When police in Nashville insisted that Jenny “Sahel” Kazemi pumped four bullets, execution style, into the sleeping body of Steve McNair before then killing herself, plenty of folks were skeptical.
It all came off as too clean and convenient, and it seemed to overlook trivial details like, you know, common sense.
Enter Armen Keteyian of CBS, who has spent three months looking into the situation (we assume he’s been doing other things, too, but the notion that he has been exclusively grinding away on only one story is a lot more impressive, like Jon Gruden going to work every day at 4:00 a.m.), has some stunning new information.
In the wake of the murder-suicide that might have actually been a double murder, suspicions centered on Keith Norfleet, the on-again, off-again boyfriend of Kazemi, who penned rap lyrics that were interpreted as a possible threat against McNair.
As it turns out, another bit player has assumed a much more central figure.
Kazemi supposedly bought the gun from Adrian Gilliam Jr. in the parking lot of her place of employment. Police and Gilliam have characterized the transaction as a routine thing, with Gilliam now facing federal charges due to the fact that, as a convicted felon, he is not permitted to own a gun.
Keteyian interviewed Gilliam in prison, and the man who was convicted in 1993 on three counts of armed robbery and one count of second-degree murder claimed that he barely knew Kazemi and that he couldn’t remember her name or how they met.
Per Keteyian, however, Kazemi’s cell phone records demonstrate that she and Gilliam had been in almost daily contact in the weeks preceding Kazemi’s death, with more than 200 calls and text messages exchanged between them.
The day before the July 4 shooting, Kazemi and Gilliam traded 49 calls and text messages.
Gilliam also called Kazemi at 12:02 a.m. on July 4, only a couple of hours before she died.
So while none of this means that Kazemi didn’t pull the trigger on McNair and then herself, the fact that a convicted murderer is lying about his relationship with Kazemi is something that authorities who might prefer an open-and-shut case cannot in good conscience ignore.