Scene november 8, 2017

WHAT HAPPENED IN BUCYRUS? A hit goes wrong in rural Ohio, and a murder case spirals out of control for 23 years

By Eric Sandy $ 6FHQH 0DJD]LQH (YHQW

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2 NIGHTS LODGING IN LAKEVIEW LODGE ROOM & 2 PAIRS OF LIFT TICKETS

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./6%-"%2 s 6/,5-% . O 19 Dedicated to Free Times founder Richard H. Siegel (1935-1993) and Scene founder Richard Kabat Group Publisher Chris Keating

CONTENTS

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Publisher Andrew Zelman Associate Publisher Angela Lott

5PFRONT

Editor Vince Grzegorek Editorial Managing Editor Eric Sandy Music Editor Jeff Niesel Senior Writer Sam Allard Staff Writer Brett Zelman Web Editor Laura Morrison Dining Editor Douglas Trattner Stage Editor Christine Howey Visual Arts Writers Dott von Schneider Copy Editor Elaine Cicora Intern Lawrence Neil

A Night With Janis Joplin

AT #ONNOR 0ALACE ON 4HURSDAY

Dog experiments at Stokes Cleveland VA prompt legislative concerns, RTA switches up its fare protocol

&EATURE

Advertising Senior Multimedia Account Executive John Crobar, Shayne Rose Multimedia Account Executive Kiara Davis Events and Marketing Coordinator Maggie Lilac

A hit goes wrong in rural Ohio, and a murder case spirals out of control for 23 years

Creative Services Production Manager Steve Miluch Layout Editor/Graphic Designer Christine Hahn Staff Photographer Emanuel Wallace

'ET /UT

Business Sales Assistant/Receptionist Megan Stimac Controller Kristy Dotson

All the events you should check out this week

Circulation Circulation Director Don Kriss Euclid Media Group Chief Executive OfďŹ cer Andrew Zelman Chief Operating OfďŹ cers Chris Keating, Michael Wagner Human Resources Director Lisa Beilstein VP Digital Services Stacy Volhein Digital Operations Coordinator Jaime Monzon www.euclidmediagroup.com National Advertising Voice Media Group 1-800-278-9866, voicemediagroup.com Cleveland Scene 737 Bolivar Rd, #4100 Cleveland, OH 44115 www.clevescene.com Phone 216-241-7550 Retail & ClassiďŹ ed Fax 216-241-6275 Editoral Fax 216-802-7212 E-mail scene@clevescene.com

3TAGE

Art museum guards navigate dreams and reality in The Art of Longing at Cleveland Public Theatre

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Twenty years in, Fat Cats is good as ever

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UPFRONT

THIS WEEK

A NEW FEDERAL LAWSUIT PUTS the spotlight on the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center and its apparently secretive track record of running lung experiments on dogs (“mongrels” in VA parlance, according to the department’s own records). The civil complaint was filed by White Coat Waste Project, a bipartisan taxpayer watchdog group.

The central argument is that the VA’s position as a public agency involves some responsibility in disclosing how it conducts taxfunded experiments on dogs. Stokes is one of only three VA centers in the U.S. that runs these animal experiments. The other two are in Milwaukee and Richmond, where surgical experiments involve hearts and brains and spines. The facility in Los Angeles recently stopped animal testing under pressure from U.S. Congressional reps.

Because of the centers’ obfuscation with public records requests, which is the tentpole allegation in this lawsuit, it’s impossible now to know what is really happening to these dogs. Media reports and WCW statements (unconfirmed by Scene) have described brain, spine and heart surgeries on puppies that, often enough, are ultimately killed.

“Because the Cleveland VA has refused to provide us with the approved application for its invasive and deadly taxpayer-funded experiments on young hound dogs, public details on their current project is limited,” Justin Goodman tells Scene. He’s the vice president of advocacy and public policy for WCW. He did, however, cite an October 2017 report authored by Stokes Cleveland VA experimenters and other local medical researchers, in which “lung inflation” procedures are documented. The paper describes

Photo by Jean Pierre Vazquez

STOKES CLEVELAND VA FACING SCRUTINY FOR EXPERIMENTS ON DOGS

the process of anesthetizing 14 adults dogs, then “suturing” an endotracheal tube into their bodies.

The experiment involved periodic inflation of the lungs with carbon dioxide, the result being distorted breath cycles that were studied as reflexes that “might be significant in understanding respiratory control mechanisms in newborn infants.”

(There is no mention of veterans in the paper.)

From the subject and methodology of the experiments to the public tax dollar underpinning, there’s a spectrum of information that WCW has been seeking in its watchdog efforts. But while Los Angeles terminated its dog experiments and the other two facilities have been more forthright in their records, the Stokes Cleveland Center remains a source of difficulty.

“Unlike Stokes,” Goodman says, “other VA facilities using dogs have provided us with the project applications which show, for instance, that at the Richmond VA, five-monthold puppies have latex injected into their arteries to induce heart

attacks and are then forced to run on treadmills to stress their damaged hearts, after which they’re killed and dissected.”

In Cleveland, records of any surgical experiments are almost nonexistent.

“We first learned about the VA’s secretive and wasteful dog experimentation program by reviewing government contracts and databases,” Goodman says, “and have since ascertained additional details via VA whistleblowers, Congress and Freedom of Information Act requests like the one we’re contesting in Cleveland.”

With FOIA on one hand, WCW has turned to the public in getting out its message that this information is in the broader interest of American taxpayers. Billboards, paid for by the White Coat Waste Project, arrived in Cleveland this year to publicly announce that these experiments were taking place without a sense of real public transparency. Litigation is ongoing.

The lawsuit specifically attacks the VA’s public records management

and responsiveness. There are two public records requests that the WCW is tracking, though neither has resulted in full compliance yet.

(The group is seeking established protocol measures that the VA follows when carrying out dog experiments.)

One of those requests yielded “169 heavily redacted responsive pages” in August.

Those documents led to the revelation that the VA had run “invasive and deadly lung experiments” on 30 mixed-breed hounds purchased between 2016 and early 2017 with public tax dollars. Some of those puppies were later killed before they had turned 1. At least one was described as “friendly” just two weeks before being euthanized.

In a separate WCW lawsuit, also filed in federal court, the U.S. VA Department has filed a motion for summary judgment, asserting that it has followed FOIA compliance policy and taking a right-to-privacy argument in defending its redactions.

(VA personnel have received death threats in light of this dog-testing information making it into major media outlets, like USA Today.)

Included in that defense is an outright denial of any records relating to where (and from whom) these puppies are being purchased and where these experiments are taking place. Details made available through USASpending.gov federal contract records point to dog breeders in New York, Indiana and Pennsylvania selling “hounds” and “canines” and “mongrels” to the federal government. Marshall Farms Group (New York), LBL Kennels (Indiana) and Covance Research Products (Pennsylvania) sold multiple dogs to the Cleveland VA to the tune of $600 to $2,000 each. Marshall

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Destination Cleveland’s brand-new plan: Enlist residents in effort to lure more tourists to town. (Strategy revealed to have been copied nearly word-for-word from “brand-new plans” in 2015, 2014, 2012, 2010, 2007, 2004, 2003, 2001, 1999, 1996, 1994, 1993, 1990, 1989, 1987, 1986, 1983, 1981, etc.)

State attorney general announces plan to sue Rover pipeline owners over ongoing EPA violations. Clerical errors result in sprawling complaint against Rover’s Morning Glory for millions of gallons of “boner jokes” spilled in Ohio’s wetlands.

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UPFRONT Farms and Covance are USDAlicensed “Class A� animals breeders; LBL is “Class B,� which denotes different breeding and distribution protocol.

But outside of WCW’s crossreferencing work, it’s not like the VA has supplied those details to the public. In court, the VA defense remains adamant: “After the scientiďŹ c merit of the research study is established by independent scientiďŹ c reviewers, Cleveland VA animal research is subject to a strict system of review and oversight to ensure compliance with ethical and regulatory standards for the care and use of the animal subjects.

Like university and private animal research programs, Cleveland VA programs comply with the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) Animal Welfare Act Regulations and the Public Health Service Policy.�

Across the three testing facilities, the VA insists that these dog experiments are serving the beneďŹ t of paralyzed veterans, among other patient sectors. U.S. Secretary for Veterans Affairs David Shulkin has defended the dog experiments: “VA’s canine research program represents a great example of why the department exists, as one of our current canine research studies illustrates. The study focuses on ways to prevent serious and potentially fatal lung infections that affect some veterans with spinal cord injuries because they are unable to cough effectively.â€?

Animal testing is not a new or novel scientiďŹ c course at either the federal level, nor at major public universities. But this case reveals how secretive the researching agencies can be. And with a brighter spotlight comes an increased sense of awareness among taxpayers and their political representatives.

There’s a bill working its way through the U.S. House now — the PUPPERS Act of 2017 — that would speciďŹ cally prohibit federal agencies like the VA from conducting the most “unkind and painful procedures and experimentsâ€? on dogs. The bill would put an end to the most intense tiers of USDA pain descriptions: categories “Dâ€? and “E,â€? which include water deprivation, iniction of burns, terminal cardiac blood collection, post-operative distress, exposure to extreme environmental conditions and more. (The bill goes beyond just the VA experimentation that we’re talking about here. As of now, the USDA permits the federal government

writ large to carry out those sorts of procedures in a variety of settings.

Class “E,� to be clear, includes legal procedures that can cause death.)

The PUPPERS Act was introduced in July. It’s presently in subcommittee; 53 representatives have signed on as co-sponsors from both major parties.

In July, the U.S. House unanimously approved an amendment to the Make America Secure Appropriations Act (the 2018 federal budget) that would defund these dog experiments at the VA. In practice, that amendment mirrors elements of the PUPPERS Act. Locally, the Cleveland Animal Protective League is publicly supportive of WCW’s campaign and the PUPPERS Act. “Our interest stems from the fact that in this day and age we really don’t see the necessity of using dogs for this incredibly invasive and painful and distressful type of

DIGIT WIDGET 80+ Number of children displaced from Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria who are now enrolled in Cleveland schools

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research,” APL CEO Sharon Harvey tells Scene. “We’re heading into 2018, and this is man’s best friend. We do believe that medical research offers options now, and that there’s no indication that these studies are truly producing information that is helping veterans. We believe veterans deserve the absolute best medical care and support from this country. We’re not convinced that this experimentation using dogs is the way to deliver care to veterans.” — Eric Sandy

JUDGE RULES HEALTHLINE FARE ENFORCEMENT METHOD IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL In an important decision that has taken immediate effect, Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Emanuella Groves ruled on Oct. 26 that the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s (RTA’s) “Proof of Payment” system used on the Red Line Rapid and the HealthLine is unconstitutional.

“The court rejects RTA’s policy of utilizing its law enforcement officers to perform fare enforcement functions requiring officers to stop passengers without reasonable articulable suspicion,” the opinion read.

Those stops, performed by armed police officers, “decorated with the

color of law,” are, according to the court, a violation of passengers’ Fourth Amendment rights to be secure in their person against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Judge Groves requested a constitutional review during a routine fare enforcement case. A passenger had been pulled from a HealthLine bus by RTA police on July 13 when he’d failed to produce a fare card. The defendant later testified that the fare card machine had malfunctioned at the station where he’d boarded (Euclid and Superior, in East Cleveland) and that he’d paid a cash fare once he was on the bus. He was nevertheless cited for fare evasion. The court then raised the question of the stop’s constitutionality.

The resulting decision was definitive: The practice of using police officers to enforce fares constitutes a “systemic attempt to arbitrarily police passengers” and “infringes upon [passengers’] Fourth Amendment rights.”

In her opinion, Judge Groves described acceptable stops by law enforcement and demonstrated that requiring every passenger to produce a fare card with no evidence (or “articulable suspicion”) that they did not pay is unconstitutional.

Mere presence on the bus cannot

be considered reasonable suspicion.

Her opinion said that if RTA used non law-enforcement officers, the constitutional question would be off the table.

But “there must be an intermediary between police and passengers to prevent arbitrary and abusive police encounters,” the opinion read.

RTA released a statement confirming that HealthLine riders must now pay as they board if transit police officers do not check fares prior to boarding.

“While the city is considering its next steps and RTA is reviewing the impact of the [Groves] decision, RTA is modifying our process and testing it to determine the best way to employ the most efficient fare collection method without impairing on-time performance,” RTA wrote in a statement to Scene.

And while RTA admitted that operations might slow down “over the next several days,” regular riders are bemoaning a severe lag in efficiency.

The local transit advocacy group Clevelanders for Public Transit issued a statement in response, calling on RTA to immediately take the following actions “in order to implement convenient and equitable

fare enforcement”: s Commit to establishing a systemwide proof-of-payment system: s To be enforced by unarmed fare inspectors s With consistent inspection across routes and time of day s Decriminalize fare evasion by reducing fare evasion to a civil penalty as opposed to a criminal offense. s Reinstate a 2.5 hour period for a single-trip fares. s Expand all-door boarding to include other heavily used routes in order to reduce trip time and operating costs.

“All-door boarding should eventually expand to all routes,” Clevelanders for Public Transit argued. “With this approach, RTA would shift to a pro-rider approach that improves transit for all, especially riders who may not have complete information.”

As for the fare-evasion case against the passenger who was stopped in July: It was dismissed.

According to the opinion, “Since the initial stop was unconstitutional ... the issue of fare evasion is moot.”

— Sam Allard

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene

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FEATURE

WHAT HAPPENED IN BUCYRUS? A hit goes wrong in rural Ohio, and a murder case spirals out of control for 23 years

By Eric Sandy

I CHARLES KEITH IS NOT PRESENTLY ONE OF THE 2,300 inmates at Marion Correctional Institution.

He is not sitting in a prison cell, because he was not at any point convicted of murder. He has never had his life spared in an act of clemency by the governor of Ohio, and thus he has never avoided his own scheduled execution, because the state has never intended upon killing Charles Keith. After 23 years of fighting, though, it may as well have.

Charles surrounds himself each day with the life story of his brother, Kevin Keith. It’s his life story, too.

Kevin just happens to be the brother behind bars.

With the stirrings of a grizzled shadow across his face, Charles begins pulling dog-eared court records out of a brown accordion file. He lays them gingerly in a row, covering a large table at the Stark County Public Library in downtown Canton. He’s done this many times

12

before, because the true story of his brother’s life is in these pages, not in the version told by the state of Ohio.

According to that version: On the evening of Feb. 13, 1994, a 30-year-old black man named Kevin Keith entered Apartment 1712 at the Bucyrus Estates complex on the edge of rural Bucyrus, Ohio. Inside, while a basketball game flashed on the living room television, he shot and killed two women and a girl: Marichell and Linda Chatman and

| clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

7-year-old Marchae Chatman. Three survivors — a man and two young children — also sustained serious gunshot wounds. The victims all were black, except for the man, and they were all acquaintances of Kevin; he even babysat the little ones every now and then.

