EXCLUSIVE: ‘She never called us – not once’: Survivors of 1994 killing that’s now subject of Kim Kardashian’s Spotify podcast say no one contacted them – and insist the man she’s trying to free IS guilty… because they SAW him do it
- Kevin Keith is the subject of Kardashian’s new podcast series The System
- In 1994, he was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Marichell Chatman, her daughter Marchae and her aunt Linda Chatman
- Kardashian says he is innocent, was never given a fair trial and should be freed
- Quanita and Quentin Reeves, aged six and four at the time, were also shot but they survived
- Quentin, now 33, told DailyMail.com that Keith is the killer – and that he saw him with his own eyes
- He also claimed Kim Kardashian never bothered to contact him or his sister and that she just ‘wants to make herself look good’ without checking the facts
- ‘She did not contact us, not one time. Why aren’t they contacting the victims? I don’t care what Kim Kardashian says – he did it, and he’s not getting out’
A brother and sister who survived the 1994 triple murder that is now the subject of Kim Kardashian’s true crime podcast on Spotify tell DailyMail.com the star never bothered to contact them to check the facts of the case – and insist the man she is trying to free is in fact guilty.
Kevin Keith, 58, was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Marichell Chatman, her four-year-old daughter Marchae, and Marichell’s aunt, Linda Chatman, at their home in Bucyrus, Ohio, in 1994.
He has been in prison for 28 years but insists he is innocent. Kim Kardashian believes him and has used his story as the launchpad for her Spotify podcast, The System.
But two people who survived the shooting and witnessed it say he is guilty.
They are Quanita and Quentin Reeves, Marichell’s cousins who were six and four at the time.
Now in their early 30s, the siblings tell DailyMail.com they were stunned when the podcast emerged on October 3 without their contribution. They claim they were never invited on as guests, and that they’ve never even heard from the crusading Kardashian.
‘She did not contact us, not one time. If Kim Kardashian wants to get involved, she should come and meet us face-to-face,’ Quentin, who is now a father-of-two, said.
Quentin and Quanita Reeves, now 33 and 35, say no one from Kim Kardashian’s team contacted them about the podcast. They were aged four and six when they survived the shooting, but their stories have not been included in Kardashian’s new podcast about the killings
Kardashian in Milan earlier this month. The star has launched a lucrative podcast on Spotify that examines what she believes to be cases of wrongful conviction
The siblings – who were both shot in the stomach by the murderer – remain adamant that Keith is the killer. They say they knew him because he was friends with their father, and that they remember seeing him point the gun at their relatives.
‘We saw it with our own eyes. You don’t forget something like that. I don’t care what Kim Kardashian says – Kevin did it,’ Quentin added.
He went on: ‘Why doesn’t Kim Kardashian come out here to Ohio? She doesn’t want to hear from us.
Kevin Keith, a drug dealer, was convicted of triple murder in 1994. He remains in prison but has the support of Kim and other wrongful conviction activists who believe he is innocent
‘She wants to get him out to make her look better… that’s the truth,’ he went on.
Quanita added: ‘We should have been the first call.’
‘Kevin gets to sit in jail and become a celebrity. Meanwhile we’re out here dealing with this our entire lives… it’s crazy.’
She said the first time she heard from the team was on Monday October 3rd, the day the podcast went live, and that it was a heads-up from producer Lori Rothschild Ansaldi.
Neither Kardashian nor Ansaldi responded to requests for comment.
Sources close to the podcast claim the siblings were contacted.
Quentin was four when the shooting happened but he says his memory of it is clear.
‘It’s been a long time but I can still remember what the place looked like. I could draw it.
‘That’s what makes it seem so hard. They don’t account for that. They don’t care how this makes us feel.
‘He did it. I was there. How could you forget something like that?
Quanita, who was two years older, has the same memory.
‘It was Kevin. He came in, and shot up the place,’ she told DailyMail.com.
