The Model & the Millionaire

Speaker 1 Grand Canyon University is one of the largest universities in the country.

Speaker 1 Praised for its community and impact, GCU integrates a welcoming Christian worldview and open discourse into over 300 online programs.

Speaker 1 Redefine your online education through GCU's industry-driven, academically rigorous programs. In 2024, online students received over $161 million in institutional scholarships.
Find your purpose.

Speaker 1 Private, Christian, affordable. Discover available scholarships at gcu.edu/slash slash myoffer.

Speaker 2 It's time for Black Friday, Dell Technologies' biggest sale of the year.

Speaker 3 Enjoy huge savings on select PCs like the Dell 16 Plus, featuring Intel Core ultra-processors and with built-in advanced features. It's the PC that helps you do more faster.

Speaker 3 Plus, earn Dell rewards and enjoy many other benefits like free shipping, price match guarantee, and expert support.

Speaker 3 They also have huge deals on accessories that pair perfectly with your Dell PC and make perfect gifts for everyone on your list. Shop now at dell.com/slash deals.

Speaker 2 There's the Florida Gold Coast, and then there's nothing quite like it, Palm Beach, where the houses are bigger, the boats sleeker, and the bank accounts unmatched.

Speaker 2 Now a person with a cynical eye might say that Palm Beach is the perfect hunting ground for gold diggers out to bag an aging but very wealthy million or even billionaire

Speaker 2 And that did seem to be what one December May romance was all about, at least on the surface.

Speaker 2 How else could you look at the unlikely union of a 23-year-old German beauty rose, Rose Kyle, and the 57-year-old real estate tycoon Fred Keller?

Speaker 2 We'll tell you right up front that ultimately this love affair would wind up with three people shot and one of them dead in a bloody whodunit.

Speaker 4 True that they're in Gurney side by side?

Speaker 5 Side by side, looking right at you.

Speaker 2 Waiting for the ducks.

Speaker 5 And both guys are pointing at each other saying, that guy shot me.

Speaker 2 Before the gunplay, there was just a beautiful young German girl full of promise.

Speaker 6 She was very bright. She had a lot of aspirations.
I mean, there are so many things, so many talents that she had.

Speaker 2 Rose and her sister, Angie Bovey, grew up in a family of six children in Frankfurt, a place that Rose wanted to escape, as her kid sister remembers it. Rose was fleeing their father.

Speaker 6 He was physically and emotionally abusive

Speaker 6 to all of us, but I think he had it out for my sister, Rose, mostly.

Speaker 2 Rose was ambitious and left school at 15.

Speaker 6 She designed clothes actually for the boutique that my mother and her had in Wiesbaden, Germany.

Speaker 6 And she also modeled them.

Speaker 2 The lovely Rose had no shortage of young boyfriends, but she had no interest in them either.

Speaker 6 She was always attracted to older men, and I think she was also probably looking for a father figure because that's what she never had.

Speaker 2 As one relationship after another sputtered out, someone in the family saw an ad in a Frankfurt paper and immediately thought of Rose. Essentially it read, Florida millionaire looking for love.

Speaker 2 Rose had nothing to lose and so she answered the ad. And just who was this rich lonely heart?

Speaker 7 Fred was a smart, obviously a very smart person.

Speaker 2 John Herring was one of the many business associates with whom Fred Keller wheeled wheeled and dealed in the booming South Florida real estate market.

Speaker 7 When you met Fred, you liked him. He was a charming person to get you into what you needed.

Speaker 2 Fred Keller actually had a little bit of rose in him. He'd come from humble roots too, and like the young German girl, he'd wanted out.

Speaker 8 This was the one thing above all others that motivated him in his life was to escape the working class and make a lot of money.

Speaker 2 Palm Beach journalist Larry Keller, no relation, found in his research that Fred had been born in Brooklyn, New York to strict German parents by the name of Bolander.

Speaker 8 He wrote in his memoir that his father was a member of the SS.

Speaker 8 And when he was about three or four, the family moved back to Germany and he was there for part of World War II.

Speaker 2 The Bolanders returned to the U.S. after the war, and Fred grew up in a modest home on Long Island.
He started his career as an engineer in Virginia, along the way changing his name to Keller.

Speaker 2 It was just one of the ways he would reinvent himself.

Speaker 2 As a youngish man with money on the mind, the potential of South Florida drew him down to Palm Beach. At first, he was an outsider, his nose pressed against the window.

Speaker 2 But real estate savvy, cutting down and dirty deals, was his ticket to the waterfront life.

Speaker 8 He made his money not building beautiful hotels like Donald Trump and resorts and golf courses, but commercial real estate, strip centers, warehouses, that sort of thing.

Speaker 8 Nothing glamorous at all about it, but very profitable.

