February 23, 2023 • 44 mins
As Keith prepares for trial, his attorneys don’t have much confidence in their case. But learning about where Keith comes from sheds some light on how and why he ended up at Lucasville in the first place.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
A morning. This episode contains language and depictions of violence
that may be disturbing to some listeners. I was charged
with nine counts of aggravated murder. Almost one year after
the April nineteen ninety three Lucasville Uprising, Keith Lamar twenty
five learns he's been indicted by a grand jury for
(00:23):
the deaths of five men. I was shocked that it came.
It was about nine to ten of them, and it
came on ceremony backs to me. The authority and the
huttered up around my sale and hand me its document
by you know, four or five inches thick, and you know,
and it's like Keith Lamar, you know, so the whole
(00:45):
range could hear and everything, you know, And I read
just enough to see the nine counts, and I just
kind of lost my ship. But yeah, this disbelief, shock
bewildered compus in denial in the Angle Game, in the
Angler Stay, I'm Leah Rothman. This is the real Killer?
(01:16):
Episode three? Who is Keith Lamar? It's Friday morning. I'm
heading out to go see Keith, starting route to Ohio
(01:40):
State Penitentiary. My stomach hurts, My stomach hurts. I don't
feel good, but I'm looking forward to meeting Keith in person.
(02:00):
It's just the whole prisoned aspect of it that's quite daunting.
At the next top sign, turn night. The destination is
on your right. Ohio State Penitentiary. Aved Okay, I'm here.
(02:22):
I turned off the big microphone because I'm afraid of
getting in trouble. They have cameras everywhere I am about
to go into the prison. Damn, it's a scary looking place.
As a producer, I've been inside many prisons, but this
time it's different, and I'm surprised how nervous I am
(02:46):
from the outside. The Ohio State Penitentiary, a supermax prison,
which I've also heard people call a super deprivation prison,
is like no prison I've ever seen before. It's an
absolute fortress. I walk from the parking lot to a small,
outdoor steel cage. I'm buzzed in. The door slams behind me.
(03:13):
I'm essentially locked in that cage until they let me out.
I will not be allowed to record my meeting with Keith.
I'm not even allowed to bring in pen and paper.
Once I get through security, I take an elevator to
the visiting room. While I wait I talk with a
corrections officer. I'm sure his body camera is recording me
(03:34):
as I answer all of his questions about why I'm
there and how I know Keith. About twenty minutes later,
Keith appears, handcuffed and escorted by two officers. He walks
into his side of our glass and metal enclosed visitors room,
Room Number sixteen. The officer's uncuff Keith through a hole
(03:56):
in the door, then leave. Keith reaches through the small
opening in the glass that separates us to shake my
hand and we say our first in person hellos. Keith
is tall, like six three and fit. He's bald, clean shaven,
and has a salt and pepper short mustache and goatee.
(04:17):
He's wearing a blue short sleeved shirt over a navy
long sleeved thermal shirt, navy pants, and brown boots, and
he has black framed glasses. Also, he has a nice
smile and an infectious laugh. Even though we've talked more
than six hours up until this point, meeting in person
could be weird, but it's not. I'm at ease with
(04:40):
him right off the bat. We have coffee and Keith
eats a chicken sandwich and a Caesar salad that I
buy from the vending machines. I'm way too wound up
to eat. We talk for about three and a half hours,
mostly about his case. I share with him a little
bit about my background. He shares some of his with me.
(05:03):
I tell him about Melissa and Rodney from our first
season and why I wanted to tell their story, and
we laugh about the one guard who tried to trick
me into leaving him the prepaid debit card I put
money on for my visit with Keith. There's this one
really awkward moment when we're leaving. He's facing me being
cuffed by officers, and I'm not sure if I should
(05:24):
leave or wait for him to leave first, so I
start backing up doing this weird sort of stuttard goodbye dance.
Keith laughs and tells me it's okay to go, so
I do. When I get back to the car, I
immediately turn on the microphone. I'm pretty flustered. Okay, oh
(05:46):
my god, I just got out of the prison. Super Max,
absolutely terrifying place. The level of secure purity is crazy,
but the place it's like, I mean, the time with
Keith was so easy, you almost forget you know, and
(06:13):
he even said it's like it's really really bad in
parts of the prison. What else, Let's see. He was
funny and thoughtful, and it was a real conversation. I
mean it was hours and hours. It feel like stuff
is going to come to me when I get back
(06:36):
to my hotel. I remember something interesting, Keith said, so
I turned the mic back on. He thinks that he
may know of a different motive for why the four
in L six were killed, and he wants me to
look into it. Remember, Keith's been accused of leading a
(06:59):
death squad in the early hours of the uprising, supposedly
going sell to sell in L six, killing four snitches
who had been locked up for their own protection. But
he says not so fast. Keith wonders whether those alleged
snitches were snitches at all. Maybe they were murdered because
(07:19):
they were actually child molesters or rapists, the most hated
in the prison population, or maybe the state decided to
label the victims snitches so they would appear more sympathetic
to a jury. I don't know if there's anything to this,
but I'm going to look into it regardless. In the meantime,
I learned from Keith on our next call. My exit
(07:42):
that day looked as awkward as it felt hopefully for
one hundred years. Like, you know, that was like a movie,
you know, like that was going off to the arm
me going apply the war and yeah, what do most
(08:09):
people do? Just walk away? They say, you know, I don't. Yeah. Yeah,
it was nice. It was a really nice Yeah, it
(08:30):
was a nice visit. And it's a confusing feeling I
still can't shake. I mean, how can this seemingly gracious
and kind man be capable of the vicious murders he's
been accused of? And look, I've worked in true crime
long enough to know that some of the most infamous
killers are charming as hell. But we as humans want
(08:50):
to believe the best in people, right, I know I do. Anyway,
after that visit with Keith, the next day, I head
out to meet with someone else. Starting route to Athens,
proceed to Columbus Road and turn left. I drive three
plus hours to Athens, Ohio to meet Herman Carson, one
(09:14):
half of Keith's trial attorney team. The destination is on
your left. Herman and I meet in a conference room
at one of the local hotels right around checkout time. Yeah,
there's the vacuum. Yep. How's it killing your recording? It's
killing it. Herman Carson, a father of three daughters and
(09:37):
grandfather of seven, was a defense attorney for almost twenty
nine years. Why did you want to become an attorney?
What about the law intrigued you or excited you. I
don't know that any of it excited me. I see
it and still see it as a helping profession. Herman
was also the head of the local Public Defender's office
(10:00):
under the director of a ten county branch for the
Office of the Ohio Public Defender before retiring in twenty nineteen.
Primarily timed my retirement to being able to travel to
Kentucky to watch my two oldest grandsons play soccer. The
other half of Keith's trial attorney team is k Robert Toy,
also from Athens. I speak with him separately over zoom.
(10:23):
What does the case stand for? Kung Fu? Oh, that's
a joke. That stands for Carrie k r r Y.
Now that's a female's name. So when I grew up
it was a name my parents like. But when I
went with my family, I'm Carrie. But when I jerked around.
It's kung fu. In nineteen ninety four, Bob and Herman
(10:46):
will team up, which is new territory for them. In
the ten years before that, they faced off in the courtroom,
Herman as a defense attorney and Bob as a prosecutor.
I was more a persecutor than I was a prosecutor.
You were tough, to say the least. Oh. Yeah. After
spending fourteen years as a prosecuting attorney, Bob was appointed
(11:09):
as the Athens County prosecutor in the summer of nineteen
ninety two. Later that year, he ran for public office,
but narrowly lost, so he opened up his private practice.
The judge who is assigned to Keith's case, Judge Fred Crowe,
knows Bob professionally and asks him if he'll represent Keith.
(11:29):
Bob says yes, then asks Herman to be his co consul.