He was arrested two days later during a SWAT raid at his home, though the Bucyrus Police Department has no record of any statement from Keith nor any official interview before the cuffs came out.

During the trial that spring, Kevin provided multiple alibi witnesses who placed him miles away from the murder scene. (He did not testify himself, a common practice in murder trials.) What little physical evidence that was available pointed to an alternate suspect, but numerous records and details were hidden from the public in 1994. The trial came and went quickly, and the conviction sealed Kevin’s fate. Within four months of the shootings, he was sentenced to death by a Crawford County jury.

“I didn’t start out to prove his innocence,” Charles says today. “Just show me where he’s guilty, and I’ll have to leave it alone,” he’d ask to

anyone who might be able to answer.

“So I’m looking, because he’s already been found guilty. ‘Let me see if I can find something,’” he says.

“I cannot; I literally tore their case apart. I set out to find out how he was guilty.”

Immediately after the arrest, Charles took to his brother’s side. He dropped out of Kent State University that spring, leaving behind a psychology degree and taking it upon himself to represent his family and brother in the court of public opinion.

When the trial started in May, Charles and his family were leading small rallies outside the county courthouse in downtown Bucyrus. He spoke with news reporters, who were also working frantically to explain this incongruous case.

The violence at Bucyrus Estates presented a gripping narrative for a small rural town with an even smaller black population. (Bucyrus is 30 miles west of Mansfield.) Stories and editorials in the local newspapers offered a glimpse into an insulated community, where Keith and his extended family grew up alongside the Chatman family — the victims — and provided fodder for neighborhood speculation.

The cold-blooded murder of women and children was even cited specifically by President Bill Clinton during a springtime visit to Ohio, where he touted his administration’s Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, otherwise known as the Crime Bill. By then, of course, people already knew the name Kevin Keith. Clinton was just casting it in bold type.

More than two decades have passed since the shootings. Kevin has maintained his innocence from the start.

These days, he spends his time working on faith-based programming at Marion Correctional, just a quick trip down the road from Bucyrus. He carries himself confidently, wearing a wiry cut of facial hair across a thick jaw line. In conversation he’s cheery, if only to maintain his leadership role in the general population’s tilt toward the Lord and in the state prison’s WordMasters program, which he created. “I woke up one day, and I said I got a choice: I can be bitter, okay? Or I can have limited frustration. I pretty much choose limited frustration,” he tells Scene during a recent visit to Marion.

For more than a decade, Kevin

sweated out the wait on Death Row while his appellate counsel exhausted every avenue back into the courts.

Back then, like now, judges weren’t budging. In 2007, he fired his attorneys amicably and welcomed the Ohio Public Defender’s Office into his case.

Almost immediately, Keith’s new lead attorney, Rachel Troutman, began discovering long-hidden police records and investigative documents that shed incredible new light on the Bucyrus murders. She found a state report that laid out a simultaneous crime spree in the spring of 1994, a pharmacy burglary ring operating out of Crawford County that was led by a convicted murderer who admitted to a role in the Chatman murders.

The Ohio Public Defenders Office has pushed a different version of the story: The conviction was marred by dubious eyewitness testimony, prosecutorial tunnel vision and the faulty work of a disgraced former forensic scientist. Those attorneys have been filing these claims in court for years now, asserting new evidence and joining the solo mission that Charles Keith started way back in 1994.

“It’s not a case we can give up on,” Troutman says. “We’re convinced that he’s innocent, so there will be some way, somehow, that we end up demonstrating that to the outside world. It’s also the kind of case where no matter where you dig you find something. It’s remarkable. Every time we try, there’s something new to be found that demonstrates that it was a sham all along, the conviction.”

Armed with this new material, Troutman and her team have worked their way back up the judicial ladder in Ohio. They secured a commutation from Gov. Ted Strickland in 2010 that canceled Keith’s date with the executioner and granted him a sentence of life in prison. (“Many legitimate questions have been raised regarding the evidence in support of the conviction and the investigation which led to it,” Strickland said at the time.) They continue to seek a new trial and a new opportunity to present the truth lost in Bucyrus so many years ago, because an innocent man has been behind bars ever since.

II The night of Feb. 13, 1994, holds many mysteries, but there’s one point

upon which the state and the defense agree: A man named Rudel Chatman was the intended target, and he wasn’t at home that night.

Rudel was a confidential informant for the Galion Police Department, based just a few miles east of Bucyrus. Dealers referred to him as a snitch, and there was plenty of dealing going around Crawford County in the early 1990s. Kevin Keith was a part of it. “I’ll be the first to tell you,” he says now, “I was involved in drug activity. I did sell drugs — and did drugs.”

Growing up, Charles and Kevin and their family spent time all over Crawford County: in Crestline, where they grew up; in Galion; in Bucyrus.

They were well acquainted with other black families in the area: the Chatmans, the Meltons, the Reeves.

There were pick-up games and picnics throughout their youth; Kevin went on to play defensive tackle at McKinley High School. His team won a state title in 1981. As he got older, he took to small-time drug dealing.

Other opportunities were limited.

Charles, a student at the old Timken High, was at the bottom of his class and skipping the sort of civics lessons that he’d eventually

“See? Every night, I go through these documents again to keep it all fresh in my mind. I’m actually back in 1994. I’m still there.”

— Charles Keith

Photo by Eric Sandy

| clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

13

FEATURE need as he studied his brother’s case.

“It didn’t seem to matter at the time,” he says. “Now I see how important your education is. It’s the only thing that America will give you for free.”

Charles scans the court documents and newspaper clippings that make up his brother’s story. This is his education, he likes to say. He spent time in libraries and took up work at a halfway house in the ’90s. He called attorneys and judges for hypothetical perspectives on criminal law. He studied the formats of court dockets, and he watched hours of criminal drama on television. Eventually, he had to kick the TV shows and hunker down.

“I used to watch all kinds of things, just so I could learn. Once I got all my information, I stopped watching them, because now it’s going to take me to a point of confusion,” Charles says. “See? Every night, I go through these documents again to keep it all fresh in my mind.

I’m actually back in 1994. I’m still there.”

A January 1994 Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum headline lays the foundation for Kevin’s murder conviction: “Area drug bust hauls in nine.” It’s the motive alleged by the prosecution; Kevin was arrested for selling 2.6 grams of crack cocaine, and Rudel Chatman was the informant involved in the Jan. 21 bust. The theory was that three weeks later the shooter was seeking revenge on Rudel for snitching.

But right after the drug bust, another local man named Rodney Melton told his girlfriend that he had been paid $15,000 to “cripple” Rudel, who in addition to snitching on dimebag dealers had also been working as an informant against Melton and the ongoing pharmacy burglary

14

THE PEOPLE INVOLVED KEVIN KEITH: the man convicted of the 1994 Bucyrus Estates murders CHARLES KEITH: the brother of Kevin Keith RACHEL TROUTMAN: Kevin Keith’s lead attorney from the Ohio Public Defender’s Office RODNEY MELTON: alternate suspect in the 1994 Bucyrus Estates murders and defendant in 1995 pharmacy burglary case BRUCE MELTON: brother of Rodney Melton and defendant in 1995 pharmacy burglary case RUDEL CHATMAN: police informant ring. The detectives working that case, however, never passed that information along to the Bucyrus Police Department. The prosecution was never told about the $15,000 hit, and that fact lay hidden for more than a decade.

In fact, a lot of information was hidden for a long time. In April 1994, for example, right before the murders, the Crawford County prosecutor quietly filed an indictment against Rodney Melton. Among the

| clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

in various drug cases, including 1995 pharmacy burglary case, and the intended victim of the 1994 Bucyrus Estates murders THE VICTIMS: Marichell Chatman Marchae Chatman Linda Chatman Richard Warren Quanita Reeves Quentin Reeves JERRY HICKMAN AND DAVID DAYNE: Galion police detectives tied to both the 1994 Bucryus Estates murders and the 1995 pharmacy burglary case JAMES BANKS: Kevin Keith’s defense attorney in 1994 murder trial three felony charges leveled against him was the August 1993 sale of morphine. The police informant working against Rodney? It was Rudel Chatman, according to the state’s own documentation. That indictment was dismissed more than a year later as the pharmacy case went to trial in Franklin County, and it was never publicly cited again.

Rudel and Rodney, like Rudel and Kevin, were linked.

For one reason or another, though,

Rudel Chatman wasn’t at home on Feb. 13, 1994. His sister Marichell, however, was at the apartment with her daughter, Marchae, and her live-in boyfriend, Richard Warren.

They were watching Marichell’s young cousins, Quentin and Quanita Reeves, along with her aunt, Linda Chatman. According to Warren’s testimony, a basketball game was playing on TV in the living room.

Outside, snow banks were piled high along the trim row of two-story apartment buildings.

Witnesses told varying stories over the years, but the first descriptions of the scene involve a “large black man” seen at the apartment complex.

According to the state of Ohio, Linda Chatman walked outside to meet the man. Richard asked Marichell who the man was, and she replied that “it was Kevin who had been involved in a large drug bust,” the state insists. When Linda and the man, who was wearing a mask, walked back inside, he and Richard talked about the basketball game.

The man told Richard not to use his name. After drinking two glasses of water through the cloth covering his mouth, the man ordered everyone in the room to lie down. As the state goes on in its explanation: “When Marichell expressed concerns about harm coming to the children who were present, Kevin told Marichell that ‘you should have thought about this before your brother [Rudel] started ratting on people.’ Marichell was then shot in the head. The gunman then turned to shoot the others.”

Those details come from an interview with Richard Warren at Grant Medical Center several days after the shootings. It remains unclear where the name “Kevin Keith” originated, but the interview features police officers using that name repeatedly while asking Warren to reiterate his description of

Image courtesy of Google Maps

Crawford County includes Bucyrus, Galion and Crestline along State Rt. 30

events. Prior to the interview, Warren had been unable to recall the name of the shooter.

Nonetheless, the description of a large black man underpinned the criminal case. And for a case that produced almost zero physical evidence, it was a credible lead that brought police to a large black man named Kevin Keith, who had been busted for small-time crack dealing three weeks prior, thanks to Rudel Chatman. (The large black man seen at Bucyrus Estates was neither Kevin Keith nor Rodney Melton, at any rate, but rather Kevinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s half-brother, Karie Walker, who had just moved into the neighborhood after a stint in prison.)

And so Charles looked for years, trying to establish some meaningful connection between his brother and the murders. He says that thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no way â&#x20AC;&#x153;a few small rocksâ&#x20AC;? could establish a motive for murder. But a multi-month investigation into a sprawling pharmacy ring? Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s insisted to anyone who will listen that thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reason to look elsewhere in this case, and many defense attorneys have agreed.

III From the summer of 1993 through the spring of 1994, an organized group of small-town criminals was routinely breaking into pharmacies around central Ohio and stealing massive amounts of liquid morphine, Dilaudid, Percocet, Vicodin and other drugs. The men involved in the theft ring were heavy drug users themselves and kept their social circle well supplied. A few of them also trafďŹ cked the drugs more broadly, ďŹ&#x201A;ooding the regional market with clean product. It was one of the broadest pharmaceutical trafďŹ cking rings in state history, long predating Ohioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s current and far-reaching opiate addiction crisis.

In Galion, Ohio, in Crawford County, police detectives Jerry Hickman and David Dayne were on the case early. With the help of

frequent conďŹ dential informant Rudel Chatman, they executed controlled purchases of morphine and benzphetamine from Rodney Melton â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a leader in the pharmacy theft ring. Court documents conďŹ rm the purchase of morphine as early as Aug. 31, 1993, offering a deďŹ ned Point A in the investigation. The pharmacy burglaries continued unabated for months, however.

Hickman and Dayne were watching Melton and the others through the winter, but nothing came of their investigative work. A three-count indictment against Melton was ďŹ led in April 1994 in Crawford County but was dismissed without any action more than a year later.

In January, meanwhile, the Ohio State Board of Pharmacy formed a task force to investigate what was becoming an apparent trend in break-ins and break-in attempts.

(The State Board of Pharmacy is a law enforcement agency that tracks pharmaceutical drug crimes.) Agent Bill Padgett headed up the task force and compiled the ďŹ nal report.

In regard to the investigation into the Bucyrus murders, Padgettâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s document would lay dormant in the State Boardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ofďŹ ces until 2007.

The ďŹ nal report was not available to the public at the time of Kevinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s trial, as the pharmacy investigation was ongoing. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a comprehensive accounting of what happened in Crawford County in early 1994. It reads like the key to a map. Whereas the Jan. 21 drug bust connected Kevin Keith to Rudel Chatman on a measly 2.6-gram crack purchase, the Padgett report connects Rodney Melton to Rudel Chatman ultimately on a sprawling felony indictment: RICO charges, theft, trafďŹ cking. â&#x20AC;&#x153;[Padgett] was involved with the investigation of the Melton brothers and the pharmacy burglaries,â&#x20AC;?

Rachel Troutman, the OPD attorney, says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;But he has no bone to pick with Kevin. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s got no reason for any sort of bias against Kevin.

Because the investigation of the

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15

FEATURE Melton brothers had begun before the murders that Kevin got convicted of — and it ended afterward — we were hoping that he would have some sort of timeline.” A 2007 records request yielded all of the following information, which neatly frames the Bucyrus Estates murders and is vital context for understanding Kevin’s conviction.

A tip from a botched break-in — a license plate provided by a witness to the Muskingham County Sheriff’s Department, one of the first agencies signed onto the state’s task force — provided a lead. The license plate was registered to a Russell Gardner in Galion, Ohio, where Hickman and Dayne had been watching the trafficking ring for months. Gardner was one of the seven men responsible for “over 200 burglaries” at that point, along with Rodney and his brother, Bruce Melton, according to the Crawford County Sheriff’s Department.

With the Board of Pharmacy task force getting on the phone and asking for an investigative leg up on this case, Hickman and Dayne suddenly became the drivers of the state’s investigation, even though they had already investigated the case for months without nabbing a single arrest. In fact, throughout Padgett’s final report, it is Hickman whose name appears more than anyone else involved as law enforcement, beginning on Jan. 18, just one week into the task force’s work. He leads Padgett’s pharmacy investigation.

Based on Padgett’s report and documents uncovered in the eventual criminal prosecution, Hickman and Dayne bailed on Rudel Chatman immediately and brought a new confidential informant into their investigation just days after the

formation of the task force. Were it not for the Ohio Public Defender’s Office, Rudel Chatman’s connection to the Rodney Melton case would have been lost forever. The 1994 indictment (and the state’s confirmation, years later) provides an uncanny and uninvestigated link between the Bucyrus Estates target and the alternate suspect.

Hickman and Dayne interviewed a woman named Lynn McKee on Jan. 14, 1994. She explained that she had been driving the Melton brothers to their pharmacy break-ins for most of the past year, and that she herself was a drug user who ran with the guys and purchased opiates from them. While she never received any criminal charges, she admits in that Jan. 14 interview that she’d been involved in multiple pharmacy breakins as the getaway driver.

