope for him not to come walking in.

You know, you still hope that. I mean, we knew she was not just going to walk away. After six weeks, Jesse's parents' worst fears were realized Her body, beaten and sexually violated, was discovered in a cornfield It can never be easy telling a parent that their child is dead No, it wasn't But at least we were able to tell them, this is her, she's gone We were able to erase all doubts

Gary Miller had a murder case to solve, and it was now a federal case involving prosecutor Larry Beaumont as well, since Jesse's body actually had been found across the Illinois state line. For the next year, Miller did lots of legwork, but to no avail. Every day you get up, are you thinking about this case? Oh, every day. What have I missed? Exactly. I know this case really shook him from the beginning,

and he would check any and all leads that would involve young girls and kind of run them down. Then, in late 1994, Miller's persistence finally paid off. A man in a van had been reported chasing two teenage girls in Jesse's hometown of Georgetown. Miller traced the van to a man named Larry Hall from Wabash, Indiana, a three-hour drive from Georgetown. Is your heartbeat starting to pick up a little bit now? Oh, yeah. You know, I'm thinking this has got to be checked out. Miller learned that Hall was a gung-ho Civil War reenactor, a pretend Union soldier who traveled the Midwest to fight fantasy

battles. Miller immediately drove to Wabash to interview Hall, who wasn't saying much. So Miller showed him a photo of Jesse Roach. When I put the picture down, he flinched, raised his arm up and turned in his chair and refused to look at the picture. Convinced Larry Hall was hiding something, Miller became obsessed with making a case against him. Days later, back in Illinois, Miller turned up a huge lead. He found witnesses who vividly remembered Hall from a Revolutionary War reenactment in the Georgetown area the very weekend before Jesse was abducted. To them, Paul stood out for his bushy mutton chop sideburns, but also for playing a soldier who was fighting the wrong war. He was wearing a Civil War

uniform and he had a Civil War hat. At a Revolutionary War reenactment. Exactly. Armed with this new information, Deputy Sheriff Miller returned to Wabash for a second crack at Hall. This time, he pressed his suspect harder, stressing that Hall's fellow reenactors had seen him near Georgetown. He came along to the point where he said, well, you know, I go to so many reenactments, I could have been there and just, you know, I just don't remember because I go to

a lot of them. He's given a little more ground. Right, yeah. Miller seized the opening and kept at it. Finally, he said, Hall came clean and confessed that he abducted, sexually violated, and strangled Jesse Roach to death. How much detail did he give you about the killing of Jessica Roach? Very good detail. What he actually did and what took place. Not only that, Miller says Larry Hall confessed to other killings, including a co-ed from Indiana Wesleyan University in nearby Marion, Indiana, named Tricia Reitler.

He did say he was involved in Reitler. Deputy Sheriff Miller didn't know much about Tricia, so he called on the local Indiana police who had been handling that case. But when Marion detective J.K. and other Indiana cops arrived, Hall was suddenly telling a much different story. He denied confessing to any killing, including Jesse's and Trisha's. What's more, he claimed it was all a misunderstanding

about disturbing dreams he had. He takes us out to a location where in my dreams I strangled her here and left her lay here. We searched the woods, we searched the area and never really found anything. The Indiana cops who were familiar with Hall were not at all surprised by his actions. Some of them, like J.K., thought Hall might be a wannabe, a pretender who gets his kicks from confessing to crimes he didn't commit.

Is it possible he's simply obsessed with these cases but not involved? There's no doubt in my mind that he does follow these cases, that he does read and is attracted to cases all over the country. So the question does come, is he a wannabe? Deputy Sheriff Miller and Prosecutor Beaumont, however, felt certain they had a real killer on their hands, a serial killer with a unique M.O. He would drive cross-country to reenactments where he'd play fantasy soldier,

then prey on young women and kill for real. The FBI started discovering girls that were in fact missing at these various areas at the time Larry Hall would have been there. But the only case for which prosecutors had sufficient evidence was Jesse Roach's. Larry Hall was arrested in connection with her death, even though he denied making that confession to Miller. Hall went on trial in 1995. As a prosecutor, what's the best card you're holding?