Their first order of business is to meet with their client. Well,
I told Bob, I said, you know, I said, this
may not go very well. I said, because we're going
to be telling mister lamar Hi. I were two white
guys that the government has sent to help you, I said,
And I don't think it'll go over very well. We'll
(11:51):
see Herman isn't wrong. Keith is leery of them both,
I mean Herman's carlson. My initial impression was that he
was just because you look like a typical redneck at
the handlebar. Must ask the cowboy, must ask Robertian know
struck me as one of those slippery types. That's hardly
(12:13):
a vote of confidence. But they're all he's got. Unfortunately,
neither Herman nor Bob feel optimistic about the case. Here's Herman.
When they dealt the cards, we didn't get any good ones.
It's a highly publicized situation. The only positive thing you
(12:33):
could say is at least they didn't charging with participating
in the killing of the correctional officer. That was the
only plus I could think of. At least we're not
charged with that. But that's yeah, it was pretty much
stacked against you. The prosecutors offered him what we thought
was a fantastic deal, which would be two murders to
(12:56):
be concurrent with the murder he was already doing. And
I know my conversation with Keith was, Keith, hey, if
we got a parking ticket out here when we come
to visit you, our penalty would be worse than yours.
And you know, he stood up and he's a stand
up guy, and he says, no, I'm not going to
because I did not do it. Herman Carson and Bob
(13:30):
Toy will be representing Keith when he goes on trial.
What physical evidence did they have against Keith? Lamar zero.
They had zero physical evidence. Five brutal killings, just nothing.
So if there's no physical evidence tying Keith to the
(13:53):
crimes he's been charged with, how did he end up here?
Here's Herman. My belief is that Keith in a small
core group pardon my language, but when they were approached
in the investigation, they said, fuck you, we're not talking.
(14:16):
It don't matter what we know, we're not doing it.
And from there it was like, Okay, I'll put this
on somebody. You're going to be the target, targeted or not.
What the state has in their arsenal are those interviews
conducted by the Ohio State Highway Patrol with prisoners who,
(14:37):
unlike Keith, did cooperate, and in those interviews, several of
them eventually point the finger at Keith and name him
as the quote leader of the death squad. On the surface,
it doesn't look great for Bob and Herman's defense, but
their preparation for trial isn't just about sifting through whatever
(14:57):
evidence there may or may not be. The also need
to learn more about Keith. Here's Hermann. I want a
lot of times to see Keith by myself, to get
to know him, and to get to know his background.
I mean, you know, he was out on his own
when he's fifteen or sixteen, yet an apartment in the
projects was dealing drugs and more like the serious crime
(15:23):
that sends Keith at age nineteen to prison in the
first place. But to understand how Keith got there, you
first have to understand where he comes from. By the way,
Keith's audio coming up isn't great. Keith believes that from
time to time people at the prison will listen in
and purposely mess with the phone lines or interrupt the
(15:45):
Wi Fi. There's no way of knowing if that's true
or not. Let's talk about like early stuff. Can you
tell me a little bit about your childhood? Yeah. I
was born in nineteen sixty nine May thirty, Flush, nineteen
sixty nine to a single mother, a third of four kids.
My older brother Nelson, the second oldest brother, Blair, who
(16:08):
died when I was when he was eight years old
leukemia being missing myself. And then I have a younger sister, Princess,
who grew up in this place called Village, my enclave
on the east side of Cleveland, made up of working
class people who were working for the most part, and
the steel meals in factory that was adjacent to our community.
(16:32):
My grandfather worked at this place called Republic Steal bought
his own house for twelve thousand dollars in nineteen sixty
from what I understand, And so yeah, that was our
home here in this little neighborhood. And it was a
community where, you know, everybody knew each other, just a small,
tight knit neighborhood. And I stayed there too. I was
(16:55):
around I would say, nine years old. You know. By then,
my mother had been every four a few years to
this man named Larry Morris, my stepdad. Describe your mom
for me in those early years. My mom, whose name
is Katherine Lamar, she was just, you know, a sweet
woman and the woman you know, but you know that
(17:17):
tenderness was something that she doled out and and um
in pieces, you know. So you know, one time in particular,
I was around nine or ten years old. I was
sick and stayed home from school. Her and I watched
this movie called Sparkle was Dinah Ross, and we watched
it over and over. We had a few, you know,
(17:38):
experiences along those lines. She wasn't like a terrible person,
she just was terribly trouble. I remember my earliest memories
of my mother. She was always in some form or
another intoxicated. She was always on you know, various peals,
sleeping peals, diet pills, pay a little. He says he
(18:01):
didn't learn a lot of this until after his mother
passed away in twenty fourteen, but he does remember one
early and awful memory quite clearly. In fact, you know,
when I was around five, four or five years old,
we live in this real stuffy, King Kennedy housing projects.
(18:21):
And one night, you know, I came to I heard
somebody knocking on the door, and I went to open it.
You know, the guy bribed me, slid some money under
the bottom of the door, and I opened the door,
released the latch, and this man ended up raping my
mom that night. M Yeah, and you know, um, and
(18:42):
several days after that, this man was killed by one
of my mother's boyfriends. And you know, his body was
blind beneath my beardroom window. And I'm, you know, four
or five years old, and I you know, we call
somebody standing behind me and asked, look at what he did.
Keith is told he is the reason that man was dead.
(19:03):
How does a child that young even process something like that?
How can it not leave a lasting effect? Around age nine, Keith,
his mom, stepdad Larry, and siblings move away from his
grandparents in the village. Keith says, that's when the real
(19:27):
struggles begin. I'm growing up with the lights being cut off,
the heat being cut off. We grew up, you know,
going through parsal. We didn't have food. And it's around
this time Keith meets a new friend, Sherman Whaley. Even
though their homes aren't far in proximity, their lives are
worlds apart. Focus parentsly are together lived and like this
(19:50):
wife ticket sense type situation going on. And somehow we
became friends in the sixth grades, best friends because he
was kind of exercised too, because he was short. I
was out sad because I was dirty, and so you know,
he and I became Queans, short and dirty, you know,
and we hung at the other every day. His mother
(20:13):
became like my said logant mother, and I spent the
night over the house quite a bit. We did everything together,
you know. He would ride his bike to our house
pretty much every day. That's Sherman Whaley today. He's a
park police officer for Cleveland Metroparks and a married father
of four daughters. We played on the same baseball team,
(20:37):
so my mom would go pick him up and he
would spend the night. She would, you know, make us breakfast,
and you know, sometimes she would wash his clothes. I
remember he had such lovely manners. He never walked in
my home that he didn't speak. High, mister Whaley, High
missus Whaley, how were you? That's Carmen Whaley, Sherman's mother,
(20:59):
also a doting grandmother, writer of poetry and short stories,
and honestly one of the sweetest women I've ever met.
And I just remember them always laughing. They were always
happy together, and they played well together. He didn't have
a mean bone in his body. I mean, he was
(21:19):
just the type of kid that was just radiated happiness,
and I just enjoyed having him in my home. We
used to put hot dogs and hamburgers on the girl
when he'd be here, and I had fruit, bananas and
strawberries and cherries and whatnot and bags of chips. He
(21:41):
ate good. Yeah. I always took Keith home, and I
always there was always a feeling of sadness when I
felt sad when I dropped him off. I don't know,
it was just there that I felt. You just know
(22:02):
that things aren't the way they really should be. You
just have that inner feeling, that innate feeling, because because
when you're a mother, you just know certain things. And
if I could have nurtured him for a long time,
I would have done it. But he had a mother,
you know what I mean, And he had a family
and home and whatnot, so you know, I had to
(22:24):
stay within my parameters and whatnot. One of the most
dominating and traumatizing figures in Keith's family is his stepfather,
Larry Morris. He passed away in the late nineties. So
tell me some of your earliest memories of Lariot. He
(22:45):
was a musician, he was a drummer, He was from
New Orleans. He was working, you know, blue collar type person.
