A FILMMAKER has revealed his horror after discovering the truth about the violent past that tore his family apart.
Kyle Tekiela lived in the Chicago suburbs with his brother Korey and mom Holly, not wanting for anything.
DOUBLE LIFE
Dad Ken was a firefighter and paramedic, working tirelessly to provide for his family.
Or so he thought.
He shared with The U.S. Sun that his childhood memories were filled with positivity. These memories serve as a stark contrast to the unbelievable story that is the centerpiece of the widely popular True Crime podcast Crook County.
Everything seemed normal – yet the truth was anything but.
Despite Kyle and his family being completely unaware, his father was living a dual life mired in brutality, triggered by a severe heroin addiction that tore apart their family dynamics.
After a tumultuous divorce and subsequent expulsion from home at the tender age of 16, Kyle’s father, Ken, found himself in a dire situation, forced to reside in the confines of his car following a harrowing encounter where his mother brandished a firearm against him.
He barely had an education to fall back on.
“My dad didn’t know what the f**k to do with his life,” said Kyle.
Everything became much more evident when Ken had the “bright idea” to rob a local drug dealer.
The stash and the cash were expertly bagged, and the young, wannabe gangster showing incredible street smarts in the first act of what would become a blood-soaked, violent career on the mean streets of Chicago.
He would walk alongside the target, not too close to raise suspicion, before threatening him with a knife.
“Give me the stuff, or this is going in your heart,” Ken warned.
A couple of days later, while enjoying some of his recently procured money in a local diner, the family he had ripped off 48 hours earlier recognized him immediately.
The victim’s uncle, who just happened to be in a highly influential member of a notorious Chicago mafia gang, was impressed.
“You’ve got spunk, kid,” he told Ken, “do you want a job?”
It was the start of something blisteringly brutal.
For the next twenty years, the newly anointed Ken “The Kid” Tekiela was a feared foot soldier and hitman for the Southside gang—part of Chicago mafia folklore founded by infamous gangster Al Capone over 100 years ago.
He ran brothels, allegedly killed “more than 10” people, and did the mob’s dirty work.
An attorney tells Kyle to be careful when talking about his dad’s blood-soaked past.
“You need to be careful; you’re going to have the FBI breathing down your neck. The information is too recent; this is a mistake,” he was told.
KILLER QUESTIONS
Yet when contacted by The U.S. Sun for clarification over any possible charges from authorities, the production company said that “all the names have been changed” and that the most important aspect for Ken was to “come clean and tell the truth that had been eating away at him for decades.”
“How can I prove any of this?” added Kyle.
His dad’s methods, including psyching himself up for preparing to whack someone or rob a target, was to listen to the Rolling Stones’ classic Sympathy for The Devil.
“It just did something to me,” Ken admitted, “It was part of my routine.”
He also learned an obscure martial art called Chung Moo Quan, which Kyle suggests was taught by a “convicted con man and felon.”
“It was like a cult,” he explained, “my dad said they would do movements called forms for an hour at a time, and it put him in a possessive, trance-like state. He could flick the good parts of his life on and off.
“It allowed him to wake up the next day like nothing happened kind of thing and, you know, raise a family or, or turn back on and go out and kill somebody.”
As he told his son in the opening episodes of Crook County, Ken never had visions of rising through the ranks.
“We were the guys in trenches, hand to hand, knife to knife,” he said. “I was a trusted member, flying under the radar.”
After a decade of dealing with prostitution corruption, extortion, labor racketeering, importing liquor and murder for hire, Ken wanted a change, which was sparked by the shocking deaths of 271 people in one of the worst airplane crashes in history.
A lie this big can’t stay hidden forever.
Kyle Tekiela On His Dad Ken Leading An Astonishing Double Life
Kyle said his dad was so close to the American Airlines disaster at Chicago’s O’Hare airport on May 25, 1979, that he could “feel the heat” of the wreckage on his skin.
