Danielle Joanna Keyes was a 29-year-old mother of three from Lawrence, Kansas, who was trying to find her way. A 2004 graduate of Perry-Lecompton High School, she was remembered by her family as someone who enjoyed listening to music, taking walks, shopping, and spending time with her sons, who were 8, 6, and 3 at the time of her death. Her identical twin sister, Dawn, described her as "lost and going through a rough patch" after she moved to Springfield, Missouri, in August 2014. "I sure missed her when she was gone," Dawn said. "Now, I really miss her." Danielle was a White female, born in Gladstone, Missouri, and is survived by her three children, her mother, a brother, and two sisters.
On the morning of Saturday, November 15, 2014, a horrific discovery was made at the Economy Inn on North Glenstone Avenue in Springfield. Around 7:45 a.m., police were dispatched to the weekly-rate motel after a 911 caller reported finding multiple injured people inside room 149.
There, authorities found a brutal crime scene. Danielle Keyes was pronounced dead inside the room, along with two Springfield residents, Lewis Green, 44, and Trevor Fantroy, 43. All three had been fatally shot with a handgun. A fourth victim, 24-year-old Christopher Freeman, was found with critical gunshot wounds and rushed to a local hospital, where he died from his injuries several days later.
The Springfield Police Department immediately launched an investigation, with detectives following up on numerous leads. Investigators came to believe the victims had been in the motel room for more than a day before they were found. The motive, according to court documents, was that the killer believed the victims were going to inform police about his drug activities. A witness later told police that he had been in the room during the shooting and survived by playing dead.
In February 2015, authorities charged Scott A. Goodwin-Bey with the four murders. The case against him, however, would follow a long and complicated path through the justice system. In December 2016, a Greene County prosecutor was forced to drop the charges after a judge ruled that crucial ballistics evidence, which allegedly linked a firearm possessed by Goodwin-Bey to the murders, was scientifically unreliable and therefore inadmissible in court. Despite this significant setback, investigators did not give up.
While the state murder charges were dropped, Goodwin-Bey was convicted on separate federal charges for illegally possessing a weapon and served a prison sentence. The homicide case, meanwhile, remained open. In 2018, a grand jury indicted Goodwin-Bey again for the four shooting deaths at the Economy Inn, and the indictment was unsealed in February 2023 after he was released from federal custody and transferred to Greene County. The new indictment charged him with four counts of first-degree murder and armed criminal action.
Nearly a decade after the killings, the case finally went to trial. In September 2024, a Greene County jury heard the evidence against Scott Goodwin-Bey. The prosecution presented ballistic evidence and the testimony of an eyewitness who claimed Goodwin-Bey opened fire on the victims. The defense argued there was a lack of physical evidence, like fingerprints or DNA, tying their client to the scene and suggested another man may have been the killer. On September 12, 2024, the jury found Goodwin-Bey, then 57, guilty on all counts, including four counts of first-degree murder. Because prosecutors did not seek the death penalty, the conviction carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. His sentencing was scheduled for November 21, 2024, bringing a long-awaited conclusion for the families of Danielle Keyes, Trevor Fantroy, Lewis Green, and Christopher Freeman.
