A Steve McNair Cover-Up?

By - Kris Fletcher

This past weekend, I received an e-mail from someone stating they would like to meet up with me to discuss a matter that I might find "very interesting." I was skeptical at first, but I replied back and made arrangements to get together and talk.

I'm glad I did.

Now obviously I'm not the first person that this matter has been discussed with. But my contact, who wants to remain anonymous, feels that the more this story is circulated the more likely something may actually be done to rectify the situation.

The death of Steve McNair is still classified as a murder-suicide. The individual I spoke to is a former Nashville police officer, with first-hand knowledge of the case. The following are issues we discussed that seem to point towards a conclusion other than murder-suicide.

Photo by: Jeff Gross

A key person here is Brent Young, who was close to McNair having worked with him for various charities. He gave an interview on 7/7/09, three days after the incident. In it, he told reporters that he saw McNair at Loser's Lounge (Bar) that Friday (7/3/09) a little after 10pm. He stated McNair was the passenger in a black Escalade, which would have belonged to his girlfriend, Sahel Kazemi. He went on to say that he saw a woman in the driver's seat when McNair exited the vehicle and approached him, and that the two talked until roughly 10:15.

The official police report says that Kazemi worked until ten o'clock that evening. There is no possible way she could have made the drive from Dave and Busters to Loser's Lounge, which is over eleven miles away, in a matter of minutes, plus met up with McNair somewhere in between to pick him up. Also, the time line drawn out by investigators left no room for Young's encounter with McNair to have even taken place. They claim Kazemi left work at ten, went to her apartment, logged in to her computer for a bit, then went to the condo at around eleven o'clock.

Brent Young would have no reason to say he saw McNair and Kazemi in the Escalade unless it were true. The account that she went straight to her apartment after work would not be possible based on this witness.

Another telling detail; the condo security video didn't show Kazemi entering the condo at or even around the time police say she did. Why was that portion of the video not released so that police could say they were 100% sure she went in at the time they said?

But possibly the biggest gap in this story is that Robert Gaddy, the person that discovered the bodies and contacted authorities, is clearly seen entering and leaving the condo. However, Wayne Neely, the co-owner of the property, claims he entered it at around one o'clock, but he is NOT seen on the tape.

How is it that the camera captured one person entering and leaving, but not another individual who is of comparable size?  This would seem to suggest that Neely was in the condo longer than he claims, or that he may have even been there DURING the incident.

Neely also told investigators that he moved one of the shell casings. WHY would he have done that? It sounds as if he told them this so he wouldn't have to explain later why his prints were on it in the event they turned up during the investigation.

The only other reason his prints would have been on the casing is if he had loaded it into the gun.

Multiple patrons and staff members at Blue Moon Lagoon also stated that McNair had a heated exchange with an unidentified female at the restaurant that Friday night, where the woman alleged McNair had slipped her a "roofie" and that her boyfriend was "going to kill him."

The bodies of McNair and Kazemi were found at the condominium only a few hours later.

This appears to have been either an extremely sloppy investigation, or a cover-up of some sort, as multiple time lines that were proposed just don't reflect the actual facts. Why did authorities not thoroughly investigate this incident, and why did they release facts that clearly do not make sense? More importantly, who would have wanted McNair and Kazemi dead, and why?

It's clear to me that this should be considered an unsolved case. It's obviously worthy of being re-opened and further investigated, and it needs to be done by an organization other than the Nashville Police Department.