The Real Killer Season 2: Ep. 3, Who Is Keith LaMar?

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 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?

Episode three? Who is Keith Lamar? It's Friday morning. I'm heading out to go see Keith, starting route to Ohio State Penitentiary. My stomach hurts, My stomach hurts. I don't feel good, but I'm looking forward to meeting Keith in person. 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. 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 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. 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 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 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.

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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 people do? Just walk away? They say, you know, I don't. Yeah. Yeah, it was nice. It was a really nice Yeah, it 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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.

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 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 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 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

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 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 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. 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, 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

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 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 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 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.

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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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.

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,

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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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. 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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 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. 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 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. 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

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, 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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, 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, 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, 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 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, it's just like these fucking people. Man, you know, my god.

We would like to extend our deepest condolences to Kevin 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 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, 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 Howard