But in terms of his personality and his sensibility, there
was a lot of mental physical abuse. Do you remember
the first time Larry you Now, it seemed like it
(23:06):
just you know, Um always was present, and you know,
the beatings were so rampant and arbitrary in my household
that you know, I really kind of developed was the
kind of hyper visionlanth Um young person, because I didn't
(23:27):
know what would result in me being beaten. You know,
I was playing football with one of my neighbors who
had asthma, and I was running drills because I was
a quarter back and he had an asthma attack, and
somehow I was blamed for that and it was beaten
to the point, you know where it was it crossed
over to like a major assault. The bell buckle struck
(23:51):
me on the right side of my face and I
can't with the mark even to this day. It wasn't
even outraged, It was just shock. You know that you
can be just walking along and all of a sudden
a trapdoor offense and you just, you know, in a
different place. What did your mom do or say when
Larry would hit you? I mean, sadly, she was the
(24:13):
one who kind of set it up, you know, going
in the room away on your father to come home,
and so I can hear the car when they pull
up in the driveway, to hear the keys turning in
the door, and I can hear him, you know, mumbling
with my mother, and I can hear him taking his
belt off. I can hear all that, you know what
I mean. Even right now, the only way he feels
(24:35):
he can fight back against his stepdad is through the
one thing that matters to him, my stepfather. He loved football.
He was a fanatic and playing you know, football, being
a star athlete, you know, seemed to you know, give
him something to be proud of, at least doing that
particular football season, and that, you know, of course made
(24:55):
me happy. You know, when I was twelve thirteen years old,
when the beatings, you know, kind of increase in intensity team,
I quit football to kind of punish him. And I
think that, you know, was probably one of the biggest
mistakes that I made in my life in terms of
being able to go to college, being able you know,
you know, to stay out of trouble. But yeah, I
(25:17):
did that. I stopped playing as a way to punish
myself father. So with football no longer his focus, Keith
takes on another hobby of sorts, shoplifting, but it doesn't
start the way you might think. I started working two
years old. I had two paper rounds, and this in
addition to cutting grass in the summertime or shoving the
(25:40):
snow in the winter, because I had to buy my
own clothes, you know, school clothes for us. For at least,
my brother and I wore a pack of six packer
two stocks and some underwear. That's what we got full school.
You know, you go to school to learn how to
do math, read books, and learn about history, but you
also are learning from your peers. Was socially acceptable how
(26:02):
to be popular. And one of the lessons that you
learned coming out of schools that what you have is
more important than who you are. That was a lesson
that was driven home to me when I was twelve
years old. My classmates, all of them, you know, took
the time to point out to me that, you know,
my clothes was less than shabby, that I was a
whole bowl. A bump, called me a bump, you're a bomb.
(26:24):
You know. The summer of my fifth grade, you're going
into the sixth grade, I saved up all my money
and I bought me five hour fits and I was
saving up, you know, for some shoes, these shoes called creepers,
black net shoes with a big gum bottom, real cheap shoes,
but they were in style at this at this particular time,
(26:46):
and I was saving up. That was the last piece
to my whole you know, remake, And I'm saving up,
and I was, you know, putting my money in a
pickle jar above the third shelf in the kitchen counter,
and turn that my brother had found it, took all
the money out of it and took my sister to
the mall for pizza in video game. Now. I was
(27:08):
devastated because school was starting a week after that, and
because now the only way I think at these shoes
is to steal them because I don't have the money.
And you know, of course, you know I had that
called stealing the shoes. You know, I wasn't a thief yet.
That took time, That took repeated try you know a
few years before I became a thief. But you know,
(27:31):
that was my first attempt. Keith gets busted shoplifting by
store managers from time to time. Going to mall jail
is one thing. Being arrested by Cleveland police and facing
an actual judge is something very different. I was called
(27:51):
Joey Ryan and the stolen vehicle with six other individuals
who had multiple conviction. That I then became an official
criminal in terms of being in the system, lags into
you know, the system as a cartie. You know. At thirteen,
Keith is sent to juvenile detention for six months. I
(28:13):
was being told what to do in a way that
I understood. I didn't really have a choice in the matter,
but everything was ultimately being done to provide structure and
provide some sense of agency and whatnot. So when I
came home from the juvenile place and from this situation
of structure, I was a straight A student. But I
(28:35):
came home to the same economic situation. In fact, it
was worse. When I came home, my family had moved
into a two bedroom department, you know, one board room
from my parents, one room from my sister, and you know,
my brother and I would had to live in an
uninsulated attic you know, electricity or whatever. Needing money, Keith
(28:56):
turns to a family member for help. I went to
a favorite undermined and it told her that I wanted
to start selling marijuana. She of course tried to convince
me against you know, going down that path. But I
was determined and I think she saw that, and I
kind of made the plea that listen, if you don't
do this for me, I'm a guard here and somebody
I don't know, it's going to cheat me out of
my money, you know what I mean. So if you
(29:18):
you know, if you want to help me now at
the time, if she altomately relined taught me, you know,
how to you know, bag it up and everything, and
you know I didn't look back after that. Kevin Lowry
(29:44):
knows Keith Lamar better than almost anyone. So tell me
you and Keith are cousins, right, okay? Um? In reality, uh,
Keith's brother Nelson Lamar is my my cousin and because
of that affiliation, we grew up as cousins. On this
(30:08):
hot and humid night, Kevin, a businessman with a law degree,
and his wife, Ramona, a civil engineer for the city
of Cleveland, invite me into their beautiful home in an
affluent suburb of Cleveland to talk about Keith. Kevin and
Ramona have been together thirty six years and our parents
to a daughter and son. Tragically, less than one month
(30:30):
after this interview is recorded. Kevin dies unexpectedly. Multiple people
would tell you that they were Keith's best friend, but
we considered ourselves to be best friends during that time.
Keith family, you know, they were known throughout the neighborhood.
(30:51):
Our homes were kind of volatile. You know, I'm not
trying to disparage, but we came from an area that
how can I put it, during the time when we
came up that some criminal activity wasn't looked down on.
(31:11):
And obviously Keith had issues at his home that he
didn't talk about, you know, And so when you would
see him or I on the street, you know, he
was always cracking jokes. You know they say people wear
many masks. He wore a mask at that time, as
(31:32):
if life was grand. You know, that he was living well,
that he was doing good. Sometimes people laugh and smile
to keep from crying. Kevin's wife, Ramona, meets Keith the
same night. She meets Kevin at a neighborhoods skate and
dance club called the Plush. She's fifteen at the time.
People's goofy. During that time, there were quite a few
(31:55):
nightclubs for kids to go to. So I would see
him at all thought. So when he said dancing, was
he a good dancer? He was a good dancer. It
was just before the break dance era, and he was
really good at dancing. But Kevin's close relationship with Keith
causes some problems in Kevin and Ramona's budding romance. Keith
(32:18):
and I never had any type of like negative words,
so whenever we were around each other, it's always cords
a good conversation. So it was more Kevin and I
bumping heads because I'm saying, hey, let's go do this
and said, oh, but Ma, Keith are going to go
do this, And so it was more about him saying,
I'll see you another day. I'm about to go and
(32:39):
hang with Keith. I remember one of the areas that
Keith lived in, which was off one hundred and twenty
third and Angelus here in Cleveland, and they lived in
a corner house had a third floor. It was a
store underneath. Keith lived there with his mom and Larry
(33:03):
and his sister and brother, and Keith and his brother
slept in that third floor, you know, fighting against the
elements hot in the summer, freezer cole in the winter,
you know, And that's when he ended up leaving home.
But it's not just the elements. Keith is fighting. After
(33:24):
another horrible altercation with his stepfather Larry, Keith, who is
fifteen at the time, has had enough. He moves out
of his parents attic and in with a friend. He
already had a place, and we were more or less
used in that place to sell drugs. So I moved
into the apartment. Around this time, Keith also drops out
(33:46):
of school. Can you describe a little for me what
it was like though, being a teenager living in that
environment in the projects. The attitude was, you know, okay, nothing.