According to the State Board’s documents, though, Hickman described McKee not as a new asset but as a long-running informant who “could be in a position to drive for the Meltons when they commit pharmacy burglaries.” He immediately began relaying to the task force what the Meltons were telling McKee about upcoming burglaries.

But McKee hadn’t been the CI prior to Jan. 14, and the interview underscores that fact. (The task force was not given a copy of that Galion Police Department interview transcript, and so this context was never included in the pharmacy investigation.) Hickman and Dayne peppered McKee with questions that read as odd and unnecessary if she were the CI the whole time, as they conveyed to the task force.

Hickman asks: “During our conversations indicated that you have some knowledge of some individuals that were originally from Crestline Ohio by the last name of Melton is that correct (sic)” McKee responds: “Yes”

“What Meltons do you know (sic)” “Rodney Melton, Bruce Melton, Maurice Melton and Donny Melton” And, later: “If there was a boss in this who would be concidered (sic) the boss (sic)” “Rodney Melton” On Jan. 20, Hickman tells the State Board task force that the Meltons “have spread the word that anybody that snitches on them would be killed.”

Hickman continues to provide information to the task force, details about where the Melton brothers live and how they go about their burglaries. During that Jan. 20 meeting, Padgett writes, “This meeting was a total exchange of information in regards to intelligence information obtained by the various departments in regards to the Meltons and their associates. Galion Police Department had informants deep inside the inner circle of the Melton burglary ring and is in the situation that a CI could be in a position to drive for the Meltons when they commit pharmacy burglaries.”

Hickman never tells the task force that he’d already been using Rudel Chatman to investigate the Melton brothers, to purchase liquid morphine and to ultimately indict Rodney Melton.

On Jan. 31, Hickman was told: “[Rodney Melton] stated that he had been paid $15,000 to cripple ‘the man’ who was responsible for the raids in Crestline, Ohio, last week” — the man being informant Rudel Chatman and the raids being the Jan. 21 drug busts that roped in Kevin Keith.

Hickman provided this information to the State Board, though it never came up in the subsequent murder investigation that was looming on the horizon. (Attempts to reach Hickman via publicly available address and phone number were unsuccessful.)

On Feb. 11, Hickman and Dayne left town to meet with an assistant

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IV Kevin Keith was arrested for the Feb. 13 murders on Feb. 15.

Galion detective Jerry Hickman joined members of the Bucyrus and Crestline police departments and the Mansfied SWAT team in raiding Kevin’s home.

In his eventual defense, Kevin would insist that he was with two girlfriends on the night of the Bucyrus murders: He began the evening, according to his attorneys, around 6 p.m. at the home of his girlfriend, Melanie Davison, in Mansfield. They left her home in a blue car that belonged to another girlfriend of Kevin’s at about 8:45 p.m., as neighbors testified. (It would have been at this time that the shootings were occurring some 30 miles away in Bucyrus.)

As 9 p.m. neared, Kevin and the second girlfriend arrived in Crestline at the home of his aunt, Gracie Keith. Kevin went inside to talk to his uncle, Roy Price, and to borrow a quick five dollars. They left Gracie’s place after 10 minutes, arriving back at Melanie’s at 9:25 p.m. “The sheer distance involved makes it impossible for Keith to have been the shooter,” Kevin’s appellate attorneys wrote. “From Gracie Keith’s house, in Crestline, it is 19 miles to the apartment, and it would have taken approximately 25 minutes to make that drive. And Mansfield and Bucyrus are approximately 30 miles apart. Keith was accounted for before, during, and after the shootings that took place at 8:45 p.m.”

Kevin did not enter a plea at his arraignment. Bond was set at $1 million. As he left the courtroom, he told reporters, “I didn’t do it.”

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Bucyrus police chief Joseph Beran held a press conference on Feb. 16, explaining that a suspect had been arrested. “A lot of it will depend on the results we get back from BCI. … I don’t want to say that we’ve made an arrest and now we’re going to make the case, but, I mean, we still are very interested in putting a lot of this evidence together. … What we have is some evidence that we have collected that we hope we will be able to link him to the crimes.”

In the immediate aftermath of the murders, cops set their sights on the specter of a large black man. At least six witnesses used that phrase during interviews with police on the night of Feb. 13, 1994. No one could say for sure who that large black man could have been, though. “At first, the connection was logical,” as Kevin’s attorneys admitted in court filings.

But things spiraled out of control very fast.

It was later determined that the large black man witnesses had seen was Karie Walker, half-brother of Kevin Keith and a neighbor who had just moved into Bucyrus Estates.

He was seen on the property that night by multiple people. During the trial, Walker would testify that he had used a nearby pay phone twice that night. He would also be ordered to stand next to Kevin Keith in the courtroom, and a May 19 Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum front page photo depicts two men who could very well be twins.

And so the “large black man” description stuck, and police moved in on neighbor Nancy Smathers, who provided a spotty narrative of what she saw that night. She lived across the street and laid out the immediate aftermath of the shootings in fairly thorough detail: After hearing “numerous shots,” she watched the apparent shooter run from the Chatman residence. The man got into a car and sped across icy asphalt into a snowbank. Smathers said she watched the driver rock the vehicle back and forth — “cussing from inside” the car — and then speed out of the icy neighborhood. She described the vehicle as “light, crème color.”

At trial, the state used a photo of a car owned by Kevin’s girlfriend — colored green or gray, according to

their description — as evidence. The Crawford County prosecution never accounted for the difference in color, and Nancy Smathers was never given a chance to compare that car with Rodney Melton’s car, a light yellow ’78 Impala.

In police reports, the name “Kevin Keith” first comes up at the crime scene, where multiple police officers say the name, according to reports.

Hickman and Dayne were at the scene that night, and multiple officers bandied about a possible connection to the Jan. 21 drug bust, in which Rudel Chatman was a police informant.

The image of a large black man blended into the apparent motive, and police moved forward. The arrest came swiftly, and Bucyrus police captain Mike Corwin would later acknowledge in court that Rodney Melton was never a suspect.

Once Kevin Keith’s name and face flashed across the nightly news after his arrest, Smathers called Corwin and said that she was now “90-percent sure” that Kevin was the man she saw in the neighborhood that night.

Smathers did go on to testify in court that she saw Kevin that night at Bucyrus Estates. She hadn’t wanted to appear on the stand, but detectives convinced her in the days leading up to the trial during an apparently tense conversation while she broke down crying, according to police reports. (Smathers has since died.)

But despite the name Kevin Keith making the rounds among police officers, it wasn’t sticking when it came time to connect with witnesses.

One of the most pivotal statements, which was left out of the trial, came from gunshot victim Quanita Reeves, the 7-year-old girl who was life-flighted to Columbus Children’s Hospital with her little brother while cops took statements from Smathers back at Bucyrus Estates.

The young girl woke up after a night of intensive care, and she told a nurse, “It’s my fault.” The nurse pressed her (and recorded the conversation in a Parent Communication Sheet), and Quanita responded “that it was her fault that she was in the hospital because her mother was sad.”

After telling Quanita that it wasn’t her fault at all, the nurse asked,

After hearing “numerous shots,” Nancy Smathers watched the apparent shooter run from the Chatman residence.

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17

“Whose fault is it that you’re in the hospital?”

“Bruce.”

“Who is Bruce?” the nurse asked.

“Daddy’s friend,” meaning Bruce Melton, friend of Demetrius Reeves, both co-conspirators in the pharmacy burglary case with Rodney.

“What did Bruce do?”

“Bruce shot me,” Quanita said.

“He’s bad. Is Bruce here?”

“No.” “Does he have his gun?”

“No. He isn’t here, and he can’t hurt you.”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

And she didn’t. By the time Kevin Keith’s 2010 clemency hearing arrived, though, Quanita Reeves wrote in a letter to Strickland that, “Whatever happens with this case I still have no doubt in my mind that Kevin Keith done this and I ask that you deny clemency for him.”

V The other primary eyewitness in the case was Richard Warren, the surviving adult.

Warren was shot in the jaw and back before he took off running into the neighborhood. He was shot again in his buttocks as he dashed across a field to a nearby restaurant. There, he told four people, including a police officer, that he did not know who shot him.

As far as Warren’s role in the prosecution, the state insisted that an alleged 5 a.m. phone call to

18

Photo by Eric Sandy

FEATURE

The Crawford County Courthouse in downtown Bucyrus

police from nurse John Foor at the hospital is where the name Kevin Keith first appeared. According to the state’s case, Foor called the police the morning after the murders and reported that Warren, his patient, had said the name “Kevin Keith.” It’s a claim that has been refuted multiple times over the years, but it remains a lynchpin in the prosecution’s case.

(On Feb. 14 at 1 p.m., a security guard at Grant Medical Center confirmed that “the perpetrator, who’s (sic) name is still unknown, is still at large.” That same afternoon, a social services worker writes that the assailant remains “unknown.” The name “Kevin Keith” appears nowhere in Grant Medical Center documents.)

Nonetheless, the 5 a.m. phone call was canon for years.

About a year ago, Rachel

| clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

Troutman discovered a subpoena delivered to the Bucyrus police chief on May 12, 1994, right around the start of the trial. According to the document, Judge Nelford Kimerline ordered the chief to “bring with you all records, including radio dispatch logs, of all call-ins from February 12, 1994, to the present time.” On the document, handwritten in ink, is the phrase “IGNORE FOR NOW.” A second subpoena was issued on the same day, seeking “all logs or other documents evidencing informative calls regarding domestic situations the Chapman (sic) family has been involved with for the last six months, including but not limited to those reported to the local newspaper.”

Again, handwritten: “IGNORE.” It’s unclear who wrote those words, but in the end no call logs

appeared in court. The 5 a.m. phone call was to be taken at the word of the prosecutor.

In 2009, after multiple attorneys had tried to find the truth behind the John Foor call, an unrelated lawsuit was filed against the Bucyrus Police Department and the city. Edwin Davila’s lawsuit alleged that the city had destroyed public records, including 11,272 separate records and 31 reel-to-reel tapes. A court exhibit of call logs issued by the city happened to include the night of Feb. 13 and 14, 1994, almost unbelievably.

There is no 5 a.m. phone call on the morning of Feb. 14, and there is no call in the vicinity of 5 a.m. that includes terms like “nurse” or “Grant Medical Center” or “hospital” or “murders.” Calls placed the night before, at 9:09 p.m. and 9:14 p.m., include “BUCYRUS ESTATESGUNSHOTS” and “5 PEOPLE DOWN WITH GUNSHOT WOUNDS AT 1712 A BUCYRUS ESTATES,” respectively.

Because Kevin’s attorneys can’t seem to get back into a courtroom to argue this fact, there has never been a public accounting of the phone log question and the subpoenas.

In a response to a public records request in 2007, then-Capt. John Beal wrote, “Regarding the Station’s daily phone log for 02/14/07 (sic): No such daily phone log existed at that time so I cannot supply you with that documentation. … The recorded phone call from Nurse Foor was not copied for the prosecution or the defense at that time. The incoming/ outgoing phone call recording system for the Bucyrus Police Department has undergone changes since 1994.

The changes made the playback of recording mediums obsolete so the

audiotapes were not retained by this Police Department. The Bucyrus Police Department does not have the recording tapes from 02/14/94.”

Charles, however, years later found the actual notes written by Warren’s nurses. Deep in the rabbit hole of the Bucyrus Police Department’s archives, he found five sheets of paper with Warren’s handwriting on them (confirmed by Foor’s own testimony).

The handwriting of at least two other people is also clearly seen on the paper. The name “Kevin” and “Damon” are written in handwriting that is distinctly not the jagged script of Warren’s hand.

On the first sheet, Warren’s handwriting reads: “When can I breath (sic) on my own,” and separate handwriting above that, in all capital letters, reads: “KEVIN —” and “DAMON — FRIEND.” It’s unclear who else had written on those pieces of paper.

Kevin’s trial attorney tried to suppress Warren’s and Foor’s interviews, but the judge allowed them to be used. Warren is an important pillar in the prosecution — the lone surviving adult — and one whose input Troutman and dozens of memory experts have attacked in subsequent years. Even this year, in the Ohio Supreme Court, 17 “memory and eyewitness identification experts” filed a lengthy amicus brief that breaks down the inherent problems with memory encoding, maintenance and retrieval in victims of violence.

“Once the situation escalated,” the experts write, “Warren’s stress level increased substantially at exactly the time that Warren was giving his full attention to the culprit. … [H]eightened stress adversely

“Warren subsequently reported being unable to recall whether he mentioned the name to the police or they mentioned it to him.”

—2017 amicus curiae brief affects memory. There was a gun involved, which naturally becomes the focus of attention and a priority perceptually. Warren provided a very detailed description of the gun, which indicated that his attention was on the gun, not the culprit, during the crime. Again, due to our limited cognitive capacity, attention directed at the gun is attention NOT directed at encoding the culprit.”

And later in the brief: “Warren subsequently reported being unable to recall whether he mentioned the name to the police or they mentioned it to him.”

But even though the Warren interview was used, no one in the courtroom seemed confident in the information. “Nowhere in there does Richard Warren name his shooter as Kevin,” Kevin’s trial attorney, James Banks, said at the time.

“Indeed, he didn’t even say with certainty it was Keith,” prosecutor Russell Wiseman said. “From that point on, identification was made in other ways.”

Which brings us to Michele Yezzo

VI In April 2016, a series of questions was leveled against Michele Yezzo, a former forensic scientist at the state

Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

She worked in the office for 33 years, touching an untold number of criminal cases. In 1994, she presented via deposition an analysis of evidence in Kevin Keith’s case.

Her work powered the engine of the prosecution.

But her track record was cast into shadow when, in 2016, a Huron County judge threw out the 1993 murder conviction of a man named James Parsons. Judge Thomas Pokorny wrote that prosecutors had hidden evidence during the trial that years of sloppy investigative work by a state forensic scientist were covered up. Because Yezzo’s time at the Bureau of Criminal Investigation was so thoroughly marred by doubt and personal controversy, Pokorny wrote, Parsons’ conviction was itself questionable.

The Parsons exoneration brought out a multitude of damning details about Yezzo’s behavior at the Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Her personnel file spans more than 800 pages.

In various instances across that time frame, Yezzo threatened to kill her coworkers; she threatened to kill herself; she acted in a “rude and aggravating,” “abusive and assaultive” manner to colleagues; and, most

critically, she demonstrated an erratic and unpredictable pattern that ran afoul of professional standards. In 1989, for example, an assistant BCI superintendent sets a grim tone for Yezzo’s track record: “Michele’s perceived problem affects her overall performance. Her finding and conclusions regarding evidence may be suspect. She will stretch the truth to satisfy a department. … Basically, the union has placed us on notice that they consider management ineffective and unconcerned in controlling Michele.”

