Truer Crime – Keith LaMar + The Lucasville Prison Riot Part 1

Host: Celisia Stanton
Guest: Keith LaMar, Michael San Giacomo
Date: September 1, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode of Truer Crime delves into the 1993 Lucasville Prison Riot at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility—a violent nine-day uprising that left ten people dead and reverberated through the Ohio justice system for decades. Through firsthand accounts, notably those of Keith LaMar—a man accused of being a central figure in the riot and who claims he became its scapegoat—host Celisia Stanton explores how the events unfolded, explores the social and institutional pressures leading to the riot, and questions whose stories get told and how.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Setting: Easter Sunday 1993

• The riot erupted on April 11, 1993, a seemingly peaceful holiday that was shattered by violence inside Ohio’s most dangerous maximum security prison.
• Celisia sets the scene:
  “It was Easter Sunday, the air was warm. The sky was clear. Families were in pews... inside the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, a riot was breaking out.” (05:26)

How Celisia Found the Story

• Celisia recounts how she first heard of Keith LaMar during a conversation with a videographer at a wedding in 2021, leading her down a path of independent research and eventually to direct communication with LaMar, who remains incarcerated.
• Celisia:
  “Keith had been a prisoner during the Lucasville uprising. And that story had every shocking detail you could imagine... 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.” (07:28)

Keith LaMar’s Experience: First-Person Account

• The riot’s outbreak: Keith describes being outside on the recreation yard, aware of heightened tensions but not expecting the scale of the violence.
  • “I was at recreation… the weather was warming up and these were our first kind of forays out into the open air… when they announced that the yard was about to close, I lined up… and that was the first indication that something was happening.” (09:05)
• Chaos ensues: A guard is attacked in front of Keith, blood pouring down his face, yet the full magnitude is not immediately clear.
  • “Even then, it wasn't clear the magnitude...A guard got hit, brutally attacked. There's going to be some repercussions behind it, serious repercussions. Somebody's going to die. We know that. We just didn't know how serious." (09:50)
• Inside the prison: Keith enters a cacophony of shattered glass, violence, and uproar, only to find a chilling silence in his pod—where guards have been taken hostage.
  • “It was really intense because it was like you was walking through hell... Then when I walked into my pod, it was total silence because in here is where all the seriousness was transpiring.” (11:23)
• Keith realizes the stakes and opts to remove himself:
  “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... I was out of my depth immediately. So I got the hell out of there.” (16:39)

Lucasville Before the Riot: Systemic Tensions

• The Southern Ohio Correctional Facility was notorious for daily violence and deteriorating conditions.
• New Warden Arthur Tate instituted harsh, militarized policies, created a snitch culture, and cracked down on religious practices, particularly targeting Muslim prisoners—pushing aligned prison gangs (Muslims, Aryan Brotherhood, Black Gangster Disciples) into unprecedented unity against administration.
• Celisia:
  “The strict policies didn't just create conflict, they infringed on religious freedoms too... That kind of pressure, combined with overcrowding, under-resourcing and years of abuse, formed an unlikely coalition... And on April 11th, it all snapped.” (12:08)

The Outside View: Reporter Michael San Giacomo

• Michael San Giacomo, a journalist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, shares his memory of being called to cover the riot—learning of it during his birthday dinner.
  • “My wife and I were celebrating my birthday… I get a phone call, and it was my editor... you need to drive to Lucasville State Prison because there's a riot.” (18:21)
• Press and families were left in the dark, with only vague briefings from prison officials and rampant rumors in the community.
  • “They were giving us almost nothing... the press conference would be, nothing's happening. We can't tell you anything. We're working on it." (20:15)
  • “My God, they just delivered like 100 body bags." (20:42)
• Prisoners improvised communication, making P.A. announcements and hanging messages from windows, insisting to the outside world that their uprising was not a racial but a political protest.
  • Prisoner message:
    "The prison authorities want you to think that this is a racial war. It is not. Whites and blacks have united to protest the abuses of the SOCF staff and administration." (21:02)

Press Access and Staged PR

• After repeated demands, authorities staged a phone call with a reporter for the prisoners—resulting in meaningless exchange, performed to “check a box” for the state.
  • San Giacomo describes the tension:
    “If you don't do exactly what we tell you to do, people will die.” (22:40)
  • Celisia:
    “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.” (26:28)

Keith’s Ordeal Continues: Chaos on the Yard

• Keith—like dozens of others—found himself neither a rioter nor free, trapped on the rec yard, eyed with suspicion.
  • “He didn’t know if he was being seen as a bystander or a threat.” (27:09)
• The situation grew desperate as the National Guard surrounded the yard but refused to intervene.
• As night fell, “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.” (28:13)
• The haunting turning point:
  • “That night, not long after that, the bodies started being dumped on the yard... Everybody… understood that one of those dead bodies could be ours.” (28:55)
• Keith describes the utter breakdown of social norms, with overt violence and sexual assaults in the bathrooms:
  • “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.” (29:55)
• Survival and fear:
  • “Yes, fear, fear, fear... It was like being at the end of the world. It was really something. And I was only 23 at the time... this was life changing.” (30:14)

The (Temporary) End

• In the early hours of April 12, after surviving a night of terror, armed state troopers retook the prison yard. But, as Celisia foreshadows, the worst for Keith was still to come.
  • “State patrol intervened about 3 o’clock that morning... They came in with guns drawn, long guns, automatic weapons.” (30:53)
  • “Keith thought surviving the night would be the hard part. But what came next was something he never saw coming. That’s next time.” (31:01)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the initial chaos:
  “It was like you was walking through hell... It was total silence because in here is where all the seriousness was transpiring.” —Keith LaMar (11:23)

• On his decision to leave the uprising:
  “I was out of my depth immediately. So I got the hell out of there.” —Keith LaMar (16:39)

• On the breakdown of order:
  “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.” —Keith LaMar (29:30)

• On the state’s manipulative 'communication' with press:
  “If you screw this up, people will die. It will be your fault. You will have to live with it.” —Prison official to Michael San Giacomo (22:40)

• On extreme fear and transformation:
  “It was like being at the end of the world... this was life changing in terms of my organization and everything.” —Keith LaMar (30:14)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [05:26] - Lucasville Riot: Setting the Scene
• [07:28] - How Celisia Found Keith LaMar’s Story
• [09:05] - Keith describes the uprising’s first moments
• [11:23] - Entering chaos: Keith’s sensory account of the riot
• [12:08] - Background: Systemic causes and prison conditions
• [18:21] - Reporter Michael San Giacomo called to cover the riot
• [20:42] - Rumors of casualties and outside panic
• [21:02] - Prisoners' messages: “This is not a racial war…”
• [22:40] - State orchestrates call between prisoner and reporter
• [28:55] - Bodies appear on the yard: Keith faces ultimate fear
• [30:14] - “Fear, fear, fear…” Keith on survival
• [30:53] - State patrol retakes the yard

Closing and Call to Action

Celisia closes the episode highlighting the ongoing legacy of the Lucasville uprising and encourages listeners to support the Ohio Justice & Policy Center and its work for humane justice and prison reform ([32:00]).

Episode Tone

The episode is reflective, intense, and immersive—balancing journalistic inquiry with compassion, vivid survivor testimony, and a critical look at institutional authority. Celisia’s narration is empathetic and direct, interspersed with Keith’s candid, sometimes harrowing recollections and Michael San Giacomo’s pragmatic outsider perspective.

For further resources and a list of sources, visit truercrimepodcast.com.
For more about the Ohio Justice & Policy Center: ohiojpc.org.