You know, life isn't fair, so why should we be fair?
Why should we live while cold where we see that
you know, it has been already been violated. I started
(34:08):
carrying a gun when I was about sixteen years old,
and it was really deep off into the drug trade.
I was selling cocaine and started snorting cocaine. So I
got hooked. What I was a drug added without even
really fully appreciating that I was hooked on drugs, and
you know, I was, you know, robbing jewelry stores, and
so a lot of money passed through my hands. You know,
(34:30):
I had marchdes Bins, Calillaca. I was living really on
the edge, twenty four seven around the clock. Then a
devastating event changes everything. It's December second, nineteen eighty eight.
Keith is nineteen years old. Can you tell me about
(34:50):
what happened? Oh? Yeah, talking, yeah, yeah, So well, I
had been robbed several times and so in that particular day,
I was dropped off some drugs and I was in
the back bedroom counting the money and somebody knocked on
the door and I heard that and the guy who
was in the h It was several people in the
(35:12):
house with me, but one of the guys opened up
the door and I heard a lot of commotion and
so I came out. I had my gun in my hand.
I came out as soon as the guy who was
in the front ken yat. As soon as he saw me,
he was raised his gun up and I shot him
and they would ran out of the department because the
bullets was lying. Then I got shot in my right
(35:34):
and I made it to the bottom of the project building,
so on third floor, but the totter. I made it
to the bottom of the hallway and I sat down
on the stairs and my brother called an ambulance and
then I woke up in the hospital room the next morning,
handcuffed to the bed. But that's the kind of thing
those out the kind of things that can happen to
(35:55):
you in that world. You know, you could be ride
in the hide one moment and literally the next moment,
you could be dead. And of course you know I
was stilling illegal drugs. There was no argument that I
can make when I'm at the court that I was
standing in my ground or that I was self defense.
But I was selling drugs. And you can't if your
(36:17):
hands are dirty. And his name YadA, Kenyada Collins, Yeah,
that's why. And was he he was a childhood friend
or you had known him from when you got he
was he was a friend. I would call him that. Yeah,
we walked to school together, played basketball together. But he
was a friend of proximity, if you understand what I mean.
(36:41):
Twenty year old Kenyada Collins dies as a result of
two gunshots. When you realized that Kenyada Collins died, yeah,
what did you feel? No for For certainly on that
day and for a long time after that, I was
blocked by the ideal that he was my enemy somebody
(37:05):
who had came to do me harm, and so I
was entitled to feel a certain way about what has
happened between us. I was reaching for some kind of
justification so that I won't have to feel so bad
about this thing I've done. Keith pleads guilty and its
sentenced eighteen years to life. In nineteen eighty nine, Keith
begins serving his time at Lebanon Correctional Institution in southern Ohio.
(37:29):
When I first got to Lebanon, I met this guy
and he took me on his wing, taught me how
to play chest, taught me how to box, you know,
and then that, you know, really gave me a foundation
to start, you know, building up how I wanted to
kind of live my life. So I got my ged
I wrote to the college pokeground, and at Lebanon, Keith
(37:52):
finds a small piece of home. It was only a
handful of people from Cleveland who was down at if
you were to Cleveland was hung out together. One of
those guys is George Fazon. You met him in the
last episode. We both were basically, I don't like the
same products of our environment. It's just environment we grew
up in, you know, within a lot of Brigan homes,
(38:15):
a lot of illegal things going on around us, and
unfortunately we did succumb to some of those situations that
were going on in our environment. Tokyo Morgan is there too,
Irking says elementary school. I ain't ain't gonna lie. Only
thing change is weight and the height. The guy's a
very humorous guy. In the end, he got a beautiful
(38:36):
this position. If a situation go down bad Obat, that's
what he all said. Man, it ain't even work. So
he's an ark away and I do the same thing.
But something happens at Lebanon that challenges that very notion.
We were starting to have problem with this other group
of guys from Daton, Ohio. A friend of Keith tells
(38:59):
him one of the Dayton guys has threatened to kill
him in prison. That can't go unanswered. A huge fight
breaks out between the Cleveland guys and the Dayton guys,
and when it's all over, Keith, George, Tokyo, and some
of the others are transferred to Lucasville. It's a horrible
twist of fate. Really turns out Keith's friend's life never
(39:22):
had been threatened, that fight never needed to happen it
but based on a lie. Ultimately he said things in
motions that resulted in us being at you know, arriving
down Lucasville. Lucasfield was like alcatrash. You went there to die.
When I got there, a friend of my brothers gave
me a two hour to play about tour. I mean
(39:44):
he showed me where all the knives or barry. You know,
they had knives planted in the ground on the recreation
yard and they had these little ribbons on the end
of them, so you can see them before the edge
of grass or you know, against the defense post or
wherever they were hid. And knives in the hallways, knives
in the kitchen. So that let me know, you know,
(40:06):
like why I need all these knives. That's telling you
the world that you have entered it into. Prior to
the uprising, did you have any disciplinary write ups or
a Lucasville Yeah, but I think I had several somebody
stole phase on properties. It's clothes and sweatsuits and tennis shoes,
and we jumped this guy in the kitchen. I got
(40:28):
it to several fights down in Lucasville. Whenever something did
happen like when you know, George and I confronted this
guy about still in his property. That was something that
obviously we had to respond to because in prison, if
you don't respond to things like that, now you become
known for that. People if they want to take something
from somebody, go take it from Piece and George, they
won't do anything. If you do something, you could get
(40:51):
in trouble. But if you don't do something, you're also
a target. And did you damned if you do, you
damned if you don't. Exactly, I'm not an angel, and
so you know I won't shy away from saying about
telling you about all them sort of shit I've done
in my life, things that I regret. A lot of regret, Yeah,
(41:11):
a lot of ship. I wish I can go back
and we can do. But does matter. He's been accused
of doing something that you know he hadn't done. But
you have the answer to work for the rest of
your life. Keith says, when he's guilty, he admits he's guilty.
But ever since the Lucasville uprising almost three decades ago,
(41:32):
he's been adamant that he was not the leader of
the death squad, and he did not kill those five men.
Defending his life begins in June of nineteen ninety five.
There was nothing that I can really say, because I've
made the same They didn't have any evidence to Pools
that I killed these five people. You know, that's the cremer,
(41:52):
that's the system is a nutshell. Next time on the
real killer. How did you feel about your case? Oh,
I thought he's going to get convicted. Keith Lamar goes
on trial and some say the state's witnesses are singing
(42:16):
for their supper. I felt that they were lying and
they had plunting incentive to lie. Reliving it almost thirty
years later is anything but easy. He's still there basically.
You know, I've already back in nineteen ninety five in
this courtoro Roundatis envisioning the ship. This se is observed. Man,
(42:37):
it's just like these fucking people. Man, you know, my god.
We would like to extend our deepest condolences to Kevin
(42:57):
Lowry's wife, Ramona. They're chill, dren friends and family. In
the short time I knew Kevin, he was so funny,
welcoming and warm, and he let me know how important
it was for us to get together so he could
share his memories of and love for his cousin Keith. Again,
to all who knew and loved Kevin, we are very
(43:18):
sorry for your loss. The Real Killer is a production
of AYR Media and iHeartRadio, hosted by me Leah Rothman.
Executive producers Leah Rothman and Eliza Rosen for AYR Media.
