Edward Keller was stabbed to death on East 111th Street in the Roseland neighborhood on Chicago's Far South Side on the afternoon of Wednesday, April 17, 2019. The Sun-Times homicide tracker lists his age as 58 and the location as the first block of East 111th Street; the news report gave his age as 53 and the location as the 100 block. The Chicago Police Department investigated.
According to police, Keller was repeatedly stabbed in the chest by his roommate about 1:10 p.m. during a dispute over $10. He was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he was pronounced dead. His death was ruled a homicide.
Police said the man who stabbed him was released without being charged after detectives determined the two roommates were "mutual combatants." No later charge has been reported, and no court case connected to his death could be found. The man's name was never released. No reward tied to his case could be found.
The case is unusual: police knew who caused his death, yet no one has been held to account in court.
Almost nothing about Edward Keller's life has been made public. No obituary or family fundraiser that can be tied to him with certainty could be found. Searches are complicated by obituaries for other Chicago-area men named Edward Keller of a similar age, which may help explain why his story has been so hard to follow. He shared a home with the man who killed him, and the small sum at the center of the fight says something about the hardship of his circumstances.
East 111th Street is one of the main east-west streets of Roseland, a Far South Side community area of bungalows, two-flats and storefronts near the old Michigan Avenue shopping strip. A fight in the early afternoon on a busy street, or in a home along it, is the kind of event neighbors, passersby or people in nearby businesses may have seen or heard, including how it started.
Chicago recorded about 500 homicides in 2019, down from about 580 the year before. Chicago police reported clearing roughly half of the city's homicides that year, though that figure counts cases closed without charges. Stabbings and beatings drew far less attention than the shootings that dominated the city's headlines, and many of them were reported in a few lines and never mentioned again.
Cases in Chicago can still move long after the first reports. In December 2019, more than a year after Refugio Ceja was found stabbed on a sidewalk in the 1100 block of South Keeler Avenue in November 2018, prosecutors charged a man already jailed in another stabbing with his murder, citing surveillance video that showed the older man being followed down the street and a bus driver who remembered seeing both men near a bus stop.
No criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Edward Keller could be found in news archives or public records, and the man who stabbed him was released. More than 7 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who saw the fight on East 111th Street, who knew Edward Keller and his roommate, or who heard either man describe their dispute may be able to help. Even a small detail, such as a name overheard, a car seen leaving the area or a conversation remembered, can help detectives move a case forward. Anyone with information can call the Chicago Police Department's anonymous tip line at (833) 408-0069 or submit a tip online at CPDTIP.com, or contact Cook County Crime Stoppers at (800) 535-STOP (7867).