Speaker 2 Palm Beach may like old money better than new money, but no one could sniff at Fred Keller's wealth. At that time, we're talking tens of millions.

Speaker 2 Still, he wasn't one for the exclusive clubs or charity balls that can define the Palm Beach pecking order for those keeping score. Writer Lawrence Lehman.

Speaker 9 Fred was too cheap to join one of the clubs to play tennis, so he joined Seaview, which is the public courts, which is $200 a year, and he'd play regularly there.

Speaker 2 Lemur was writing a book about Palm Beach, and in some audio tapes he made, Fred Keller explained why he kept the social glitz at barge pole distance.

Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Speaker 2 Nobody likes that, but somebody thinks they're better than you.

Speaker 2 Not surprisingly, as Keller accumulated his fortune, he also accumulated quite a few girlfriends and along the way a few children and four ex-wives, all recruited from the classifieds.

Speaker 2 Fred's Cupid didn't shoot arrows as much as dollar signs.

Speaker 9 So all his relationships, he put an ad and it didn't embarrass him to say I'm a millionaire.

Speaker 9 And why would people respond to the ad? Because it's a millionaire.

Speaker 2 And so it was that in 1992, the personals column brought Fred and Rose together.

Speaker 6 They started writing to each other. They started talking on the phone,

Speaker 6 and then eventually he asked if she wanted to come visit to meet

Speaker 6 and I think she was supposed to be here for two weeks

Speaker 6 and she never came back to Germany.

Speaker 2 Was it love or let's make a deal?

Speaker 9 I think when there's 25 or 30 years of difference, I think if you're going to call it love, you better have quote marks around love.

Speaker 2 Do you think there was affection there?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 4 It was, I need your youth and beauty, and I need your

Speaker 7 green cardness, your wealth. I need your lifestyle.

Speaker 2 Still, on those audio tapes, you can hear Keller saying it was champagne and fireworks from the moment he saw Rose step off the plane. She smiled,

Speaker 2 and it was just like instant fraud.

Speaker 2 Same desires, the same outlooks. And Rose's sister agrees.
Strange as it may appear, she says it was the real thing.

Speaker 6 She loved him. She wanted to be happily married and

Speaker 6 have a,

Speaker 6 you know, happy and secure

Speaker 6 family life.

Speaker 2 Her dream came true. The older Palm Beach money bags and the German Ingenu were married, which is when the trouble began.

Speaker 2 The good life comes with a hefty price tag. No secret there, not even to a young German bride.

Speaker 2 But Rose Keller would have no idea what the true cost would be of her marriage to the much older millionaire Fred Keller, her senior by 34 years.

Speaker 2 It appeared that the high school dropout had hit the immigrants' jackpot: marriage to a mogul, and a big house on the desirable intercoastal waterway.

Speaker 2 But the reality wasn't all that gamutlakite. Take the mansion.
It was a dump.

Speaker 6 There were holes in the ceiling. It certainly wasn't what people would imagine a mansion would look like.

Speaker 2 And no gleaming Mercedes in the driveway either.

Speaker 6 She drove a 10-year-old minivan,

Speaker 6 you know.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 he always drove his,

Speaker 6 I don't know how old that car was, but it was a Cadillac.

Speaker 6 It was old.

Speaker 2 And as for the glittering party life, while the social x-rays rattled their jewelry at fancy balls, the Kellers kept to themselves. And that's the way Fred liked it.

Speaker 4 But he wasn't one for the society pages, was he?

Speaker 2 Because some people are.

Speaker 7 I think he lived here because he felt it was a value in the property. He didn't live here for the social life.

Speaker 2 At first, Rose went along with Fred's austerity program.

Speaker 9 When she went into that house the first time, she didn't realize how poorly decorated it was. She didn't realize the places she was going with him were not the premier places in Palm Beach.

Speaker 2 And she'd quickly learned that in Fred's world, it was his way or the highway.

Speaker 6 If he said dinner at six, it didn't mean

Speaker 6 five minutes or even two minutes or three minutes before six or after six. It meant six o'clock.

Speaker 6 And,

Speaker 6 you know, it was like walking on eggshells sometimes.

Speaker 2 He may have been a grumpy old man and tight as a tick, but Rose Keller never considered herself put upon.

Speaker 2 Fred seemed to be devoted to her, even tutoring his wife in the intricacies of his real estate empire.

Speaker 6 She was his partner, really.

Speaker 6 When they first met, he was ready to sell everything and be done with it.

Speaker 6 And she was actually the one that said, no, let's just keep buying properties and build on this and make this a family business.

Speaker 2 Some people thought they'd already read this play, Pygmalion, with Rose as Eliza Doolittle.

Speaker 7 I actually watched Rose

Speaker 7 grow in to being the protege of Fred Keller.

Speaker 9 Savvy.

Speaker 11 Pretty savvy.

Speaker 7 Fred's way was her way.