Written by Leah Rothman, Executive producer Paulina Williams, Senior associate producer,
(43:44):
Jill Pesheznik, Coordinator George Faum. Editing and sound design by
Cameron Taggy. Mixed and mastered by Cameron Taggy. Audio engineering
by Matt Jacobsen. Studio engineering by Anna Moolish. Legal counsel
for AYR Media, Gianni Douglas. Executive producer for iHeartRadio, Maya
(44:07):
Howard
A morning. This episode contains language and depictions of violence
that may be disturbing to some listeners. I was charged
with nine counts of aggravated murder. Almost one year after
the April nineteen ninety three Lucasville Uprising, Keith Lamar twenty
five learns he's been indicted by a grand jury for
(00:23):
the deaths of five men. I was shocked that it came.
It was about nine to ten of them, and it
came on ceremony backs to me. The authority and the
huttered up around my sale and hand me its document
by you know, four or five inches thick, and you know,
and it's like Keith Lamar, you know, so the whole
(00:45):
range could hear and everything, you know, And I read
just enough to see the nine counts, and I just
kind of lost my ship. But yeah, this disbelief, shock
bewildered compus in denial in the Angle Game, in the
Angler Stay, I'm Leah Rothman. This is the real Killer?
(01:16):
Episode three? Who is Keith Lamar? It's Friday morning. I'm
heading out to go see Keith, starting route to Ohio
(01:40):
State Penitentiary. My stomach hurts, My stomach hurts. I don't
feel good, but I'm looking forward to meeting Keith in person.
(02:00):
It's just the whole prisoned aspect of it that's quite daunting.
At the next top sign, turn night. The destination is
on your right. Ohio State Penitentiary. Aved Okay, I'm here.
(02:22):
I turned off the big microphone because I'm afraid of
getting in trouble. They have cameras everywhere I am about
to go into the prison. Damn, it's a scary looking place.
As a producer, I've been inside many prisons, but this
time it's different, and I'm surprised how nervous I am
(02:46):
from the outside. The Ohio State Penitentiary, a supermax prison,
which I've also heard people call a super deprivation prison,
is like no prison I've ever seen before. It's an
absolute fortress. I walk from the parking lot to a small,
outdoor steel cage. I'm buzzed in. The door slams behind me.
(03:13):
I'm essentially locked in that cage until they let me out.
I will not be allowed to record my meeting with Keith.
I'm not even allowed to bring in pen and paper.
Once I get through security, I take an elevator to
the visiting room. While I wait I talk with a
corrections officer. I'm sure his body camera is recording me
(03:34):
as I answer all of his questions about why I'm
there and how I know Keith. About twenty minutes later,
Keith appears, handcuffed and escorted by two officers. He walks
into his side of our glass and metal enclosed visitors room,
Room Number sixteen. The officer's uncuff Keith through a hole
(03:56):
in the door, then leave. Keith reaches through the small
opening in the glass that separates us to shake my
hand and we say our first in person hellos. Keith
is tall, like six three and fit. He's bald, clean shaven,
and has a salt and pepper short mustache and goatee.
(04:17):
He's wearing a blue short sleeved shirt over a navy
long sleeved thermal shirt, navy pants, and brown boots, and
he has black framed glasses. Also, he has a nice
smile and an infectious laugh. Even though we've talked more
than six hours up until this point, meeting in person
could be weird, but it's not. I'm at ease with
(04:40):
him right off the bat. We have coffee and Keith
eats a chicken sandwich and a Caesar salad that I
buy from the vending machines. I'm way too wound up
to eat. We talk for about three and a half hours,
mostly about his case. I share with him a little
bit about my background. He shares some of his with me.
(05:03):
I tell him about Melissa and Rodney from our first
season and why I wanted to tell their story, and
we laugh about the one guard who tried to trick
me into leaving him the prepaid debit card I put
money on for my visit with Keith. There's this one
really awkward moment when we're leaving. He's facing me being
cuffed by officers, and I'm not sure if I should
(05:24):
leave or wait for him to leave first, so I
start backing up doing this weird sort of stuttard goodbye dance.
Keith laughs and tells me it's okay to go, so
I do. When I get back to the car, I
immediately turn on the microphone. I'm pretty flustered. Okay, oh
(05:46):
my god, I just got out of the prison. Super Max,
absolutely terrifying place. The level of secure purity is crazy,
but the place it's like, I mean, the time with
Keith was so easy, you almost forget you know, and
(06:13):
he even said it's like it's really really bad in
parts of the prison. What else, Let's see. He was
funny and thoughtful, and it was a real conversation. I
mean it was hours and hours. It feel like stuff
is going to come to me when I get back
(06:36):
to my hotel. I remember something interesting, Keith said, so
I turned the mic back on. He thinks that he
may know of a different motive for why the four
in L six were killed, and he wants me to
look into it. Remember, Keith's been accused of leading a
(06:59):
death squad in the early hours of the uprising, supposedly
going sell to sell in L six, killing four snitches
who had been locked up for their own protection. But
he says not so fast. Keith wonders whether those alleged
snitches were snitches at all. Maybe they were murdered because
(07:19):
they were actually child molesters or rapists, the most hated
in the prison population, or maybe the state decided to
label the victims snitches so they would appear more sympathetic
to a jury. I don't know if there's anything to this,
but I'm going to look into it regardless. In the meantime,
I learned from Keith on our next call. My exit
(07:42):
that day looked as awkward as it felt hopefully for
one hundred years. Like, you know, that was like a movie,
you know, like that was going off to the arm
me going apply the war and yeah, what do most
(08:09):
people do? Just walk away? They say, you know, I don't. Yeah. Yeah,
it was nice. It was a really nice Yeah, it
(08:30):
was a nice visit. And it's a confusing feeling I
still can't shake. I mean, how can this seemingly gracious
and kind man be capable of the vicious murders he's
been accused of? And look, I've worked in true crime
long enough to know that some of the most infamous
killers are charming as hell. But we as humans want
(08:50):
to believe the best in people, right, I know I do. Anyway,
after that visit with Keith, the next day, I head
out to meet with someone else. Starting route to Athens,
proceed to Columbus Road and turn left. I drive three
plus hours to Athens, Ohio to meet Herman Carson, one
(09:14):
half of Keith's trial attorney team. The destination is on
your left. Herman and I meet in a conference room
at one of the local hotels right around checkout time. Yeah,
there's the vacuum. Yep. How's it killing your recording? It's
killing it. Herman Carson, a father of three daughters and
(09:37):
grandfather of seven, was a defense attorney for almost twenty
nine years. Why did you want to become an attorney?
What about the law intrigued you or excited you. I
don't know that any of it excited me. I see
it and still see it as a helping profession. Herman
was also the head of the local Public Defender's office
(10:00):
under the director of a ten county branch for the
Office of the Ohio Public Defender before retiring in twenty nineteen.
Primarily timed my retirement to being able to travel to
Kentucky to watch my two oldest grandsons play soccer. The
other half of Keith's trial attorney team is k Robert Toy,
also from Athens. I speak with him separately over zoom.
(10:23):
What does the case stand for? Kung Fu? Oh, that's
a joke. That stands for Carrie k r r Y.
Now that's a female's name. So when I grew up
it was a name my parents like. But when I
went with my family, I'm Carrie. But when I jerked around.
It's kung fu. In nineteen ninety four, Bob and Herman
(10:46):
will team up, which is new territory for them. In
the ten years before that, they faced off in the courtroom,
Herman as a defense attorney and Bob as a prosecutor.
I was more a persecutor than I was a prosecutor.
You were tough, to say the least. Oh. Yeah. After
spending fourteen years as a prosecuting attorney, Bob was appointed
(11:09):
as the Athens County prosecutor in the summer of nineteen
ninety two. Later that year, he ran for public office,
but narrowly lost, so he opened up his private practice.
The judge who is assigned to Keith's case, Judge Fred Crowe,
knows Bob professionally and asks him if he'll represent Keith.
(11:29):
Bob says yes, then asks Herman to be his co consul.