More than routine research, in fact, Yezzo played a pivotal role in Kevin Keith’s murder conviction.

When an appeals court ruled earlier this year that “the evidence against Keith was simply overwhelming,” the panel of judges was referring almost singularly to Yezzo’s involvement in the case; there just wasn’t much else presented at the trial. Aside from Nancy Smathers, Richard Warren and the alleged 5 a.m. phone call, the prosecution rested on Yezzo’s report on the tire treads of the getaway car and a license plate imprint in the snow.

Kevin Keith’s latest appeals were filed with the Ohio Supreme Court on Aug. 10, 2017. He’s been up against that court before, but this time he and his attorneys were equipped with Yezzo’s personnel file. Had it not been for the Parsons ruling last year, Yezzo’s work would remain unexamined.

In a motion arguing in favor of Ohio Supreme Court jurisdiction, Keith’s team writes: “The employment-personnel file of G. Michele Yezzo … demonstrates that her superiors and colleagues knew

| clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

19

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| clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

that she had a ‘reputation of giving’ answers the State wanted, and that she would ‘stretch the truth’ when her answers did not satisfy the State.

The amount of damage that was done by this one corrupt forensic analyst is yet to be determined, and this Court will undoubtedly be faced with the fallout from the defense bar’s recent discovery of Yezzo’s personnel file.”

The Ohio Supreme Court motion urges a referendum-like hearing on the Yezzo matter by way of Keith’s case. “In order to streamline the affected cases, to present the lower courts with some guidance, and to act in the interests of justice, this Court should accept jurisdiction of this appeal,” the motion argues.

Despite the Parsons ruling, no court has yet ruled on how Yezzo’s work might have affected untold hundreds of convictions in the state of Ohio. In Kevin Keith’s case, her interactions with the Bucyrus Police Department paint a grim picture.

During the investigation and the subsequent trial, Yezzo’s role dealt with the getaway car outside the Bucyrus Estates apartment on the night of the murders. Sight unseen, she linked Keith’s girlfriend’s grandfather’s car with the crime scene, citing tire treads and a license plate imprint on a snow bank.

The license plate imprint, however, was only partial; the impression showed the numbers “043.” It was later determined that there was no way of knowing where in the sixdigit license plate the numbers might have been oriented: at the beginning of the plate or at the end.

On the day after the murders, a database search for “043” yielded “043LIJ,” a license plate attached to a car driven by Rodney Melton. But they also brought back “MVR043,” a license plate attached to a car owned

by Kevin’s girlfriend’s grandfather.

Kevin’s girlfriend, Melanie Davison, often drove that car, owned by Alton Davison. Yezzo insisted that the plate imprint had to have come from Davison’s car, based on the spacing between the digits. Still, no physical evidence (like clothing fibers) or forensic evidence (like blood) tied the car to Kevin; the police investigation nonetheless narrowed on Davison’s 1982 Oldsmobile Omega as the getaway car and on Kevin as the driver, based solely on the account of the neighbor, Nancy Smathers, and Yezzo’s BCI work.

Smathers, indeed the one eyewitness to see the getaway car at

all, was never shown a photograph of Davison’s car to see if it was the car she saw that night. And while Davison’s car was shown in court, Rodney Melton’s ’78 Impala was not.

“They kept saying that was a key part of evidence,” Kevin tells Scene.

“Matter of fact, they said that’s what led them to me. The car. Now that you know that ain’t the car — now all of a sudden it didn’t matter. Things like that right there, that’s when your faith really gotta come into play.

That’s where my faith really comes into play at, right there.”

During the trial, though, none of that BCI forensic material was challenged. Kevin’s defense attorney, James Banks, failed to counter the Yezzo deposition with any sort of independent expert.

In 2010, and at the behest of Kevin’s OPD defense, William Bodziak, a retired FBI special agent, put together a report that dismantled the science behind Yezzo’s work.

Long before those personnel file details leaked into the court of public opinion, Bodziak had pointed out that Yezzo’s findings were slim and unprofessional.

Of the tire tread: “Yezzo chose to simply make a visual evaluation and opine the design was similar [to the tires on Kevin’s girlfriend’s grandfather’s car]. The forensic use of the word ‘similar’ has no further meaning that it would for a layman in that it can only attest to a visual likeness of sorts ...”

Bodziak reported that it’s impossible to say whether the same car left both the tire tread imprint and the license plate imprint in the snow.

In a July 2016 affidavit, Lee Fisher, the attorney general of Ohio in 1994 (a position that oversees the BCI), stated that Yezzo’s personnel file was “very troubling” and “concerning due to the fact that the opinions of BCI’s forensics analysts are relied upon by law enforcement, judges and juries. The character of an analyst is important.”

Fisher went on: “Ms. Yezzo’s opinions were likely very wrong and … the prejudice in [Kevin Keith’s] case is very significant.” The former attorney general declared that he was “deeply concerned that Ms. Yezzo’s conclusions and testimony led to a miscarriage of justice in Mr. Keith’s case.”

VII None of those details — Yezzo, the car, the license plate, the Bodziak report, Warren’s interview, the $15,000 deal to kill Rudel Chatman,

Photo courtesy of Bucycrus Police Department

Kevin Keith’s girlfriend’s grandfather’s car—the alleged getaway car.

the pharmacy burglary connection — would have come to light had it not been for the Ohio Public Defender’s Office. A stroke of serendipity brought those attorneys to Kevin’s side.

Melinda Dawson was working with the Innocence Project on her ex-

husband Clarence Elkins’ wrongful conviction case in the early 2000s when she introduced Charles Keith to attorney Rachel Troutman.

“That mere introduction, the window opened,” Charles says. “I talked to [Dawson] every single day, you know? That was just a bond that

we had. We used to sit at Burger King and cry over french fries. We’re both going nuts. And I said, ‘We can’t go crazy, because the day is going to come when we’re talking to people, we’re going to be on TV. People are going to be looking at us, and you gotta know what you’re talking

about. Just crying is not going to get it.” (Elkins was exonerated in 2005 after the unreliable eyewitness testimony of the 6-year-old victim was exposed, and another suspect was revealed through DNA evidence.)

By 2007, though, Keith had exhausted all of his appeal options.

The only move left was to seek clemency. Troutman says that Charles greeted her with boxes of paperwork, including the lengthy trial transcript that laid out a unfinished tale.

What he was saying, though, was almost unbelievable. It took some hard reading to bring the attorneys around to the depth of this case.

“When I read his transcript, it reads like a surprise novel,” Troutman says. “I was shocked that he would get conviction, except I knew obviously he was on Death Row. It’s not my first case, so I didn’t necessarily believe he was innocent until I did my research and began my investigation. We started to uncover a whole bunch of stuff.”

The first document acquired was that State Board of Pharmacy report, which outlined the pharmacy burglaries and revealed the other details left out of Kevin’s prosecution.

In that document, Troutman and other attorneys learned that

| clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

21

FEATURE Melton had been paid $15,000 to “cripple” Rudel Chatman, that he wore a mask while he committed his crimes (to hide a gap in his front teeth), that his car was light yellowor cream-colored and that his license plate included the “043” sequence.

“It was like we just hit paydirt,” Troutman says. “It was like, ‘Oh, my god, I think this guy is telling the truth.’ The more we investigated, the more we realized that what he was saying was true. When somebody’s first telling you all this kind of stuff about a case, it’s really hard to swallow. And then you look into it and you see for yourself, and it’s just like, ‘Oh, my god.’”

From there, Charles’ vision of a conviction gone wrong was concretized in evidence. When it came time for Troutman to argue for clemency, conjecture had given way to confidence.

At a press conference in August 2010, Troutman laid out the simple case for Kevin, an argument that the state should not execute him. “Mr. Keith is an innocent man,” Troutman said. “He is scheduled to be executed

on Sept. 15, 2010, for a crime he did not commit. Tomorrow, we will appear before the Ohio Parole Board and urge the board to recommend that Gov. Strickland grant him clemency. Innocent people can get executed, unless people of good conscience do something to stop it.”

As that execution date loomed, dozens of former judges and prosecutions joined Innocence Projects and other criminal law organizations around the country in supporting Kevin’s defense. The Ohio Innocence Project, which rarely sticks its nose into cases that don’t involve DNA evidence, filed numerous amicus briefs and letters that outlined a strong concern for the conviction at hand. “Mr. Keith was convicted and sentenced to death based on eyewitness testimony that has shown to be faulty and with no forensic evidence linking him to the crime,” the OIP attorneys wrote.

Richard Warren’s testimony, cemented by police lineup identification, would not have been permissible in 2010 (or the present day). Earlier that year, the statehouse approved Senate Bill 77, which banned suggestive photo lineups and prohibited any officer who is aware of a suspect’s identity from conducting

the ID session. (Photo lineups now must be conducted one at a time, rather than an officer showing six photos to a witness at one time.

Charles suggests that his brother’s conviction is a direct antecedent to that law.)

As far as Nancy Smathers’ identification, she had admitted that she could only point to Kevin’s face after having seen him on TV — at which point he had already been publicly identified as a suspect. “This type of eyewitness identification is notoriously unreliable,” the OIP wrote.

With questions about the two witnesses, and the reveal of the fabricated 5 a.m. phone call, Gov. Ted Strickland was staring down what could only be called a highly questionable execution. “Many legitimate questions have been raised regarding the evidence in support of the conviction and the investigation which led to it,” Strickland said in commuting Kevin’s sentence in 2010.

“I can’t thank the governor for giving me life in prison,” Kevin told The Columbus Dispatch in 2010.

“When I found out his decision, it felt like the poison was going through me right then. But the governor gave me some hope by leaving the door

open in my case.”

And, like the OIP noted, that door was left open not through DNA evidence — there wasn’t a shred, after all — but at least in part due to something called Brady material.

Brady v. Maryland, a landmark 1963 Supreme Court case, held that the prosecution must turn over any evidence that could exculpate the defendant. It’s a tenet of due process.

Because “actual innocence” is not a valid claim that can be filed in anticipation of post-conviction relief in the state of Ohio, attorneys like Troutman have to find other avenues to get back into court.

Brady material falls under the broad umbrella of information that is related to the prosecution— the work of police and state crime labs, for instance. In this case, that would of course include the claim that the alternate suspect had been paid $15,000 to carry out a hit on a man expected to be at the Bucyrus Estates crime scene. The Galion detectives involved in the pharmacy burglary ring did not mention that during the trial and, in the spring of 1994, had only an apparent tangential connection to the murders.

Yet it remains the burden of the prosecution to reveal such Photo by Eric Sandy

22

| clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

Brady material.

Six years later, a man named James Parsons would walk out of prison, and the integrity of former state forensic scientist Michele Yezzo would cast doubt across the rest of the evidence against Kevin. But where Parsons went free, Kevin remains behind bars.

sentence is appended with a footnote, which reads: “Both at this trial and following his convictions Keith has strongly pursued the defense that another man committed the killings, specifically Rodney Melton. That theory was presented at trial, along with multiple other individuals the defense contended were the potential killers. Rodney Melton, along with the others, actually testified for the jury to see and hear and the jury Kevin Keith is looking for a new rejected the defense’s theories.” trial, an opportunity to lay out all As the Third District judges that has been discovered since the acknowledged, there indeed was an rushed hearings in 1994. He’s been at alternate suspect in the murders, it for years, and he’s now waiting for though police did not investigate him word from the Ohio Supreme Court in 1994. There were opportunities on this latest attempt. for Keith’s trial attorney to explore “Kevin’s had numerous times since that avenue of defense at the time I’ve represented him where we’ve felt — the evidence was all there — but like, ‘What are we going to do? … things moved very fast in the spring That’s it, we’ve of 1994. Tunnel exhausted vision gripped everything,’” the prosecution, Troutman and the Bucyrus told Scene in case was swept March of this quickly into year, months legend. Once he before the Third landed on Death District ruling.

Row, that was it.

“Then — if Kevin Keith was something’s stuck. false — then the With each —Rachel Troutman more you dig, passing year, the more you more evidence is find. Literally every time I look for discovered that supports his claim something, I find something new. It’s of innocence. And while exculpatory a house of cards.” evidence has piled up, no new More than two decades span the evidence has surfaced in support time between the shootings and the of Kevin’s murder conviction. The present day. Keith has maintained problem, as Kevin keeps learning, is his innocence all along. Troutman that it’s no easy task to get back into and the Ohio Public Defender’s Office, a courtroom. backed by attorneys across the state In certain corners of the postand favorable legal observers, argue conviction criminal law world, many that the evidence at hand in 1994 observers are waiting anxiously for lacks any credibility, that there word from the Ohio Supreme Court. is nothing that ties Keith to the It’s a long shot, like every other court Bucyrus Estates murders. Indeed, filing in Kevin’s case. And it’s a court the evidence that Troutman has that isn’t in the business of correcting uncovered points singularly to an trial court errors. alternate suspect and to a conviction “They won’t take a case just to say that raises more questions than that the lower court got it wrong,” answers.

Troutman explains. “It has to be This year, as they put forth the an issue that would impact more argument again in April, there was people. We initially have to make a a sense of optimism among Kevin’s demonstration that it’s a significant family and his attorneys as they constitutional question and one that waited for a response from the Third could affect the public in general.

District Court of Appeals in Lima.

Obviously, Yezzo didn’t just testify That optimism was squashed in against Kevin. We don’t even know routine fashion. the extent of the damage she caused.

In its ruling, the three-judge We know that it happened in Kevin’s panel wrote: “Over the years in his case and we know that it happened numerous appeals and post-conviction in James Parsons’ case. But we can’t petitions Keith has challenged many know at this point the extent. I don’t aspects of his case and the evidence know who all has filed or who all is against him, but one fact remains even aware.” clear, the evidence against Keith To the extent that Troutman was simply overwhelming.” That even raises the idea of actual

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23

Photo by Eric Sandy

FEATURE innocence in this case, she’s doing so to underscore how alarming Yezzo’s testimony really is — that Yezzo’s work directly and unduly attacked Kevin’s original claim of innocence.

“This case is hanging by a thread,” Troutman says. “Yezzo constitutes the forensic proof that you have that Kevin Keith is the person who committed this crime.”

If the Ohio Supreme Court denies jurisdiction on this one, then Troutman says that the next step would be an attempt to get into the federal court system.

The problem with that route is that there’s a spectrum of procedural roadblocks that would slow things down quite a bit, including a 1999 habeas petition filed by Kevin’s former appellate attorneys. (A writ of habeas corpus is filed in federal court “to determine if a state’s detention of a prisoner is valid,” according to the Legal Information Institute.) Troutman and the Ohio Public Defender’s Office would need to work around that and argue that even through there’s a paper trail that indicates the federal district court had touched Kevin’s case, that it hasn’t really heard the case.

However it goes down, though, the entry into federal court remains a ways off.

“I’d like to think that Ohio wants to clean up its own mess, so hopefully that occurs,” Troutman says.