Speaker 2 But Keller never apparently regarded Rose as his successor, the captain of his empire. In his 50s, he'd been diagnosed with leukemia, and he had other ideas about an heir apparent.

Speaker 8 He initially brought her two brothers, Wolfgang and Klaus, over, and he was very generous. He put them up in a a house in Palm Beach.
He paid for college education for the two of them and he

Speaker 8 wanted to mentor them and have them become a part of his business.

Speaker 2 According to some, brother-in-law Wolfgang was being groomed to head the company, but others weren't so sure Keller was really serious about that.

Speaker 2 Fred Keller was turning out to be no one's idea of Prince Charming. But while some still saw Rose and Fred's match as a marriage of convenience, her family wasn't quite so cynical.

Speaker 2 Rose, they say, loved him, warts and all.

Speaker 6 She responded to his behavior as, you know, a loving wife. Hey, you know what? I love him.
I want to be with him with all his quirks.

Speaker 2 And they both wanted a child. Rose gave birth to a son, Fred Chin, in 1995.
But just as Fred controlled dinner time, Rose's sister says he began to micromanage his son and the boy's mother.

Speaker 6 He tried to tell her when to breastfeed, when not to breastfeed. She wasn't allowed to go in the baby's room at night when he was crying because he would say, just, you know, let him cry.

Speaker 7 He only had German nannies,

Speaker 7 only could eat certain food, very, very regimented.

Speaker 2 Rose came to resent her husband ordering her about. It was one thing to tell her how to live, and quite another to boss around their son.

Speaker 6 As soon as you bring another human being into a relationship like this, and that person treats

Speaker 6 your child like that, then you realize what's going on, for sure.

Speaker 2 It seemed to some observers that when Rose started defying Keller over Fredshin's upbringing, things began to spin out of control.

Speaker 2 Keller maintains the rift came about not because he was a martinette, but because his unsophisticated bride was turning into a social climber.

Speaker 2 She became more social conscious of what a palm feature should be. She said, Why don't we belong to a country club?

Speaker 2 And she was going in that direction, and I was going in the direction how false this whole stuff was.

Speaker 2 Finally, by 1999, seven years into the marriage, Rose had had enough. She would file for divorce, and it would turn out to be the fight of her life.

Speaker 2 One that would end up with three bloody bodies on an office floor.

Speaker 12 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason.

Speaker 13 But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 11 Zin is America's number one nicotine pouch brand.

Speaker 16 Plus, Zin offers a robust rewards program.

Speaker 11 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zen. Check out Zinn.com slash find to find Zin at a store near you.

Speaker 17 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 18 Score holiday gifts everyone wants for way less at your Nordstrom Rack store. Save on Ugg, Nike, Rag and Bone, Vents, Frame, Kurt Geiger London, and more.
Because there's always something new.

Speaker 2 I'm giving all the gifts this year with that extra 5% off when I use my Nordstrom credit card.

Speaker 18 Santa who? Join the Nordy Club at Nordstrom Rack to unlock our best deals. It's easy.
Big gifts, big perks. That's why you rack.

Speaker 19 Hey, Ron Reynolds here, wishing you a very happy half-off holiday because right now, Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of 50% off unlimited.

Speaker 2 To be clear, that's half price, not half the service.

Speaker 19 And Mint is still premium, unlimited wireless for a great price.

Speaker 20 So that means a half day.

Speaker 19 You know?

Speaker 17 Give it a try at mintmobile.com/slash switch.

Speaker 20 Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. New customer offer for first three months only.
Speed slow under under 55 gigabytes of networks busy.

Speaker 20 Taxes and fees extra.

Speaker 2 See me at mobile.com.

Speaker 2 Ruthless isn't a nice adjective, but it's one that people who knew Fred Keller used comfortably and they thought accurately.

Speaker 2 His much younger wife, Rose, had filed for divorce, and now she would understand what it was like to be across the table from Keller.

Speaker 7 Fred was driving back from Palm Beach one day, and he says, says,

Speaker 7 I only lost one lawsuit in my life and I don't know why I ever let it happen, but it will never happen again. And if anybody does win, they will never collect.

Speaker 2 But Rose did want to collect. There had been years of her quietly suffering his iron-fisted control and steely rage when crossed.
She'd even said she'd feared for her life sometimes.

Speaker 2 From the outset, though, it looked like Rose Keller didn't stand a chance because Fred had built a firewall between his marriage and his finances.

Speaker 8 He'd been involved with many other much younger women. He had her sign a prenup before they got married.

Speaker 9 When I read the prenuptial the first time, I thought something was wrong. It was 16 pages.

Speaker 9 Where was the section where it's what she gets? But she was to get nothing.

Speaker 21 So the prenup may have been quite clear about being valued at Goose Egg. But Rose had a stronger card to play in the divorce proceeding.
She claimed that she was more than just a wife in the marriage.