We had his statement, his confession, said he did it. Beaumont called Deputy Sheriff Miller to the stand to testify that Hall had indeed admitted that he abducted and killed Jessie after he spotted her with her bicycle. She was walking her bike at that point. Miller testified that in his confession, Hall gave him a detail that only the killer would know, that Jessie was not riding her bike, but walking it, a safety precaution the Rochies insisted she follow when she was on their narrow road. That was never in the press, that she was walking her bike that day. Right.

When you heard that, did that give more credence to the story? Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. That just sealed it for me. I knew. I knew that he was the one. A jury unanimously agreed. It took just three hours to convict Larry Hall. But Prosecutor Beaumont believed this was just the tip of the iceberg. He felt certain Hall was a serial killer, and now he had to find a way to prove it. So he began investigating Tricia Reitler's abduction, a case that wasn't his for a family he didn't even know. I can't imagine sending my daughter off to school and never seeing her again.

And he came up with an outside-the-box scheme to get home, which would risk the life of that charismatic convict he had just put away for dealing drugs, Jimmy Keene. What happens when I've got to deal with all these crazy killers and stuff? You know, what if I get shanked? What if I get killed? I mean, am I going to survive this? Coming up, a get-out-of-jail-free card with a price. They had your back.

They had my back. At least you thought. That's what I thought. When Dateline continues. People typically don't admit murders, sexual assaults and murders to police officers unless in fact they probably have done it. So it was clear we felt he was responsible for the Trisha Reitler disappearance. She had such a zest for life and she'd walk in the room and everybody knew she was there. Trisha Reitler, a 19 year old psych major at Indiana Wesleyan University was

on her way to becoming a family counselor. Her goal was to be able to put families back together again. Then, in March 1993, Donna and Gary Reitler received that late-night phone call every parent dreads. A cop from Marion, Indiana was on the line. He says, do you know where Trisha is? In my heart, you know, I knew that something was drastically wrong. Tricia had walked to an off-campus supermarket and never returned to her dorm. Her parents are still waiting. You purchased a cemetery plot? Yes.

No headstone? No, not until we find her. And we have no answers. And somebody out there, that's what eats at me. Somebody out there has that answer for us. Tricia Reitler wasn't even Prosecutor Beaumont's case, but he was deeply moved by her parents. That was always a horrible crime to me.

I mean, I knew about the facts of the case, and I knew about the family. I never met them, but I read all the newspaper articles and the accounts of them, you know, asking for help. Beaumont felt certain that suspected serial killer Larry Hall was responsible. Not only did Hall live 25 minutes from Indiana Wesleyan, he'd been identified chasing two co-eds there just a week after Tricia went missing. So in the summer of 1995, a month after convicting Hall for Jesse 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, Trisha'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 can get him to tell us what he did with Trisha Reiler. They all think you were crazy. Most people did think I was crazy, yeah. But I was able to convince them that we should do it anyway. Enter Jimmy Keene, the drug dealer Beaumont had just convicted and sent to a low security prison.

Why did he stick out in your mind? Because I knew he was kind of a con man. He was smart. I knew if anybody could pull it off, he would probably be the one to be able to pull it off. He says, you've been trained in martial arts. He goes, you can go into a dangerous environment where a lot of people can't. You can maintain and protect yourself in an environment like that. In return, Beaumont offered Jimmy freedom. But first, Jimmy would have to exact more than a confession. I told him, unless we found the body, he would get no credit. No body, you'd get nothing. Jimmy was skeptical. He was a drug dealer, not a criminal profiler.

