The True Story Behind Apple TV’s ‘Black Bird’ Is Just as Wild as Fiction

Black Bird is a new miniseries starring Taron Egerton, Sepideh Moafi, Greg Kinnear, and the late Ray Liotta—And at the beginning, the series claims to be inspired by true events, but what are those events?

The True Story Behind ‘Black Bird’

Black Bird is based on the non-fiction book In With the Devil: A Fallen Hero, A Serial Killer, and A Dangerous Bargain for Redemption, which was written by James “Jimmy” Keene and Hillel Levin.

Growing up, Keene (played by Egerton) was seen as a golden boy and had a lot of athletic promise. However, that promise did not come to pass when he failed to impress the major college football squads, ending his potential pro career before it started. So, after falling in with a bad crowd, at the age of 17, he became a drug dealer, selling cocaine, in Chicago. In 1996, during a drug sting dubbed Operation Snowplow, Keene’s house was raided and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison without the possibility of parole.

Eventually, federal prosecutor Larry Beaumont approached him with a deal. If Keene could befriend suspected serial killer Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser), get him to confess to at least two out of the nineteen murders they believed Hall committed—Keene could walk free.

This would require Keene to transfer from his safe prison to a maximum security one, where the risk of being murdered was likely. Keene would need confessions and body locations in order for his deal to be complete. So … like easy peasy?

After five months undercover, Keene managed to gain Hall’s confidence, and slowly, information began to be shared. Newsweek quotes a Dateline interview with Keene where he said that, “the hardest thing [he’s] ever done is to sit there and pretend to be his friend and listen to this stuff and not just rip him apart.”

After managing to get Hall to confess to the murder of 15-year-old Jessica Roach, a crime that Hall had been convinced of but tried to appeal, Keene then tried to get Hall to confess to participating in the 1993 disappearance of Tricia Reitler, however, despite getting it initially, Hall and Keene had a falling out.

It has been over 29 years since Tricia Reitler went missing.

Eventually, Keene was released early and released his book in 2010. His criminal record was scrubbed clean due to his assistance in the Hall case. Jimmy Keene is still alive today and got an executive producer credit and cameo role in Black Bird.

(featured image: Apple TV Plus)