Speaker 21 She was a business partner as well. A business partner whose skill and drive had increased the Keller fortune.
And she wanted her fair share of that pile.

Speaker 6 The

Speaker 6 assets have quadrupled pretty much since they met.

Speaker 7 That's how we lived.

Speaker 2 Now, there were some, like Keller's sometimes partner John Herring, who never really regarded Rose as much more than a trophy wife playing at work when it came to actually rolling up her sleeves in the business.

Speaker 2 I think she was more

Speaker 7 in the position to just be with him to maintain the business versus going out and finding a deal.

Speaker 2 But Rose's divorce lawyer thought this case had the potential for enormous ka-ching-ka-ching.

Speaker 2 It seems before things turned sour, Rose had begun insisting that she deserved an equal share in her husband's business empire.

Speaker 2 She said that's how they would have done it back in their mutual old country.

Speaker 2 Her theme was in Germany, the wife owned half of everything. I was not comfortable with doing it.

Speaker 2 But Rose would not be denied in this negotiation. She wanted half.

Speaker 8 He finally signed some documents that he knew were not legally binding,

Speaker 8 really in an attempt to defraud his own wife and keep her with just a 10% interest.

Speaker 2 Defraud his own wife? Would Fred Keller do such a thing? Why, yes. My purpose was not to convey it to her, but to placate her, and hopefully that things would be okay at the home front.

Speaker 2 Did I mislead her? Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Martin Haynes was Rose's divorce lawyer.

Speaker 23 She gave everything she had to that man.

Speaker 23 And ultimately, Fred recognized her contributions.

Speaker 4 Which came back to bite him?

Speaker 23 Which came back to bite him.

Speaker 21 Lawyers haggled now over whether Fred's gift to Rose was legally binding. It turned out it was, and no 10% deal either.

Speaker 21 If the divorce judge followed the logic of that finding, then Fred Keller would have to turn over to Rose up to half of his estate, nearly $50 million, money he'd never intended to put in anyone's pocket but his own.

Speaker 2 But it was no quickie divorce.

Speaker 2 While their A-list neighbors climbed the Palm Beach social ladder, the Kellers spent day after day in a decidedly unglamorous courtroom where a judge presided over an autopsy of their marriage.

Speaker 2 The Fred and Rose show dragged on for three years.

Speaker 6 It was really killing her. I always told her,

Speaker 6 why can't you just, you know,

Speaker 6 settle with him, you know, take what he wants to give you and run?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 she wasn't able to do that.

Speaker 2 But how strange is this? All through Rose's knife fight of a divorce, she kept on dating Keller.

Speaker 23 Sometimes it happens, but in this instance, I was somewhat surprised that it happened.

Speaker 2 Ultimately, the $100 million question, the divvying up of the money pie, was put before the judge to decide. Fred Keller was convinced, as always, that he couldn't lose.

Speaker 2 His former colleague saw him just days before the final decree was handed down.

Speaker 7 I said, so what's going on with the divorce? I said, I'm surprised to hear you're not winning. He goes, oh, she's not going to get anything.
She's not going to get anything.

Speaker 2 On October 30th, 2003, the judgment was delivered.

Speaker 4 The judge bought Rose's understanding of what these agreements were, that she was indeed the 50% partner of a $100 million business.

Speaker 23 Correctly so.

Speaker 2 It was an astonishing and sweet victory by proxy for all those who'd danced with Keller and been stopped.

Speaker 4 Big round numbers, if it's $100 million, she's going to get $50 million in this thing.

Speaker 2 Fred Keller's young bride had bested her cagey older husband. It meant that for a second time, Rose Keller was going to start a new life.

Speaker 23 She and her brothers were going to work together and build an empire.

Speaker 2 But dividing up the real estate empire of a self-made man who answered to no one wasn't going to be an easy matter. A meeting was called for a Monday morning, 10 days after the divorce became final.

Speaker 2 Fred, Rose, and her brother Wolfgang Keil would sit down in the conference room at Fred's office and try to figure out where to go in this court-ordered 50-50 relationship.

Speaker 2 Then, within minutes, 911 had received a frantic call.

Speaker 2 Fred Keller's something.

Speaker 5 Wolfgang Kyle initially stated that Fred had shot him and that he, Wolfgang Kyle, stated, I shot Fred and I've got the gun.

Speaker 2 There would be conflicting accounts of what had happened behind the closed doors of Keller Trust, but it had been very sudden and very violent.

Speaker 2 Fred Keller, the wealthy investor, his recently divorced wife, Rose, and her brother Wolfgang Kyle, all shot.

Speaker 2 The wounded brother had called 911.

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 21 now, Mr. Keller shot you, right?

Speaker 21 I got the weapon from him.