And he knew this was a mission impossible. He said no. But then, fate intervened. Jimmy's dad suffered a stroke. Weeks later, frail and sickly, he came to visit Jimmy. My dad was in a wheelchair. Now, this is Big Jim, the guy that had been Superman to me my whole entire life. We cried through the window to each other, and we talked for a while, and he didn't even know about the offer. Nobody knew

about it. Jimmy now realized that he had a one-time only opportunity to fix the mess he'd made for himself and get out while his dad was still alive. As soon as we were done with the visit, I called my lawyer. I said, tell Beaumont I'm going to take him up on his offer. The mission was on. So on August 3rd, 1998, federal marshals escorted Jimmy into the psychiatric prison. Once they stepped out the door, I was on my own. Jimmy's cover story was that he was a convicted weapons runner whose 40-year sentence pushed him over the edge and landed him in the psych prison. A psych prison

filled with killers. His one inside contact, the chief psychiatrist, couldn't protect him. Nor could his outside lifeline, a female FBI agent who visited as his girlfriend to monitor his progress. I did have a hotline to her too, so if I got caught in a dangerous situation, I could get a hold of her. And the deal was they'd have me out of there in 24 hours. They had your back. They had my back. At least you thought. That's what I thought. When Keene's mission began, it was all about him, his shot at freedom. He had few feelings, if any, about Tricia Reitler or her family. All he wanted was to get in and out with Tricia's location and as fast as possible. Day one, breakfast in the mess hall. Jimmy zeroed in

on Larry Hall. I was waiting with my tray and I look over and there he is 20-25 feet away from me sitting there all by himself. It felt like a magnet was compelling me to come to him and finally I bumped shoulders with him on purpose. Jimmy explained he was a brand new inmate needing directions to the library. Hall obliged. I kind of slapped him on the shoulder. I said, thanks a lot. I said, I appreciate that from a cool guy like you. After that, they occasionally talked. But the next step came when Jimmy was invited to join Hall's breakfast club. Which in the prison system, it's a big thing of who you're invited to have your breakfast with. Keene thought he was making progress.

But then prison politics got in the way. I left out of the child hall one morning and a few really big muscular guys came up to me and they said, hey, the old man wants to talk to you right now. Right now he wants to talk to you. The old man was celebrity mafioso Vincent the Chin Gigante, also known as the Oddfather, who used to wander around

New York City in his bathrobe pretending to be nuts. He goes, hey boy, what's wrong with you? What's wrong with you? What are you hanging around all them baby killers over there for? He goes, you hang with us from now on. He goes, you hang around them people. He goes, you know, maybe somebody comes up and puts a knife in your back. You know, he'd be at my cell early in the morning. Jimmy, get up, get up. We're going to go out and play some boc your back. You know? And he'd be at my cell early in the morning. Jimmy, get up, get up. We're going to go out and play some bocce ball. I said, what about breakfast?

Well, we'll go out and get a round of bocce ball and first then we'll go have breakfast. It's all very nice, except you're trying to get out of prison. Exactly. The chin was taking up Jimmy's valuable time, making it harder to even talk to Hall. But then he learned Hall's favorite show

was America's Most Wanted. So one Saturday night in the TV room, Jimmy would make a daring move, putting his body on the line just to gain Larry's trust. Coming up, Jimmy's new best friend shares a nightmare. It was probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my life to listen to this kind of stuff and not just rip him apart. When the Inside Man continues. By the fall of 1998, after several months in Missouri's toughest federal prison, Jimmy Keene could have won a popularity contest. He charmed everyone just as Beaumont knew he would. He even won over some convicts with his lending library of pornographic magazines.

And he'd managed to placate the Chin and the mob faction by day while circling his prey, suspected serial killer Larry Hall with one-on-one bull sessions at night. We just talked about a lot of normal things, hung out, made him feel like I was wanting to be his friend. But it wasn't fast enough for Keen, who feared someone might recognize him and blow his cover. If you went by the FBI's technical terms, I was pretty much staying right on pace. But from my point of view of being in this place, it was starting to get very hard. On the outside, the mission mastermind, Larry Beaumont, could only sit and wait for-hand news on how this crazy scheme of his was going. Now, were you pacing the floors waiting for updates during all this?

