When Kim Kardashian’s podcast The System: The Case Of Kevin Keith was released on Monday, we were instantly intrigued. The reality star, who famously turned her hand to law (and beat Hilary Clinton in a legal knowledge quiz) started the series to prove the convicted murderer Kevin Keith’s innocence and save him serving the rest of his life imprisonment – much to the shock of his surviving victims.
In 1994, Keith was convicted of triple homicide for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Marichell Chatman, her daughter Marchae and her aunt Linda Chatman. However, Kim Kardashian says that the police charged him quickly and without a fair trial and now intends to prove his innocence in the public eye.
However, two surviving victims, brother and sister Quanita and Quentin Reeves (Marichell’s cousins) who were also shot on the same night as the rest of their family have said they saw Keith commit the crime with their own eyes and are upset that Kim Kardashian didn’t contact them about the incident before releasing the show.
‘You don’t forget something like that. I don’t care what Kim Kardashian says,’ they told the Mail. ‘Why doesn’t Kim Kardashian come out here to Ohio? She doesn’t want to hear from us. She wants to get him out to make her look better…that’s the truth.’
‘We should have been the first call,’ they added, explaining the distress they feel at Keith becoming a ‘celebrity’ in jail while they’ve been left to deal with the trauma of the incident that has affected their ‘entire lives’.
It goes without saying that the key witnesses in the murder case should have been contacted before Kim Kardashian’s podcast went ahead. And The System’s producers have claimed that they did contact Quanita and Quentin about the programme. Yet, evidently their attempts have not satisfied the survivors.
‘At the time, they decided not to share their story and requested we no longer contact them,’ the production companies told Fox News. ‘We respected their decision and gave them privacy. If they have reconsidered, we welcome them to sit down for the podcast at any time.’
But is it really any wonder that Quanita and Quentin were initially unwilling to speak to The System – a podcast designed specifically to prove their family’s convicted killer innocent? We don’t know what information they were given about the contribution they’d have to give, how their story would be told or whether their side of the story would be respected.
What would be powerful now is for Kim Kardashian to make a statement or to visit Quanita and Quentin as they requested. Fundamentally, it’s not kind to use other people’s trauma to create content without working alongside them. This isn’t just the ‘Case Of Kevin Keith’ it’s the case of Quanita and Quentin Reeves, Marichell, Marchae and Linda Chatman—and they deserve to be respected and remembered in the making of this show.