CHICAGO — A key prosecution witness against R. Kelly has taken the stand in the disgraced R&B superstar’s federal trial and is expected to testify that he helped recover incriminating videotapes while Kelly was being investigated for sexual abuse.
Charles Freeman, who defense attorneys characterized in opening statements as a liar, a con man and an extortionist, is testifying under an immunity deal from prosecutors.
Freeman entered the packed courtroom dressed in a blue suit and dark glasses. He took his glasses and black face mask off before he started testifying.
Kelly seemed animated, appearing to chuckle as Freeman described the way they became friends after a misunderstanding about a stolen jacket. And several times during Freeman’s testimony, Kelly leaned over to whisper to his attorneys.
Freeman began working for Kelly doing merchandising in the early 1990s, he testified, and the two men became friends.
Freeman told jurors that in 2001 he got a call from Kelly, who said he wanted him to “recover some tapes.”
Not long afterward, he heard from co-defendant Derrel McDavid and investigator Jack Palladino, he testified, who said there would be a “reward” if he could get the stolen video back. At the time of the phone calls, he did not know what was on the tape, he said.
“Derrel said it was a performance tape they really needed to recover, and if I would recover the tape they would take care of me,” Freeman said. “Those were his exact words.”
Freeman was told that an ex-girlfriend of Kelly’s, Lisa Van Allen, had stolen the video and given them to some people in Atlanta, he testified. He signed a contract in August 2001 to recover the tapes for $100,000 plus expenses — not the million dollars he had agreed to, he said.
McDavid told him he’d get the full million “but how do we know what you recovered is what we’re wanting? We need originals and make sure this is the actual evidence tapes,” Freeman said.
“It would look bad if we gave you a million dollars for a tape and it’s not the tape that we want,” McDavid said, according to Freeman’s testimony.
Freeman drove to a house in Georgia a few days later.
“A young lady came to the door and I said ‘I’m here to recover the MF tapes that y’all stole from Robert Kelly.’ Them were my exact words,” Freeman said.
Freeman got three tapes from the house, then went to Walmart and bought blank tapes and a VCR recorder, he said.
One tape was a Disney movie. Another was some kind of family video. The third was a tape of Kelly “with a young lady having sex,” Freeman said.
“What age did the female appear to be to you?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeannice Appenteng asked.
“Young,” he responded.
Freeman “immediately” made three or four copies of that tape, he says, because he didn’t trust McDavid or Palladino to pay him. He still had copies of the tape as of early 2019, he testified.
In early 2019, Freeman’s attorney told him “the police was coming to get me because my name came up that I was holding child pornography for Robert Kelly.” Freeman gave the tapes to his attorney, who gave them to law enforcement, he said.
Freeman did not initially tell law enforcement about the child pornography “because the police wasn’t going to pay me a million dollars,” he said.
Freeman turned over a copy of the tape to McDavid and Palladino, who had him pass a polygraph test about it. Later, Palladino called and said they knew he had another tape, and arranged another meeting for him to turn it over and get paid.
Freeman handed over the tape and got a bag of cash in return. It was not the full million, but they told him he’d get paid out in installments — every other year “until Rob gets to court,” Freeman said.
Freeman filed a lawsuit in 2002 to get the money, a suit he says Kelly settled right away for $100,000. And in 2003 he reached out to McDavid to get another payment of about the same amount of cash in a bag, Freeman said.
In late 2003 or early 2004, McDavid reached out to Freeman again about getting a different tape, Freeman said.
“I said if I gotta recover another tape, you gotta pay me another million dollars,” Freeman said.
“Derrel said it’s another performance tape, sex tape is what he described,” Freeman says. “With Lisa Van Allen, Robert and the young lady on the tape.”
Prosecutors have described a similar video as Video 4 of the indictment, which prosecutors have said they do not have and cannot play for jurors.
