Death by deception

Dennis Murphy Correspondent • Profile

James Keown was a man who circled back to where he’d come from—the morning man on news-talk radio in Jefferson City, Missouri.

After a taste of the bigtime, and studies at no less an institution than Harvard, Keown, the 30-year-old call-in host, had found a place to regain his footing and heal his wounds after what many thought was his great loss.

It had been years since he’d been behind the mike. Radio was James’ first love and now he was working again with the man who’d given him his big break when he was just a teenager with ambition and no experience.

Warren Kretch, mentor: He had just an uncanny confidence about him.

Warren Kretch remembers he was doing his show as a live remote when this 15-year-old kid stuck out his hand and told the veteran broadcaster he could do him some good if he’d hire him.

James Keown, even then, was nothing if not glib and confident.

Kretch: I put him on the air as a disc jockey.

Murphy: He had the goods?

Kretch: [He was] an amazing kid. I have hired umpteen part timers in my day. And he was the standout in that whole crowd, in my 35 years in this business.

So in 2004, when a very grown up James Keown showed up back in Jeff City looking for work, Warren Kretch urged his bosses at the radio station to hire his former protege.

Kretch: Frankly he would have been way overqualified to go back to work in Jefferson City, Missouri after all the things he had done.

Murphy: Even as on air talent?

Kretch: Yes.

James Keown, son of a statehouse lobbyist, grew up with an ear tuned to the state capitol’s gossip. Two decades later, that’s what his popular morning show was all about— dishing out the latest political buzz around town.  He’d gab about the politicos he’d seen at dinner the night before, rubbing prominent elbows at the Capitol’s watering holes.

What he kept out of the banter for the most part was maybe the important biographical detail of his life: That his wife of nearly 8 years, Julie Keown, had died recently. The man behind the mike was trying to open a new, happier chapter in his life.

To this friend from high school days, James Keown confided a secret: the real reason for his wife’s death. She had been chronically ill, he said, before falling into a severe depression.

Julie Webber, James Keown's friend: Julie had actually committed suicide because she had been depressed.

In the rare times he shared his story, his friends and family understood that his desperate wife had loved him right up to her final hours.

They’d been an opposites attract couple from the start. Him, the teenage disc jockey, the child of a state bigwig, and she, a farmer’s daughter from the rolling soybean fields of western Missouri.

Nancy Oldag, Julie’s mother: I thought a perfect child. She never gave us any problems at all.

Julie Oldag

Before James came along, she was known as Julie Oldag. Her parents Nancy and Jack, remember a sharp-witted, outgoing kid with a small appetite for mischief.

Nancy Oldag: I think the only thing she did was wrong was during high school. She had a music teacher that she really liked and her and her friends went out and stuck plastic forks in his yard one night (laughter). And she drove the getaway car.

Harmless pranks aside, her parents say Julie was always a sensible, rooted person.

At college, friends set Julie up with a guy they knew from the campus radio station.  Mike and Stephany Webb— now a married couple— thought that Julie might blossom in the company of James Keown.

The salt of the earth girl and the full of himself boy always swinging for the fences.

Mike Webb, friend of the couple: Well, her being very down to earth, very grounded... and him being very ambitious and sort of... larger than life. There was a balance there.

That blind date freshman year was a success as Mike and Stephany watched their friends James and Julie find an easy pace for their growing relationship. When his balloon threatened to sail away, Julie would tug James back to earth.

Stephany Webb:  She would just say, “That’s not true. That’s b.s., James.”

When Julie graduated with a degree in nursing, James hadn’t finished college. It seemed only natural to one and all that the two were getting married.

Mike Webb:  Watching the two of them together had inspired us as a couple because of the way they loved one another.

The newlyweds settled just outside Kansas City where James still worked in the radio biz—mostly behind the scenes. No one doubted James, the big dreamer with his non-stop chat, would make it in radio, or anything else he set his mind on.

Things certainly seemed to be going well for James a few years later when he went home to Jefferson city and took his one-time boss and mentor Warren Kretch out to lunch. He announced he was now working a cushy gig in Chicago with ESPN Radio, the sports broadcasters. From what his old boss could tell, the protege was earning a good living.

Kretch: There was a little twinge a jealousy when this kid that I trained in when he was 15 years old picks me up for lunch in a BMW.

Betsy Dudenhoeffer—a high school classmate—says Keown’s old pals wore a similar shade of envy green when he pulled up to their 10-year high school reunion in a rolling success story and a slightly different set of wheels.

Betsy Dudenhoeffer: He shows up in a brand new, top of the line, fully loaded Mercedes-Benz --  gorgeous and easily a $60,000, $70,000 car. And he tells us he’s the voice of ESPN. He’s living in Chicago. He’s living the high life.

But by his late 20s, the old friends had lost touch with James’ brilliant career. Word reached home that he’d left Chicago, gone back to Kansas City – and after some setbacks, had gotten out of radio and into marketing and Web consulting.

His new boss Tammie Blossom liked her hire.

Tammie Blossom, James Keown's boss: Boy, he’s got an impressive resume. And this is a guy that’s smart and going places.

And where he was going next came as something of a surprise—good news certainly—but not expected. James announced that he’d been accepted into the prestigious Harvard Business School.

He and Julie would be uprooting themselves from Missouri and heading for Boston. A new beginning for the Keowns which would turn out to be the end.

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