The 14-Year-Old Rapper Who Caught 3 Bodies: Lil Speedy

The 14-Year-Old Rapper Who Caught 3 Bodies: Lil Speedy Just after 11:30 in the morning on December 3rd, 2024, a mother walked into her home on the 6700 block of South Parnell Avenue on Chicago's South Side and found her fifteen-year-old son inside with two gunshot wounds to the head. Emergency services were called and Kenwon Van Pelt, who went by Lil Keso on the streets, was pronounced dead on the scene. Police taped off the building. Nearly a dozen shell casings were scattered across the parking lot. And in the way that Chicago has perfected over decades of unresolved homicides, no one was arrested, no charges were filed, and the case went cold almost as soon as it opened. What the police report couldn't capture — what no official document ever could — was that within hours of Keso's death, a teenager he had grown up with, run with, laughed with, and made music plans with, was posting cryptic messages on social media that the internet immediately treated as a confession. That teenager's name, or at least the name he gave the streets, was Lil Speedy.