Earlier Kelly’s defense lawyers cross-examined Lawrence Berkland, a lie-detector test administrator, as prosecutors outlined an alleged conspiracy to cover up Kelly’s alleged sexual misconduct before his Cook County criminal trial.
Berkland first took the stand late Monday and said he was hired by an attorney in August 2001 to test someone about whether he had made copies of a certain videotape, and whether it was the only videotape he had. Berkland gave the unidentified man three tests and he passed all three, he said.
It was not specified for the jury whether the man was in fact Freeman.
The test subject was relatively uncooperative at first, declining even to give Berkland his name. But when Berkland told him what the attorney said — that the subject would get $200,000 if he passed — the man grew more compliant, Berkland said Tuesday on cross-examination from an attorney representing co-defendant Milton Brown.
Berkland had said Monday on direct examination that at one point the test subject pulled a VHS tape out of his pants and left it on the table while he used the restroom. The person who hired him had also arranged for the same test subject to undergo a polygraph, Berkland said Monday.
Tuesday morning, polygraph administrator John Hurlock testified remotely from Missouri that he also was hired in August 2001 to test someone about whether they had any other copies of a certain tape. The test subject also declined to give Hurlock his name or signature.
“He gave me a moniker, he told me to just call him ‘Showtime,’” Hurlock said. “So that’s what I wrote on the form.”
Hurlock also never got any information about what was on the tape in question, Hurlock said. He was directed to refer to it only as the “performance tape,” he said.
Hurlock does not recall actually giving the subject a polygraph test, he said. If the man refused to sign his form, Hurlock probably wouldn’t have tested him, he said.
“Seems to me like he just got upset over the whole process and wanted to stop,” he said.
Defense attorneys objected to the speculation, and Hurlock acknowledged that, yes, he was speculating.
“It was just so long ago,” he said.
Kelly and co-defendants Brown and McDavid are accused of participating in an extensive scheme to cover up Kelly’s misdeeds.
The centerpiece witness Monday was a mother whose young daughter was allegedly sexually assaulted by R. Kelly on videotape in the 1990s. She testified that Kelly threatened them and sent them out of town after the allegations of abuse first surfaced more than 20 years ago.
The woman, who is being referred to under the pseudonym “Susan,” echoed some of the explosive claims her daughter “Jane” gave made in court last week, a watershed moment in the R. Kelly saga after years of denying any sexual misconduct by the R&B superstar. But Susan’s testimony, unlike Jane’s, was disjointed and confusing at times, and she contradicted her daughter on a few key points.
Kelly, 55, is charged with 13 counts of production of child pornography, conspiracy to produce child pornography and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Some of the counts carry a mandatory minimum of 10 years behind bars if convicted, while others have ranges of five to 20 years in prison. Prosecutors are also seeking a personal money forfeiture of $1.5 million from Kelly.
The trial is expected to last at least through mid-September, and jurors are likely to hear from more women who say Kelly had sexual contact with them when they were minors. Prosecutors also allege Kelly and his team took extensive measures to conceal Kelly’s misdeeds, ultimately leading to his acquittal on state child pornography charges in 2008.
Jurors on Friday watched graphic clips of three separate videos allegedly showing the R&B superstar sexually assaulting 14-year-old Jane.
Jane testified last week that she was the girl seen on the videos and that Kelly had sex with her “innumerable times” when she was underage, then paid her and her family to keep quiet.
Kelly’s defense so far has not directly contested that it is Kelly on the video clips, only saying that their authenticity could not be verified and that Kelly was previously acquitted for conduct related to them. Nor has the defense given jurors an alternate version of Jane’s narrative of events related to videos. Instead, the defense lawyers are seeking to sow doubt by telling the panel Jane denied it was her on the clips for more than two decades.
Regardless of the outcome, Kelly is still facing decades in prison. In June, he was sentenced to 30 years on federal racketeering charges brought in New York. He is appealing both the jury’s verdict and the sentence in that case.
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