3 Pushed Katie Kearns' Body Into Pole Barn: Testimony

JOLIET, IL — Georgia Keagle was asleep in her two-story country farmhouse when someone showed up at her front door. It was Nov. 13, 2017, sometime between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m., and her dogs started barking. Then she heard loud boots walking around her house.

"I heard Jeremy telling the dogs to be quiet. I heard his boots on. I was asleep," Georgia Keagle testified Monday afternoon.

The visitor was Jeremy Boshears, then 32.

"He's like my son," Keagle said. "He had keys to the house. He could come and go as he pleased."

Will County prosecutors Dan Egan, Steven Platek and Tom Bahar wants the jury to convict Boshears of first-degree murder in the death of 24-year-old Joliet bartender Katie Kearns, his then-girlfriend. She died inside the Joliet Outlaws clubhouse around 2 a.m. that same morning, Nov. 13.

At the time of his new girlfriend's death, Boshears and Kearns were the only people still inside the clubhouse. Boshears had been a patched member of the Joliet Outlaws for one year.

On Monday, Keagle recalled how she heard Boshears approach her bed and say, "Mom."

She and Boshears had a close relationship through their association with the Joliet Outlaws. Her husband was a member of the Outlaws for more than 20 years.

In the summer of 2017, she and her husband moved out of their Joliet house on Algonquin Street to a Kankakee County farm in St. Anne.

Platek asked what Boshears said after he woke her up.

"He told me he was cold," she testified. "I threw my arm around him and told him to go to bed."

"After he gave you that hug, where did he go?" Platek followed up.

"Downstairs or the spare room. I'm not sure," Georgia Keagle answered. "I went back to sleep. I saw him later on that morning. He was at the table."

Once she got out of bed, Georgia Keagle made coffee for her husband.

"Did you see them leave?" Platek inquired.

"Yes," she answered.

"It was just Ronald, your husband, and the defendant?"

"Yes."

The prosecutor asked Georgia Keagle to describe the vehicle Boshears drove to get to her farmhouse, which is about an hour away from the Joliet Outlaws clubhouse.

"It was like an SUV-ish type thing," she testified. "We pushed it into the barn. It wouldn't start."

Platek wanted to know who pushed the vehicle into her pole barn?

"My husband, myself and Jeremy," she testified.

Was there any conversation about the body of Kearns being stored in the back?

"Not at all," Georgia Keagle testified.

After Georgia Keagle finished testifying, Egan called her husband to testify.

"I'm 69," Ronald Keagle testified. "I'm retired right now."

What did he remember about Boshears showing up unannounced at his farm that night?

"He knocked on the door," Ronald Keagle told the jury. "He had been up all night. He had been drinking."

"Was he intoxicated?" Egan asked.

"Oh yes, he was," the witness agreed. "He just wanted to talk to mom."

Egan asked what type of vehicle Boshears drove to the farm.

"I do know he arrived in a Jeep," Ronald Keagle testified.

"How long was he upstairs?"

"I'd say 20 minutes," Ronald Keagle testified.

Ronald Keagle described his pole barn as being 40 feet by 60 feet, with 12-foot-tall doors. Inside, he kept one of his small trucks and two campers, he said.

That Monday morning, he added another vehicle to the fleet, a 1996 Jeep Grand Cherokee. The body of Kearns, 24, was in the trunk, wrapped in a tarp, prosecutors said.

"He said his car wouldn't start," Ronald Keagle testified, referring to Boshears. "Yes, we pushed it into my barn, yes, Georgia, Jeremy and I."

The retired Joliet Outlaw told the jury he did not have a key to the pole barn. He remembered that Boshears followed him out of the pole barn.

"He shut the door. I presume he did," Ronald Keagle testified. "In the four months that we lived there, no, I never locked it. I never had a key to it."

After putting Kearns' Jeep into his pole barn, Ronald Keagle grabbed his coffee cup.

"We jumped in my truck," he testified.

Egan asked his witness to clarify who got to his truck with him.

"Jeremy," Ronald Keagle answered.

The prosecutor asked if he remembered what they talked about as Ronald Keagle drove Boshears back to his house in Coal City. The drive took about an hour.

"No, I think I'm pretty sure Jeremy fell asleep on the ride home," he testified. "He took a little nap."

Within a couple of days, police arrived at the Keagle farmstead in Kankakee County.

"Did you let them into the barn?" Egan inquired.

"Yes, I did," Ronald Keagle answered. "I tried the door and it was locked. I gave (police) permission to kick the door in."

The murder trial resumes at 10 a.m. Tuesday in the courtroom of Judge Dave Carlson.

Lawyers have indicated the trial may take two weeks. Criminal defense attorney Chuck Bretz has told jurors that Kearns died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and she had a long history of severe depression. She was at the emergency room of Silver Cross Hospital after cutting her forearm with a razor only three weeks before her death, Bretz told jurors.

"This is a classic example of the government just getting it wrong," Bretz declared during last week's opening arguments.

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