Their first order of business is to meet with their client. Well,
I told Bob, I said, you know, I said, this
may not go very well. I said, because we're going
to be telling mister lamar Hi. I were two white
guys that the government has sent to help you, I said,
And I don't think it'll go over very well. We'll
(11:51):
see Herman isn't wrong. Keith is leery of them both,
I mean Herman's carlson. My initial impression was that he
was just because you look like a typical redneck at
the handlebar. Must ask the cowboy, must ask Robertian know
struck me as one of those slippery types. That's hardly
(12:13):
a vote of confidence. But they're all he's got. Unfortunately,
neither Herman nor Bob feel optimistic about the case. Here's Herman.
When they dealt the cards, we didn't get any good ones.
It's a highly publicized situation. The only positive thing you
(12:33):
could say is at least they didn't charging with participating
in the killing of the correctional officer. That was the
only plus I could think of. At least we're not
charged with that. But that's yeah, it was pretty much
stacked against you. The prosecutors offered him what we thought
was a fantastic deal, which would be two murders to
(12:56):
be concurrent with the murder he was already doing. And
I know my conversation with Keith was, Keith, hey, if
we got a parking ticket out here when we come
to visit you, our penalty would be worse than yours.
And you know, he stood up and he's a stand
up guy, and he says, no, I'm not going to
because I did not do it. Herman Carson and Bob
(13:30):
Toy will be representing Keith when he goes on trial.
What physical evidence did they have against Keith? Lamar zero.
They had zero physical evidence. Five brutal killings, just nothing.
So if there's no physical evidence tying Keith to the
(13:53):
crimes he's been charged with, how did he end up here?
Here's Herman. My belief is that Keith in a small
core group pardon my language, but when they were approached
in the investigation, they said, fuck you, we're not talking.
(14:16):
It don't matter what we know, we're not doing it.
And from there it was like, Okay, I'll put this
on somebody. You're going to be the target, targeted or not.
What the state has in their arsenal are those interviews
conducted by the Ohio State Highway Patrol with prisoners who,
(14:37):
unlike Keith, did cooperate, and in those interviews, several of
them eventually point the finger at Keith and name him
as the quote leader of the death squad. On the surface,
it doesn't look great for Bob and Herman's defense, but
their preparation for trial isn't just about sifting through whatever
(14:57):
evidence there may or may not be. The also need
to learn more about Keith. Here's Hermann. I want a
lot of times to see Keith by myself, to get
to know him, and to get to know his background.
I mean, you know, he was out on his own
when he's fifteen or sixteen, yet an apartment in the
projects was dealing drugs and more like the serious crime
(15:23):
that sends Keith at age nineteen to prison in the
first place. But to understand how Keith got there, you
first have to understand where he comes from. By the way,
Keith's audio coming up isn't great. Keith believes that from
time to time people at the prison will listen in
and purposely mess with the phone lines or interrupt the
(15:45):
Wi Fi. There's no way of knowing if that's true
or not. Let's talk about like early stuff. Can you
tell me a little bit about your childhood? Yeah. I
was born in nineteen sixty nine May thirty, Flush, nineteen
sixty nine to a single mother, a third of four kids.
My older brother Nelson, the second oldest brother, Blair, who
(16:08):
died when I was when he was eight years old
leukemia being missing myself. And then I have a younger sister, Princess,
who grew up in this place called Village, my enclave
on the east side of Cleveland, made up of working
class people who were working for the most part, and
the steel meals in factory that was adjacent to our community.
(16:32):
My grandfather worked at this place called Republic Steal bought
his own house for twelve thousand dollars in nineteen sixty
from what I understand, And so yeah, that was our
home here in this little neighborhood. And it was a
community where, you know, everybody knew each other, just a small,
tight knit neighborhood. And I stayed there too. I was
(16:55):
around I would say, nine years old. You know. By then,
my mother had been every four a few years to
this man named Larry Morris, my stepdad. Describe your mom
for me in those early years. My mom, whose name
is Katherine Lamar, she was just, you know, a sweet
woman and the woman you know, but you know that
(17:17):
tenderness was something that she doled out and and um
in pieces, you know. So you know, one time in particular,
I was around nine or ten years old. I was
sick and stayed home from school. Her and I watched
this movie called Sparkle was Dinah Ross, and we watched
it over and over. We had a few, you know,
(17:38):
experiences along those lines. She wasn't like a terrible person,
she just was terribly trouble. I remember my earliest memories
of my mother. She was always in some form or
another intoxicated. She was always on you know, various peals,
sleeping peals, diet pills, pay a little. He says he
(18:01):
didn't learn a lot of this until after his mother
passed away in twenty fourteen, but he does remember one
early and awful memory quite clearly. In fact, you know,
when I was around five, four or five years old,
we live in this real stuffy, King Kennedy housing projects.
(18:21):
And one night, you know, I came to I heard
somebody knocking on the door, and I went to open it.
You know, the guy bribed me, slid some money under
the bottom of the door, and I opened the door,
released the latch, and this man ended up raping my
mom that night. M Yeah, and you know, um, and
(18:42):
several days after that, this man was killed by one
of my mother's boyfriends. And you know, his body was
blind beneath my beardroom window. And I'm, you know, four
or five years old, and I you know, we call
somebody standing behind me and asked, look at what he did.
Keith is told he is the reason that man was dead.
(19:03):
How does a child that young even process something like that?
How can it not leave a lasting effect? Around age nine, Keith,
his mom, stepdad Larry, and siblings move away from his
grandparents in the village. Keith says, that's when the real
(19:27):
struggles begin. I'm growing up with the lights being cut off,
the heat being cut off. We grew up, you know,
going through parsal. We didn't have food. And it's around
this time Keith meets a new friend, Sherman Whaley. Even
though their homes aren't far in proximity, their lives are
worlds apart. Focus parentsly are together lived and like this
(19:50):
wife ticket sense type situation going on. And somehow we
became friends in the sixth grades, best friends because he
was kind of exercised too, because he was short. I
was out sad because I was dirty, and so you know,
he and I became Queans, short and dirty, you know,
and we hung at the other every day. His mother
(20:13):
became like my said logant mother, and I spent the
night over the house quite a bit. We did everything together,
you know. He would ride his bike to our house
pretty much every day. That's Sherman Whaley today. He's a
park police officer for Cleveland Metroparks and a married father
of four daughters. We played on the same baseball team,
(20:37):
so my mom would go pick him up and he
would spend the night. She would, you know, make us breakfast,
and you know, sometimes she would wash his clothes. I
remember he had such lovely manners. He never walked in
my home that he didn't speak. High, mister Whaley, High
missus Whaley, how were you? That's Carmen Whaley, Sherman's mother,
(20:59):
also a doting grandmother, writer of poetry and short stories,
and honestly one of the sweetest women I've ever met.
And I just remember them always laughing. They were always
happy together, and they played well together. He didn't have
a mean bone in his body. I mean, he was
(21:19):
just the type of kid that was just radiated happiness,
and I just enjoyed having him in my home. We
used to put hot dogs and hamburgers on the girl
when he'd be here, and I had fruit, bananas and
strawberries and cherries and whatnot and bags of chips. He
(21:41):
ate good. Yeah. I always took Keith home, and I
always there was always a feeling of sadness when I
felt sad when I dropped him off. I don't know,
it was just there that I felt. You just know
(22:02):
that things aren't the way they really should be. You
just have that inner feeling, that innate feeling, because because
when you're a mother, you just know certain things. And
if I could have nurtured him for a long time,
I would have done it. But he had a mother,
you know what I mean, And he had a family
and home and whatnot, so you know, I had to
(22:24):
stay within my parameters and whatnot. One of the most
dominating and traumatizing figures in Keith's family is his stepfather,
Larry Morris. He passed away in the late nineties. So
tell me some of your earliest memories of Lariot. He
(22:45):
was a musician, he was a drummer, He was from
New Orleans. He was working, you know, blue collar type person.