For Kevin’s part, he remains at Marion Correctional, the latest stop in a 23-year run through the state prison system.

“I gave up on the law part of it a long time ago,” he says, adding that he wanted to bring his Bible to the interview with Scene, but he hadn’t cleared it with corrections staff.

“Yeah, I did away with the law a long time ago. I’m here because of Christ, I can assure of that.”

For years now, a sense of faith that he found in the mid-90s — one that pulled him out of depression and suicidal thoughts — has guided him.

He talks cheerily of WordMasters, a Christian program that Kevin helped start. The group, which is now active in four Ohio state prisons, hosts events like the upcoming “Faith and Reform in Criminal Justice” forum.

In a word, he’s actively involved in his community.

“I was on Death Row for 16 and a half years,” he says. “When I got into population, what I really saw was the result of pretty much my

24

Kevin Keith

generation’s actions. I’m just being honest here, you know? We sold drugs. Now, those same kids that were neglected, they’re pretty much in prison now. When I left the street, these kids were — some of them was still in their mother’s womb, some of them wasn’t born, and some of them was running around being neglected. I was so stressed out, I was like, ‘Lord, why did you send me here?’”

The path he walks now is both limited and, in other ways, divinely ordained. Still, he listens intently and talks regularly with his attorney and his brother. Outside Kevin’s cell, the justice system lurches forward, only occasionally looking back to

| clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

correct its mistakes.

There have been 62 exonerations in Ohio since 1989, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

Of those, just about half were in connection with a murder conviction, and eight were Death Row inmates.

Sixty percent of the exonerations were black prisoners. Against the state’s wrongful conviction history, prosecutors have fought hard for 23 years to keep Kevin Keith out of the courtroom. In September, the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association filed a brief with the Ohio Supreme Court that argued that the court shouldn’t even bother with this case.

“There is no new law here for this court to issue,” the organization

wrote. “There is no conflict to resolve.”

There’s not a lot of resolution in the life of Kevin Keith. His trial attorney, James Banks, didn’t even offer a closing statement on the most pivotal day of his life, the conviction.

“Did I ever tell you what his last words were?” Charles asked one day earlier this summer. “Did anybody ever tell you that? At the clemency, had he been getting ready to be executed, what his last word would have been? It was ‘Help.’

“What else could you say?”

esandy@clevescene.com t@EricSandy

| clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

25

Friday, December 1

7PM - MIDNIGHT

DOWNTOWN WILLOUGHBY

Brought to you by:

$15 Adv. $20 Day Of

26

| clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

Part Of

BeneďŹ ting The Downtown Willoughby Organization and Willoughby-Eastlake Schools Food Pantry

SceneHolidayBarBlast.com

everything you should do this week

GET OUT

Photo by Emanuel Wallace

WED

Cleveland Institute of Music, will give the pre-concert lecture, “Naked Knees and Nebulous Nicknames,” an hour before the performance. The orchestra performs again at 8 p.m. tomorrow and Saturday. Tickets start at $21.

(Niesel) 11001 Euclid Ave., 216-231-1111, clevelandorchestra.com.

11/08

SPOKEN WORD

Cleveland Stories Dinner Party Cleveland Stories Dinner Party is a weekly series that pairs fine food with storytelling. Through it, the folks at Music Box Supper Club hope to raise awareness of the mission of the Western Reserve Historical Society’s new Cleveland History Center. The goal of the Cleveland Stories Dinner Party is to “bring to life some of the fun, interesting stories about Cleveland’s past — from sports, to rock ’n’ roll, to Millionaires’ Row,” as it’s put in a press release. Admission is free, with no cover charge, although a prix fixe dinner, designed to complement the night’s theme, is $20. Doors open at 5 p.m., dinner is served at 6, and the storytelling starts at 7. Tonight, journalist Neil Zurcher discusses “strange stories from Ohio history.”

The menu includes Amish chicken noodle soup, One-Tank pot roast and New Baltimore ice cream. (Jeff Niesel) 1148 Main Ave., 216-242-1250, musicboxcle.com.

MUSIC

Simply Three Glen McDaniel, Nick Villalobos, and Zack Clark — the trio known as Simply Three — dip into various genres during their performances.

The trio plays selections from artists ranging from Puccini to Gershwin, along with works by contemporary pop stars such as Adele, Coldplay and Michael Jackson. They perform tonight at 7:30 at the Ohio Theatre.

Tickets are $35. (Niesel) 1501 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

THEATER

Wicked Wicked, the Broadway musical based on The Wizard of Oz, has been through town a few times already. Yet every time it comes back around, it puts up huge numbers. While it might seem better suited to Halloween, the play, which details how the Wicked Witch of the West came to develop her deepseated hatred for Glenda the Good, appeals to the entire family. So with some free time over the holidays, why not take the whole brood to Playhouse Square to check it out? It opens tonight at 7:30 at the State Theatre; performances continue through Dec. 3.

Tickets are $49 to $169. (Niesel) 1519 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

THEATER

Whiskey Business returns to Red Space. See: Friday.

FILM

Yojimbo Toshiro Mifune stars in Akira Kurosawa’s visually stunning and darkly comic film, Yojimbo. To rid a terror-stricken village of corruption, the masterless samurai Sanjuro takes advantage of a war between two evil clans. Remade by Sergio Leone and Walter Hill, this genre-twister remains an influential film. Draw Hard, a documentary about Gordon Square Arts District artist in residence John G. precedes the screening. Regular admission rates apply. (Niesel) 1390 West 65th St., 216-651-7295, clevelandcinemas.com.

THU

11/09

COMEDY

Matt Braunger The creator and host of the popular podcast Ding-Donger with Matt Braunger, comedian Matt Braunger shares stories and observations and also doles out advice to people who call in and leave questions on his voicemail. It’s a novel approach that showcases Braunger’s wacky sense of humor. The comic performs at 8 tonight at Hilarities, where he has shows scheduled through Saturday.

Tickets are $23 to $28. (Niesel) 2035 East Fourth St., 216-241-7425, pickwickandfrolic.com.

COMEDY

Jim Florentine Inspired by loudmouth comics like Andrew Dice Clay and Sam Kinison, comedian Jim Florentine, who starts a four-night stand at the Improv tonight, began doing standup comedy in the early ’90s. Florentine’s career took off after he released an album of crank phone calls. That led to an appearance on The Howard Stern Show and he became a regular. Florentine has kept plenty busy. He was the co-host of That Metal Show on VH1 Classic. It ran for

14 seasons before VH-1 pulled the plug.

And Florentine has had appearances on Girls, Californication and Inside Amy Schumer. He performs tonight at 7:30 at the Improv, where he has shows scheduled through Sunday.

Tickets are $17 to $20. (Niesel) 1148 Main Ave., 216-696-IMPROV, clevelandimprov.com.

SPOKEN WORD

The Gordon Square Review Launch Party Literary Cleveland, the non-profit literary organization that brings together Northeast Ohio writers, will host a launch party for the inaugural issue of its online magazine, The Gordon Square Review, tonight at 6:30 at Happy Dog. Literary Cleveland began back in August 2015, following a one-day event called Cleveland Inkubator. Today, the org boasts 300 members, an office and a full-time executive director in journalist and writer Lee Chilcote. Gordon Square Review began accepting submissions in August and went live last week, after receiving more than 800 entries for its inaugural issue. The content will focus on Northeast Ohio writers, with the intention to publish twice a year. Tickets for tonight’s launch party are $8 for the public, and free for members of the organization. The evening will feature readings from this issue’s contributors and contest winners. There will also be a raffle for Lit Cleveland swag. (Brett Zelman) 5801 Detroit Ave., 216-651-9474, litcleveland.org MUSIC

Mendelssohn’s Scottish Tonight at 7:30 at Severance Hall, the Cleveland Orchestra plays a program of music that reflects the drama and grandeur of the Scottish landscape.

The orchestra will perform pieces by Mendelssohn, Haydn and Vivaldi.

Guest speaker Timothy Cutler, a professor of music theory at the

Sex Tips for Straight Women from a Gay Man A straight woman, a gay man and a “hunky” male model offer tips on how to properly get it on in Sex Tips for Straight Women from a Gay Man. The comedy aims to “take the audience on a hilarious and wild ride where no topic is taboo and the insider tips come straight from the source: a gay man.” Broadway World calls it “a night of laughter that makes you feel good in all the wrong places.” Tonight’s performance takes place at 8 at the Hanna Theatre, where the show goes on through Saturday. Tickets are $35 to $45. (Niesel) 2067 East 14th St., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

FRI

11/10

FILM

The Exterminating Angel A group of dinner party guests find they’re unable to leave the room in The Exterminating Angle, a surrealist classic from director Luis Bunuel.

The movie screens at 7 tonight at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Tickets are $10, or $7 for CMA members. (Niesel) 11150 East Blvd., 216-421-7350, clevelandart.org.

FILM

Kids Film It Festival When 14-year-old Ryan Levine decided to start a film festival for kids, he chose to partner with the Michael J. Fox Foundation because his grandmother has Parkinson’s disease.

The resulting film festival has become a big hit; it comes to the Rock Hall at 7 tonight. While this is only its second year, the festival has received more than 100 submissions from around the country, from kids ages 8 to 18. This year’s selections are grouped into three categories (animation, music and film), and have been submitted by three age groups. Winners in each category and age group will be announced tonight. Judges are Todd Lieberman, who produced the films Wonder and Stronger; Marc Buckland, an Emmy | clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

27

GET OUT

ART

Award-winning producer and director; and Cleveland’s own Ivan Schwarz, president of the Greater Cleveland Film Commission. Tickets can be purchased through the festival website, below, and 100 percent of proceeds go to the MJFF. And don’t forget to check out the DeLorean on the plaza, a not-sosubtle nod to Michael J. Fox’s ride in the timeless Back to the Future.

(Niesel) 1100 Rock and Roll Blvd., 216-515-8444, kidsfilmitfestival.com.

Rock/Roll Perspective Rock/Roll Perspective, a new photography exhibit at AsiaTown’s Loftworks Gallery, will feature the work of two veteran local music photographers, Joe Kleon and Anastasia Pantsios. Each photographer has an impressive history of shooting concerts in Cleveland. Pantsios actively shot concerts from 1975 to 1989, and Kleon, a contributor to Scene, has shot concerts for the past 15 years.

Pantsios’ perspective centers on the classic era when Cleveland put stars like Rush and Bruce Springsteen

on the map. Kleon captures today’s colorful pop stars and rock groups such as Taylor Swift, Imagine Dragons, the Dave Matthews Band and Britney Spears. The exhibit features a visual history of hundreds of concerts, and more than 100 photos will be on display, with additional prints available for sale in the biggest offering yet from these two photographers. The show opens today with a reception from 5 to 9 p.m. Gallery hours are 2 to 8 p.m. tomorrow and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday. (Niesel) 1667 East 40th Street #1A, 440-991-7097, loftworksgallery.com.

NIGHTLIFE

Whiskey Business This year’s Whiskey Business, an annual party put on by Scene, promises to be the best yet. In addition to all the great whiskey, there will be Tito’s and craft beer for those non-whiskey drinkers, and gourmet whiskey-paired appetizers from Lago Custom Events. (That includes things like salted popcorn with sweet and spicy nuts.) Local bluesman Austin “Walkin’” Cane will perform and DJ Flaco Flash will man the wheels of steel. Plus, a bagpiper will be playing intermittently throughout the event, and there will be a gaming lounge for foosball, pingpong and darts.

Anthony’s Men’s Salon will offer grooming services like hot-towel shaves. Balani Custom Clothiers will be on hand to help guests find their perfect fit, and Jo Vann’s Tobacco Shop will help you choose the right stogie to pair with your favorite whiskey.

Tickets are $40 in advance, $50 at the door. (Niesel) 2400 Superior Ave., Facebook.com/ REDSPACEEVENTS/.

SAT

11/11

DANCE

Paul Taylor Dance Company Choreographer Paul Taylor continues to win public and critical acclaim for the “vibrancy, relevance and power” of the dance pieces he creates. Critics hail his work for the “movement invention, athleticism, cultural commentary and intricate musicality.” DanceCleveland and Playhouse Square present tonight’s performance of Taylor’s company. It takes place at 7:30 at the Ohio Theatre. Tickets are $25 to $70.

(Niesel) 1501 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

All neW

COMEDY

Highlighting 30+ years of induction ceremonies!

The hall of fame pays homage to our inductees through an immersive concert-like experience and a space for fans to share their own stories.

1100 Rock and Roll Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44114 • 216-781-ROCK • rockhall.com

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| clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

*On general admission when showing a valid ID with ZIP beginning in 440, 441, 442 or 443.

Sebastian Maniscalco Sebastian Maniscalco puts a secondgeneration twist on everything he talks about, and it’s pretty funny.

He observes how 50 years ago, his Italian mom would save a cake “just for visitors” and leave the crap muffins for the family to eat. Nowadays, his mother cusses and pulls out a sword every time the doorbell rings. You won’t ever catch this guy playing basketball because Italians “don’t play sports” in America. Give him a meatball sandwich instead, and he’ll paint your whole ceiling. You’ll feel right at home if you happen to come from an Italian family; but even if you don’t, this guy’s observations are hilariously spot-on. He performs tonight at 7 and 9:30 at Connor Palace

GET OUT in Playhouse Square. Tickets are $42.75 to $253. (Liz Trenholme) 1615 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org NIGHTLIFE

Snow Day Bar Crawl Celebrate opening day at Breckenridge with this spirited Snow Day Bar Crawl brought to you by Breckenridge Brewery. Grab your lift ticket and ride with us through all the great bars at Flats East Bank including Lago East Bank, Bold Food and Drink, Flipside, the Big Bang Cleveland, Beerhead Bar, Coastal Taco, WXYZ Bar at Aloft, Magnolia Cleveland, Alley Cat Oyster Bar, Danteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Inferno Flats/Backyard Bocce Flats, Thirsty Dog East Bank, Margaritaville Cleveland and Punch Bowl Social, where the Breakfast Club will perform. Price includes drink specials at all 13 participating bars, light appetizers during check-in from each of the participating restaurants/ bars, a surprise gift bag and chances to win prizes throughout the crawl.

The grand prizes include a two-night stay at Shanty Creek Resort with two lift passes and a Snowtrooper All Mountain Snowboard. Advance tickets cost $15 on the website, below, or $25 at the door. (Niesel) scenesnowday.com.

SUN

11/12

screens today at 2 and 7 p.m. at the Cedar Lee Theatre. Tickets are $12.50.

(Niesel) 2163 Lee Rd., Cleveland Heights, 440-717-4696, clevelandcinemas.com.

SWAP AND SHOP

Northeast Ohio Vinyl Swap & Spin Social Once considered obsolete, vinyl sales are on the rise. Today at noon at Happy Dog, vinyl aďŹ cionados can potentially add to their collections as the Northeast Ohio Vinyl Club descends upon the place for a â&#x20AC;&#x153;social, swap, sell and spin.â&#x20AC;? Admission is free.

