ST. LOUIS – Prosecutors with the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office said a jury convicted a man from Arnold, Illinois, of murder after a violent break-in and kidnapping in November 2017.
Prosecutors said the jury convicted Khamkhay Samatmanivong, 57, on Friday for the second-degree murder of Charles D. Keltz, 37, in the city’s Carondelet neighborhood.
Samatmanivong was driving in his black BMW to a BP gas station located at the Virginia and Bates Avenue intersection when he encountered a 31-year-old woman who was living with Keltz.
Samatmanivong bought the woman cigarettes, a Cardinal’s baseball hat and cash at the gas station.
Samatmanivong told the woman he wanted her to be his girlfriend and live with him in his house in Arnold. The woman asked him to drop her off near her and Keltz’s apartment.
That evening, Samatmanivong returned to the woman’s apartment to get his money back and waited for her to come outside. Keltz came outside and told Samatmanivong that the woman was not there.
Samatmanivong then called two other men, Maurice Whitt and Durrell Anderson who beat up Keltz. Then they began pounding on the apartment door for the woman while she hid in the bedroom closet.
Whitt entered and dragged her out of the closet by her hair while gunshots rang outside. Surveillance video at the home showed two men outside of the apartment beating up Keltz and then shooting him as he tried to run away for help.
Whitt and Anderson got in their car and drove off. Samatmanivong and the woman followed behind in his BMW. While in the car, Samatmanivong told the woman they were going to kill her.
As the two cars slowed down for traffic, the woman jumped out of the BMW and ran inside a nearby bar on Michigan Avenue, fearing for her life.
Anderson pleaded guilty in 2023 and was sentenced to 18 years in prison for second-degree murder, armed criminal action and kidnapping. Whitt is awaiting trial.
Samatmanivong is convicted of second-degree murder, armed criminal action, first-degree burglary and first-degree robbery. He waits for sentencing on Nov. 1, 2024.
