Keeler spent the first eight years of his BPD career on patrol, most of it in Charlestown. According to internal-affairs documents, he racked up seven official complaints during that time, including five for alleged physical abuse. The only one that stuck, however, stemmed from an incident in April 1986, when Keeler fired shots at a car that, he claimed, was backing up quickly toward his partner. The department ruled that his use of deadly force was inappropriate, and gave him a formal reprimand.
Despite the two official disciplinary actions, Keeler was made a sergeant in 1989, and was transferred to the troubled “Area B,” which includes most of Roxbury and Dorchester. Then, in 1992, with the homicide unit swamped with trials from a record-setting 152 killings two years earlier, the department brought in Keeler and two others to help with cold cases.
It didn’t take long for Keeler to find the spotlight. That December, his three-man crew pulled Boston College sophomore Michael Finkley out of class to arrest him for a 1990 murder.
Later, with the media in full swarm for the arraignment, the judge decided to keep Finkley and his co-defendant out of the courtroom, where potential eyewitnesses would see them either directly or on TV. According to sources involved in the case, while the arraignment was under way Keeler snuck the two defendants out of the court holding cell, drove them around to the front of the courthouse, and paraded them into the building in front of the cameras. Finkley ultimately pled guilty to second-degree murder; the other defendant was acquitted.
Arrests and acquittals
Keeler was later assigned to a regular homicide squad. On Halloween evening, 1994, nine-year-old Jermaine Goffigan was fatally shot on his front porch in Roxbury’s Academy Homes projects. Keeler and Detective William Maloney, working on a tip, quickly arrested Donnell Johnson. In the first interrogation with Keeler, Johnson gave an alibi: he was home with his family that night. That alibi — in fact, the very fact that the questioning took place — was never passed on to the prosecutors, as required by law. (A judge later called the episode “deeply troubling”: Maloney was suspended for 30 days but Keeler was not disciplined.) In 2000, Johnson was exonerated when federal investigators discovered that two other men, who later pled guilty, had committed the murder.
After discussing 12 years of Keeler cases with prosecutors, defense attorneys, investigators, and others — and reviewing court documents, transcripts, and other case materials — one detects a distinct pattern, particularly in high-profile cases, such as those involving murdered children. That pattern includes vague circumstances leading Keeler to a suspect; information never making it to the defense counsel; and eventual acquittal or exoneration, long after Keeler has enjoyed the glory of solving a case.
Anthony Jones was acquitted twice on Keeler cases, from 1993 and 1994; Leon Dixon was acquitted of a 1996 murder; Felix Santiago’s conviction for the 1994 murder of a pregnant 17-year-old was overturned and he was not retried; Lamarr Smith was acquitted of the 1997 murder of a 16-year-old. Marlon Passley was convicted for a 1995 murder and exonerated for it in 1999. Keeler was involved with all of these cases.
