Police believe NFL player ‘Air McNair’ was murdered by his 20-year-old mistress. New doctor questions that version of events

Steve McNair was living the American dream.

A native of a small town in Mississippi, McNair rose to the top of the football ranks at Alcorn State University, where he broke national records for passing and offensive yards and was named an All-American.

He then joined the NFL, where he played for the Houston Oilers and had a string of victories with the Tennessee Titans. The quarterback reached the Superbowl in 1999, narrowly missing victory against the Buffalo Bills.

By the time of his retirement in 2007, he had been named NFL MVP and a three-time Pro Bowler.

But things took a nightmarish turn on the evening of July 4, 2009, when a friend of McNair’s called the police in a panic: two bodies had been found in a Nashville apartment building. One was McNair, lying face down on a bloodied couch. The other was a mysterious woman, later identified as McNair’s girlfriend, with gunpowder on her hands.

The dramatic case is revisited in Unspeakablea new Netflix sports documentary series that spoke with investigators and friends of the late quarterback to find out what really happened.

Police eventually concluded that Sahel “Jenni” Kazemi, 20, was responsible for both deaths in a murder-suicide. But a private investigator criticized the Nashville Police Department’s investigation and said the case wasn’t so clear-cut.

A fateful July 4th evening

Nashville was in the midst of Independence Day celebrations when police received this 2009 call from Robert Gaddy, a close friend and business partner of McNair.

Gaddy told police he saw a man with his head bent and blood stains on his Air Force sneakers. He had been shot in the head and next to him was Kazemi, holding a gun. Gunshots littered the walls.

A frenzy quickly formed around the murder scene when police and fans were informed that one of the bodies was that of Steve McNair, the football star who had just retired two years earlier after a 13-year career.

“People loved him. He smiled, he was calm,” said Jeff Fisher, McNair’s former NFL coach who helped guide him and his teammates to stardom. “He didn’t really like the cameras and the interviews, but there was no doubt he had the ability to excel at that level.”

But it was Wayne Neely, another friend of McNair’s, who first saw the bodies. Neely reportedly entered the apartment he had rented with McNair and didn’t realize the body on the couch was his friend. After seeing the shell casing on the floor, he called Gaddy.

Gaddy had played football with McNair at Alcorn State and was his business partner.

But the two men had fallen out after an argument over a $13,000 check.

Gaddy quickly arrived after Neely contacted him and was the one to call police, but he had already left by the time officers arrived.

Forty-four minutes passed between the discovery of McNair’s body and the first call to 911.

It proved difficult to pinpoint the motive of either suspect. That’s when Charles Robinson, a detective with the Nashville Police Department, set his sights on McNair’s ex-girlfriend.

A Troubled Relationship: Deception, Betrayal, and Tragedy

Kazemi, originally from Iran, worked as a waitress at a local Dave & Buster’s, where football teams often visited and where McNair met the 20-year-old. Despite McNair’s marriage, the two embarked on romantic escapades during the six months they were together.

“They started really falling in love with each other, and it was genuine,” said Emily Andrews, a friend of Kazemi’s. “They talked about adopting kids together one day and building a real life together.” They were reportedly looking at homes.

A close friend of Kazemi reinforced this image: “She was happy with him. She said he was going to divorce her very soon, in about two weeks.”

Investigators then began looking into her ex-boyfriend Keith Norfleet, a McNair admirer who felt betrayed after Kazemi began dating the former MVP.

Police questioned Norfleet after he posted on his MySpace profile: “Never let anything or anyone come between you and the one you love, because if you do, you lose everything.”

It was true: “My ex-girlfriend, who I’m still in love with, was now going to be with my favorite player of all time,” Norfleet said in UnspeakableThe two had separated but were still living together since their lease was not up.

But Norfleet had posted the quote months before their deaths, and long before she moved out; he told police he had no knowledge of the apartment where McNair and Kazemi were found dead.

Investigators later discovered text messages between Kazemi and McNair, describing a woman in distress. “Baby I might have a breakdown I’m so stressed,” one message read.

Kazemi had asked McNair for financial help: She had debt from a previous lease and car payments on a 2007 Cadillac Escalade that she and McNair had co-signed.

Their relationship was strained: Kazemi realized she wasn’t the only woman in McNair’s life after he found condoms in the downtown condominium they co-owned. “I think he really broke her heart,” Andrews said.

“I think it all went downhill after Jenni started realizing that there were other women Steve was seeing as well,” Robinson said.

Two days before their deaths, on July 2, Kazemi was arrested for drunken driving while driving McNair and another friend. Several people told investigators that Kazemi had expressed anger over Steve’s non-monogamy.

And just hours after his arrest that night, Kazemi purchased a handgun, which would later show up in the condominium where the bodies were discovered.

A Dave & Buster’s employee who spoke to Kazemi the day before her death said she appeared “depressed.” Kazemi was reportedly heard saying, “My life has just turned to shit … I should just end it.”

To Nashville police, these sporadic events formed a logical picture: Kazemi, distraught, shot McNair, then shot herself in the head. The deaths were thus classified as murder-suicides, leaving behind a sordid tale of betrayal, tragedy and past glory.

Doubts in the murder-suicide case

While the official version attributes the couple’s death to Kazemi, Vincent Hill, a private detective, saw flaws in the investigation.

“The police made a lot of mistakes,” Hill said in Unspeakable.

They believe the man who sold Kazemi the gun was Adrian Gilliam, who had previous convictions for murder and armed robbery. Police questioned Gilliam for seven minutes, but he said he did not know Kazemi’s name.

But phone records revealed that Kazemi and Gilliam exchanged 203 phone calls and text messages in the three weeks before the deaths.

Gilliam was also one of the last people to speak to Kazemi at 12:02 a.m. on July 4. He said he was visiting a friend at the time of the murders, but the friend contradicted his account. In 2009, Adrian Gilliam was sentenced to two and a half years in federal prison for possession of a firearm by a felon, but it was unrelated to McNair or Kazemi’s deaths.

Hill, whose self-published book Murder Game Manual presents theories to explain McNair’s death, requested the reopening of the case in 2010, but was dismissed by a grand jury due to lack of evidence.

It may not be clear exactly what happened that night in July, but the Tennessee Titan’s legacy continues to resonate. In 2012, McNair was named the 35th-best quarterback of the NFL’s post-merger era, and in 2020, he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.

“The sun was shining. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky,” said a former Titans player. recalled the day McNair died. “Then all of a sudden, when the news of Steve’s passing got out, things got really dark and it started raining. It was like a dark cloud hanging over the city all weekend.”