The model and the millionaire

Dennis Murphy Correspondent • Profile

PALM BEACH - There’s the Florida Gold Coast -- and then there's nothing-quite-like-it Palm Beach where the houses are bigger, the boats sleeker and the bank accounts unmatched.

A person with a cynical eye might say that Palm Beach is the perfect hunting ground for gold diggers out to bag an aging but very wealthy million- or even billionaire.

And that did seem to be what one December-May romance here was all about, at least on the surface.

How else could you look at the unlikely union of a 23-year-old German beauty Rose Keil and the 57-year-old real estate tycoon Fred Keller?

We’ll tell you right up front that ultimately this love affair would wind up with three people shot and one of them dead, in a bloody whodunnit.

Dennis Murphy, NBC Correspondent: True that they were in gurneys side-by-side?

Bill Frasier: Side-by-side, looking right at each other.

Dennis Murphy: And waiting for the docs.

Bill Frasier: And both guys are pointing at each other saying', "That guy shot me."

Before the gunplay, there was just a beautiful young German girl full of promise.

Angie Bovi: She was very bright. She had a lot of aspirations. There were so many things, so many talents that she had.

Rose and her sister Angie Bovi grew up in a family of six children in Frankfurt--a place that Rose wanted to escape, as her kid sister remembers it. Rose was fleeing their father.

Angie Bovi: He was a physically and emotionally abusive to all of us.  But I think he had it out for my sister, Rose, mostly. 

Rose was ambitious and left school at 15.

Angie Bovi: She designed clothes, actually for the boutique that my mother and her had in Wiesbaden, Germany. And she also modeled them.

The lovely Rose had no shortage of young boyfriends, but she had no interest in them either.

Angie Bovi: She was always attracted to older men and I think she was also probably looking for a father figure, because that's what she never had.

As one relationship after another sputtered out, someone in the family saw an ad in a Frankfurt paper and immediately thought of Rose. Essentially, it read:  "Florida millionaire looking for love." Rose had nothing to lose.  And so she answered the ad.

And just who was this rich lonely heart?

John Herring: Fred was a smart, obviously, a very smart person. 

John Herring was one of the many business associates with whom Fred Keller wheeled and dealed in the booming south Florida real estate market.

John Herring: When you met Fred, you liked him. He was a charming person to get you into what you needed. 

Fred Keller actually had a little bit of Rose in him. He’d come from humble roots too, and like the young German girl, he'd wanted out.

Larry Keller: This was the one thing above all others that motivated him in his life, was to escape the working class and make a lot of money. 

Palm Beach journalist Larry Keller (no relation) found in his research that Fred had been born in Brooklyn, N.Y., to strict German parents by the name of Bohlander.

Larry Keller: He wrote in his memoir that his father was a member of the S.S.  And when he was about three or four, the family moved back to Germany and he was there for part of World War II.

The Bohlanders returned to the U.S. after the war and Fred grew up in a modest home on Long Island.

He started his career as an engineer in Virginia, along the way changing his name to Keller. It was just one of the ways he would reinvent himself.

As a youngish man with money on the mind, the potential of south Florida drew him down to Palm Beach. At first he was an outsider with his nose pressed against the window, but real estate savvy--cutting down and dirty deals--was his ticket to the waterfront life.

Larry Keller: He made his money not building beautiful hotels, like Donald Trump, and resorts and golf courses, but commercial real estate.  Strip centers, warehouses, that sort of thing. Nothing glamorous at all about it, but very profitable. 

Palm Beach may like old money better than new money, but no one could sniff at Fred Keller’s wealth. At that time, we're talking tens of millions. Still, he wasn't one for the exclusive clubs, or charity balls that can define the Palm Beach pecking order for those keeping score.

Laurence Leamer, writer: Fred was too cheap to join one of the clubs to play tennis.  So he joined Seaview, which is the public courts, which is like $200 a year and he'd play regularly there. 

Leamer was writing a book about Palm Beach, and in some audio tapes he made, Fred Keller explained why he kept the social glitz at barge-pole distance.

Not surprisingly, as Keller accumulated his fortune, he also accumulated quite a few girlfriends. And along the way, a few children and four ex-wives, each recruited in the classifieds. Fred’s cupid didn't shoot arrows so much as dollar signs.

Laurence Leamer: All his relationships, he put an ad.  And it didn't embarrass him to say, "I'm a millionaire," and why would people respond to the ad? Because it's a millionaire.

And so it was that in 1992, the personals column brought Fred and Rose together.

Angie Bovi: They started writing to each other.  They started talking' on the phone.  And-- then eventually, he asked if she wanted to come visit, to meet.  And I think she was supposed to be here for two weeks.  And-- she never came back to Germany

Dennis Murphy: Was it love? Or...let's make a deal?

Laurence Leamer: I think when there's 25 or 30 years

of difference, I think if you're going to call it love you better have quote marks around love.

Dennis Murphy: Do you think there was affection there?

John Herring: No.

Dennis Murphy: It was, "I need your youth and beauty, and I need your green cardness, your wealth.."--

John Herring: I need your lifestyle. 

Still, on those audio tapes you can hear Keller saying it was champagne and fireworks from the moment he saw Rose step off the plane.

She smiled and it was just like an instant bond the same desires, the same outlooks.

And Rose's sister agrees.  Strange as it may appear, she says it was the real thing.

Angie Bovi: She loved him, she wanted to, be happily married. And have a you know, a happy and secure family life. 

Her dream came true. The older Palm Beach moneybags and the German ingénue were married.

That is when the trouble began.

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