D (5:44)

Hundreds of prisoners took over part of the prison yesterday.

A (5:47)

Prison guards became hostages.

C (5:49)

Everybody was just standing there, staring at this powder keg, wondering if it was going to explode. We are not going to bow down. We are not going to give up. We are going to remain, no matter what they put on us. If we die, we die. We had one group called the Death Squad. My God, they just delivered like 100 body bags. If you don't do exactly what we tell you to do, people will die.

A (6:17)

A maximum security prison, guards taken hostage. Entire cell blocks under inmate control. And one of the men on the prison wreck yard that day. One of the many who watched it all unfold was a man named Keith Lamar. At first, Keith didn't know what he was walking into. But what happened over the next few hours and what the state would later accuse him of, it shaped the rest of his life. This is the story of the Lucasville riot and of the man who says he became its scapegoat. I'm Celicia Stanton, and you're listening to Truer Crime. I want to start by telling you how this story found me. It was 2021, and I was working a wedding here in Minnesota. I've run a wedding photography business since I graduated college. So for me, this was just, you know, another weekend. I just sat down for dinner. I had 30 minutes to eat before jumping back in for speeches and champagne toast. When I struck up a conversation with the videographer, she asked me what I did outside of weddings. So I told her about this podcast. She nodded and then said, have you heard about Keith Lamar? I hadn't. You should look into it, she said. It's wild. So I did. What I found, though, was beyond anything I expected. Keith had been a prisoner during the Lucasville uprising. And that story had every shocking detail you could imagine. Prison gangs, hostages, a desperate scramble to regain control. But the more I read about the riot, the more I kept circling back to the person whose name had led me to the story in the first place. Keith Lamar. And if I wanted to understand what really happened at Lucasville, then I knew I had to talk to him. The only catch? Keith was still in prison. So I wrote to him, and eventually we got the chance to speak on the phone. Okay, can you hear me?

E (8:28)

Oh, yeah, I Can hear you.

A (8:29)

Would you mind just saying your name or like a sentence for me?

E (8:33)

Keith Le. My name is Keith Lamar.

A (8:38)

From our very first call, I could tell that Keith wasn't like anyone I'd interviewed before. He was quick witted, disarming, you know, like the kind of person that can make you laugh even while talking about things that most people couldn't imagine. But he wasn't just a great storyteller. He'd lived through one of the longest prison uprisings in U.S. history. And on April 11, 1993, he was outside on the rec yard.

E (9:05)

You know, I was at recreation. It was one of the first days of spring. And so the weather was warming up and these was our first kind of forays out into the open air and everything. And so, you know, everybody was kind of elated or happy about that. Went out. I ran with a couple friends of mine, and when they announced that the yard was about to close, I lined up along with everybody else and that was the first indication that something was happening.

A (9:36)

Then a guard came running out of the building, blood pouring down his face. Behind him, a group of prisoners holding billy clubs. The chaos was immediate, but for Keith, the severity hadn't fully set in.

E (9:50)

Even then, it wasn't clear the magnitude of, you know, what was afoot. It had a lot of people that were real nervous, obviously, because a guard got hit, you know, was brutally attacked. There's going to be some repercussions behind me, serious repercussions. Somebody's going to die. We know that. We just didn't know how serious.

A (10:11)

Folks on the yard were stunned, watching, waiting to see what would happen next. But with the guards unable to restore order, he started thinking about what might already be happening inside. Who was in control, was anything going on in his cell block and what would happen to his belongings if the whole prison was unraveling.

E (10:32)

But when it was clear that guards were no longer in control and that all of your property and whatnot was now subject to being rifled through or stolen, I went in to kind of secure my belongings. I didn't have a lot, so I'm not saying that I had valuables in the prison that drew me back in. I just didn't know the magnitude. I had some brand new finishes that was difficult to get, but they weren't worth my life. Had I known beforehand what I was walking into, I wouldn't have walked into it.

A (11:01)

But he did. And inside, the chaos had already taken hold. The first thing Keith noticed was the noise. The second was the glass. He stepped through shards like it was a minefield. Windows busted out, people yelling over each other, the whole place on edge. Whatever he'd expected to find, it wasn't this.

E (11:23)

Guys who wasn't even organized in the larger issues on the ride were responding to the natural sense of freedom and were busting windows and tearing, smiling, screaming and whooping and hollering was chaotic. And so I was walking to my pod through showers of glass and screaming and being nervous. It was really, really intense because it was like he was walking through In Hell is the only way to describe it. Then when I walked into my pod, it was total silence because in here is where all the seriousness was transpiring.