The siblings both say Kevin arrived at the time seeming ‘nervous’. He came inside, asked for multiple glasses of water and then suddenly retrieved a gun.
He yelled for them all to ‘get on the ground’ and started shooting, they said.
Marichell, the siblings’ 24-year-old cousin, screamed: ‘Kevin, why are you doing this?’ they say.
After the shooting, the murderer fled. Kevin was arrested days later but insisted then, and now, that he thought he was being picked up on drug charges.
The siblings say that they have since learned their older cousin, Rudel, was a police informant who had just snitched on Kevin for dealing drugs. The prosecution argued that Kevin went to the home looking for Rudel to kill and punish him for snitching, and instead found the family.
Kevin however insists that he was in a different part of town. His alibi is that he was at his aunt’s house, and many of his relatives say they can corroborate it.
Murdered: Marichell Chatman, 24, her four-year-old daughter Marchae and her aunt Linda Chatman (right) were all killed in the mass shooting
Quanita, who was six at the time, was shot in the stomach but survived. She is shown in the hospital after undergoing surgery. One police report that is seized on by Kardashian reveals that Quanita called the killer ‘Bruce’. She said it told them that it was her ‘daddy’s friend Bruce’ at the door. Kardashian highlighted this in one of the first episodes of the podcast and presented it as proof of Kevin’s evidence. But Quanita says she had just come out of surgery when she made the comment aged six, and that she was ‘scared and confused’. ‘I was terrified of being questioned, I’m in the hospital, I’ve just had surgery. It was a mistake,’ she said.
Quentin Reeves was four at the time of the murders. He was also shot in the stomach but survived. He is shown left, after the killings, and right, today
One police report that is seized on by Kardashian in the first two episodes of the podcast reveals that Quanita, then six, called the killer ‘Bruce’.
She described the shooter as her ‘daddy’s friend Bruce’, and she also failed to pick Kevin out of a police line-up. Kardashian highlighted these two facts to reiterate why she thinks Kevin is innocent.
But speaking to DailyMail.com, Quanita says she had just come out of surgery when she made the comment aged six, and that she was ‘scared and confused’.
‘I was terrified of being questioned, I’m in the hospital, I’ve just had surgery. It was a mistake,’ she said.
The family’s 1994 obituaries
Her mother Joyce later explained to police that she often confused Bruce with Keith, and that it was indeed Keith who opened fire on them.
Warren, Marichell’s boyfriend, fled the home. He has not spoken publicly about the shooting, and it’s unclear if he will be a guest on Kardashian’s podcast.
Six more episodes are yet to be released.
Kardashian, who is training to become a lawyer, says that police rushed to charge Keith, and that he’s never had a fair trial.
She says she first learned about the case in 2018 after Lori, then a producer on Family Feud, ‘pitched’ her the story as one she could turn her famous hand to.
Kardashian had successfully lobbied the White House at the time to commute the sentence of Alice Johnson and release her from prison.
Kevin’s case, she said in the podcast, is one of thousands that people have sent her since.
She tweeted about his case, claiming he was innocent.
In 2020, she inked a deal with Spotify for a true-crime podcast for an undisclosed amount.
While neither she nor Spotify has confirmed the figure she received, Alex Cooper, the host of the Call Her Daddy podcast, was given a $60million deal.
The first two episodes of The System were released earlier this week.
They focus on Keith’s apparent alibi.
He said he was at his aunt’s house and that was corroborated by multiple members of his family. It also focused on the fact that he was never questioned by police.
Keith has always maintained his innocence. He has the support of public defender Rachel Troutman, who continues to fight for a case review.
Keith was due to be executed in 2010 but former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland commuted his death sentence at the 11th hour, citing ‘important questions’ that remain unanswered.
The podcast is billed the series as exposing a cover-up involving police corruption and another example of America’s failed justice system.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter this week, Kardashian said Keith is innocent, and that she wanted to ‘shake s**t up’ to ‘make noise’.
