LR man gets 35 years for killing Belvis

Prison sentence accepted in fatal ’21 machete attack

The 32-year-old man who killed Belvis — the Little Rock Elvis Presley impersonator who sang and danced his way into the national spotlight 15 years ago with Hillary Clinton — has accepted a 35-year prison sentence for the fatal machete attack.

Keemo Losuan Richardson II of Little Rock pleaded guilty last month to first-degree murder, reduced from capital murder, for hacking Dwayne Donnell Turner, 51, to death in May 2021 in front of Richardson’s West 13th Street home, about a block east of Arkansas Children’s Hospital, court filings show.

Richardson had initially claimed self-defense. He will have to serve at least 24½ years before he can qualify for parole. The plea agreement was negotiated between senior deputy prosecutor Barbara Mariani and defense attorney Willard Proctor.

Turner suffered skull fractures and his throat was cut in the attack, which was witnessed by several spectators, including Richardson’s father, who called 911, court records show.

En route to the Richardson home at 3108 W. 13th St., police continued to receive reports of a man wearing a dark hoodie beating another man on the front porch of the home. When officers arrived, they found Turner’s body at the foot of the steps leading up to the home with a shovel and plastic trash bag on the porch along with a large amount of blood.

Kaelon Richardson, 50, told officers that Turner, whom he knew as Belvis, had knocked on their front door that night, stating that his car had broken down and asking for a ride. Belvis was drinking a beer and they got to talking outside until Keemo Richardson walked between them, the elder Richardson told police. Belvis said something to his son, Kaelon Richardson told police, but he couldn’t hear what Belvis said.

Kaelon Richardson said his son walked out of sight but returned a short time later carrying something that he began hitting Belvis with. He said the crazy look in his son’s eyes led him to call the police.

Rikki Morrow, Kaelon Richardson’s girlfriend, told police that when she went outside, she saw Turner lying on the porch bleeding from his head. She said she went to help Turner but Keemo Richardson told her to move out of the way, saying, “No mercy,” before striking the victim with a machete. She said she and Kaelon Richardson ran back inside the home, locked the door and called police.

Keemo Richardson was gone when officers arrived, but detectives were able to call him to tell him they wanted to talk to him about what had happened, and he told them he was at a car wash about 5 miles away at the intersection of South Shackleford Road and West Markham Street. Arrested

there about five hours after the murder, Richardson has been jailed ever since.

In custody, Keemo Richardson said he and Turner had fought before so when the older man turned up at his home uninvited, he felt threatened and had to defend himself, although he would not say what he had done but acknowledged using a weapon. He denied doing anything wrong but would not give details about what weapon he had used or how he had used it.

Richardson said he had moved Turner off the steps and into the yard near a tree, stating that he had planned to bury Turner in a field next to the home. Richardson said he got a shovel and briefly started digging a hole before deciding against it. He said he next got a trash bag and started gathering Turner’s possessions before changing his mind and leaving.

In January 2008, news cameras and Turner — fully bedecked as the king of rock ‘n’ roll in a bejeweled white jumpsuit and oversized sunglasses — were present when Clinton, then a New York senator, stopped for breakfast at the Kitchen Express buffet restaurant on Asher Avenue. Clinton was running against Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination and was making a quick visit to Little Rock after winning the Florida primary the night before.

Turner, singing, “One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready now go Hillary go,” his own take on Presley’s “Blue Suede Shoes,” greeted Clinton, who responded with a smile and laugh as she admired his outfit.

“That is some suit, man,” she told him.

Shaking his shoulders and swinging his hips, Turner briefly engaged Clinton in dance. She rested her hand on his shoulder for a moment, laughing, as they briefly conversed before the cameras.

Mimicking her husband’s signature Hope drawl, Turner said, “I understand what you’re going through. I feel your pain. We are going to build a bridge to the 21st century. We need to let them know that we’re going to do this thing.”

Turner later told reporters that he was endorsing Clinton because when he was a child, then-Gov. Bill Clinton arranged for school buses to come to his neighborhood, when before he’d had to walk to school.

Turner said he’d described how he had to walk to school directly to Clinton. According to Turner, he met the governor as a boy visiting the Governor’s Mansion during an outside event.

He said he’d asked Clinton why white boys and girls got to ride on buses and Black boys had to walk. Three weeks later, buses arrived at his school, he said.

Caught on camera and preserved on the internet, Turner’s barely-a-minute moment with Clinton was iconic, drawing notices from political blogs, TV commentators, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

Before his Clinton encounter, Turner had done prison time for theft, drugs and possession of stolen property, but he had not been in trouble for years before their meeting.

But by the time he was murdered, Turner, a father of two, had fallen deeply into drug and alcohol addictions that had plagued him almost his entire adult life. His family remembered him as an ordained minister, with a flair for cooking and entertainment, who had just recommitted himself to serving God less than two weeks before he was murdered.