A (12:08)

A group of correctional officers were huddled in the showers. Hostages. The atmosphere had shifted. It wasn't just noise anymore. It was strategic, controlled. The uprising hadn't come out of nowhere. Keith would later describe Lucasville as one of the most violent prisons in the country. Daily stabbings, killings by both prisoners and guards. Under pressure from the state, a new warden had been brought in. Arthur Tate. He came in with a hard line, military style, painted lines on the floors, arbitrary rules. Tate called it Operation Shakedown. He created a kind of snitch culture. He installed anonymous PO boxes and encouraged people to inform on one another. Trust obviously evaporated, fear spread, and for many prisoners that was the final straw. The strict policies didn't just create conflict, they infringed on religious freedoms too. When Muslim prisoners refused to take a tuberculosis test because it used an alcohol based substance, the warden gave them a take it or be forced. That kind of pressure, combined with overcrowding under resourcing and years of abuse, formed an unlikely coalition Muslims, the Aryan Brotherhood, the Black Gangster Disciples. People who otherwise hated each other working together. And on April 11th, it all snapped.

F (13:41)

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A (15:44)

When Keith stepped into his prison pod, the chaos he just walked through fell away. The shouting, the glass, the noise. All gone in its place. Silence. There was so much he didn't know yet. Not about the planning or about the demands. Not about this unlikely alliance that had made the uprising possible to begin with. All he knew was what he saw. Guards huddled in the showers and inmates moving with purpose. And then a prisoner approached. Keith told him what was going on and what would come next. This was a riot, an uprising, and they were taking over. Keith could stay, be part of it, take some power back. Or he could leave, walk back out onto the yard, abandon his cell, abandon his stuff. The choice was up to Keith.

E (16:39)

I knew just from the fact that the guards were in the shower stalls that the repercussions would be serious. And so just based on that, I knew that this was something that I didn't want to be a part of. Plus, I had no skin in the game. I had no dog in fight, so to speak. I wasn't a Muslim. I wasn't an A brotherhood, wasn't in black, an disciple. So yeah, I just knew immediately that this was above my pay grade, so to speak. I was 22, 23 years old at the time and I was out of my death immediately. So I got the hell out of there.

A (17:15)

Keith walked back out into the yard. It was still warm, still spring, still Easter. But everything had changed. And while Keith had seen the inside, I kept thinking about everyone else. What was it like for families on the outside waiting in silence for prisoners locked in solitary, hearing chaos they couldn't explain for reporters trying to break this story to the local community? So I started making calls. But it had been more than 30 years. Most people had moved on. Some had passed away. Then on an old newspaper website, I saw a phone number and an AOL email address. It belonged to a former reporter who'd been on the ground. There's no way that number still worked, but I called anyway. A voice picked up.

C (18:04)

My name is Michael San Giacomo, and I've been a reporter for over 45 years, and I covered everything.

A (18:13)

Michael San Giacomo was a journalist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the night he was called to report on the ride at Lucasville was one he knew he'd never Forget.

C (18:21)

It was April 11th in 1993, and it was an Easter Sunday. My birthday is April 12th, so my wife and I were celebrating my birthday. So we were just finished dinner, and I get a phone call, and it was my editor at the Plain Dealer. And first thing he said was, happy birthday. And they said, and now I'm going to destroy it for you. And he said, you need to get in your car and drive to Lucasville State Prison because there's a riot.

A (18:51)

Michael packed a bag and drove to Lucasville. When he arrived, the prison was sealed off. The state wasn't saying much, and the press, they were stuck outside.

C (19:00)

I pulled up to the gate and there were just a couple of reporters there. You could hear noise from the prison itself, like just banging and shouting and things like that. It was difficult to make out anything that they were saying because they were so far away. But you could definitely hear the shouting and things being broken and screams. And then, of course, you know, the reporters, we were just all listening, trying to get to the bottom of that, figure out what it was.

A (19:28)

Easter Sunday. 450 prisoners, armed only with batons stolen from the guards, reportedly took cell block L, adjacent to death row under siege.

F (19:37)

Injuring seven guards and taking an undetermined number of guards hostage.

A (19:41)

At first, the press got brief updates from a prison spokesperson named Sharon Kornegay.

E (19:46)

You have to know that this is.

A (19:47)

A maximum security institution.

C (19:48)

We have to maintain the security of.

A (19:51)

The institution and we'll listen to their demands. But our priority is to get our staff out.