I don't know if I paced the floors, but I was eager to get updates. I had information that he was starting to trust him. They were talking and that kind of thing. But Beaumont had absolutely no idea that a breakthrough moment had arrived. It was a Saturday night. But Beaumont had absolutely no idea that a breakthrough moment had arrived. It was a Saturday night. King and Hall were in the prison's TV room, watching America's Most Wanted again. And here comes this big prisoner, and he's a big, muscular, buff guy.

And he walked over to the TV, and he turned the channel. And Hall looks at me, and he goes, real quietly, he mumbles under his breath, he says, Hey, that's not right. I was watching that. I thought, you know what, this is a prime opportunity for me. Jimmy, a martial arts expert who'd continued working out in prison, was ready for this moment. He got up and changed the channel back. He jumped up and he's slobbering all over the place. You turn that channel again, I'll rip your damn head off. You don't touch that TV.

And he's going on all crazy and stuff and He turns the channel and he sits back down. I just looked at him and I turned the channel again. He jumped up and he starts cussing at me. I finally threw a particular cuss word at him that I knew was going to set him off. As soon as I did, he took a wild haymaker swing at me. I come up with an uppercut and nailed him, kicked him through three rows of chairs and jumped on him and I beat him to a pulp. Hall had a ringside view of Saturday night's main event. Afterwards, he staunchly defended Jimmy as the retaliator, not the instigator, when prison officials interviewed eyewitnesses about the TV room brawl. You're Larry Hall's new hero. Yeah, I became his new best friend and hero too. Jimmy could sense that his heroics had brought him even closer to Hall.

And now he was ready to make a bold move. In the prison library, Jimmy had figured out a strategy to draw Hall out on Trisha Reitler. I noticed he was reading his hometown newspaper. And that was really important eventually for me to start cracking into his psyche. Even though the goal was Trisha's body, Jimmy decided to ask first about something already public knowledge, Hall's conviction in the Jesse Roach case. Jimmy fit that his mother lived near Wabash and read about Jesse's case and other stories involving Hall. She gets

that newspaper from that hometown where you're from, and I said, and all the newspaper stories say that you've killed multiple women. That was a big risk, though. It all was a big risk. And I said, Larry, I don't care what you're in here for, but be honest with me, that's all. I said, just tell me what happened, man. I said, you know, I'm still going to be your friend no matter what. And I said, you know, I've had girls do me wrong in my life. I understand how girls can get under your skin and how they can be bothersome to you. Jimmy said he pressed Hall about Jesse Roach. At last, Hall began to open up, recalling that September day in 1993.

He was driving down a backcountry road and he seen her walking her bicycle. Hall then told Jimmy exactly how he abducted and killed Jesse. You must have been revolted. Oh God, Lester. It was probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my life to have to sit there and pretend to be his friend, to listen to this kind of stuff and not just rip him apart. But I knew what the mission involved. I knew what was at stake for me.

I knew what was at stake for the people's families, you know, that were still, you know, trying to find their daughters. A major transformation was taking place. Jimmy was starting to care about more than just himself. And now he was determined to squeeze the most crucial confession out of Larry Hall. And not just for himself, but for the family of Tricia Reitler. I started thinking, I don't know where this is still going to lead,

how long this is going to take, but something's now happening. Coming up, a disturbing discovery. Has Jimmy Keene solved the mystery of the missing girls? I go, what are these things? He says, they watch over the dead Jimmy. He goes, they do. When the Inside Man continues.

Jimmy Keene's five months of hell, five months making nice to a killer he despised, had finally paid off. Hall had described in gruesome detail how he murdered Jesse Roach. I've opened that door and he's feeling that he can trust me enough now. But Jimmy felt he needed to wait a bit before going for the goal line. How did you broach Trish Reitler? I had to slowly keep prodding

because I didn't want him to think I was piling on. So he carefully plotted his next move. Days later, he thought the time was right. He tried that hometown newspaper ploy again. I said, you know, the newspapers say that you killed this girl from the college over here. I says, you know, 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 Trisha and said he drove his van right up to her that day he saw her outside school. He said that he tried to kiss her and when he did that she started fighting very violently and he said she was a very strong girl and she fought stronger than anybody had ever fought before. And did he admit it? He said that he had killed her, and he knew he had done it again. And these are his words, that he knew he had done it again. And he said he went way out in the woods, and he buried her way out in the woods.