(Niesel) 5801 Detroit Ave., 216-651-9474, happydogcleveland.com.

MON

11/13

SPOKEN WORD

Science Cafe The second Monday of each month, Music Box Supper Club hosts Science Cafe, an informal lecture series that brings scientists from throughout the region to the club to talk about science topics. Tonight at 7, Emily B. Pentzer, a Frank Hovorka Assistant Professor of Chemistry at CWRU, will discuss how â&#x20AC;&#x153;chemical-based memory devicesâ&#x20AC;? can be used for large-scale data storage.

Admission is free. (Niesel) 1148 Main Ave., 216-242-1250, musicboxcle.com.

TUE

Friends of Lasa Sanctuary Fundraiser Special Event

Michael Kelsey

November 17th @ 8pm, $25 General Admission

â&#x20AC;&#x153;A fearless experimenter, Kelsey is an acoustic guitarist who weaves a multitude of unusual sounds and rhythms into his patchwork quilt of work. Part performance artist and part virtuoso musician. Kelsey takes the widest possible variety of music and makes it his own.â&#x20AC;?

-Nuvo Magazine,Indianapolis, IN The full $25 from the cost of the ticket will go to Lasa Sanctuary Tickets are on sale at www.kentstage.org Tickets also available by phone at 877-987-6487 Lasa Sanctuary is an all-volunteer, publicly IXQGHG F QRQSURĆ&#x201C;W LQ 1RUWKHDVW 2KLR ZKLFK DLPV WR SURYLGH OLIHORQJ FDUH DQG VDQFWXDU\ WR DQLPDOV UHVFXHG IURP VLWXDWLRQV RI FUXHOW\ QHJOHFW DQG DEDQGRQPHQW 3OHDVH YLVLW ODVDVDQFWXDU\ RUJ WR OHDUQ PRUH DERXW WKLV ZRQGHUIXO VDQFWXDU\

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11/14

FILM FILM

Baby Face and Employeesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Entrance As a tie-in with its Jazz Age art exhibit, the Cleveland Museum of Art will screen two pre-code ďŹ lms, Baby Face and Employeesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Entrance, today at 1:30 p.m. Barbara Stanwyck stars as a woman who works at a speakeasy in Baby Face, and Employeesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Entrance centers on a store manager who mistreats his female employees. The ďŹ lms also screen at 1:45 p.m. on Tuesday. Tickets are $10, or $7 for CMA members. (Niesel) 11150 East Blvd., 216-421-7350, clevelandart.org.

FILM

Casablanca 75th Anniversary In the classic ďŹ lm Casbalanca, Humphrey Bogart stars as Rick Blaine, a nightclub owner in Vichycontrolled Casablanca thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s frequented by refugees desperate to escape German domination. He manages to remain netural, but all that changes when an attractive young woman (Ingrid Bergman) walks through the front door of his club. The movie

Lazer Team 2 Nichole Bloom and Colton Dunn star in Lazer Team 2, the sequel to the 2015 science ďŹ ction action comedy directed, produced and co-written

by Matt Hullum. The movie screens tonight at 7:30 at the Capitol Theatre.

Tickets are $12.50. (Niesel) 1390 West 65th St., 216-651-7295, clevelandcinemas.com.

MUSIC

Open Turntable Tuesday Tonight from 6 to 9, the Winchester hosts its weekly Open Turntable Tuesday. DJ Kris Koch offers 20-minute slots to people who want to bring their own vinyl and spin their favorite songs or deep tracks.

Turntables are provided; you can play three to ďŹ ve songs during your time slot; and a mic is available to talk about the selections. (Niesel) 12112 Madison Ave., Lakewood, 216-600-5338.

Find more events @clevescene.com t@clevelandscene | clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

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THE ROAD TO THE ROCK HALL BEGINS WITH THE ROCK OFF

Check Out Our Brand New Game Room!! Tuesday FREE POOL (4pm -cplose)

Thursday OPEN MIC NITE with Matt and Sean come share your talents all instruments and Genres are encouraged

Friday

Darts Tournament ($3/player)

We Will Book Any Band.

Bands Get Door.

Call us to secure your spot!

Sunday Come Watch THE FOOTBALL PLAY on our two 100” screen projectors and 10 TV’s Open Pool Tournament ($5 to enter)

WJW.CLEVELAND

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| clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

Photo by Steve Wagner

STAGE

AN AFFAIR OF THE ART Art museum guards navigate dreams and reality in The Art of Longing at Cleveland Public Theatre

By Christine Howey

DID YOU EVER WONDER WHY your body can do some amazing things, but not others? You can grow new skin to heal a cut, but you can’t grow a whole new hand. You can remember things when you don’t want to, but can’t remember the one thing you want to recall. And your brain can create multiple and complex stories involving you and people you know — while you sleep — yet you can’t finish that novel which has been sitting in the bottom desk drawer for eight years.

The body and mind can be perplexing, and some of this is addressed in the confusing but often engrossing The Art of Longing. Set in Cleveland, the 70-minute world premiere is written by Lisa Langford, a local actor and playwright. Her one-act has grand aspirations to encompass aspects of the African-American experience as well as universal topics involving gender, biblical stories, sex and the way certain works of art can transport us.

The broad outlines of the play are fairly easy to describe, since it all begins with the night shift at the Cleveland Museum of Art. There’s not much to do in a museum when it’s closed (when you’re not Nicolas Cage), so three guards — young Kreesha, veteran Grady and a newly minted transgender man named Samir — pass the time in other ways.

Early on, Grady expresses his love for a painting by the African-American artist Jacob Lawrence titled “Fulton and Nostrand.” Part of the CMA collection, this vibrant work depicts a Brooklyn intersection that Grady calls the “center of the universe.” When he’s not extolling the painting’s virtues, Grady helps Kreesha with her aching feet by cutting one off and putting it in his pocket.

Oh, did I mention that this play dips into the surreal now and then?

Like any good dream, Langford’s snatches of stories leap and flit about, and soon Kreesha has grown a new foot to replace the missing one. As the characters talk and josh with one another, the towering presence of a black man dressed all in white appears, hovering over the proceedings on painter stilts and gently shaping the flow of the storytelling.

mood is interrupted by the over-use of silhouettes shown on a screen in the large central stage unit.

Soon, the scene shifts to a hospital where we encounter another threesome. A dying man, Sid, occupies a bed, as a janitor named Wan and a doctor, Phylicia, discuss the relative merits of having a child together.

Then, later in the proceedings, the two sets of characters evolve as Kreesha gets pregnant and various intimate body parts are added to and subtracted from certain people.

Langford and the CPT design team have crafted a rich brew of imagery and words that would benefit from a few more footholds for an audience that is encountering it in real time.

To borrow the central analogy of the play, one can spend many minutes observing and absorbing a single work of art. But this jam-packed play moves so quickly it’s like cruising through a

THE ART OF LONGING THROUGH NOV. 18 AT CLEVELAND PUBLIC THEATRE, 6415 DETROIT AVE., 216-631-2727, CPTONLINE.ORG

The entirety of Douglas Puskas’ simple yet elegant scenic design is bathed in white, providing a blank canvas for the fragments the playwright is spinning. This ethereal effect is sometimes beautifully enhanced, for instance when Kreesha grows wings. But at other times, the

museum on skates, and that can leave audience members lost in the lurch.

The cast has clearly bought in to Langford’s conception and, under Jimmie Woody’s skillful direction, they are frequently able to connect. India Nicole Burton plays three characters and gives each a distinct identity. In

particular, her Samir is effervescent with the joy of his new gender, happily exchanging black male joking and roughhousing with Grady.

Nailah Matthews is both endearing as Kreesha and properly irritating as Wan, while Greg White lends his solid stage presence to Grady and Sid. As for the man in the white suit, dancer extraordinaire Kevin D. Marr II is the picture of elegance, on stilts or off.

Langford is an intelligent and evocative writer. Upon losing a vital part of herself, Kreesha says, “They took things I wanted to be buried with.” And you shudder with her. But at another time, when Sid observes, “I have found there is no upside to impotence,” the laughter is well earned.

There is a theatrical syncopation that is bubbling under the surface of this play, tied together here and there with bits of songs by Nina Simone and other ancillary music. And although presentation of the powerful song “Strange Fruit” is given too much prominence in this play’s context, Langford’s unique voice shines through. Like many complex works of art, The Art of Longing may be more satisfying at a second viewing.

scene@clevescene.com t@christinehowey | clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

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EAT SIMPLY PURR-FECT 20 years in, Fat Cats is as good as ever THE SCENE: A NEARLY DESERTED road on the outskirts of town. Behind rusted-out fences sit faded cottages leaning with age and neglect. There is a horrifying lack of vegetation, as if a defoliant recently rained down from the sky. Roving hounds outnumber pedestrians at a postapocalyptic rate of 10 to one. Over the wailing din of car alarms, a rooster can be heard crowing in the distance.

Curtain rises to reveal an attractive Colonial glowing from within, an oasis in an otherwise desolate landscape. People — human people! — can be seen through the glass in what looks to be jovial moods. Lest it be a trap, we enter with trepidation, holding our breath for what seems like an eternity.

Host: How you guys doing? Table for two?

That pretty much illustrates the memories surrounding my first visit to Fat Cats. I had recently moved back to town after more than 15 years away, and Tremont was about as foreign a place in my mind as Beirut. My friend wanted to take me to his new favorite bistro, but for the life of me I had no idea why we were parking at the terminus of a somber residential street.

It was the late-1990s, and like many Clevelanders, I was just starting to get acquainted with Tremont, a “neighborhood in transition.” New-to-me discoveries like Edison’s and the Treehouse proved to be lively watering holes, while restaurants like Sokolowski’s, Hi & Dry and Grumpy’s offered affordable, reliable variety.

Like Michael Symon, who only one month prior had opened Lola, Fat Cats owner Ricardo Sandoval was a pioneer in the Tremont dining scene, helping to lay the groundwork for chefs like Rocco Whalen, Dante Boccuzzi and even Zack Bruell. In the intervening two decades, ambitious restaurants like Kosta’s, Mojo, Theory and Sage Bistro all have come and gone, but Fat Cats keeps chugging along.

A recent visit — the first in years, sadly — reminded me how and why Fat Cats has endured for so long in such a challenging and dynamic industry. The setting remains

Photo by Emanuel Wallace

By Douglas Trattner

FAT CATS 2061 WEST 10TH ST., 216-579-0200 COOLPLACESTOEAT.COM

comfortable if not trendy, like a snug tweed blazer with threadbare elbow patches. Carved out of a now-125year-old house, the restaurant is divided into three intimate spaces.

New communal benches in the barroom offer flexible seating while demonstrating management’s sustained efforts to both set and respond to trends. Fat Cats was one of the first true farm-to-table restaurants (it even cultivates its own garden plot next door) and it was an

early adopter with respect to adding vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free dishes.

If you can’t find something on the menu that tickles your taste buds, you probably should be eating at home. The Mediterranean-AsianLatin-American menu, like the room, is just trendy enough, with contemporary hits like Korean steamed buns sitting shoulder-toshoulder with familiar fare like a fried egg-topped burger and fries. An

ever-shifting specials menu nearly doubles the number of options.

Fat Cats absolutely slays a grilled octopus ($10) starter by cooking it perfectly and serving it as a seasondefiant salad with ripe avocado, sweet onion and crunchy shaved cauliflower in a lemony vinaigrette.

Firm but lush sweetbreads ($10) get a more autumnal preparation thanks to smoky bacon and tender winter squash in a savory tomato-based sauce laced with welcome acidity.

A Vietnamese detour nets a trio of crispy sweet potato-wrapped shrimp ($10) served with Asian slaw and sweet and sour dipping sauce.

Servers here are of the kind that can recommend a food-appropriate bottle of wine under $30 (Côtes du Rhône) while clearly and confidently explaining the differences between hangar and bavette steaks, drilling all the way down to flavor, texture and chew. Just this side of bloody, that beefy bavette ($22) landed with a warm, red interior enveloped in a deeply caramelized crust. The plate included blistered green beans and crispy fried potatoes. In the fish stew ($22), plump fin fish, large butterflied shrimp and sweet mussels languished in a rich tomato broth.

The wildcard we threw at the kitchen — pancit ($15), a Filipino noodle dish, for heaven’s sake — came back and knocked our socks off, thanks to juicy pork meatballs and rim shots of kimchi, jalapeno and radish. You’d have to turn up the house lights to realize that the cashew-crusted tofu in the vegetarian quinoa ($15) wasn’t meat. A ginger-heavy dressing gilded the proverbial lily.

While some diners might categorize the portions as small, I think they’re spot-on, especially given the menu prices. If four people can enjoy appetizers, entrees and two bottles of wine and escape for $25 per person pre-tip, you’re winning dinner. Toss in the complimentary bread service and warm hospitality and you’re well on your way to understanding how Fat Cats is still thriving after 20 years.

dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner | clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

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IT’S ALL ABOUT THE CHICKEN, FISH,RIBS & OUR OWN 13 GOURMET SAUCES!

★★★★★ “Worth the stop & future excursions from the Near West Side in the future.I can’t find one thing wrong with V’s and the woman taking care of us was just the nicest and personable person ever. For all the food we ordered it was very reasonably priced and held up well on the ride home/ Stopping here in the near future is in order as it puts lousy KFC’s, Popeyes, etc to shame in terms of quality, price, and customer service.” - Jesco D. ★★★★★ “I went here after the good reviews and I was impressed. I had the regular/mild batter. The chicken was light, crispy and delicious. The rice and greens is ingenious! They have

a little kick to them but quite tasty.

They were buttery and lightly sweet. I enjoyed my meal and will return in the future.” - Ladonna G. ★★★★★ “This is some Seriously delicious chicken. I have lived very close, and almost drive by there daily. Thought it was part of the convenient store, so I would not go there. After reading the reviews and being extremely hungry, I took the plunge, and I am more than glad I did. I will be coming here so much more.” - Stephanie L. ★★★★★ “It’s no joke, best fried chicken in Cleveland. They’ve got plenty of sides, but don’t kid yourself, it’s all about the chicken. While there’s a variety of flavors the staff might not give you many clues past identifying the individual flavors. Luckily there’s a brief explanation of them at the restaurant.” - Noah F.

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EAT bites

SNEAK PEEK Il Rione Pizza coming soon to Detroit Shoreway

By Douglas Trattner IT’S BEEN TWO YEARS SINCE Brian Moss and Brian Holleran purchased a dilapidated brick structure on West 65th Street in the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood.

In approximately two weeks’ time, that space will open as Il Rione Pizzeria (1303 West 65th St.).

Over the years the building has been home to a beer hall, pool hall and speakeasy before it was chopped up into apartments. The goal all along has been to retain the authenticity of the building while bringing it back to its days as a valued neighborhood asset.