Speaker 2 Bill Fraser is an investigator with the prosecutor's office. It was a difficult crime scene to figure out.

Speaker 5 Wolfgang Kyle had been shot twice, once in the chest and once in the back, and he had a gun. Fred, who had also been shot, he sustained a superficial gunshot wound to the face.

Speaker 5 And they transported those guys up to the trauma unit at St. Mary's Hospital.

Speaker 2 Wolfgang and Rose's sister, Angie, rushed to the hospital. Her brother was in critical condition.
Rose was beyond that. Angie begged a detective for details.

Speaker 6 And all she said was there was a female that didn't make it.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 I described what my sister looked like.

Speaker 2 I said, she has really long

Speaker 2 red hair.

Speaker 2 And the detective

Speaker 2 she just

Speaker 2 shook her head.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 I just freaked out.

Speaker 6 10.30 hours, and I am entering the scene of the homicide.

Speaker 2 Investigators descended on the crime scene, retrieving bullets from the walls and carpet, finding blood spatter throughout. Soon, two wildly different accounts of the carnage emerged.

Speaker 2 As Rose's brother Wolfgang Wolfgang recovered from his wounds, he told police the meeting had started calmly enough, with Fred near his office chair and he and Rose at the conference table.

Speaker 5 Wolfgang sits down and as he sits down, his cell phone kind of hits him in the gut a little bit, you know, like that'll happen sometimes. And he takes the cell phone and places it on the table.

Speaker 2 Fred Keller, in his account, told police that's when the trouble started, mistaking Wolfgang's cell phone for something else.

Speaker 5 Now, according to Fred, Fred sees this and says, Wolfgang just pulled a gun.

Speaker 24 He just drew on me.

Speaker 5 Just drew on me.

Speaker 2 Fred Keller then turned and walked over to his briefcase. And goes into his bag he's brought with him and comes up with his gun.

Speaker 5 So you have to think about that. Wolfgang's sitting in the chair, and he sees Fred point a gun at him, and he shoots him right in the chest.
Now he sees Fred Keller

Speaker 5 in what is commonly referred to as a combat stance, holding the firearm in his hands, and he's pointing the firearm right at Rosemarie Keller.

Speaker 5 Wolfgang, shot in the chest, gets up and advances on Fred. Now Wolfgang hears a second shot.

Speaker 5 As he approaches Fred,

Speaker 5 he reaches up, put your hands up,

Speaker 5 and he grabs Fred, and the gun goes off again. And Wolfgang is shot again.
And he gets in a struggle with Fred.

Speaker 5 And he gets the gun away from Fred.

Speaker 2 Like something out of the movie.

Speaker 5 He's saying, I shot this guy.

Speaker 2 I had command of the situation.

Speaker 24 I took the gun.

Speaker 5 Yeah, readily admits that he shot Fred Keller.

Speaker 2 Fred has shot Wolfgang. Wolfgang, wrestling for the gun, shoots Fred.
And where was Rose during all this? She, it turned out, was the second of the three shots fired.

Speaker 5 Wolfgang sees Rose laying there and she's spurting blood. And he realizes right away there's nothing he can do to help her.
She's dead.

Speaker 2 One gun among three people and it belonged to Fred Keller. The fact of the wounded brother and the dead ex-wife made it look like a cold-blooded execution.

Speaker 2 Keller would claim immediately that it was all a terrible misunderstanding, just a matter of self-defense.

Speaker 2 In fact, he said the only reason he was carrying a gun in the first place was to protect himself from a threat, not from Wolfgang, but from Rose.

Speaker 2 A telephone threat he said he'd reported to the police the week before. She said, They don't respect me.

Speaker 2 And she just said, I'm going to shoot everyone in the office.

Speaker 2 The next morning, I thought about it all night. And I said, is she serious?

Speaker 2 Keller had even faxed a letter to nearby Riviera Beach police telling them of the supposed threat. But this police investigator wasn't buying Keller's story.

Speaker 5 I think that it's a setup.

Speaker 4 Setting up his play.

Speaker 5 He's establishing the threat. And on November 10th, 2003,

Speaker 5 the play is going to go into play.

Speaker 2 Keller denied intending to hurt anyone. In fact, his lawyer, Doug Duncan, says Keller's briefcase containing the gun wasn't even within reach at the start of the meeting.

Speaker 25 He doesn't have the gun on him,

Speaker 25 suggesting that someone has a plan. But when he sees the black object, which he testified he honestly believed was a gun, he went to get his gun and he fired one shot at Mr.
Kyle. Mr.

Speaker 25 Kyle got control of the gun and in the process of Mr. Kyle trying to shoot and kill Mr.
Keller, that the shot fired and hit Rose, and she tragically died.

Speaker 2 Keller, by this account, was also insisting that in the horrible mishap, it was Wolfgang who had accidentally killed his own sister. Keller said he would never have harmed Rose.

