Bartender Katie Kearns Vanished From Joliet 9 Years Ago, Where Is Murder Defendant Jeremy Boshears Now?

JOLIET, IL — Nine years have now passed since 24-year-old bartender Katie Kearns went missing after finishing work late that night at Woody's Bar, 1008 East Washington St. on Joliet's older industrial east side. After exiting the parking lot, Kearns arrived at the Joliet Outlaws motorcycle clubhouse and that's where she died. A single gunshot to her head.

To this day, the murder case remains on the open docket at the Will County Courthouse. Jeremy Boshears now has the distinction of being one of the longest serving inmates inside the Will County Jail. Now 41 years old, Boshears has remained in the county detention facility since Nov. 18, 2017.

Boshears has already stood trial once in front of a Will County jury. He was convicted of first-degree murder and concealment of a homicide back in May of 2022. But Boshears never served a day in prison. He was never even sentenced.

Instead, Will County Judge Dave Carlson ruled the jury verdict was improper, overturned the first-degree murder conviction and ordered Boshears to stand trial for a second time.

She Saw A Gun Behind The Bar: Boshears Testifies At Trial

During these past four and a half years, Boshears, unwilling to enter a guilty plea with the Will County State's Attorney's Office, has chosen to remain in the Will County Jail, where he gets three meals a day, as he awaits his second trial to happen.

As of today, Boshears is set to return to the courthouse for his second murder trial starting on March 9, 2027 in Courtroom 502 of Will County Judge Jessica Colon-Sayre.

The main unresolved question for the second jury to decide surrounds whether Boshears pulled the trigger and ended the life of his new girlfriend. The jury will have to explore the possibility that Kearns used a handgun left at the Outlaws clubhouse, put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger.

During his first murder trial, Boshears took to the witness stand in his own defense in April 2022 and told the jury how he did not pull the trigger on the handgun that ended Kearns' life.

Boshears told the jury he was turning off the lights and shutting down the Joliet Outlaws clubhouse when Kearns got upset at him. An argument erupted and when she went to the bar to retrieve her keys, she saw a gun kept behind the bar and grabbed it, pointing it at her head, he testified.

Boshears testified he begged her and screamed not to shoot herself, but she pulled the trigger. Boshears testified the gun belonged to Joliet Outlaw probate Colby O'Neal, who had accompanied Boshears to the clubhouse after the two men hung out at the Woody's Bar in Joliet, where Kearns was tending bar earlier that Sunday night.

Boshears testified that his first phone call, following Kearns' death, was to O'Neal, who turned around near Morris and returned to Joliet. O'Neal testified he participated in the cleanup of the death scene at the clubhouse during the wee hours of the morning, and with Boshears, over the next couple of days.

Boshears told the jury he wanted to call the police immediately, to notify them in the middle of the night that Kearns just shot herself, but Boshears claimed Outlaws clubhouse president Jimmy McCoy ordered him not to call the authorities, so that's what Boshears did.

In the days that followed, Boshears testified he became scared when McCoy showed up at his house in Coal City, supposedly wearing all-black, threatening him and his family.

Kearns died around 2 a.m. Nov. 13, 2017.

Within three hours of her death, Boshears arrived at the St. Anne farm of longtime Joliet Outlaw president Ron Keagle. Keagle was considered higher in rank than current Joliet Outlaws club president McCoy, testimony showed. Keagle and his wife, Georgia, helped Boshears push Kearns' Jeep, with her body wrapped in a mattress and plastic pool table cover, into their metal pole barn.

The pole barn remained locked up until Will County sheriff's detectives arrived at the farm a few days after Kearns was reported missing. Will County police used her Facebook account to track the location of her cell phone.

Here's a recap of some of our most important Joliet Patch coverage of the Katie Kearns murder case during these past nine years:

Boshears Became A Killer Once He Got His Outlaw Patch: Egan

A married man, Jeremy Boshears had a family, and he lived in Coal City when his life drastically changed about a year before he met Katie Kearns in October 2017.

"This defendant had been a member of the Outlaws about a year," Assistant Will County State's Attorney Dan Egan told the jury at the opening arguments in the first-degree murder trial back in the spring of 2022. Boshears was 32 when Will County Sheriff's deputies arrested him in connection with the death of the 24-year-old Joliet bartender in November 2017.

"It was an Outlaw bar," Egan told jurors. "He's an Outlaw."

When Kearns closed down Woody's, she drove a couple miles up the road, where she visited Boshears at the Joliet Outlaws clubhouse. "When he and Katie Kearns are alone, he kills Katie Kearns," Egan declared.

Between 2:45 a.m. and 4:05 a.m., Boshears made 30 phone calls "each and every one to a fellow Outlaws member," Egan remarked.

After Boshears wrapped up Kearns' body inside a pool table cover and a mattress, "he puts her dead body in her trunk," Egan announced.

In the middle of the night, Boshears drove her body 50 miles to rural Kankakee, to a farm "owned by other Outlaws," Egan said.

At the farm, Boshears left Kearns' Jeep inside the pole barn.

He "locks the door and proceeds to get a ride," Egan explained. "He tells them he's having car trouble."

And even though he knew Kearns was dead, the murder defendant sent her a text that read, "I hope you made it home last night," Egan revealed. "The cover-up is on."