“By attempting to preserve the old building and keeping it as original as possible, we want to help turn this neighborhood back to what it was 75 years ago, when you had all these old retail spaces,” Moss says. “People are building places like Crocker Park to emulate neighborhoods like this.”

Most of us are familiar with Cleveland’s east-side Little Italy neighborhood, but few of us realize that there was a west-side Little Italy as well, densely clustered north of Detroit between West 65th and 69th streets, Holleran explains.

“The architecture’s a little different, the neighbors are a little different, there are one-way streets,” he says. “That’s the beauty of this place: There’s so much character and

36

history. To be able to take something old and make it new is fun.”

“Rione” roughly translates to neighborhood in Italian.

Inside, drop ceilings were removed to reveal 100-year-old rafters. The plaster-patched brick walls were scrubbed and shellacked but left largely as they were. Large window openings along the facade were reclaimed, making room for glass and sunlight. A roomy wraparound bar was installed on one side of the dining room while a pair of 1,000-pound deck ovens anchor the open kitchen on the other.

As the owners see it, Il Rione will be an open, transparent and uncomplicated pizza joint that does a few things and does them well. There will be seating for 40 in the dining room and at the bar.

The main focus will be on the pies, “real New York/New Jersey-style pizzas” like those found at places like Spirito’s in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and Patsy’s Pizza in New York. The 17-inch pies exit Blodgett deck ovens with a crispy bottom and crust enriched with a touch of olive oil. “More like a baguette kind of dough,” Holleran explains.

There will be eight house pizzas plus the option to build your own from a modest list of toppings not to exceed eight options. Meat and cheese boards, platters of

| clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

sausage and peppers, and a few dips and salads will augment the pizzas. Down the road, some straightforward pastas might make an appearance.

“We want to make sure that we nail the pizzas first before adding on,” says Holleran.

Beer, wines by the glass, and a few good, simple cocktails also will be on offer.

As for the mood, Holleran describes it as “a cross between a cafe in Milan and a rock-and-roll bar in New York — a dimly-lit pizza joint with Velvet Underground, Wu-Tang Clan and James Brown on the sound system.”

The two have been developing the project for five years, ever since they worked together at Stone Mad across the street, where Moss worked as a chef and Holleran as a barback.

“This was just a stupid-ass dream that we had, but we know what we like and we work really hard,” Holleran says. “As soon as our dough is good, we’re opening; everything else will eventually fall into place.

It’s going to be perfect, eventually.”

When it opens, Il Rione will be dinner-only except for weekends when it opens at 11 a.m.

dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner

clevelandrestaurantweek.com | clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

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Photo by Brian Hockensmith

MUSIC

ON PURPOSE The Accidentals’ nascent success points to great things on the road and in the studio

By Eric Sandy WE LAST SAW THE ACCIDENTALS on their tour with Keller Williams in early 2016. And we were happy to catch them in the midst of their yearslong odyssey on the road. The show was great and, honestly, they’ve pretty much been touring ever since — with no plans to slow down.

The trio returns to Cleveland this week to show off material from their latest album, aptly titled Odyssey.

It’s worth noting that musicians Sav Buist, Katie Larson and Michael Dause are only in their very early 20s. And they’ve been relentlessly touring for several years at this point.

“Odyssey has kind of been more of a culmination of the past six years of being a band,” multi-instrumentalist Larson tells Scene in a recent phone interview.

It’s a story that has roots in high school, where a younger Buist and Larson were coming up in the orchestra program. A local music store had kindly offered use of various instruments — a violin, in Buist’s case, and a cello in Larson’s — and the girls had taken up the classes. When an opportunity arose to join a new Alternative Styles group, they jumped at the chance to play Led Zeppelin and MGMT tunes. This is where they met.

When they got together at Buist’s house, the bond was clear right away.

“Instead of working through the music that we were supposed to be working on, we ended up playing the White Stripes,” Buist says.

Growing up, she says, she spent time sitting in on local albums and joining her family’s folk jam sessions.

She learned the craft of group improvisation, an important stepping stone in her education. This sort of stuff made the Alternative Styles gig all the more enticing, of course.

As soon as she and Larson graduated from high school in Traverse City, Michigan, they accepted a production deal from Marshall Crenshaw and Stewart Lerman (Beck, Patti Smith). They recorded a handful of songs and eventually self-released an EP after opting out of the situation with the producers, which left a backlog of recorded tunes waiting for them by the time they signed a later deal with Sony. “Songs from high school, songs from touring and some brand new songs that we had written,” Larson says. “We wanted to

Larson and Buist had been offered music scholarships and the aforementioned production deal in New York City. “The decision came down to a 24-hour period in which we had to figure out if we were going to pursue music full-time as a career or learn how to pursue music full-time as a career,” Buist says. “We made the jump, and we decided to go ahead and take the production deal. That was a really, really difficult decision for us.

We’re really nerdy, and we love school and we love to learn. We figured we could put that on the back burner and that would always be there, that we could always go to college later.”

And while such decisions are obviously complicated matters, both prospects — college and the record deal — lead to a really sharp period of growth for young adults.

“Really what has been a huge

THE ACCIDENTALS, JAKE ALLEN 8:30 P.M., WEDNESDAY, NOV. 8, BEACHLAND TAVERN, 15711 WATERLOO RD., 216-383-1124.

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make something authentic, something that captured the last couple years of material.”

High school graduation had been a tricky crossroads to navigate. The young women were deeply involved with music education; their parents are either musicians themselves or heavily involved in the music business.

And by the time they graduated,

learning curve, especially with some of the songs on this album, is that in order to have true strength you have to be vulnerable and open with one another,” Buist says. “If you’re going to live in a van full-time with seven people, then you really have to create a family out of it. You have to learn to trust each other. That’s a big theme in the album.”

On the road, the band practices yoga regularly, keeping health and mindfulness at the top of their collective priority list. “We’ll stop at Whole Foods and see how much we can get for under $20,” Buist says.

“Which is a pretty fun game for us.

“It’s important, because if you want to be in a healthy headspace and you want to be able play music every night and connect with your crowd, then you’ve got to stay healthy.”

Larson adds: “The No. 1 thing we’ve learned in these past three years of full-time touring is balance. It comes across on so many different levels.”

The band is already booking shows for 2019, so they’re constantly on the lookout for ways to fit that healthy balance into their lives.

And those experiences blend neatly into the new album. It’s a fun and jaunty ride that fit in perfectly with its late-summer release date.

The album features a neat tune called “KW,” which lays a Keller Williams-inspired riff across reflective, almost yearning lyrics. (“Any glove that fits was stitched by hypocrite / No one else to blame, there’s no reward for a wicked fame.”) The title of the song, of course, is a direct homage to the guitarist who actually appears on the track with band, bringing that 2016 tour around in a full circle.

esandy@clevescene.com t@EricSandy | clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

41

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| clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

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| clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

43

MUSIC KOZMIC BLUES A Night With Janis Joplin aims to capture the late singer’s remarkable legacy

By Jeff Niesel

INDUCTED INTO THE ROCK & Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, singer Janis Joplin left behind a significant musical legacy in a remarkably short amount of time.

The Texas-born singer became a superstar after a show-stopping performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. At that time, she fronted the San Francisco-based band Big Brother and the Holding Company.

Big Brother’s “Piece of My Heart,” a single from 1968’s Cheap Thrills, shot to the top of the charts and the album sold a million copies in a month. Joplin’s departure from Big Brother and emergence as a solo star were inevitable; she put together her own outfit, the Kozmic Blues Band, and in 1969 released I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, which immediately went gold. That year, she also gave a memorable performance at Woodstock.

After she died of a heroin overdose in 1970, Joplin became an even bigger star when Pearl was released posthumously. The album would pass the platinum mark.

Shows such as Love, Janis, a biographical play that Joplin’s sister, Laura, helped create, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival hit, Janis, have chronicled her notorious past. A Night with Janis Joplin, which opened three years ago on Broadway, also serves as a tribute. It comes to Connor Palace on

44

Thursday.

Kelly McIntyre, the actress and singer who portrays the raspy-voiced Joplin in the play, says she’s been singing her whole life. McIntyre, who grew up in the Boston area, gravitated to theater in high school.

“It just stuck since then,” she says in a recent phone interview when asked about her interest in rock ’n’ roll and theater. “My dad played a lot of classic rock and definitely pop music around the house. He played a lot of music from the ’70s and ’80s, and that’s what I grew up listening to.”

McIntyre joined the A Night with Janis Joplin team two years ago when it went on the first national tour, which started right after a run on Broadway.

give it a try. I sang in a seventh-grade band but nothing professional. This was a new experience on many levels.

Now, I love it, and it’s become one of my favorite things.”

The women who performed in the play on Broadway helped her out as well.

McIntyre acknowledges that Joplin was one of a kind. She embraced a sense of individualism that quickly made her a rock icon.

“I think the biggest part of it was that she didn’t care what people thought,” says McIntyre. “That mentality wasn’t popular back then.

She always said that she spoke the truth and told it like it is. She didn’t care how she was perceived. She was

A NIGHT WITH JANIS JOPLIN 8 P.M. THURSDAY, NOV. 9, CONNOR PALACE, 1615 EUCLID AVE., 216-241-6000.

TICKETS: $10-$59, PLAYHOUSESQUARE.ORG

She prepped for the role by watching lots of vintage footage.

“Luckily, YouTube is around,” she says. “I watched a lot of videos of her concerts and interviews and just got ahold of her mannerisms that way.

It was a little bit difficult, but I’ve always liked singing rock ’n’ roll, and I felt like I had more of an edgier side than most girls in musical theater. I thought I’d be a good fit for the part. I always liked her music, so I thought I’d

| clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

just going to be herself. When she was back in Texas, she wasn’t the most popular, but she always knew who she was. The music scene gave her a better platform to be that person.”

The play depicts Joplin’s troubled childhood, during which she was bullied, and the start of her career.

“It goes back to the beginnings of everything, and she talks about the people who influenced her and her siblings and her hometown

and how she got to where she did,” says McIntyre of the play’s plot.

As much as the play provides a biographical overview, it also serves as a concert and features more than 20 songs, including both Joplin’s hits and songs by her influences. Four other women in the show portray musical inspirations such as Bessie Smith, Aretha Franklin and Etta James.

“I hope that people get rid of any preconceived notions and can see her as more than an addict and a girl who died too young,” says McIntyre.

“She was more than that. The show focuses on her music and her legacy, and there are new facts about her childhood and life.”

McIntyre says that even high school kids identify with the show’s themes and music.

“Yesterday, we had kids from a high school see the show, and they were saying how much they enjoyed the music and loved it. I think her lyrics and what she was singing about then are relatable to now. It’s the true definition of timeless music.

I’ve met some people who have seen her perform live, and they said it was really unforgettable, which I can imagine. I hope to capture that energy with my performance.”

jniesel@clevescene.com t@jniesel

| cl clevescene.com levescene.com m | November N vembber 8 - 114, No 4 22017 4, 0177 01

455

MUSIC SPACE IS THE PLACE Styx gets conceptual (again) on The Mission, its first studio release in 14 years THE FIRST BAND IN ROCK history to have four consecutive certified multimillion-selling albums (1977’s The Grand Illusion, 1978’s Pieces of Eight, 1979’s Cornerstone and 1981’s Paradise Theatre), Styx has yet to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, while prog rock peers such as Yes and Rush have finally gotten in.

That hasn’t fazed the band. It continues to play about 100 dates a year; it also just released a new album, The Mission. It opens with a noodle-y “Overture” and then features guitarheavy tunes such as “Gone Gone Gone” and “Trouble at the Big Show,” as the songs explore a science fiction theme.

The band performs at the Hard Rock Rocksino Northfield Park at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday. In a recent phone interview, guitarist James Young speaks about the band’s legacy.

On coming up with the new album’s concept: “It was [guitarist] Tommy Shaw’s idea. He talks about how the story just popped out of his head when he came up with a melody and thought about the ‘mission to Mars’ thing that’s at the end of Side 2 on the vinyl. The fact that we have a lot of fans at NASA might have had a small influence too.

[NASA] sent a probe out to deep space to take pictures of the planet Pluto and discovered a fifth moon and they had to come up with a name, and Vulcan was the biggest vote-getter. But there’s another celestial body by that name, and Styx was the second vote-getter.

It’s somewhat of a coincidence, but we have a pile of Styx fans in Maryland [where the NASA Goddard Space Center is based]. I think there’s a bit of cross-pollination there.”

The story behind “Gone Gone Gone” “The beauty of my colleague, Mr. Tommy Shaw, is that he’s great at taking a concept like this and bringing it into daily experience. It’s his gift as a writer. With ‘Gone Gone Gone,’ the guitar riff is something that I used to noodle around with, and it’s Jeff Beck 101, who’s a huge influence.

I finally shook Jeff Beck’s hand about three years ago, by the way. I kept trying to put a song to this title but it didn’t come to me. Tommy and his collaborator managed to bash it out.

46

Photo by Rick Diamond

By Jeff Niesel

When I heard the demo of it that opens with my guitar riff after Tommy added the lyrics and melody, it was a delightful surprise.”

Is the new album on par with The Grand Illusion?

“That’s for people in your position to judge. I’ve never seen us receive such positive reviews from writers and journalists and people who generally review music. Tommy is credited with producing, and it turned out great. I have friends in the business who keep gushing about it. At this late stage in our career, to have this kind of response to our first new music in 14 years is gratifying. Music has become more disposable because of technology.

We’re inundated with things at every angle to distract us, and Tommy is

Dennis [DeYoung] and had our biggest attendance ever last year.

A bitter breakup “We broke up in 1983 when everyone started making solo records.

Beyond that, no one had individual success. [DeYoung] firmly believed his solo career would take off and Tommy got tired of waiting for him and started Damn Yankees. When you make a commitment to a man like [guitarist] Ted Nugent, with crossbows, you have to stick with it.

We got back together in 1996, and it was extremely successful. Yes was the opening act on that tour, but we were the main draw. I know Dennis is making noise about a reunion, but we’re in a good spot and [current Styx singer] Lawrence [Gowan] is a

STYX 7:30 P.M. THURSDAY, NOV. 9, HARD ROCK ROCKSINO, 10777 NORTHFIELD RD., NORTHFIELD, 330-908-7625. TICKETS: $55, HRROCKSINONORTHFIELD.COM

uniquely qualified to be our alpha dog. Even though I’m the one with the mechanical engineering degree, if I had come up with this concept, they would have rolled their eyes. I would have spun it a different way, but Tommy has done a tremendous job, and I give him the highest praise. We’ve carried the band on for 19 years without [original singer]

| clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

tremendous talent. I wish Dennis the best at everything he does. We did some incredible work together. We had such incredible battles, and it was hell to live through. People who talk about the creative process say that great works come from tortured souls. We were torturing each other, and my taste is different from Dennis’. The work we did together collaboratively

had to live up to high stands. The work holds up because it was subjected to such scrutiny. ‘Babe’ was something I didn’t necessarily like because I was more into Deep Purple, but I’m happy to have been involved with it. We did some incredible work, and ‘Come Sail Away’ and ‘Renegade’ are still popular.”

