Mother retrieves shoes from Fairview Heights drug house; Daughter died of overdose there two years ago

In a house where heroin ruined lives and caused deaths, Christine Keel of State Park recovered the shoes her daughter Jennifer Herling wore the night she died.

Keel waited almost two years to search the place at 20 Kassing Drive, because local and federal officials kept delaying its demolition.

On Monday, Keel said, "I got justice."

Former home owner Deborah Perkins and son Douglas Oliver currently serve long prison terms for distributing heroin from the house.

Perkins bought heroin in Chicago and sold it through Oliver and two other distributors to customers including former judge Michael Cook.

The enterprise flourished openly for years, until two guests of Oliver died.

Jessie Williams died in the house. Perkins and Oliver dumped her body.

For Herling, Oliver called an ambulance. She died at Memorial Hospital.
Federal agents shut down the enterprise at last, in January 2013.

This Nov. 21, the city opened the door for Keel and Williams’s mother, Ginny Thomason.

Keel said there were no major appliances but everything else was there.

“I don’t think they took anything of Doug’s,” she said. “His dressers were full of clothes.”
“There was a dresser with a picture of Doug on it. I ripped it up.

“There was cell phones everywhere. There was maybe five or six per room.”

She said she saw credit cards with names of other people.

“There was probably dope in there somewhere, probably money.”