Hall gave a general location for Trish's body near a river in Indiana, but Jimmy needed more specific information. Luckily, he seemed to stumble into it a few nights later when he spotted Hall inside the prison woodshop, a restricted area. There was nobody at the door, no guards or anything, and I went in there. And as I came up from behind him, he had all these little different statues lined up, 10, 15 of them maybe. And I couldn't tell what they were at first. And as I got closer, I noticed he had a big map laid out.

And he dove on that map and folded that thing up really fast and slid it off to the side of the table. And I go, what are these things anyway? And he says, they're these little falcons. And he goes, they watch over the dead, Jimmy. He goes, they do. And they look like? A good-sized chess piece.

Jimmy had a strong feeling that Hall's woodcar falcons and the map were journal-keeping by a serial killer. That map had little red dots all over it of Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. You'd look down at this map, and you could see all of those little spots are burial spots where he's got somebody. All those months of dangerous, painstaking work had paid off. Jimmy had cracked the case. Mission accomplished. Once you see the map, the falcons, you want to tell the FBI about it, right? I did. I went to the hotline I had for the FBI girl. I called. I got some type of a 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 Trisha's parents' prayers were now just hours away. I was elated. I felt I wrapped this up. You're expecting the troops to come marching in. Expecting the troops to come marching in and it didn't quite work that way. What he couldn't know was his FBI contact didn't get his voicemail and his one inside contact, the chief psychiatrist, was on vacation. Then you got a little full of yourself, didn't you? I did. I went back to my cell. I was really happy. I thought, you know what? 24 hours, they said they'll have me out of here. I've got what they need. This is it. So I went across to his cell over there. Impulsively, Jimmy decided he just couldn't leave prison without giving his fake friend a piece of his mind.

The repulsiveness I felt about him throughout the whole time I had to stay being his friend and the disdain and dislike I had for him, that I thought it was good for me to unload on him and tell him what I really thought of him and who he really was. I said, you know, I'm going to be going home tomorrow, Larry. And I said, you're a crazy killer. And I started calling him everything you can think of. With that, Jimmy returned to his cell and waited to be released. You're going

home the next day, you think, and things take another turn. About 5.30 in the morning, I hear some little lady in a white doctor smock come walking in. It was Hall's psychologist, and she was furious that Jimmy had blasted her patient, turning him into an emotional wreck. She told the guards, grab him, take him, throw him in the hole. So they put me in the hole, and they keep me in there. And I'm not really worried. I'm thinking, so what? The FBI's going to be here. They told me 24 hours, they'll have me out of here. But morning turned into afternoon, into evening, and the cavalry still hadn't arrived.

This was hard time at its hardest. turned into afternoon, into evening. And the cavalry still hadn't arrived. This was hard time at its hardest. You can't see if it's day or night because you're in the hole. But you can tell what time of the day or night it is by what meal's coming through the door slot. Well, next thing you know, here's breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Next thing you know, here's coming breakfast again. Here's coming lunch again. I'm like, where are these guys?

My thoughts were they did me wrong. They got what they needed. They got the info and they pulled the rug out from under me. While Jimmy was wondering where they were, Beaumont was looking for him too. And we were like, where could he be? He's got, he's in a prison for God's sakes. They lost you. Yeah, they lost me. But had they also lost their best chance at finding the body of Tricia Reitler? Larry Beaumont successfully snuck informant Jimmy Keene into the Springfield prison in 1998. He just didn't expect to lose him there. Goes off your radar. Yeah, he disappeared.

