by Maile Lesica

Jim Greenhill was asked to commit murder – three murders to be exact.

It began during spring 1996 when Greenhill, a School of Journalism and Mass Communication graduate, was the police beat reporter for The News-Press in Fort Myers, Fla.

Greenhill was called to cover the murder of a local high school band director, Mark Schwebes, 32. As the story unfolded, local teens were suspected as Schwebes’ killers.

The murder turned out to be only one part of a crime spree perpetrated by the teens, who called themselves the Lords of Chaos. The mastermind of the gang, Kevin Foster, now 29, and three other members were involved in the murder of Schwebes.

Greenhill was fascinated by the teenagers; they were misfits, but all were intelligent. Greenhill felt Foster was especially interesting because he pulled the trigger, felt no remorse and wanted to kill again.

After Greenhill left The News-Press in 1998, he decided to document this act of teen violence and its aftermath in a book called “Someone Has to Die Tonight.”

“I felt the only way to really understand the story was to hear it from Kevin,” Greenhill recalled. “I knew he had never talked to any adults about the case.”

With Foster serving his sentence on death row, Greenhill traded letters and spent more than 100 hours with him over an 18-month period.

Foster gave Greenhill insight into the Lords of Chaos, but that was not the end of the story. Greenhill said Kevin and his mother, Ruby Foster, now 57, asked the writer to murder three witnesses who had testified against the gang leader.

Greenhill went to the police and wore wires and a camera to document the conspiracy to commit murder.

“It was very draining,” Greenhill said. “I felt like I betrayed someone [Kevin]. Of course, he betrayed me, in a sense, by asking me to do that.

“Guilty feelings exist even though Kevin clearly wanted to continue killing people. By speaking up, I kept him from doing so,” he said.

With Greenhill’s help, Kevin and Ruby Foster were tried and convicted of conspiracy to commit murder.  

“The full story of what happened between Kevin and me would fill another book,” he surmised.

Greenhill said that his work with the case emphasized how “small choices, even more than big ones, can have extraordinarily large impacts on our lives and the lives of those around us.”

According to Greenhill, Kevin Foster’s followers did not necessarily plan on murdering Schwebes; they just never stood up to the gang leader. Greenhill believes that some of the teens in the Lords of Chaos were caught up in Foster’s charisma or were afraid of him. Over time, a series of seemingly small decisions led to the murder of an innocent schoolteacher and jail time for the teens.

Retracing His Steps
Greenhill came to the University from London in 1984 as a John Motley Morehead Scholar. He recalled feeling lost and directionless the summer before what should have been his senior year. During a chance meeting on Franklin Street, then-dean Richard Cole asked Greenhill if he would be interested in pursuing a career in journalism.

With Cole’s prompting, Greenhill chose journalism. “Dean Cole helped me to find the straight and narrow again,” Greenhill said. “He got me on my feet.  He is a teacher who has stayed with me my entire life.”

Cole remembered Greenhill’s struggles. “We all have problems,” Cole said. “Jim is intelligent, canny and a good writer. I tried to help him in any way I could, and I wanted him to succeed. He has succeeded.”

“Someone Has to Die Tonight” was released in 2006 and led to Greenhill’s appearance on “Dateline NBC.” Even before the “Dateline NBC” prime-time broadcast, 34,000 copies of the book had sold.

Today Greenhill is a sergeant on a three-year, full-time tour with the National Guard. He received a special age exemption to join after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, because he felt it was important to support the country in its time of turmoil.  Greenhill is working on another book while the National Guard is paying for him to get a master’s degree. ♦

Maile Lesica is a senior in the school’s public relations sequence.