Golden (61 page)

That left Patti to take over the duty of heading to the rain forest for America's entertainment, featured along with the likes of reality-star-turned-singer Heidi Montag, former Detroit Piston John Salley, and actor Stephen Baldwin. Before long Patti was eating a tarantula to stay on the show and talking to her fellow contestants about her husband being a good person and about his many campaign travails. One had been his run against veteran Illinois politician Judy Baar Topinka, Patti told John Salley.

“And he thought of her as like a crazy old aunt,” Patti said. “That he had to kind of like suffer and just kind of like roll your eyes at. Like she's the kooky old aunt that, you know, you have to be respectful to her because she's your old aunt.”

And like most people who find themselves on
Survivor
or a similar show, Patti got a chance to talk to her family while she was still in the wild. Rod and her daughters told her how proud they were of her over a video phone.

“They're clean. They're reading,” Blagojevich said of the couple's daughters as Patti looked on. She would spend more than three weeks in the jungle and afterward credited it with restoring her faith in people and introducing her to a new diet of rice and beans. But she failed to win; that honor went to actor Lou Diamond Phillips.

As Blagojevich and his wife were becoming D-grade celebrities, those left back in Chicago were dealing with the fallout of the criminal case. Among them was Chris Kelly.

On Tuesday, September 8, 2009, Kelly's phone rang. It was his attorney, Michael Monico. He told Kelly, who was headed to prison soon on a tax conviction, that he had to show up in court later that day because federal prosecutors wanted to revoke his bond. Kelly quickly realized why.

In the two years since he had first been indicted, Kelly's once whirlwind life had folded into a downward spiral of despair and chaos. His relationship with Blagojevich was obliterated. His roofing company, which once thrived due to business at O'Hare Airport, was all but done since City of Chicago officials banned him from ever doing business with them again after he was charged in yet another federal fraud case related to a contract for roofing work at hangars. Lenders had moved to foreclose on his Burr Ridge
mansion. And the fifty-one-year-old had separated from his wife, Carmen, and was now living in a downtown Chicago condominium near Millennium Park with a thirty-year-old Latina divorcee who worked in a Logan Square nightclub. Kelly had invested tens of thousands of dollars in the club, Vlive, and he had recently stormed down there to talk with the owner about why he wasn't seeing much return on his investment. He demanded to see the financial books. The exchange quickly turned heated, and Kelly, screaming and yelling, was turned away. Federal prosecutors had caught wind of the quarrel and went to court to revoke Kelly's bond, a move that could have forced him to jail immediately.

Kelly told Monico he would be there and was true to his word. He appeared before US District Judge Charles Norgle, who decided not to revoke Kelly's bond, instead allowing him to enter prison days later, as planned. But the judge listened as Kelly pleaded guilty in the O'Hare case, admitting he was part of a kickback scheme to illegally get $8.5 million in work at the airport.

The normally brash and confident Kelly was unusually subdued, even given the circumstances. Standing before the judge was a broken man sweating through a blue shirt and shifting from one foot to the other. At times he spoke so softly it was impossible to hear him.

Out in the hallway before the hearing began, the desperation on his face was clear.

“I know my life is over,” Kelly told a pair of reporters. The federal government had put enormous pressure on him, charging him three times in all, including in the Blagojevich case. And while there had been talks about what kind of break he would get to plead guilty to all the cases at once and then testify against his former friend, Kelly had said no. What he thought about was not his time on earth, Kelly said, but the next life.

“That's why you stay true to who you are,” he said. “I've never changed that. Never.”

After court, Kelly told his girlfriend, Clarissa Flores-Buhelos, he planned to see his daughters. But at 7:30 P
M,
he called her to say he had fallen asleep at the “yard.” Flores-Buhelos knew exactly where Kelly was talking about. For the last five months, he had rented a storage yard near an old True Value at 173rd and Cicero in south suburban Country Club Hills to stockpile some of his roofing equipment. It was nothing to look at, a gravel lot loaded with weeds and a small trailer. But Kelly had been hanging out there a lot recently, fumbling about in the trailer for hours at a time. He kept a sleeping bag in the trailer.

Kelly then conceded he hadn't just fallen asleep. He had taken some pills. Flores-Buhelos headed down to the yard immediately, a trip that could take more than a half hour from downtown. When she arrived, the gate was locked. A five-foot-eight-inch former Northwestern University basketball star, Flores-Buhelos quickly jumped the fence and spotted Kelly stumbling around with a flashlight. She took Kelly to her car, where the two sat and talked for a few minutes. Flores-Buhelos didn't like how Kelly was acting and told him she was taking him to the hospital. Kelly said he didn't want to go, but she insisted. She called one of Kelly's friends, who also called Monico and Kelly's brother, Charles.

Flores-Buhelos took Kelly to nearby Oak Forest Hospital and parked near the ER. Kelly was still groggy but seemed better. His friend Carlo Buonavolanto showed up, and after about thirty minutes outside the two decided not to take him into the hospital but instead to drive him back home to the downtown condo. But first, they returned to the yard to find out what kind of pills he had taken.