A couple weeks, we didn't know what the heck happened to him. We were trying to find out. We were kind of getting frantic. Two weeks later, only after Keene's psychiatrist contact returned from vacation, did they finally find Jimmy. By noon, the FBI was there, and she kept apologizing. She kept saying, I'm really sorry, you know, I mean, something happened with the message. At last, investigators got to search the woodshop and Hall's cell. But by then, the map

and the Falcons, items Jimmy believed could lead to Triciaricia were gone. What were you thinking telling Larry Hall you're out of here and dressing him down? You know, people probably wouldn't understand the mounting pressure that kettle's ready to blow over at any time, you know. And it just felt good to unload on the guy. I mean, the problem is, as I see it, you've unloaded on him, he knows you're against him, but nobody has that map. Right. I'm 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 him, but I did all I could do. And I feel in my being that I did all I could do. Meantime, the people who would benefit the most from a successful mission,

Trisha's parents, only learned about the secret operation 10 years later, in 2008, when the story came out in a Playboy magazine article. The Reitlers are thankful for Jimmy's courage and the corroborating details he said he got from Hall, but they're furious he blew his cover before finding their daughter. Why would you have been so close? Yes. And then give it up like you did? I try not to dwell on that at all because it eats at me,

and it's very hard to deal with that he was that close. Jesse Roach's parents find small consolation in that Jesse was the victim who tripped up Hall. If something good could possibly come out of losing Jesse, it's the fact that he's in prison and he will never get released. Hall remains in federal prison with no possibility of parole. He actually has made more murder confessions to reporters and investigators. I sincerely believe that there are young girls out there somewhere who are alive today because Larry Hall is in prison. Do you think he'd killed before?

I think he killed before, and I think he would kill again. Jimmy did tell Beaumont that Hall had killed again, but there was no documentation. It was just Jimmy's word. So to be sure, the prosecutor made him take a lie detector test and Jimmy passed with flying colors. He was telling us the truth. So the bottom line is we had further information that Larry was responsible for Tricia. A grateful Beaumont decided to reward him with full credit for his brave undercover work, releasing him from prison and scrubbing his criminal record clean. From his perspective he expected to get nothing, but from my perspective I mean of course he'd spent time in a

loony bin with this guy and gone through this whole process. For 15 years Jimmy had been the only one to see those falcons that Hall said watched over the dead. The problem is we never got them, though. I mean, they disappeared, so we don't know what happened to them. You've never seen the falcons? No. I want to show you a picture. That's one of the falcons. Dateline took pictures of a falcon when we met Larry Hall's twin brother. He said Larry carved the falcon in the woodshop at the Springfield prison and then mailed it to their mother. I showed a photo of that falcon to both Beaumont and Jimmy. What's it like for you to see that after all these years?

Well, it's definitely bizarre, but it's also reassuring to me, Lester, and I'll tell you why. Now these falcons backs everything I've said, this is exactly what it looked like. After becoming a free man in 1999, Jimmy got to spend five more years with a father he idolized before Big Jim passed away. And he's kept his nose clean, not wasting his incredible opportunity. He sees the Hall experience as something that gave him a second chance at life. He's done well in real estate and co-wrote a book with author Hillel Levin, In With the Devil,

which tells Jimmy's compelling story of redemption. He says he's working on several Hollywood projects, most notably the movie version of the book. The Academy Award-winning producer of The Departed owns film rights, and Brad Pitt from Springfield, Missouri himself is interested. I've talked with Brad Pitt and his people, and Brad Pitt loves the relationship that I had with my father. He loves the fact that this happened in his own hometown. But Jimmy is especially proud, he says, that his book re-energized some cold case investigations, several targeting Hall in Indiana and Wisconsin, at least one near a Civil War reenactment site.

Investigators dug up locations where Hall spent time over the years and found articles of women's clothing and a belt modified with wooden handles, all set out for DNA testing. But cold case detectives following leads still haven't developed enough evidence to bring charges. The walls are closing in on him. There would be no cold case files open if it wasn't for me. None. I did a good deed and I did a lot of good things. And that's where I feel the redemption comes in. I've done something good for the things that I did wrong. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.