Back at the Joliet Outlaws clubhouse, Boshears cleaned up all the blood spatter from the fatal gunshot wound, Egan said. Boshears drove to the Walmart on Route 30 in New Lenox, where he purchased a smoke detector.

Why did the Joliet Outlaws clubhouse need a new smoke detector, the prosecutor asked the jury to ponder.

"He covers the hole in the ceiling of the clubhouse" where the bullet went, Egan revealed.

Boshears' initiation into the Joliet Outlaws motorcycle club transformed him into a cold-blooded killer, who orchestrated a cover-up of a pre-meditated murder, according to Egan.

"Patchitis," Egan told the courtroom. "You get your patch. Some people change. This defendant changes."

Jeremy Boshears Didn't Look For Katie Kearns: Testimony

As for the prosecution's first witness during the April 2022 murder trial, Kevin Kearns told the jury that he sold wine and liquor for his job. In November 2017, "Kaitlyn had brought a guy over that she wanted me to meet," her father Kevin Kearns testified.

When Kevin Kearns first met Boshears, he was wearing jeans and a black vest, Kevin Kearns testified. The two men talked for about 15 to 20 minutes.

"It was cordial," Kevin Kearns testified.

As the questioning about their first face-to-face encounter continued, Kevin Kearns told the jury how "I offered him a drink, being a liquor salesman."

The prosecutor asked if he remembered the man's name?

"Jeremy Boshears," Kevin Kearns told the jury. "He said he was in love with my daughter. He actually did tell me he was married, but he was getting a divorce."

On that occasion, Kevin Kearns tried to offer Boshears one of his many brands of whiskeys that he sells, but Boshears was not interested.

"He told me, 'The only thing I drink is Crown Royal,'" Kevin Kearns testified. "Mine is better than that."

Katie Kearns lived at her father's Mokena house and she worked at a breakfast restaurant called Caffe Milan in Frankfort, and she had a part-time job as a bartender in Joliet at Woody's, her father testified.

"I had said goodbye as she was going out the door ... that was the last time I saw her," her father testified.

A couple days later, "I went to the Joliet Police Department, and I filled out a missing persons on her. Around (November) 13th or 14th."

Within days of reporting his daughter missing, Kankakee law enforcement notified him "that they had recovered Kaitlyn's body ... St. Anne, I believe it was," her father told the jury.

Will County Sheriff's investigators informed him "she was found in the back of her Jeep and her body was wrapped in a shower curtain," Kevin Kearns testified, as he began to cry.

The judge asked if he wanted any water.

"No, I'm good," he replied.

Kevin Kearns began to cry as prosecutors asked him questions about the wake at the funeral home and his memories of his daughter.

"My daughter was always very upbeat," he said. "She would help anyone anytime she could."

Prosecutors asked Kevin Kearns whether he ever spoke with Boshears on the phone after his daughter brought him over to his house.

He did. It was around Nov. 13, 2017, after his daughter went missing.

"I said she's missing," Kevin Kearns testified. "He said, well, I saw her on the 11th at the (Joliet Outlaws) clubhouse."

The prosecutor asked if Boshears offered any assistance in finding her.

"Uh, no," Kevin Kearns told the jury.

Why Is Boshears In Jail If Judge Carlson Vacated His Murder Conviction?

In January 2024, shortly before Dave Carlson left the bench to return to private practice as a criminal defense lawyer, he vacated Boshears' convictions and ordered a new trial.

Then, citing the new SAFE-T-Act, Carlson ordered Boshears' release. But before Boshears walked out of the Will County Jail, the Will County State's Attorney's Office of Jim Glasgow filed an appeal to the new judge who replaced Carlson, Jessica Colon-Sayre.

On May 20, 2024, Judge Colon ruled "the proof was evident or presumption great that defendant committed a detainable offense, defendant posed a real and present threat to any person or persons or the community."

She also labeled Boshears a flight risk and "noted the State met its burden of proof that defendant committed these offenses by clear and convincing evidence ... noting how extreme defendant was willing to act in not following the law, cleaning up the scene, wrapping the body, putting the body in the vehicle, traveling to another town, and leaving the body there," the Third District appeals judges explained. "The court also noted that since the jury had already returned a guilty verdict, defendant's risk of flight was great."

In its ruling issued Jan. 15, 2025, three judges from the Appellate Court of Illinois Third District: Justice Peterson, Justice Brennan and Justice Holdridge ruled that Judge Colon did not err in vacating Judge Carlson's prior pretrial release order of Boshears.

On the final page of its 10-page ruling, the three appeals judges noted, "we reject defendant's position that the judge who presided over his jury trial and granted him pretrial release was in a better position to make a ruling on the state's petition to detain and should be afforded more deference. First, the judge failed to make the adequate findings and then retired from the bench. The only option was for the new hearing on the state's petition to detain be held before a different judge."

Where Do Things Stand Now?

August 6 marked the last time that sheriff's jail deputies escorted Boshears over from the jail to the Will County Courthouse. That day, prosecutors Mike Fitzgerald and Alexandra Molesky were in court as was Chuck Bretz, Boshears' lawyer for the past nine years.

Court records indicate that Bretz, not the prosecution, asked for another continuance, resulting in Judge Colon's decision to remove Feb. 1 as the start of the second trial. The judge agreed to postpone the trial yet again. As a result, the court calendar indicates that Feb. 1, 2027 will be a hearing on the status of the jury trial and if nothing changes, the second murder trial would start on March 9, 2027 in Courtroom 502.