Inside the trailer, Flores-Buhelos saw a bottle of Aleve and a box of Tylenol Cold medicine. She also noticed a smell she thought was carbon monoxide. When she asked Kelly about it, he acknowledged he had left one of his trucks running outside of the trailer, connected a hose from the tailpipe, and dragged the other end of the hose into the trailer in a bid to kill himself.

By the time all three got to the condo, Kelly was in better spirits, but Flores-Buhelos and Buonavolanto talked about getting Kelly a psychiatrist. When Flores-Buhelos went into her bedroom, she found tucked between her pillows a letter inside an envelope with Kelly's handwriting on it. She knew what it was and didn't want to read it. She placed it a drawer. She and Kelly then talked before going to sleep. Kelly promised he would never do anything like that again.

Three days later, on Friday, September 11, Kelly and Buonavolanto met at Monico's office in downtown Chicago to talk about getting Kelly some help. The meeting lasted two and a half hours. Flores-Buhelos went to work, and by 2:20 P
M,
Kelly had made his way out to Country Club Hills. Wearing a white baseball cap, a short-sleeve T-shirt, and blue jeans, he walked the aisles of a Wal-Mart. He purchased several items, including bread, 2 percent
milk, and a box of D-con rat poison. He loaded the items into his 2007 black Cadillac Escalade and took off.

Less than an hour later, Kelly sent Flores-Buhelos a text. “I LOVE 46.” 46 was their code for the day they met. Just after 5:30 P
M,
Flores-Buhelos texted Kelly her work schedule, trying to arrange a day to make dinner reservations. Kelly didn't respond. A few more hours passed, and Flores-Buhe-los texted Kelly again, telling him she was leaving work soon. A half-hour later, at 10:15 P
M,
Kelly finally texted back.

“Come get me asap yard.”

Depression had enveloped Kelly once again.

He had been at the trailer, positioned his sleeping bag near photographs of his three daughters, and chugged the milk. More bottles of aspirin and Tylenol were opened. So was the box of rat poison. He had vomited inside the trailer and stumbled outside, holding the Wal-Mart bag filled with more blue and white pills. He had vomited again right in front of trailer where numerous pebbles of the rat poison were later found.

After getting the text, Flores-Buhelos called Kelly, but he didn't pick up. She texted him, “call me pls.” When she eventually got him, Kelly sounded groggy. On the way to the yard, she kept texting him. “I need u!!!!!!” At 10:40 P
M,
she texted again: “Almost there!”

When she pulled up to the lot, she found Kelly's 2007 black Cadillac Escalade parked nearby. Kelly was hunched over the wheel. He had defecated and thrown up all over himself. He wasn't wearing any shoes. She pulled him out of the SUV and got him into the backseat before she took the wheel and headed back to Oak Forest Hospital. On the way there, Kelly kept yelling for Flores-Buhelos to slow down because he felt sick. He told her he had taken aspirin, Tylenol, and rat poison.

This time, Flores-Buhelos didn't hesitate to go inside the ER. She contacted friends, including Buonavolanto. Initially, a doctor said Kelly was OK “but just needed to rest.” Kelly was coherent and talking, but Buonavolanto feared for his friend's life. Physicians later told Flores-Buhelos they wanted to move Kelly to Stroger Hospital, the county-run hospital that was better equipped to treat him. Oak Forest focused more on rehabilitation services and acute care than general emergency room procedures. It took several
hours for an ambulance to arrive to transport Kelly to Stroger, and when hospital and ambulance staffers went to strap Kelly down for the move, he became aggressive.

“No, C,” he said to Flores-Buhelos, “it's my life. Tell them they won. Tell them they won.”

Hospital staffers gave Kelly a sedative and moved him to Stroger. When Flores-Buhelos arrived, she waited for an update with Buonavolanto and another of Kelly's friends from college, Mike Allen. While at the hospital, the three decided to call Carmen Kelly, who arrived at Stroger a short time later. Doctors worked on Kelly at Stroger, but his condition continued to deteriorate. Shortly, despite their best efforts, Kelly was dead.

For two hours after Kelly's death, Flores-Buhelos, Buonavolanto, Allen, Carmen Kelly, and Kelly's sister Gertrude remained with the body until they were told it had to be taken to the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office.

Allen went back to the yard, looking for a suicide note. When he arrived, he found the Wal-Mart bag outside the trailer with the blue and white pills still inside, along with opened bottles and opened and empty boxes of the rat poison. Inside the trailer, he found the empty milk jug, the sleeping bag, and the pictures of his daughters. He sat on the stairs outside the trailer for several minutes before collecting the Wal-Mart bag and the pills. He didn't want Kelly's family hearing about the details. He then tried to get Kelly's Escalade at Oak Forest, but hospital security stopped him.