Speaker 2 I loved her, but I still do. And I know she loved me, but I could not live with her anymore.
One woman dead. The only two other people in the room, both wounded.
Who's to blame?

Speaker 5 I think the most important piece of evidence was the 911 cut.

Speaker 5 I shot Wolfgang. You shot him? I got the weapon away from him.

Speaker 5 And you listen to Wolfgang's voice, and you have to ask yourself, is this a guy who's responsible for this event the way he's talking?

Speaker 5 I mean, would he call up if he was the guy that's responsible for this killing?

Speaker 2 Some common sense things of the narrative didn't add up either.

Speaker 4 A, there aren't many cell phones that look like a gun.

Speaker 4 And I've got to go now, turn my back to this group, go retrieve my gun out of my bag, and I'm now going to turn around and shoot you.

Speaker 24 It just doesn't make sense, the scenario.

Speaker 25 Well, the cell phone, all he sees is the black barrel. He keeps his back to them because if they're shooting me, I want everyone to know they shot me in my back.

Speaker 2 And in his defense, why would a man who spent his life calculating all the angles deliberately commit a murder which would almost surely be blamed on him?

Speaker 2 I've called a lot of things in my life, but no one's ever called me stupid. For me to kill someone, and for me to kill Rose, lose my money, would gain nothing for them.

Speaker 2 Lose my freedom, lose my son, that is stupid.

Speaker 2 Though there were no outside witnesses to the wife's death and the brothers wounded,

Speaker 2 within a matter of hours, it was Fred Keller who was arrested. The canny tycoon would face a prosecutor who was convinced that Keller had actually thought everything out and had plenty of motive.

Speaker 2 Motive enough to get him convicted of first-degree murder.

Speaker 22 This case is about a man who was consumed with his desire to keep his accumulated wealth,

Speaker 22 even if it meant that he was going to get arrested, and even if it meant that he was going to go to jail.

Speaker 2 Hey, paid to do this. Could we reschedule our morning hike? I was just about to ask the same.
Next week?

Speaker 2 Yes, it's Duncan Original Blend Time. Staying at home with Duncan? Don't mind if I do.

Speaker 1 The home with Duncan is where you want to be.

Speaker 13 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason.

Speaker 14 But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 11 Zinn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand.

Speaker 16 Plus, Zinn offers a robust rewards program.

Speaker 11 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zen. Check out zin.com/slash find to find Zen at a store near you.

Speaker 17 Warning: this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 2 Are you ready to get spicy? These Doritos Golden Sriracha aren't that spicy. Maybe it's time to turn up the heat or turn it down.
It's time for something that's not too spicy.

Speaker 2 Try Doritos Golden Sriracha. Spicy, but not too spicy.

Speaker 2 January Palm Beach, the heart of what locals call the season, when Ritzy Worth Avenue is the center of a very rarefied world. But in January of 2003, attention was drawn across the intercoastal.

Speaker 2 In decidedly less upscale West Palm Beach, real estate mogul Fred Keller was standing trial for killing his beautiful ex-wife Rose and wounding her brother Wolfgang in an okay corral style shootout.

Speaker 9 Palm Beach was fascinated by this, but just like any other murder in Palm Beach, when this happens, the Palm Beachers say, well, gee, that's not a real Palm Beacher. That's not us.

Speaker 2 The timing of the incident was certainly suspicious. The slaying occurred just days after a judge had awarded Rose half of Keller's $100 million fortune in a divorce settlement.

Speaker 2 Keller was a man who didn't like to lose. Prosecutor Andy Slater called that the motive for murder.

Speaker 22 He became enraged and was bound and determined that Rose Keller and her family members were not going to benefit one red cent from that final judgment of dissolution of marriage.

Speaker 2 But the defense would argue that Keller still had plenty of money left. He said as much in those taped interviews.

Speaker 2 What we have is worth over $100 billion.

Speaker 2 I'm ending up with $50 billion.

Speaker 2 My lifestyle's not changing. And his attorney, Doug Duncan, maintains that Keller was too smart to plan a murder that would fool no one.

Speaker 25 Fred Keller never made a decision without thinking about it, planning.

Speaker 25 And this was a very poor plan, because what was the exit strategy? Rose is dead. Wolfgang is shot, dead, and there's one gun.

Speaker 25 Fred Keller wasn't about to hinge his life on, you know, that week of a self-defense claim.

Speaker 2 So the trial began, and the jury was riveted as they heard Wolfgang recall in graphic detail how Fred Keller had calmly shot him point blank.

Speaker 2 I heard a loud bang, and

Speaker 26 I felt the pain right away in my chest. He was standing like this and moved forward, something like this.

Speaker 2 And then he said Keller methodically turned his sights on Rose.

Speaker 26 He was shooting at my sister he just had this mean look in his face.