C (19:58)

She would come out regularly, even if only to say, nothing has changed, and we'll tell you everything we can. And, you know, she would give us something, a little something to keep us going.

A (20:10)

But before long, the Trickle of information from authorities shut off completely.

C (20:15)

They were giving us almost nothing. They would just come out very rarely. And the press conference would be, nothing's happening. We can't tell you anything. We're working on it. Blah, blah, blah.

A (20:28)

Fear swirled in the local community. Were the hostages alive? Did law enforcement have a plan to regain control of the prison? In the absence of answers, rumors began to spread. There were casualties that they knew, but how many?

C (20:42)

And the local funeral home told everybody, my God, they just delivered like 100 body bags.

A (20:47)

But the prisoners, it turned out, wanted to communicate with the folks on the outside. They built a makeshift PA system, played a looped recording out the window. They hung bedsheets with messages from broken windows. They yelled into megaphones.

C (21:02)

The prison authorities want you to think that this is a racial war. It is not. Whites and blacks have united to protest.

E (21:12)

The abuses of the SOCF staff and administration.

C (21:18)

From the onset of this, we have tried desperately, desperately, desperately to get in contact with the news media. We have been stopped by this administration. They think they can confine this incident within the walls of this prison like no other part of the world can hear this. They think they can hide everything like they've been doing down here for years and years. This is not the case.

A (21:44)

Over and over again, the prisoners demanded to speak directly to the press. And finally, officials agreed.

C (21:51)

By that time, there were a handful of reporters there from Cincinnati and Columbus and Dayton. And everybody was asking, shouting questions at Sharon. And she stopped this. She says, okay, let's get organized here. The first thing we got to establish is this. The prisoners who've taken over the entire prison are demanding to speak to a reporter. So she said, we need to choose one of you. So we're all kind of standing around and she said, I'll tell you what, why don't we do this? We'll put all your business cards in a hat. And Sharon would pull the name out of the hat. So we all put our names in, and mine was the first one she pulled.

A (22:33)

Suddenly, all eyes were on Michael San Giacomo as he headed to get instructions from prison officials.

C (22:40)

I was taken in through the prison, right into the actual prison where the riot was being held. And the guy that I walked into in a room, very stark room, with a phone on the desk, he looked exactly like Spencer Tracy, very serious looking guy. And he just stared at me with these eyes, very piercing eyes. And he was smoking a cigarette. And he looked at me and he said, you're Michael San Giacomo? And I said, yes. So he walked over to me and he said, okay, that cigarette phone is going to ring. And he said, and here's what I want you to remember. He said, if you screw this up, if you don't do exactly what we tell you to do, people will die. And he said, so keep that in mind. If you screw this up, people will die. It will be your fault. You will have to live with it. And that like, shocked me, so I was very much on edge. So he said, well, you know what you got to do. And I said, sure, I'll do whatever you want me to do. That moment the phone rang and I looked at him and he indicated I should pick it up. And I picked it up and there was a voice and I said, hi, this is Mike San Giacomo from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. And he said, hi, my name is. And then click. Spencer Tracy hung up the phone and I said, he didn't tell me anything. He said, we know what we're doing. We promised him that he could talk to a reporter and we've done that.

D (24:32)

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C (26:07)

When did I get here?

A (26:08)

What do you mean?

C (26:09)

I swear it was just moments ago.

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That I accepted a great offer from Carvana online. I must have time traveled to the future.

A (26:15)

It was just moments ago. We do same day pickup. Here's your check for that great offer.

C (26:19)

It is the future.

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It's. It's the present. And just the convenience of Carvana. Sorry to blow your mind.

E (26:25)

It's all good.

C (26:26)

Happens all the time.

A (26:28)

Sell your car the convenient way to Carvana. Pick up. Times may vary and fees may apply. The state had chosen Michael to check a box. The prisoners had asked to speak to the press, and now, technically, they had. But Keith wasn't one of the men on the phone. He was still in the yard, still waiting, still watching as things got worse. And while Keith waited, so did his family and the families of hundreds of other men inside.

C (27:00)

This is WTBN's John Remy outside the prison. Corrections spokesperson Corake says they're doing the best they can to get information to.

A (27:08)

All the loved ones.

C (27:09)

First priority is with the families, that of the hostages. As to the families of inmates, that appears to be a different story. Marilyn Eldridge has a son who's an inmate. She says Department of Corrections people have told her little.