But in terms of his personality and his sensibility, there
was a lot of mental physical abuse. Do you remember
the first time Larry you Now, it seemed like it
(23:06):
just you know, Um always was present, and you know,
the beatings were so rampant and arbitrary in my household
that you know, I really kind of developed was the
kind of hyper visionlanth Um young person, because I didn't
(23:27):
know what would result in me being beaten. You know,
I was playing football with one of my neighbors who
had asthma, and I was running drills because I was
a quarter back and he had an asthma attack, and
somehow I was blamed for that and it was beaten
to the point, you know where it was it crossed
over to like a major assault. The bell buckle struck
(23:51):
me on the right side of my face and I
can't with the mark even to this day. It wasn't
even outraged, It was just shock. You know that you
can be just walking along and all of a sudden
a trapdoor offense and you just, you know, in a
different place. What did your mom do or say when
Larry would hit you? I mean, sadly, she was the
(24:13):
one who kind of set it up, you know, going
in the room away on your father to come home,
and so I can hear the car when they pull
up in the driveway, to hear the keys turning in
the door, and I can hear him, you know, mumbling
with my mother, and I can hear him taking his
belt off. I can hear all that, you know what
I mean. Even right now, the only way he feels
(24:35):
he can fight back against his stepdad is through the
one thing that matters to him, my stepfather. He loved football.
He was a fanatic and playing you know, football, being
a star athlete, you know, seemed to you know, give
him something to be proud of, at least doing that
particular football season, and that, you know, of course made
(24:55):
me happy. You know, when I was twelve thirteen years old,
when the beatings, you know, kind of increase in intensity team,
I quit football to kind of punish him. And I
think that, you know, was probably one of the biggest
mistakes that I made in my life in terms of
being able to go to college, being able you know,
you know, to stay out of trouble. But yeah, I
(25:17):
did that. I stopped playing as a way to punish
myself father. So with football no longer his focus, Keith
takes on another hobby of sorts, shoplifting, but it doesn't
start the way you might think. I started working two
years old. I had two paper rounds, and this in
addition to cutting grass in the summertime or shoving the
(25:40):
snow in the winter, because I had to buy my
own clothes, you know, school clothes for us. For at least,
my brother and I wore a pack of six packer
two stocks and some underwear. That's what we got full school.
You know, you go to school to learn how to
do math, read books, and learn about history, but you
also are learning from your peers. Was socially acceptable how
(26:02):
to be popular. And one of the lessons that you
learned coming out of schools that what you have is
more important than who you are. That was a lesson
that was driven home to me when I was twelve
years old. My classmates, all of them, you know, took
the time to point out to me that, you know,
my clothes was less than shabby, that I was a
whole bowl. A bump, called me a bump, you're a bomb.
(26:24):
You know. The summer of my fifth grade, you're going
into the sixth grade, I saved up all my money
and I bought me five hour fits and I was
saving up, you know, for some shoes, these shoes called creepers,
black net shoes with a big gum bottom, real cheap shoes,
but they were in style at this at this particular time,
(26:46):
and I was saving up. That was the last piece
to my whole you know, remake, And I'm saving up,
and I was, you know, putting my money in a
pickle jar above the third shelf in the kitchen counter,
and turn that my brother had found it, took all
the money out of it and took my sister to
the mall for pizza in video game. Now. I was
(27:08):
devastated because school was starting a week after that, and
because now the only way I think at these shoes
is to steal them because I don't have the money.
And you know, of course, you know I had that
called stealing the shoes. You know, I wasn't a thief yet.
That took time, That took repeated try you know a
few years before I became a thief. But you know,
(27:31):
that was my first attempt. Keith gets busted shoplifting by
store managers from time to time. Going to mall jail
is one thing. Being arrested by Cleveland police and facing
an actual judge is something very different. I was called
(27:51):
Joey Ryan and the stolen vehicle with six other individuals
who had multiple conviction. That I then became an official
criminal in terms of being in the system, lags into
you know, the system as a cartie. You know. At thirteen,
Keith is sent to juvenile detention for six months. I
(28:13):
was being told what to do in a way that
I understood. I didn't really have a choice in the matter,
but everything was ultimately being done to provide structure and
provide some sense of agency and whatnot. So when I
came home from the juvenile place and from this situation
of structure, I was a straight A student. But I
(28:35):
came home to the same economic situation. In fact, it
was worse. When I came home, my family had moved
into a two bedroom department, you know, one board room
from my parents, one room from my sister, and you know,
my brother and I would had to live in an
uninsulated attic you know, electricity or whatever. Needing money, Keith
(28:56):
turns to a family member for help. I went to
a favorite undermined and it told her that I wanted
to start selling marijuana. She of course tried to convince
me against you know, going down that path. But I
was determined and I think she saw that, and I
kind of made the plea that listen, if you don't
do this for me, I'm a guard here and somebody
I don't know, it's going to cheat me out of
my money, you know what I mean. So if you
(29:18):
you know, if you want to help me now at
the time, if she altomately relined taught me, you know,
how to you know, bag it up and everything, and
you know I didn't look back after that. Kevin Lowry
(29:44):
knows Keith Lamar better than almost anyone. So tell me
you and Keith are cousins, right, okay? Um? In reality, uh,
Keith's brother Nelson Lamar is my my cousin and because
of that affiliation, we grew up as cousins. On this
(30:08):
hot and humid night, Kevin, a businessman with a law degree,
and his wife, Ramona, a civil engineer for the city
of Cleveland, invite me into their beautiful home in an
affluent suburb of Cleveland to talk about Keith. Kevin and
Ramona have been together thirty six years and our parents
to a daughter and son. Tragically, less than one month
(30:30):
after this interview is recorded. Kevin dies unexpectedly. Multiple people
would tell you that they were Keith's best friend, but
we considered ourselves to be best friends during that time.
Keith family, you know, they were known throughout the neighborhood.
(30:51):
Our homes were kind of volatile. You know, I'm not
trying to disparage, but we came from an area that
how can I put it, during the time when we
came up that some criminal activity wasn't looked down on.
(31:11):
And obviously Keith had issues at his home that he
didn't talk about, you know, And so when you would
see him or I on the street, you know, he
was always cracking jokes. You know they say people wear
many masks. He wore a mask at that time, as
(31:32):
if life was grand. You know, that he was living well,
that he was doing good. Sometimes people laugh and smile
to keep from crying. Kevin's wife, Ramona, meets Keith the
same night. She meets Kevin at a neighborhoods skate and
dance club called the Plush. She's fifteen at the time.
People's goofy. During that time, there were quite a few
(31:55):
nightclubs for kids to go to. So I would see
him at all thought. So when he said dancing, was
he a good dancer? He was a good dancer. It
was just before the break dance era, and he was
really good at dancing. But Kevin's close relationship with Keith
causes some problems in Kevin and Ramona's budding romance. Keith
(32:18):
and I never had any type of like negative words,
so whenever we were around each other, it's always cords
a good conversation. So it was more Kevin and I
bumping heads because I'm saying, hey, let's go do this
and said, oh, but Ma, Keith are going to go
do this, And so it was more about him saying,
I'll see you another day. I'm about to go and
(32:39):
hang with Keith. I remember one of the areas that
Keith lived in, which was off one hundred and twenty
third and Angelus here in Cleveland, and they lived in
a corner house had a third floor. It was a
store underneath. Keith lived there with his mom and Larry
(33:03):
and his sister and brother, and Keith and his brother
slept in that third floor, you know, fighting against the
elements hot in the summer, freezer cole in the winter,
you know, And that's when he ended up leaving home.
But it's not just the elements. Keith is fighting. After
(33:24):
another horrible altercation with his stepfather Larry, Keith, who is
fifteen at the time, has had enough. He moves out
of his parents attic and in with a friend. He
already had a place, and we were more or less
used in that place to sell drugs. So I moved
into the apartment. Around this time, Keith also drops out
(33:46):
of school. Can you describe a little for me what
it was like though, being a teenager living in that
environment in the projects. The attitude was, you know, okay, nothing.