Speaker 26 Just I don't know how to describe it but it's a look that I never forget.

Speaker 2 Even though he'd been severely wounded, Wolfgang recounted trying to save his sister.

Speaker 26 I pushed both my hands around her neck and tried to push on where the blood was coming out.

Speaker 2 I was thinking,

Speaker 2 please, God,

Speaker 2 help us.

Speaker 2 Help us survive this.

Speaker 2 Wolfgang said he'd struggled with Keller over the gun, and that's when Keller had been shot.

Speaker 2 The prosecution also said Keller's allegation about Rose threatening the people in his office was all hoo-eye.

Speaker 22 Number one, he doesn't tell any of his employees that Rose has threatened them. He doesn't put extra security on the business.
He doesn't change the locks of the business.

Speaker 22 He does none of the things that a person who's legitimately been threatened would normally do.

Speaker 4 You're arguing a premeditated murder here.

Speaker 22 Absolutely, a premeditated murder.

Speaker 2 Then it was Keller's turn. He took the stand and told the jury that he only carried the gun in self-defense.
The purpose of bringing that gun was to protect yourself and your employees from Rose,

Speaker 2 correct?

Speaker 2 And Wolfgang. The ensuing melee, Keller said, was a horrible mistake.

Speaker 10 He had what was a gun to me in his hand.

Speaker 28 Why don't you show us how he had it?

Speaker 24 It was just like this.

Speaker 4 I never intended to shoot at anyone.

Speaker 7 You never intended to shoot anyone.

Speaker 4 I never wanted to have a situation arrive

Speaker 10 where one would have to shoot somebody.

Speaker 2 But more crucial, Keller insisted it was Wolfgang, not he, that was responsible for Rose's death.

Speaker 10 My finger was not on the trigger that fired the shot that killed Rhodes.

Speaker 2 Moreover, his lawyer says there was another reason Keller wouldn't have wanted his ex-wife dead.

Speaker 25 Fred Keller loved his son, wanted the best for his son.

Speaker 25 Fred Keller knew that he had a terminal illness. Fred Keller would never have intentionally orphaned his child by killing his mom.

Speaker 2 The defense reminded jurors the last thing Keller would do was destroy a future with his beloved young son over money.

Speaker 25 Fred Keller did not have this fancy lifestyle where he needed a lot of money. That he had more money than he could possibly spend.
That his lifestyle was spending time with his son.

Speaker 2 The jury was out for five days, turning it this way and that. A homicide or a misbegotten self-defense.
This juror said it was a hopeless deliberation.

Speaker 29 We did realize,

Speaker 29 you know, again, agonizing and agonizing over it, taking the weekend and, you know, trying to regroup, that we were not going to be able to do that as a group. We could not reach a consensus.

Speaker 2 And in fact, they did not.

Speaker 8 It was a hung jury in a mistrial.

Speaker 6 We were all devastated.

Speaker 28 I thought it was very clear that he was guilty.

Speaker 6 We were thinking, did the jury not hear, you know, did the jury not hear what we heard?

Speaker 22 There was absolutely no question at all that this was going to be a retrial.

Speaker 2 The state was determined to convict Fred Keller of murder. But would Keller be allowed to walk free on bond while he waited for a second trial? Rose's family was still afraid of him.

Speaker 6 It was too scary to think about, to be honest with you.

Speaker 2 With more than enough cash for bail, there seemed nothing to keep Keller in jail until one man walked out of the shadows of a tortured past to tell a courtroom an astonishing and terrible story about Fred Keller.

Speaker 4 And it involves this allegation of abducting, kidnapping his own children.

Speaker 23 That's true.

Speaker 2 Palm Beach millionaire Fred Keller had been charged with killing his ex-wife Rose, but there had been a mistrial.

Speaker 2 And now his ex-wife's family was afraid he'd get out on bond as he waited for the retrial.

Speaker 22 We needed to do a bond hearing to keep him in custody.

Speaker 2 Most bond hearings are routine affairs, but this one would be a shocker. The prosecution called to the stand Brian Bolander, a son of Keller's first wife, whom Keller had adopted during the marriage.

Speaker 2 He'd tell the court how far Fred Keller would go to have his way when the legal system didn't work for him.

Speaker 22 His wife filed for and received a divorce from him, and it was the early 1960s at this point. The wife got custody of the children, and apparently Mr.
Keller didn't like that very much. Mr.

Speaker 22 Keller had arranged for a visitation with the wife and the children in a park in upstate New York.

Speaker 2 What happened next would change Brian Bolander's life forever. He told us, boys, get in the car.
I want to talk to you, mother, alone.

Speaker 2 We got in the car.

Speaker 2 He did the 50-R dash, jumped in the car, and that was the last I saw my mother.

