LI Native Uncovers True Crime As Exec Producer On Kardashian Podcast

NORTH BABYLON, NY — Lori Rothschild Ansaldi always had an interest in law enforcement. Growing up in North Babylon, her father was a police officer.

While she briefly considered becoming a lawyer, the producer told Patch about her career, producing true-crime stories for television.

“I've always wanted to work in the entertainment field, but I really didn't know where I wanted to be,” she said.

Rothschild Ansaldi attended SUNY Farmingdale for two years, and then went to SUNY Buffalo to obtain a bachelor’s degree in business and communications.

She remembers the moment she told her father her entertainment career goals.

“I remember him pushing down his sunglasses and looking at me and saying, you're going to be poor for the rest of your life,” she said.

Despite her father’s words, Rothschild Ansaldi’s career was quite successful. She worked in audio post-production after college, and also interned on the television show, Ricki Lake.

She eventually moved to the Washington D.C. area to work for Discovery, and helped produce documentary and reality programs. Her most notable work includes Deadly Wives (AE), Murder Book (ID), Cash Cab (Discovery), Deadliest Catch (Discovery), Planet Earth (Discovery), DB Cooper: Case Closed (History) and Passport to Latin America with Samantha Brown (Travel), for which she won a National Daytime Emmy.

In 2016, she founded Tent City Productions, and later became the President and CEO of Big City TV.

“It's really amazing to see the heroes bring a killer to justice,” she said.

But in 2016, she came across the story that altered her perspective on the American justice system — and caught the attention of television personality Kim Kardashian.

"Kim Kardashian’s The System: The Case of Kevin Keith", launched in October 2022. The eight-episode podcast tells the story of Kevin Keith, who was arrested and charged with a triple homicide in Bucyrus, Ohio, in February 1994.

On February 13, 1994, a gunman opened fire in an apartment on a family of six. Three people — including a four-year-old girl — were killed. Three people were injured.

Keith was arrested and charged without any physical evidence or questioning by police.

Rothschild Ansaldi told Patch she learned of Keith’s story from a fellow producer, who was friends with Keith’s brother, Charles. The producer described Keith as someone who was “wrongly convicted”, she said.

“When I heard that, coming from a place of always believing in law enforcement, I immediately said ‘Well everybody says they're innocent’,” she told Patch. “I think she might have sent that link three or four times to my email before I clicked it.”

After reading about Keith’s story in a Cleveland Scene article by Eric Sandy, Rothschild was hooked.

“The story inspired me to say, ‘Well, that doesn't sound right,’” she said.

Rothschild Ansaldi began compiling a notebook of information about the case, including any police reports, articles and documents.

She also got in touch with Charles, who sent her a “FedEx box filled with papers”, to add to her research.

Charles was Keith’s older brother, she told Patch, and helped raised him like a father-figure in a single parent household.

“He took it upon himself to figure out what happened to Kevin because he really didn't believe couldn't believe that his brother would commit such a terrible crime,” she said.

Although police reports told a “pretty easy” story of someone who was arrested, charged, and put on death row within a matter of days, Charles claimed that information was changed, missing and possibly fabricated.

“I think that was the biggest part of all those documents, just listing out who said what and when, became the puzzle,” she said.

In 2018, Rothschild Ansaldi had moved to Los Angeles and was working for Freemantle, the company which produces Family Feud. At the time, she was hoping to connect with a celebrity who could help shed light on the story.

So when the Kardashian family competed on an episode of Family Feud, a producer pitched Rothschild Ansaldi’s project to Kim.

About a week later on a Friday night, Rothschild Ansaldi was sharing a movie night with her kids when she received an unexpected call.

“It was 9:30 at night and I had a couple of glasses of wine in me, my kids are in bed and the phone rings,” she said.

It was one of Kardashian’s assistants, saying that “Kim” was on the line.

“I remember literally smacking myself in the face and saying, ‘Get yourself together.”

Rothschild Ansaldi said Kardashian was really excited to hear Keith’s story, and asked to meet in person to learn more.

The following week, she was at Kardashian’s house, bringing both the notebook and toys for her children.

“As a good Long Islander growing up with both Catholic and Jewish parents, I was like ‘Okay, you can't show up to someone's house without something in your hand. “

The pair worked with Kim’s personal legal team, and decided that a podcast would be the best way to showcase Keith’s story.

“When you watch TV and close your eyes, could you actually imagine what you're seeing?” she said. “That’s how incredibly important I think visceral audio production can be, that you can literally picture and make up the scenes of what you're hearing in your own head. And everybody will have a different scene based on their experience in life.”

Since then, the duo and their team interviewed Keith, his brother, Charles, and researched as much information as possible.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, Rothschild Ansaldi was in the “Kardashian bubble” and was able to record at her home.

Rothschild Ansaldi told Patch that it took work to simplify a complicated story.

“You really adequately have to tell the story in a way that is not only compelling to your listener, but in a way that they can really understand it,” she said. “To really grasp everything that went on right because there are so many names.”

The goal of the podcast, she said, is to make listeners aware of not only Keith’s story, but the amount of innocent incarcerated people.

“We also wanted them to see the bigger picture of what was going on in our criminal justice system and how these mistakes were made,” she said. “This case is almost like a replica of what we're seeing in so many other cases.”

Rothschild Ansaldi said that although the first season of the podcast is over, the case continues, and Keith is still behind bars.

Many people have reached out to Rothschild Ansaldi, who have family members in similar situations to Keith.

“It’s not done, and tips are coming in every single day from all over,” she said.” We're nowhere near finished.”