Jeremy Boshears Testifies: 'I Was Freaking Out, I Threw Up'

JOLIET, IL — Jeremy Boshears testified Wednesday morning he was in the center of a love triangle. He had known his wife since they were teenagers. And by early November 2017, Boshears had fallen in love with a much younger, new girlfriend, Katie Kearns, 24.

"I started having feelings," Boshears testified. "Me and Katie, we got close."

On Kearns' last weekend alive, Boshears and Kearns spent several hours together inside the Joliet Outlaws clubhouse. She was his invited guest. After enjoying laughs and conversation, the two retreated to the basement of the Outlaws club, where there were several bunk beds.

Boshears and Kearns shared a bunk bed together.

"Did that include a sexual encounter between the two of you?" criminal defense attorney Chuck Bretz asked his client.

"Yes," Boshears told the jury. "I didn't have a condom. She said it's OK."

That Saturday morning, tensions escalated when Boshears told his new girlfriend that his wife was driving to the Outlaws to give him a ride home. One of the married couple's vehicles was broken down at the time.

"She didn't like it, she said, 'You're going to use me and throw me away?'" Boshears testified of his conversation with Kearns.

The next night, Sunday, Nov. 12, 2017, Boshears visited the Woody's Bar on East Washington Street, where Kearns was bartending. Colby O'Neal, another member of the Outlaws, joined him.

When the bar closed around midnight, Boshears met with Kearns in the parking lot, where they hugged and kissed, he said. She agreed to meet up with him back at the Joliet Outlaws clubhouse.

She arrived 35 to 40 minutes later, Boshears testified.

"At the clubhouse, what happened?" Bretz asked.

"Just poured a couple of shots, just kind of mingling, shooting the shit, having a good time," Boshears testified.

Last week, O'Neal testified for the prosecution, telling jurors he and Boshears got into a fight inside the clubhouse during the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2017.

"I was hazing him," Boshears testified. "I was just joking with him. Just words were exchanged, he pushed me. I did headbutt him" and we wrestled on the floor, Boshears said. "He apologized. It was nothing, just a disagreement between two brothers. Me and Colby do this a lot."

After O'Neal left the clubhouse to drive home toward Morris, only Boshears and Kearns remained.

After they finished their drinks, Boshears began discussing the 21-gun salute he would be attending the next morning for his uncle, who died following terminal cancer. The military memorial service was at the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood.

When Boshears told Kearns that his wife would not be attending the funeral, Kearns said, "it's OK. I want to go with you. I told her no," Boshears testified. "And she got upset, and she pushed me to the side."

Kearns reminded Boshears how she had just introduced him to her family and to her father, but now, Boshears was refusing to let her meet his family.

"I have a wife," Boshears testified. "She was upset, so upset ... she started yelling, 'I thought you were different.' I said, 'You're drunk, I'm drunk, sweetheart, I'm gonna go home. It's time to go.

"At that time, I said we're leaving. I shut those light switches off. At that time, Katie walked behind the bar to grab her keys."

She emerged with a gun in her hand, Boshears testified, saying O'Neal had left the weapon behind.

Boshears testified he began screaming, "What the (expletive) are you doing? What the (expletive) are you doing? Don't grab that!"

Boshears said he begged her to give him the gun. Kearns yelled, "'(Expletive) you,' and she pulled the trigger," Boshears told jurors.

Bretz asked whether Boshears came to the Joliet Outlaws clubhouse armed with a gun. Boshears answered he had a FOID card and a valid concealed carry permit.

"Yes, I carry a gun," Boshears testified.

Bretz asked if the gun Kearns used to shoot herself belonged to him.

"No, sir," Boshears told Bretz.

Last week, prosecutors showed the jury a gun recovered from the cluttered kitchen table of Boshears' house in Coal City during a Will County Sheriff's raid.

Bretz asked if that's the gun Kearns got a hold of in this particular incident?

"No, sir," Boshears replied.

Boshears said he knew that "multiple brothers" at the Joliet Outlaws often put their guns behind the bar in the clubhouse.

"I knew Colby (O'Neal) had a gun ... I wasn't aware he left it there."

During prior trial testimony, Danny Brandt, an ex-boyfriend of Kearns, testified he sent a flurry of text messages to Kearns and made several phone calls to her while she was at the clubhouse, asking her to drive over to his place so he could have sex with her.

Kearns did not respond to most of the text messages, and she did not pick up the phone during the multiple times Brandt tried to call her.

Did Boshears have any knowledge or awareness of the ex-boyfriend's text messages, Bretz inquired.

"Not that night," Boshears testified.

What happened after Kearns fired the gun, Bretz asked?

"I panicked," Boshears testified. "I stepped over her. I went out the front door. I ran behind the building. (I was) hot. I took my shirt off. I was freaking out. I threw up. That's when I made the phone calls."

"So, Jeremy, you said you began making a series of calls?" Bretz inquired.

"Yes," Boshears answered.

Boshears told the jury his first call was made to O'Neal, who was driving on Interstate 80 near Morris at the time, around 2:25 a.m.

"I said, 'Get your ass back here. You left your gun,'" and "'The girl shot herself,'" Boshears testified.

O'Neal told him the gun left behind the bar, actually was not his, but belonged to another Outlaw, Cory Espeland, according to Boshears.

While Kearns' body remained on the clubhouse floor, Boshears said he talked with Joliet Outlaws president, Jimmy McCoy, about how to proceed. Boshears testified he insisted they needed to call the police, but McCoy quashed that idea.

Bretz asked Boshears if he acknowledges that he "covered up the death of Katie Kearns?"

"Unfortunately, yes, sir," Boshears answered.

More Patch coverage: Prosecutor Hammers Boshears For Lies After Katie Kearns Died