Speaker 2 Keller, still known as Fred Bolander, drove the three young boys to Canada.

Speaker 2 Then boarded a plane with them to Germany, where they set off traveling throughout Europe for almost a year. Along the way, Fred Bolander changed his name to Fred Keller.

Speaker 2 And how did he explain to the children their mother's absence?

Speaker 22 All of this time, the young sons were asking of their father, where's mom? And Fred Keller told his sons, your mom is dead. She died in an automobile accident.

Speaker 2 Ultimately, Keller brought the boys back to Virginia, where an observant social worker happened to hear young Brian's story.

Speaker 2 She did a little research, uncovering the twisted truth, and after nearly a decade, the boys were reunited with their mother.

Speaker 2 While two of the sons maintained a relationship with Keller, Brian Bolander never saw him again.

Speaker 25 I think it's important that he was never prosecuted for any kidnapping or any child abuse charges.

Speaker 2 Keller had never answered for the incident, but now the judge viewed Keller as a definite flight risk and denied bail. Rose's family, the Kyles, would wait two years for the second trial.

Speaker 2 Her sister, Angie, was raising the boy, Fred Chin. If Fred Keller was found not guilty in the makeover trial, they were certain he'd want to get his son back under his roof.

Speaker 6 He certainly would have had enough money to fight everybody to

Speaker 6 get him back, and that was

Speaker 6 just unthinkable.

Speaker 2 In January of 2007, Fred Keller once again stood trial for his ex-wife's murder. Prosecutors felt they'd learned something by talking to the previous jury after it had deadlocked.

Speaker 4 What was the wobbly part of the case for that four person in trial one?

Speaker 22 They were having some trouble understanding some of the aspects of the physical evidence.

Speaker 22 And so, whereas we relied upon diagrams in the first trial, we had a scale model of the office of the scene actually built.

Speaker 27 And then you moved like this.

Speaker 2 Now, a new set of jurors heard accounts of that horrible morning. Wolfgang's story.

Speaker 27 I was thinking, I'm going to die. I'm dying today.
I can't believe it's happening.

Speaker 2 The prosecutors.

Speaker 22 A person who's afraid does not do what defendant Fred Keller did on the morning of November 10th, 2003. They do everything but the defense.

Speaker 30 Fred Keller would not and did not, as the evidence shows, shoot Rose Keller. leaving his son without a mother.

Speaker 2 And so a second jury retired to deliberate. Rose's family family didn't know what to expect.

Speaker 6 It could be another mistrial. It could be a not guilty voting.
I mean, it could be anything. And it's really scary.

Speaker 2 After a scant five hours, the jury was coming back with a verdict.

Speaker 28 As to Count 1, we find the defendant, yes, guilty of first-degree murder.

Speaker 2 The jury hadn't believed Keller's account of self-defense.

Speaker 3 I'm so relieved that finally we got some justice.

Speaker 3 I'm sure Rose is watching from heaven.

Speaker 25 She's happy.

Speaker 2 Keller sat stoically through both trials, but at his sentencing, the court came out of his bottle.

Speaker 8 He proceeded to just

Speaker 8 light into Rose's family. He called them greedy opportunists.
He looked right at Wolfgang and said, you're responsible for your sister's death and you've been lying about it. It was quite amazing.

Speaker 2 Keller was sentenced to life in prison. And most expected a control freak like Keller to have trouble doing time.
But...

Speaker 7 My understanding was he pretty much controlled the prison. People were saying sir to him.

Speaker 2 In those audio tapes made from behind bars, Keller put an oddly positive spin on his incarceration. It has not been completely negative to you.
I have a lot of respect to you,

Speaker 2 because I'm the only person here that they call Mr. Keller.
He's been close to deputies.

Speaker 2 Once upon a time in Germany, a pretty young girl answered a lonely heart's heart's ad. And now the unhappy little fairy tale was over.
Promise turned to ruin.

Speaker 2 Fred Keller said all along that Rose would never get a dime of his money. And ultimately, she didn't.

Speaker 7 Did he win in the end? In his mind, he did. In his mind, this is the way it was going to be.

Speaker 2 Fred Keller succumbed to leukemia and died in prison in August of 2007. leaving his son Fredschin, both a very rich young boy and an orphan.

Speaker 2 Rose Kyle and Fred Keller were hardly a blip on the Palm Beach radar. But the tiny island meant a great deal to both of them, each hungry for something they felt they'd found in this place.

Speaker 9 The illusion is fantasy on this island, but you peel it away and you find greed and money.

Speaker 2 In the end, though, it would turn out nothing was found, only a great deal lost.

Speaker 12 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason.

Speaker 14 But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 11 Zinn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand.

Speaker 16 Plus, Zen offers a robust rewards program.

Speaker 11 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zen. Check out zinn.com slash find to find Zen at a store near you.

Speaker 17 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.