Ken ran over to the carnage and instantly became inspired.
“He was watching all these first responders and was like, ‘That looks cool,” said Kyle.
CRASH HORROR
With a burning desire to get away from the dirty work—” he 100% wanted a clean break” — Ken asked his bosses about the possibilities of creating the most unlikely of double lives.
Not only did he want to continue bashing heads on the street. He also wanted to join the Chicago Fire Department.
The mafia men agreed.
It appealed to them to have a man on the inside, someone they knew and trusted, who would work to clean up many of the problems they had created in the first place.
“He could also cover crooked cops and all that other bulls**t,” Kyle said.
And for Ken, who had become “sick” of the grind, the perfect balance was struck.
The problem was his family had absolutely no idea. They just assumed their dad was a brave first responder and member of the fire service.
The long hours and the callouts at wild hours, however, fitted in sweetly with his mafia work.
It was the perfect storm. Yet, after 20 long years, the strain eventually ended. In the late 90s, his final gig for the mob was working as a projectionist in a cinema run by a connected union boss.
“I remember going to the movies and hanging out there,” Kyle said. “It was cool.”
Kyle says his mom potentially suspected her husband was not living a normal life, yet believes “all the grime and bad stuff” was kept away from her.
“It was well hidden,” he admitted.
Not only was Ken hiding his double life, a heroin addiction began to engulf him.
Just like his employment secrets, his drug use was kept from the family.
SHOCKING FIND
Kyle’s brother Korey then discovered drug paraphernalia in Ken’s car, and everything began unraveling.
“A lie this big can’t stay hidden forever,” admitted Kyle, who left Chicago for Los Angeles in the late 2000s as Ken’s drug nightmare began to unravel. “I had never felt this kind of emotional pain before.”
The family split up, but Ken’s drug hell continued to rage.
In 2013, Kyle’s phone rang.
“My dad was dying,” he recalled. “He was asking for help.”
Kyle was overcome with emotion. He pulled over his car and cried.
He asked Ken to come to California to get himself clean. When he arrived, his son was stunned. He was “skinny and frail.”
“I didn’t recognize him,” Kyle said. “He was a down on his luck, Clark Kent.”
Ken started to come to grips with his addiction, which began with painkillers after an accident while holding a ladder in a fire rescue, which “almost killed him.”
Kyle says that brother Korey saw “the worst” of their father’s addiction and said it “really affected” him and left him scarred.
“This story is a mafia story on the outside, but you unwrap the top layer of that onion, and it’s just like a family drama of trauma and trying to understand and learn and Make sense of these awful things and then ask questions like, how the hell did you not know?”
Once Ken began to edge his way out of his self-induced drug-fuelled nightmare, he opened up his heart. Kyle was floored as his dad told tales of violence, murder, and utter mayhem.
“I was shocked and numb,” he said, “I knew he was a heroin addict, but a mafia hitman?”
Once firmly ensconced in a rehab facility, the scarcely believable stories began to flow. When Kyle’s mom was told the stunning truth, she was “in shock like we were.”
Korey was equally stunned but wanted nothing to do with his dad:
“He was like, even if he’s the President of the United States, I don’t want to hear his f******* name.”
Fast forward to today, and Kyle says Ken is in bad shape. He refused to disclose his location but fears the drug problems that have ravaged him for decades have begun to take a serious toll on his health.
“He’s living a near-poverty lifestyle,” the Emmy-nominated film and documentary producer admitted. “He was homeless for a while and has some brain damage.”
Kyle admits he will never have a normal father-son relationship again. Depending on how the podcast series is received, he is considering making Crook County into a film.
Meanwhile, Ken thanked his eldest son for allowing him to expose “his true self.”
“I don’t want to glorify this,” he said in one of the opening episodes. “I have tried to forget these stories for years. My goal wasn’t to run whore houses and kill people.
“I am surprised I am sitting here. Historically, people like me don’t make it.”
