Photograph by Mark Gilliland
Kevin Grillion's just coming off an all-night surveillance. His boss, Greg Kellerman, sees him pull up and goes outside Kellerman Investigations' new Glen Carbon, Ill., office to hear what happened. Grillion sits there with the window rolled down, bringing his boss up to speed.
Grillion looks like a middle-aged guy comfortable with his own bulk, glad for the simple joys of beer and televised baseball. Then he reaches for the military-grade black monocle that allows him to see things, lit in a green haze, in the dark of night … the GPS system that lets him "ping" a vehicle in real time and track its progress on his laptop … the 1 million–candlepower infrared illuminator (for long-distance night vision) that's boxed up in the back seat like a kid's toy …
"We keep blankets in our cars," Kellerman explains, "so we can hide this stuff at a moment's notice." Trim, with one of those goatees that never looks quite wholesome, he's warm, talkative, wired with restless energy. He loves his work.
Contrary to a March article in the National Enquirer, the mainstay of that work is "fidelity testing" surveillance and the decidedly less sexy (until you hear the stories) 2,500 cases a month of process serving. The Enquirer—tipped off by a British correspondent who came across Kellerman's website—zoomed in on what its headline pronounced "honeytrapping," dubbing Kellerman an "integrity pioneer."
He's OK with the moniker.
"Honeytrapping" involves sending an operative—usually female, but not always—to, say, a bar to be "friendly, smile, make eye contact" without ever approaching, touching or in any way seducing the target. If the target gives or requests a phone number or initiates any kind of intimacy, it's on tape (no audio, as that's illegal in Illinois, but videotape captured by Kellerman from a nearby table), and the honey's outta there.
"I've been called several times to do this myself—go, sit in a bar, talk to somebody's girlfriend and see what happens," Kellerman says. "And I'm no Adonis."
"That's what I'm here for," Grillion says, smoothing his bald head and shifting his girth. "Piece of meat's all I am." They laugh, hard. These guys laugh a lot.
"People never cease to surprise you," Grillion remarks. "They lie even about things they don't need to. You knock on the door, the guy's standing there with a phone in his hand, you say, ‘Can I have a phone number?' and he says, ‘I don't have a phone.' Or you ask if he's so-and-so, and he says no, and you call the cellphone that's in that person's name, and it rings on his hip."
Or you get one of the crazies.
"That's why there's no sign out front," Kellerman explains. "You wouldn't believe the people who come in here. One woman said her new neighbors brought in roaches, and now those neighbors knew everything she did, so was there some kind of electrical device you could attach to a roach?" Another wanted him to investigate the local power company, because she thought it was sending out electric bursts to hurt her. "Another thought Bill Gates and Microsoft were using military satellites to singe her and fry her hard drives, and she wanted me to call Bill Gates, who she claimed was her cousin."
What did he say in reply?
"After years I finally came up with this: I advise them to see a psychiatrist because, in proving their case, it would be a good thing to have a psychological evaluation."
Not every client's nuts, though. Let's see: There was the woman who suspected her husband of having an affair. Turned out he'd been living in a second household six blocks away for 12 years, Kellerman says, taking the other woman to plays and restaurants, even running a home business from the second house. Two other private-detective agencies had tried to catch him at infidelity and failed. "He drives like a bat out of hell and kept losing them. We were able to stay with him." The speed was habitual, Kellerman adds; the guy had no clue anybody was onto him. He'd quit his construction job in St. Louis and gone to his second house every morning instead. "I told his wife when I first met her, ‘I'll bet you he's living a double life,'" Kellerman recalls with satisfaction.
Then there was the workers' comp case for an Alton, Ill., factory. "Again, two other firms had tried to catch this woman," Kellerman says, "but they sat right on the road in front of the home." He climbed up the river bluffs in full camouflage—his favorite sartorial possession is a Marine sniper's olive-drab burlap ghillie suit—and camped out for 16 days. "Hikers walked past and never even saw me. I was able to film her mowing the grass, picking up her grandchild, picking up heavy cans of gasoline, bags of groceries and a large fish tank," he says.
A GPS device helped him nail a police officer in southern Illinois for an internal affairs division. "We had their permission to attach the device to his patrol car," Kellerman explains. "You always have to have the owner's permission. But the chief didn't even know we were doing this, so they warned me I might wind up spending a night in jail if I got caught. I was able to distract the officer—a confederate in the department took him into a back room and talked about some union issue. It only takes about 30 seconds to hook up the device. What was scary was that there was a state police car parked next to his, motor running. What do you think he would have done if he'd come out and seen me under his car?"
Didn't happen—and they were able to track, on their computer, his routine: leaving his night shift at 12:30 a.m. for a couple of hours, returning around 2:30 a.m., making a few checks, then heading home around 4:15 a.m., eating lunch in his trailer and staying there until 7 a.m., when he signed off. "He did that nearly every day I was down there," Kellerman says. "And we also took out the chief with that case, because of his mismanagement."
Behind his desk, a red teardrop on his computer screen glides slowly through St. Louis County—a replay of a trucker's deviation from his assigned route the night before. Kellerman goes on with his story, explaining how he camped in the woods by the patrolman's trailer. What would he have said if someone approached him? "Oh, we always have a back story. I would have said I'd just found a nice, quiet place to sleep because I was traveling to Kentucky."
One minute, Kellerman and his operatives have the enthusiasm of 10-year-old boys with a secret club, secret rituals and a bunch of castoff gadgets they've endowed with magical properties. The next minute, they sound like undercover cowboy cops with SWAT-team gear and the counterintelligence capabilities of the Mossad.