Records show he’d been arrested 61 times by Little Rock police over the last 10 years of his life, mostly for drunkenness, sometimes for unruly behavior.

A December 2011 arrest for stealing a car resulted in a oneyear prison sentence in 2013 after he failed to complete drugcourt rehabilitation programs after 18 months.

About two years later, Little Rock police arrested Turner for breaking into a car on Izard Street. He pleaded guilty to the charges for a sentence of six years on probation, but was sentenced to three years in prison in May 2016 due to his continued arrests for public intoxication, failing to stay in touch with his probation officer and not paying his fines and court costs.

And while his star had faded considerably by then, in July 2019, a 42-year-old man was stabbed six times after his disparaging assessment of Turner’s Elvis impersonation skills led to a fight with a Turner acquaintance in downtown Little Rock who expressed his disagreement with the man’s opinion with a knife. Turner was not involved in the altercation.

In September 2020, some downtown business owners, believing Turner to be mentally ill, tried to have him committed, describing him as scaring customers with aggressive and belligerent behavior. The effort did not go anywhere because Turner could not be found in time to take him into custody.

About a month before he was killed, Turner, wearing a blood-spattered shirt, flagged down a patrol car on State Street, near Wright Avenue, to complain that someone he knew named Dean had just taken his Louis Vuitton belt at gunpoint, then clubbed him with the pistol.

He said he didn’t want to press charges, but that he wanted police to be aware of what had happened. Turner declined an ambulance, but his sister took him to the hospital.

If police were familiar with Turner, authorities were beginning to become aware of his killer, with police reports describing 19 complaints about Richardson, almost all low-priority calls, in the 18 months before Turner was killed.

Police records show that most reports involve accusations about Richardson, frequently described as homeless, showing up where he was not wanted, sometimes causing a scene. He usually left before officers arrived. On one occasion, police described him as living in a tent.

Twice police found Richardson, a nephew of Little Rock City Director Ken Richardson, with a shotgun. In August 2020, police who got a call about a man carrying a shotgun in the parking lot of 10901 N. Rodney Parham Road found Richardson with the weapon walking south on South Shackleford Road near Mara Lynn Road. He handed over the gun when asked, telling officers that he had the weapon for protection and was on his way to put a lock on his business, which is not described in the report. They gave the weapon back to him and let him go after also finding a padlock on his person and determining that Richardson was not doing anything illegal.

About two weeks later, in September 2020, officers fielded a call from The Berkley Apartments, 1601 N. Shackleford Road, about Richardson walking around the apartments with a shotgun. He again surrendered the weapon, which was loaded, when police asked, and officers gave it back to him after again determining he was doing nothing wrong.

Police’s last encounter with Richardson came at the end of April 2021, about three weeks before the murder, when a man reported he was robbed of almost $600 while walking home by someone dressed all in black who had pepper sprayed him in the alley behind his residence at the Towne Oaks Apartments at 9600 Satterfield Drive.

Police found Richardson, wearing all dark clothing, about a quarter-mile away at the Rodney Parham Superstop convenience store but turned him loose because the victim could not identify Richardson as his assailant and Richardson did not have any money.

Richardson had no prior felonies but had a serious encounter with Texas police almost five years earlier that landed him in jail in the Dallas suburb of Lewisville for about five months.

According to police reports and Denton County, Texas, court records, Richardson was arrested about a week before Thanksgiving 2017 after dropping off a woman at the InTown Suites hotel on East Corporate Drive in Lewisville while working as a Lyft ride-service driver.

A 911 call by the woman’s boyfriend had brought police to the hotel, with the man telling officers that the woman had called to tell him her driver appeared to be intoxicated — “seriously messed up” — and claimed to have a bomb with him.

An officer briefly talked to the woman on her phone and she was able to communicate that she was afraid for her life. The woman couldn’t talk for long because her phone was almost out of power. In text messages to her boyfriend, she said she was scared she was going to be blown up because her driver claimed to have a bomb and was trying to ignite it.

Police could see through the Lyft app that she was almost at the hotel so officers waited in the parking lot for the car to arrive. Once the woman got out of the car, police arrested Richardson behind the wheel.

The woman told police that the trip started out fine but that when she started chatting with Richardson, he got upset, started driving erratically and turned the music up loudly. She said he showed her a plastic bag holding some kind of powder and liquid, which he claimed was a homemade bomb, and that he kept lighting matches trying to set the bag on fire.

When Richardson got her to the hotel, he gave her a leafy green substance as she was getting out of the car and asked her not to give him a bad review on Lyft. The woman said she’d thrown the material down. Police collected it and determined it to be marijuana. Police found more of the contraband in the car.

He was arrested by police on a felony prohibited weapons charge, but was indicted by state prosecutors on a misdemeanor hoax bomb count, with Richardson pleading no contest to the charge in October 2019 in exchange for a sentence of five months in jail, a sentence he completed in December 2019.