On Kilroy Was Here “That was the worst. It was Dennis’ [DeYoung’s] dream and our nightmare.”

Snubbed by the Rock Hall “The crazy thing is that there has been a blind spot for Chicago as the birthplace of stuff that was deserving, unless it was blues artists like Willie Dixon, who came to fame there, and Chuck Berry, who recorded at Chess Studios. The Paul Butterfield Band was a joy to me. I’m a huge fan and saw him play many times. I’m happy they finally got in. Two years later, Cheap Trick, who are our friends, got in. I know the door is open for us. We just have to be patient. For the longest time, I said I didn’t care. But fans want to see us there. I would say to [Rolling Stone publisher] Jann Wenner that we’d be well behaved should we be inducted. We will be there if it happens.”

jniesel@clevescene.com t@jniesel

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| clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

& THE COVER UPS

CLEVELAND ROCKS

LIVEWIRE WED

11/08

10 X 3 Singer Songwriter Showcase hosted by Brent Kirby: 8 p.m. Brothers Lounge.

The Accidentals/Jake Allen: 8:30 p.m., $12. Beachland Tavern.

Arch Echo: 7 p.m., $12 ADV, $15 DOS. Odeon.

Arkells/IronTom: 8 p.m., $15 ADV, $17 DOS. Beachland Ballroom.

BBQT/Soft Copy/Trophy Knife: 9 p.m., $5. Happy Dog. Rich Chigga/Duckwrth/Don Krez: 9 p.m. Grog Shop.

An Evening with Herb Alpert & Lani Hall: 7:30 p.m., $45-$60. The Kent Stage.

Jack & Jack: 6 p.m., $25-$35. House of Blues.

Night Terrors: 8 p.m., $7. Bop Stop.

Tom Rush: 7:30 p.m., $35 ADV, $40 DOS. Music Box Supper Club.

Scale the Summit/Angel Vavaldi/ Andy James: 6:30 p.m., $15 ADV, $18 DOS. Agora Ballroom.

THU

11/09

Frankie & the Witch Fingers/ Exploding Lies: 9 p.m., $8. Now That’s Class.

Chris Hatton’s Musical Circus (in the Wine Bar): 8 p.m. Brothers Lounge.

Hiram-Maxim/St. James & the Apostles/Wooly Bear: 9 p.m., $5.

Happy Dog. Jam Night with the Bad Boys of Blues: 9 p.m., free. Brothers Lounge.

KIMOCK - Satellite City: 8 p.m., $32. The Kent Stage.

Nate LaPrairie: 9 p.m., $8.

Beachland Tavern.

Luna/Eleanor Friedberger/PartTime Lover: 9 p.m., $20 ADV, $22 DOS. Grog Shop.

Minus the Bear/Pet Symmetry: 7 p.m., $25 ADV, $30 DOS. Agora Ballroom.

New Found Glory: 7 p.m., $25-$35.

House of Blues.

Northeast Ohio Drum & Music Jam: 9 p.m., free. Beachland Ballroom.

Styx: 7:30 p.m. Hard Rock Rocksino Northfield Park.

FRI

all the live music you should see this week

11/10

Blue October: 7 p.m., $27-$40.

House of Blues.

Lee Brice and Randy Houser: 8

Rapper Tyler, the Creator returns to House of Blues.

See: Sunday.

p.m., $43.50-$52.50. Hard Rock Rocksino Northfield Park.

Marc Broussard: 8 p.m., $25. The Kent Stage.

Call Me Karisma/A Summer High/ Skyhaven/Anthony Amorim: 6:30 p.m., $15-$59. Musica.

EYE/Part-Time Lover/Queen of Hell/Upper Wilds: 9 p.m., $6.

Happy Dog. Horns & Things: 8:30 p.m., $20.

Nighttown.

In Training: November Percolation with Chalked/Haus of Hun/ Kiernan Laveaux: 9 p.m., $8. Now That’s Class.

Jazz Heritage Orchestra Celebrates the Life of Kyle Braun: 8 p.m., $50. Bop Stop.

Lucero/Two Cow Garage: 8:30 p.m., $25. Beachland Ballroom.

Al Mazur (in the Supper Club): 8 p.m. Brothers Lounge.

Mo Mojo: 9:30 p.m., $5. Brothers Lounge.

Motown & More with Nitebridge (in the Supper Club): 8 p.m., $10.

Music Box Supper Club.

Ripe/Mungion/The Happy Little Trees: 8 p.m., $12 ADV, $14 DOS. Grog Shop.

Moss Stanley: 10:30 p.m., free.

Nighttown.

Neil Young Tribute by Broken Arrow: 8 p.m., $24 ADV, $28 DOS. Music Box Supper Club.

SAT

11/11

Chris Robinson Brotherhood: There’s no other way to describe it: The Chris Robinson Brotherhood is on a tear. After releasing a two-part album in 2016, the band served up a live album and another full-length this year. Barefoot in the Head captures the essence

of what Robinson’s been getting at since starting this project in 2011. It’s a lively, engaging record that builds neatly off what they were doing with the two releases last year; stuff like “Narcissus Soaking Wet” and “From the North Garden” certainly teed up the woozy grooves of “Blue Star Woman” and the heady songwriting in “Dog Eat Sun.” (Eric Sandy) 8 p.m., $25-$35.

House of Blues.

The Wood Brothers/Sean McConnell: Delicate, soulful and funky: The Wood Brothers blend a nice variety of American musical traditions into their stuff, and they tend to bring a charming and profound presence to the stage.

We loved their show at the Kent Stage a few years back, dotted with older tunes and newer cuts from Paradise, which had only recently come out at that point. They’ll get you dancing and thinking, and we certainly condone that. With Oliver Wood’s masterful vocal work and Chris Wood’s top-of-the-game bass playing — along with the multi-instrumentalist curiosities of Jano Rix — the band twists the traditions of folk music into a complex and inviting web. (Sandy) 8 p.m., $28 ADV, $30 DOS. Beachland Ballroom.

Bethlehem Steel/Cold Sweats/The Katy/Scientific Affair: 9 p.m., $5.

Happy Dog. Buildings/Actual Form/Wooly Bear/ Orca: 8 p.m., $7. Now That’s Class.

Cats on Holiday (in the Wine Bar): 8 p.m. Brothers Lounge.

Damn the Witch Siren/Wrecking Crew Panda Bears: 9 p.m., $8.

Grog Shop.

Ensemble Et. Al./Trepanning Trio: 8:30 p.m., $8. Mahall’s 20 Lanes.

Sam Hooper Group: 8 p.m., $15. Bop Stop.

J Marco: 9 p.m., $5. Musica.

Jazz Jam Session: 11 p.m., free. Bop Stop.

The Jimmy Jack Band: 9:30 p.m., $5.

Brothers Lounge.

The Larry Keel Experience: 8 p.m., $15-$20. The Kent Stage.

Sharon Rae North: 8:30 p.m., $20.

Nighttown.

Plastic Crimewave Syndicate/ Andrew Kirschner/Magnetic West: 9 p.m., $5. The Euclid Tavern.

A War Within/Dose: 6 p.m., $15.

Odeon.

Jackie Warren: 10:30 p.m., free.

Nighttown.

Kamasi Washington: 8 p.m., $29.50 ADV, $35 DOS. Agora Ballroom.

SUN

11/12

Tyler, the Creator: Not a ton of rap artists have been arrested for inciting a riot like Tyler, the Creator was after a SXSW set in 2014. But those days are behind him. The Odd Future artist is 26 now and incredibly busy. He has two TV shows on Viceland and Adult Swim, and also collaborated on a shoe line with Converse. He’s currently on tour promoting his new album, Flower Boy, which he so kindly touted as “Scum Fuck Flower Boy” before its July release. And it’s within this flowing album that we (thankfully) see the most growth. In lieu of misogynistic and homophobic rants, Tyler looks inward. Straight from the beginning of his swirling and slow “Foreword,” he delves into his desire to understand himself better. But Cleveland fans can still expect the L.A. artist to throw a party at tonight’s House of Blues show. Just this time, the sweat, jumping dance moves, neon lights and enunciated raps will offer a much larger glimmer of truth.

(Laura Morrison) 7 p.m., $30-$40.

House of Blues.

2nd Sundays with Wetbrain: 4 p.m., free. Now That’s Class.

Chucky Supreme B-Day Party: 10 p.m., $12 ADV, $15 DOS. Grog Shop.

Cleveland Cello Society Workshop and Concert with Mike Block: 5 p.m., $15. Bop Stop.

DANA/Cotton Ponys/Brat Curse/ The Eediots: 9 p.m., $5. Happy Dog. KOOKOO Kanga Roo/MC Lars/ Mayor Wertz: 3:30 p.m., $12 ADV, | clevescene.com | November 8 - 14, 2017

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Bar sales directly support The Music Settlement and its many programs.

Tickets to the second sets of our shows are half price for students

LIVEWIRE $14 DOS. Grog Shop.

JD McPherson/Dylan Pratt: 8 p.m., $18 ADV, $20 DOS. Beachland Tavern.

Mike Petrone (in the Wine Bar): 5:30 p.m. Brothers Lounge.

Olivia Newton-John: 8 p.m., $44.50$54.50. Hard Rock Rocksino Northfield Park.

Kate Taylor: 7 p.m., $20. Nighttown.

Turnover/Elvis Depressedly/Emma Ruth Rundle: 7 p.m., $17 ADV, $20 DOS. Agora Ballroom.

MON

“ Rainy days seem to wind up sunny”

at Margaritaville

11/13

Skatch Anderssen Big Band: 8 p.m., $7. Brothers Lounge.

Will Dailey/Top Hat Black: 8:30 p.m., $8 ADV, $10 DOS. Beachland Tavern.

Grassroots Bluegrass Jam: 7:30 p.m., free. The Euclid Tavern.

Johnny Iguana and the Claudettes: 8 p.m., $12. Bop Stop.

Schemata/Drug Charge/Lies from the Tablecloth/Slowdance: 9 p.m., $5. Now That’s Class.

Shit Show Karaoke: 10 p.m. B-Side Liquor Lounge & Arcade.

Velvet Voyage (in the Wine Bar): 8 p.m. Brothers Lounge.

TUE

11/14

CKY/Lionize/Years Before/The Breezeway/Titans in Time: 7 p.m., $15 ADV, $20 DOS. Agora Ballroom.

The Electric Straws: 7:30 p.m., $25 ADV, $28 DOS. Music Box Supper Club.

Harper’s Jar/In Lieu/Bitchseat: 9 p.m., free. The Euclid Tavern.

Hembree/Kalaika: 8:30 p.m., $7.

Grog Shop.

Peter Himmelman (in the Supper Club): 7:30 p.m., $18 ADV, $20 DOS. Music Box Supper Club.

Anita Keys (in the Supper Club): 8 p.m. Brothers Lounge.

Our Great Country Night with Mary Taylor Brooks (in the Wine Bar): 8 p.m. Brothers Lounge.

The Security Project/ProgNation: 8 p.m., $20 ADV, $25 DOS. Beachland Ballroom.

Tweed/Electric Orange Peel/ Conscious Pilot: 8:30 p.m., $8 ADV, $10 DOS. Beachland Tavern.

Yautja/Pyrrhon/Once Flesh: 7 p.m., $10. Now That’s Class.

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SAVAGE LOVE THE DADDY FILES

By Dan Savage Dear Dan, I’m a 40-year-old bi man. I’ve been with my 33-year-old bi wife for three years and married for one. When we first met, she made it clear that she was in a long-term (more than three years) “Daddy” relationship with an older man.

I figured out six months later that her “Daddy” was her boss and business partner. He is married, and his wife does not know. I struggled with their relationship, since I identify as open but not poly. Eight months later, she ended things with him because it was “logically right” for us (her words). But she cheated with him four times over the course of two years. In all other aspects, our relationship is the greatest one I’ve ever had. I do not doubt her love for me.

My wife has met her biological father only a couple of times and her stepfather died when she was 16 — the same year she went to work for her “Daddy.” Their non-work relationship started 10 years later, when she was 26. It’s a complex relationship, and he is not going anywhere, as they now own a business together. The final complication: I have a cuckold fetish. I believe it might be possible to meet everyone’s needs, so long as everyone is honest. I will admit that, in the heat of passion, my wife and I have talked about her having “two daddies.” Do I consider allowing this, so long as everyone is honest? Is mixing business and personal matters going to blow up in our faces? Do I ignore the part of my brain that wants this guy’s wife to know?

— Distressed About Deceitful Dynamics Involving Entangled Spouse You don’t need my permission to consider this arrangement, because you’re clearly already considering it. What you want, DADDIES, is my permission to do this, not just to think about it. Permission granted. Could it all come to shit? Anything and everything could come to shit. But your wife has been fucking this guy the entire time you’ve been together, and you nevertheless regard this relationship as the greatest one you’ve ever had. It stands to reason that if things were great when she was honest with you about fucking her boss (at the start) and remained great despite being dishonest with you about fucking her boss (the last two years), you three are in a good position to make this work now that everything is out in the open.

As for your other concerns: Most of

the poly people I know started out as either monogamous or “open but not poly” (people evolve), we find out about secret workplace romances only when they blow up (skewed samples make for skewed perceptions), and you need more info about the other man’s wife before you issue an ultimatum or pick up the phone yourself (their marriage could be loving but companionate, he could be staying in a loveless marriage for good reasons, they could have agreed to a DADT arrangement regarding affairs).

But again, DADDIES, you’re asking if something that seems to be working in practice might actually work in practice.

And I’m thinking, yeah, it probably could.

Dear Dan, I’m a 31-year-old gay man who looks 45. Most men interested in me are surprisingly up-front about expressing their desire to include a father-son element. Even men older than me call me “daddy” unprompted. I try not to be judgmental, but this repulses me.

People who are into other forms of out-of-the-mainstream sex approach their kinks respectfully and establish mutual interest and obtain consent in advance. Why aren’t I given the same consideration when it comes to incest role-play? And where does this come from? Were all these men molested by their fathers?

— Desperately Avoiding Discussing Disgusting Incest Whoa, DADDI. Just as gay men who call themselves or their partners “boy” don’t mean “minor” and aren’t fantasizing about child rape, gay men who call themselves or their partners “daddy” don’t mean “biological father” and aren’t fantasizing about fatherson incest. Daddy is an honorific that eroticizes a perceived age and/or experience gap; it’s about authority and sexual dominance, not paternity and incestuous deviance. If being called “daddy” turns you off, you should say so, and your partners should immediately knock that “daddy” shit off.

But you shouldn’t assume every gay guy who calls you “daddy” is into incest and/ or was molested by his bio dad, because 99.999 percent of the time that’s just not going to be true.

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