It sounds like something cooked up in a Hollywood writers' room. A star high school football player turns into a high-stakes drug dealer, gets busted, and then the FBI offers him a "get out of jail free" card. The catch? He has to move into a maximum-security prison for the criminally insane and befriend a suspected serial killer.
Most people know this story now because of the Apple TV+ hit Black Bird. But honestly, the real-life intersection of Jimmy Keene and Larry Hall is even more unsettling than the TV version.
Jimmy Keene wasn't some hardened undercover agent. He was a guy from Kankakee, Illinois, who made a million dollars a year selling weed and lived in a mansion before he was 21. When the DEA finally caught up with him in 1996, he got slapped with a ten-year sentence. He thought he could handle it. Then, his dad, a former cop known as "Big Jim," had a stroke. That changed everything.
The Deal Nobody Wants
The prosecutor who put Keene away, Lawrence Beaumont, was the one who came back with the offer. It was basically a suicide mission. Beaumont was terrified that Larry Hall, a quiet janitor with bushy sideburns and a penchant for Civil War reenactments, was going to win his appeal and walk free.
Hall had been convicted of kidnapping 15-year-old Jessica Roach, but he was a "serial confessor." He would admit to a murder, give graphic details, and then take it all back the next day, claiming it was just a dream he had. The FBI suspected he had killed dozens of girls across the Midwest, but they had no bodies. No bodies meant no murder charges.
Keene had to get the location of those bodies. Specifically, they wanted Tricia Reitler, a college student who vanished in 1993.
Why Larry Hall was so dangerous
You have to understand how Hall operated. He drove around in a tan Dodge van, attending historical reenactments. It gave him a perfect excuse to be a "drifter" across state lines. He looked harmless. Some people even called him "backward" or "slow."
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But the FBI believed he was a predator who used that perceived "slowness" to disarm victims. By the time Jimmy Keene met him in the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, Hall was already suspected in up to 40 disappearances.
Life Inside the Springfield Medical Center
Springfield wasn't a normal prison. It was where they sent the "worst of the worst" who also had mental health issues. Keene was dropped in there with a fake back-story. He was terrified. You've got to imagine the pressure: if he fails, he stays in for a decade. If he gets caught as a "snitch," he’s dead.
Keene played it smart. He didn't rush Hall. He waited. He actually defended Hall during a confrontation over a TV channel, which earned him the killer's trust. They started talking. Not just about prison food, but about Hall's "dreams."
The Map and the Falcons
The turning point came when Keene walked into the prison workshop and saw Hall working on something strange. Hall was hunched over a map of the Midwest. It was littered with red dots—locations in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin.
Sitting next to the map were several small, hand-carved wooden falcons.
"They watch over the dead," Hall told him.
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Keene knew he had it. This was the holy grail. The red dots were the graves. The falcons were the markers. In that moment, the adrenaline must have been insane. But this is where the real story deviates from the "perfect" ending you might expect.
The Moment it All Collapsed
In the show, there's this big dramatic sequence in solitary confinement. In real life, Keene actually lost his cool. He was so revolted by Hall—a man who had just described the horrific details of Tricia Reitler’s death—that he couldn't keep the act up anymore.
He unloaded on Hall. He told him he was a monster. He revealed he was working for the feds.
Keene thought he could just call his FBI handlers and it would be over. But there was a massive communication breakdown. He was thrown into "the hole" (solitary) for his outburst. By the time the FBI realized what had happened and got him out, the map and the falcons were gone. Hall had likely mailed them out or destroyed them.
Jimmy Keene and Larry Hall never spoke again.
What Happened After the Map Vanished?
Even though the map was gone, Keene's mission wasn't a total failure. The information he gathered about Hall’s specific "inside knowledge" of the crimes was enough to help the authorities block Hall's appeal.
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- Larry Hall is still behind bars. He’s currently serving his life sentence at FCC Butner in North Carolina. He has confessed to over 35 murders since then, only to recant them later. He remains one of the most prolific suspected serial killers in American history, though he's only ever been convicted of the kidnapping of Jessica Roach.
- Jimmy Keene got his freedom. He served about 17 months total. He was able to spend the final five years of his father’s life with him before Big Jim passed away.
Keene eventually wrote a book about the ordeal titled In with the Devil. He’s spent much of his post-prison life helping law enforcement profile other killers. It’s a weird kind of redemption. He went from a guy who only cared about fast cars and money to someone who stared into the darkest parts of the human soul to help families get closure.
Can the bodies still be found?
Decades later, people are still looking. Detectives in various states still use the details Keene provided to check against cold cases. The problem is that Larry Hall traveled so much that his "hunting grounds" cover half the country.
Without that map, finding the victims is like looking for a needle in a thousand haystacks. But because of Keene, at least everyone knows that Larry Hall is exactly where he belongs.
If you're looking into this case for the first time, the best way to understand the technical side of the investigation is to look at the 1996 appeal documents from the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. It lays out exactly why the "false confession" defense was so central to Hall's strategy and why Keene's work was so vital to keeping him locked up.
Actionable Insights for True Crime Researchers:
- Check the Appellate Records: Search for United States v. Hall, 93 F.3d 1337 to see the legal technicalities that almost let a serial killer walk free.
- Compare the Narrative: Read Keene's original memoir, In with the Devil, to see the parts the TV show changed for "drama" (like the prison guard extortion plot, which was largely fictionalized).
- Follow Cold Case Units: Many of the "red dot" locations from Hall's lost map are still being investigated by Indiana and Illinois state police as technology like Ground Penetrating Radar improves.