‘Well, the main thing that really stuck out was that someone can be convicted of a crime, let alone a triple homicide, without any physical evidence linking him to the crime and he was sentenced to death.’
‘Kevin’s been in for 28 years for a crime that I believe he didn’t commit.’
Kardashian has been in contact with Keith since 2018, when she first heard about his case. She has shared his story with her followers, and has now turned it into the basis of her podcast
Kardashian’s new podcast on Spotify is now the third most listened to in the US
She said she was compelled to step in by the harm the case had done to his brother, who also believes in his innocence.
‘Usually, you think of the victims and their families and how their lives are affected, but there are other victims if someone is wrongfully accused of something. It doesn’t just affect their life; it affects their entire family’s life,’ she said.
Keith’s advocates hinge their belief in his innocence on the fact that there is no physical evidence linking him to the crime, and because of how quickly he was charged and convicted.
But the Reeves siblings, who are two of the only three witnesses to the shooting, say their testimony should be considered as proof of Keith’s guilt – even if they were kids.
Keith has unsuccessfully appealed his conviction multiple times. The Supreme Court turned down his request for them to review it.
His case has galvanized critics of the criminal justice system, who say that despite what the siblings said, a proper investigation was not carried out.
There are six remaining episodes of Kardashian’s Spotify podcast – for which she was paid an undisclosed amount.
She has already teased a second season, focusing on what she believes is another wrongful conviction.
THE 1994 MURDER THAT LAUNCHED KIM KARDASHIAN’S PODCAST THE SYSTEM: KEVIN KEITH SAYS HE’S INNOCENT AND HAS SPENT 28 YEARS BEHIND BARS… NOW THE STAR WANTS TO GET HIM OUT
Kevin Keith has been in prison for 28 years. He maintains he is innocent
Kevin Keith was convicted of triple murder in February 1994.
Prosecutors argued that he murdered his ex-girlfriend Marichell Chatman, her four-year-old daughter Marchae and Marichell’s aunt Linda after going looking for Marichell’s brother, Rudel.
Rudel was a police informant and had just given information about Kevin’s drug dealing.
But Kevin maintains he is innocent. He says he was at his aunt’s house, miles away, at the time of the murders.
The lack of physical evidence linking him to the crime, combined with what many have said is unequivocal police and prosecutorial misconduct, should be enough to have the case reviewed.
His advocates say that he was never questioned before he was taken into custody.
He was then allowed to go on television, in 1994, and protest his innocence, but it exposed him to the public in a way that was harmful to his case, according to attorneys interviewed by Kim.
The jury was predominantly white, another red flag.
The trial happened at rapid speed, which Kim says is another indication of wrongdoing.
In 2010, 13 days before he was due to be killed, the governor granted him an 11th hour reprieve, citing the problems with the case.
Kim joined Kevin’s advocates in 2018, tweeting and posting on Instagram about how she wanted to help shed light on the case
She argues, and so do Kevin’s advocates, that there was nowhere near to the ample preparation time required for a capital murder trial.
In the end, after a two week trial, he was convicted and sentenced to death.
The youngest victim of the 1994 killing was four-year-old Marchae Chatman
Multiple unsuccessful appeals followed.
In 2010, 13 days before he was due to be killed, the governor granted him an 11th hour reprieve, citing the problems with the case.
His death sentence was commuted and he was instead given a term of life without parole.
The Reeves/Chatman family was horrified by the decision.
In 2018, Kim Kardashian came across the case. She had just successfully lobbied President Trump to commute the life sentence of Alice Johnson, who was serving a life sentence on a petty, first-time drug offense.
A TV producer who investigated true crime and came across Kim at a Family Feud taping approached her.
Kim looked into the case files, and decided to help with the case.
In her podcast, she says the evidence is clear that there was misconduct.
She has since spent years talking with Kevin over video chat, and formatting his story into a podcast for Spotify.
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