Kellerman started off in uniform with the Bethalto, Ill., police department at age 15—as an Explorer. At 19 he joined the Coast Guard, setting sail on the Eagle and then setting buoys and dredging bodies in St. Louis. He became a police dispatcher and special (part-time) patrol officer, then a firefighter for 19 years, loving the adrenaline of the rescues.
Now he's rescuing people from themselves—or spouses from their partners' lies—and business is exploding, thanks to the nation's ever-loosening morals and roughly $5.5 billion in uncollected car and credit-card debt. He'd intended to retire on real-estate investments, maybe do a little process serving. Then the calls started coming, and he started hiring people, and this April he moved the agency to a new office building a few blocks from his home. "We had several police officers, even a couple chiefs, working for us in their off hours, and they'd park their squad cars at my house," he explains. "The neighbors got alarmed. I kept saying, ‘These people work for us!'"
He likes propriety's edge, the bourgeois raised eyebrows, the hint of danger. "I was actually carjacked once while serving a paper," he volunteers. "The guy wanted to take me over into the woods. I got up to 6 miles an hour and slammed hard on the brakes, so he was thrown forward, and then I got out my Glock. He politely got out of the car."
He and Grillion talk about precautions: "The minute you come on someone's property, they don't like you. We have to try to get out of there without getting hurt," Kellerman says. "Once you give someone a paper, they are in shock for about 15 to 30 seconds. That is your time to get to your car and leave. Because the shock wears off."
Grillion says "even serving papers is a chess game." He checks the block first: "Any people hanging around? And is there a street between me and them, so I can get out if I need to? I don't ever pull in the driveway."
"That can be construed as illegally blocking their vehicle," Kellerman explains. "You point your car in the direction of the exit, and you've got your head on a pivot."
"Are the vertical blinds all smooth?" Grillion continues. "If one's up, someone just looked through the window. And you don't ever, ever stand in front of the door. You stand to the side, and after you knock, you close the screen door again."
"People's dogs scare me more than the people do—I carry mace and a loud noisemaker," Kellerman remarks. "O.J. [operative Olivia Johnson] carries dog biscuits and feeds all the mutts in East St. Louis."
"I carry a cat and just throw it at them," Grillion says dryly.
As for the humans, they "kill 'em with ma'ams and sirs, thank-yous and have-a-nice-days," Grillion adds. "One lady said, ‘You were the nicest server I ever had.'"
"We treat everybody with respect," Kellerman says. "We don't judge. And they actually thank us; they offer us beverages. It's because they expect us to have an attitude, and we don't."
He's never been disgusted by someone's behavior? "Well, yeah," he admits. "I followed one guy to a park near Westport Plaza, and there they were in the car, broad daylight, with people jogging and kids playing all around them, and the woman proceeded to give this guy fellatio for 2½ hours." He pauses. "He had a medical condition, high blood pressure, which makes it—I'm trying to be delicate here. Anyway, we got it all on film—they were in the front seat of their car, and you could see her head bobbing the whole time. There were kids around." He pauses, then says wryly, "But I have to give her credit: She was persistent."
Another case, he refused to take: "The guy had a physical ailment and could not pursue sex with his wife unless she was asleep. Naturally, she left him—and he came to hire me to see if she was seeing another man. Well, I thought she had the right."
He's also refused clients who wanted him to follow, and thereby harass, their enemies: "I said, ‘We don't do that. In fact, the only time we are doing our job is when you do not see us.'"
"Ninjas," Grillion murmurs.
"And with the equipment," Kellerman adds, "we can pretty well control the night."
Bring up the lurid, Springer-esque TV show Cheaters and Kellerman grins: He's done a couple of jobs for that detective agency. "The cases they film are only from Dallas and Houston, but they get work all over the country," from people who want to find out if their lover or spouse is cheating. "And no, I do not believe those cases are contrived. Do I think they ask the people to be more salacious and get into a fight? Yeah, maybe. I'd say the confrontations might be more staged—but not the actual events. Because they look very similar to what we do.
"One thing about people who are unfaithful: They are creatures of habit," Kellerman says suddenly. "They have to have someplace they can meet, same time every week, because communication's where they are vulnerable." A strange number again and again on the cellphone statement, an overheard call, a sent email … It's all too risky. Spontaneous bursts of uncontrollable passion must be prearranged.
"And affairs are almost always with people they know," Kellerman adds. "Just like any criminal—the victim's a relative or co-worker. With affairs it's typically someone they work with or work out with. Affairs are not random."
His voice sounds sanded at the edges, worn by all he's seen—yet he's not the least bit cynical. "We cannot allow ourselves to be," he says quietly. "When you are cynical, that makes you an interested party; it causes you to judge, and it will cause you to draw conclusions that are not true. You have to go into every situation thinking that the people are not doing what they are said to be doing."
Kellerman says the real thrill is providing proof of fidelity: "One woman was convinced her husband was going to go to a massage parlor when he flew to this convention. I rented a hotel room just down the hall from his and hid this wireless camera"—he holds up a narrow black box that fits neatly inside his palm—"behind a fire extinguisher in the hall." Not in the guy's room? "Absolutely not. If there's an expectation of privacy—as there would be in a hotel room—you cannot violate that. But from my room I could watch the outside of his door, see if he left or anyone came in."
And?
"He led the life of a monk."
Such happy outcomes occur in maybe 10 percent of his cases, though. "Usually by the time someone sits in this office wanting to hire us, they already have evidence. Phone records, underwear stains …" People with guilty consciences often try to pick fights, he adds. "They'll even go so far as to accuse the spouse who's not having an affair."
Grillion folds his hands on his stomach. "People are pretty easy to read once you start watching them," he announces.
"Shut your mouth and open your ears," Kellerman says.
"And don't trust what they say," chimes in a third private investigator, Eric Mendenhall.
"At all," Kellerman agrees, "ever."
