R Kelly has offered $ 1 million for the return of a videotape of an underage girl, a former merchandising agent said during the singer’s latest trial.
Kellywho is serving a 30-year prison sentence after being sentenced in New York in 2021 on charges of using his fame to sexually abuse fans, now appears in court in his hometown of Chicago accused of several other federal charges. .
The most serious charge is conspiracy to obstruct justice by allegedly rigging a 2008 trial for state child pornography charges – stemming from an alleged video of him and a girl having sex when he was a minor – from which he was acquitted.
Deny any wrongdoing.
On Tuesday, prosecutors presented evidence apparently demonstrating his alleged desperation in the early 2000s to recover a video after he went missing.
Testifying in court, former merchandising agent Charles Freeman said he spotted the tape and returned it to the singer, whose real name is Robert Sylvester Kelly.
When asked why it took two decades to turn over the recording to authorities, he said police wouldn’t give him $ 1 million (around £ 845,750 today) for the footage, unlike Kelly, he said.
The charges Kelly faces in Chicago include the production of child pornography, based in part on this tape.
At the start of the trial, a woman identified only as “Jane”, now 37 – who prosecutors say is the girl filmed in the alleged video – told the court that Kelly had sex with her “hundreds of times” before she was 18. years.
On Monday, the woman’s mother, who used the pseudonym “Susan” in court, testified about Kelly’s 2008 trial.
She said she lied about the singer in advance as she and her husband feared for their lives and their daughter’s well-being.
“We were very, very scared,” he told the jurors.
During cross-examination, Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, repeatedly asked Susan if she really felt her life was in danger from Kelly or her associates.
“Nobody threatened you, did they?” asked Mrs Bonjean.
“Yes, they did,” Susan replied.
Ms. Bonjean also asked why the family continued to mingle with Kelly in the years following these events. She told the court that the singer was their only income for a while, paying her musician husband to work on the recordings.
The process continues.