A (27:23)

Right now I'm numb. I haven't slept. I can't sleep. And as Keith would later tell me, the families, they had good reason to be scared. The uprising was unfolding inside. But in Keith and dozens of others were still stuck outside, trapped on the wreck yard. But the authorities didn't intervene. They didn't move in. They just surrounded the yard, kept their distance and watched. It left Keith in this state of limbo. He didn't know if he was being seen as a bystander or a threat. And as the hours pass, the situation only grew more tense. He didn't know what would happen next, only that the guards weren't in control and the men around him were growing more desperate.

E (28:13)

Daytime turned into night. Now it's starting to get cold. And so the boxing ring, this place where I had all these memories, all these victories, was now being dismantled to make firewood for bonfires. I could not participate in that. I could not tear this thing down. That I had all this experience, all this growing up, that I did.

A (28:38)

Before the riot, Keith had been a boxer. The ring on the rec yard wasn't just a pastime. It was a place of discipline, focus. It was where he'd started to believe in something more. But the destruction of the boxing ring would ultimately be the least of Keith's concerns.

E (28:55)

That night, not long after that, the bodies started being dumped on the yard. We all understood this. You know, it was dead bodies one after another. And some of us was, you know, motioned over to the National Guard and like, what's up, man? Cause we all understood standing there that one of those dead bodies could be ours. Everybody knew that. Everybody now understood.

A (29:19)

But the National Guard didn't move. They stood armed around the perimeter of the yard for hours. The prisoners still outside remained trapped.

E (29:30)

Because of how I grew up in the environment that I grew up in, I never had good feelings about the police, but this confirmed all my worst inclinations about them, that they didn't really give a damn about us.

A (29:43)

And so the men stayed put, fear thick in the air. The rules of the prison had evaporated, and what replaced them was something far more terrifying.

E (29:55)

You remember going into one of the bathrooms and guys were being raped in these places. You didn't look around, but you heard the noises. You heard the grunts and the screams, and you knew that this could happen to you.

A (30:10)

Was the primary emotion that you were feeling fear, or was it something else?

E (30:14)

Yes, fear, fear, fear. I mean, everybody now kind of trapped on the reptilian stage. Everybody now is thinking about their survival, thinking about how to make it through the night. So everybody was on pins and needles. It was like being at the end of the world. It was really something. And I was only 23 at the time, so I had an experience in the. So this was life changing in terms of my organization and everything.

A (30:45)

And then finally, in the early morning hours of April 12, movement, the highway.

E (30:53)

State patrol intervened about 3 o' clock that morning, give or take. And they came in with guns. Drawn, long guns, automatic weapons.

A (31:01)

Keith thought surviving the night would be the hard part.

C (31:04)

But when.

A (31:05)

But what came next was something he never saw coming. That's next time. Before you go, I want to leave you with one small way to take action today. The legacy of the 1993 Lucasville uprising still echoes across Ohio's criminal justice system. And it raises these really urgent questions about prison conditions, sentencing, and human rights. And that's why I wanted to spotlight the Ohio justice and Policy Center. They're a nonprofit, and they're providing free legal help and fighting for smarter more humane justice across the state of Ohio, especially for folks who've been over sentenced, denied medical care, faced religious discrimination, or found themselves trapped in cycles of punishment. Their Human Rights in Prison program tackles the exact kind of issues that helped spark the LucasFilt riot in the first place. To learn more or to donate to support their work, visit ohiojpc.org as always, you can find a full list of today's sources and action items@TrueOrKrimePodcast.com and if you want to keep in touch between episodes, True or Crime is on Instagram and xreuorkrimepod. You can also find me on Instagram and TikTok, Alicia Stanton and through my weekly newsletter sincerelyceleciaincerelycelecia.substack.com True crime is created, hosted and written by me, Celisia Stanton, and is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with with Odyssey. Additional writing, research and production by Olivia Heusenfeld and Jamie Albright. Executive producers are myself, Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay. Editing by Liam Luxon, artwork by Station 16, original music by Jay Ragsdale and makeup and vanity set mix by Dayton Cole. Thank you to Orin Rosenbaum and the team at uta, the Nord Group and the team at Odyssey. For more podcasts like True or Crime, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app or visit us@Tenderfoot TV. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of True Crime. If you want an ad free version of the show, plus early access to every episode for this month's case and tons of other great Tenderfoot podcast, you can subscribe to Tenderfoot plus at tenderfootplus.com or on Apple Podcasts. It's a small way to support the work and it makes a big difference.

E (34:02)

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