You know, life isn't fair, so why should we be fair?
Why should we live while cold where we see that
you know, it has been already been violated. I started
(34:08):
carrying a gun when I was about sixteen years old,
and it was really deep off into the drug trade.
I was selling cocaine and started snorting cocaine. So I
got hooked. What I was a drug added without even
really fully appreciating that I was hooked on drugs, and
you know, I was, you know, robbing jewelry stores, and
so a lot of money passed through my hands. You know,
(34:30):
I had marchdes Bins, Calillaca. I was living really on
the edge, twenty four seven around the clock. Then a
devastating event changes everything. It's December second, nineteen eighty eight.
Keith is nineteen years old. Can you tell me about
(34:50):
what happened? Oh? Yeah, talking, yeah, yeah, So well, I
had been robbed several times and so in that particular day,
I was dropped off some drugs and I was in
the back bedroom counting the money and somebody knocked on
the door and I heard that and the guy who
was in the h It was several people in the
(35:12):
house with me, but one of the guys opened up
the door and I heard a lot of commotion and
so I came out. I had my gun in my hand.
I came out as soon as the guy who was
in the front ken yat. As soon as he saw me,
he was raised his gun up and I shot him
and they would ran out of the department because the
bullets was lying. Then I got shot in my right
(35:34):
and I made it to the bottom of the project building,
so on third floor, but the totter. I made it
to the bottom of the hallway and I sat down
on the stairs and my brother called an ambulance and
then I woke up in the hospital room the next morning,
handcuffed to the bed. But that's the kind of thing
those out the kind of things that can happen to
(35:55):
you in that world. You know, you could be ride
in the hide one moment and literally the next moment,
you could be dead. And of course you know I
was stilling illegal drugs. There was no argument that I
can make when I'm at the court that I was
standing in my ground or that I was self defense.
But I was selling drugs. And you can't if your
(36:17):
hands are dirty. And his name YadA, Kenyada Collins, Yeah,
that's why. And was he he was a childhood friend
or you had known him from when you got he
was he was a friend. I would call him that. Yeah,
we walked to school together, played basketball together. But he
was a friend of proximity, if you understand what I mean.
(36:41):
Twenty year old Kenyada Collins dies as a result of
two gunshots. When you realized that Kenyada Collins died, yeah,
what did you feel? No for For certainly on that
day and for a long time after that, I was
blocked by the ideal that he was my enemy somebody
(37:05):
who had came to do me harm, and so I
was entitled to feel a certain way about what has
happened between us. I was reaching for some kind of
justification so that I won't have to feel so bad
about this thing I've done. Keith pleads guilty and its
sentenced eighteen years to life. In nineteen eighty nine, Keith
begins serving his time at Lebanon Correctional Institution in southern Ohio.
(37:29):
When I first got to Lebanon, I met this guy
and he took me on his wing, taught me how
to play chest, taught me how to box, you know,
and then that, you know, really gave me a foundation
to start, you know, building up how I wanted to
kind of live my life. So I got my ged
I wrote to the college pokeground, and at Lebanon, Keith
(37:52):
finds a small piece of home. It was only a
handful of people from Cleveland who was down at if
you were to Cleveland was hung out together. One of
those guys is George Fazon. You met him in the
last episode. We both were basically, I don't like the
same products of our environment. It's just environment we grew
up in, you know, within a lot of Brigan homes,
(38:15):
a lot of illegal things going on around us, and
unfortunately we did succumb to some of those situations that
were going on in our environment. Tokyo Morgan is there too,
Irking says elementary school. I ain't ain't gonna lie. Only
thing change is weight and the height. The guy's a
very humorous guy. In the end, he got a beautiful
(38:36):
this position. If a situation go down bad Obat, that's
what he all said. Man, it ain't even work. So
he's an ark away and I do the same thing.
But something happens at Lebanon that challenges that very notion.
We were starting to have problem with this other group
of guys from Daton, Ohio. A friend of Keith tells
(38:59):
him one of the Dayton guys has threatened to kill
him in prison. That can't go unanswered. A huge fight
breaks out between the Cleveland guys and the Dayton guys,
and when it's all over, Keith, George, Tokyo, and some
of the others are transferred to Lucasville. It's a horrible
twist of fate. Really turns out Keith's friend's life never
(39:22):
had been threatened, that fight never needed to happen it
but based on a lie. Ultimately he said things in
motions that resulted in us being at you know, arriving
down Lucasville. Lucasfield was like alcatrash. You went there to die.
When I got there, a friend of my brothers gave
me a two hour to play about tour. I mean
(39:44):
he showed me where all the knives or barry. You know,
they had knives planted in the ground on the recreation
yard and they had these little ribbons on the end
of them, so you can see them before the edge
of grass or you know, against the defense post or
wherever they were hid. And knives in the hallways, knives
in the kitchen. So that let me know, you know,
(40:06):
like why I need all these knives. That's telling you
the world that you have entered it into. Prior to
the uprising, did you have any disciplinary write ups or
a Lucasville Yeah, but I think I had several somebody
stole phase on properties. It's clothes and sweatsuits and tennis shoes,
and we jumped this guy in the kitchen. I got
(40:28):
it to several fights down in Lucasville. Whenever something did
happen like when you know, George and I confronted this
guy about still in his property. That was something that
obviously we had to respond to because in prison, if
you don't respond to things like that, now you become
known for that. People if they want to take something
from somebody, go take it from Piece and George, they
won't do anything. If you do something, you could get
(40:51):
in trouble. But if you don't do something, you're also
a target. And did you damned if you do, you
damned if you don't. Exactly, I'm not an angel, and
so you know I won't shy away from saying about
telling you about all them sort of shit I've done
in my life, things that I regret. A lot of regret, Yeah,
(41:11):
a lot of ship. I wish I can go back
and we can do. But does matter. He's been accused
of doing something that you know he hadn't done. But
you have the answer to work for the rest of
your life. Keith says, when he's guilty, he admits he's guilty.
But ever since the Lucasville uprising almost three decades ago,
(41:32):
he's been adamant that he was not the leader of
the death squad, and he did not kill those five men.
Defending his life begins in June of nineteen ninety five.
There was nothing that I can really say, because I've
made the same They didn't have any evidence to Pools
that I killed these five people. You know, that's the cremer,
(41:52):
that's the system is a nutshell. Next time on the
real killer. How did you feel about your case? Oh,
I thought he's going to get convicted. Keith Lamar goes
on trial and some say the state's witnesses are singing
(42:16):
for their supper. I felt that they were lying and
they had plunting incentive to lie. Reliving it almost thirty
years later is anything but easy. He's still there basically.
You know, I've already back in nineteen ninety five in
this courtoro Roundatis envisioning the ship. This se is observed. Man,
(42:37):
it's just like these fucking people. Man, you know, my god.
We would like to extend our deepest condolences to Kevin
(42:57):
Lowry's wife, Ramona. They're chill, dren friends and family. In
the short time I knew Kevin, he was so funny,
welcoming and warm, and he let me know how important
it was for us to get together so he could
share his memories of and love for his cousin Keith. Again,
to all who knew and loved Kevin, we are very
(43:18):
sorry for your loss. The Real Killer is a production
of AYR Media and iHeartRadio, hosted by me Leah Rothman.
Executive producers Leah Rothman and Eliza Rosen for AYR Media.
Written by Leah Rothman, Executive producer Paulina Williams, Senior associate producer,
(43:44):
Jill Pesheznik, Coordinator George Faum. Editing and sound design by
Cameron Taggy. Mixed and mastered by Cameron Taggy. Audio engineering
by Matt Jacobsen. Studio engineering by Anna Moolish. Legal counsel
for AYR Media, Gianni Douglas. Executive producer for iHeartRadio, Maya
(44:07):
Howard
Host
Leah Rothman
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