Jury trial begins in Joliet Outlaws murder case

A jury was given two scenarios Thursday as to how a 24-year-old woman ended up with a gunshot wound to the head at the Outlaws’ clubhouse in Joliet Township.

Prosecutors charged Jeremy Boshears, 36, of Coal City with first-degree murder and concealment of a homicide. He is accused of shooting Kaitlyn Kearns in 2017 in the Joliet Outlaws clubhouse, cleaning up the crime scene and parking Kearns’ Jeep containing her body at a pole barn about 50 miles away in Kankakee County to hide it.

On the other hand, Boshears’ attorney, Chuck Bretz, contended that Kearns died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He supported that claim by citing her past history of anxiety, depression, cutting herself, her use of psychiatric medication and a defense expert’s analysis of the incident.

Jurors must decide whether Boshears is guilty of killing Kearns and concealing her death.

In opening arguments, Will County Assistant State’s Attorney Dan Egan said Kearns was working at Woody’s bar in Joliet Township on Nov. 13, 2017, before she closed it for the night and went down the street to the Outlaws’ clubhouse.

Egan said Kearns was let in by Boshears, a member of the Outlaws who was dating Kearns while married to another woman.

Egan said Boshears put a gun to her right temple and pulled the trigger.

“And right away, the cover-up starts,” Egan said.

Egan said Boshears made about 30 phone calls to fellow Outlaws seeking help to cover up the murder. He said Boshears, as part of the cover-up, sent a text to Kearns’ phone hours later expressing he was worried about her.

Egan read texts allegedly sent by Boshears to Kearns during their relationship to demonstrate his obsession with her. He said Boshears texted Kearns that he was going to make her “my queen.”

“‘There is no man out there that will go as far as me,’” Egan read from one text.

Egan said forensic evidence shows there was no gunshot residue on Kearns’ hands but there was such residue on a flannel shirt belonging to Boshears.

Bretz told the jury they were “going to hear a lot of things that don’t add up.” He called the case against Boshears a “classic example of the government getting it wrong.”

Bretz said that when investigators with the Will County Sheriff’s Office learned of the extramarital affair between Boshears and Kearns, they “narrowed on him” without considering whether Kearns died by suicide.

Bretz said after he retained an expert who concluded Kearns’ died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the state brought in their own expert who couldn’t make a determination either way.

Bretz said there were no eyewitnesses to the incident.

“They’re going to ask you to speculate,” Bretz said of the state’s case.

The first witness called by the state was Kearns’ father, Kevin Kearns.

Kevin Kearns said in a tearful testimony Thursday that his daughter was a “very upbeat” person who was looking forward to becoming a godmother to a relative.

“She was just so kind. She would help anyone anytime she could,” Kevin Kearns said.

Under cross-examination by Bretz, Kevin Kearns said he knew “to a certain extent” of his daughter’s mental health struggles and suggested she was distraught by the death of her mother.

Kevin Kearns said he had met Boshears, who told him that he was in love with his daughter and in the process of divorcing his wife.

The next state witness was Kaitlyn Kearns’ friend Marie Roche, one the last people to see Kearns at Woody’s bar on the night of Nov. 12, 2017. Roche said she also met Boshears for the first time at the bar.

“She was real happy, her normal self,” Roche said of her friend.