CHICAGO — R. Kelly’s former business manager and current co-defendant took the stand again Thursday for what promises to be lengthy testimony in his own defense.
Derrel McDavid, who began testifying late Wednesday morning, said again Thursday that in the early 2000s he had no reason to believe any of the claims about a tape showing Kelly sexually abusing his underage goddaughter.
In February 2002, McDavid said he heard about two phone calls in the same day: One from Kelly’s ex-manager Barry Hankerson claiming he had a tape of Kelly and his goddaughter “Jane” in a threesome, and one from Sun-Times journalist Jim DeRogatis saying he had a tape of Kelly and Jane.
The timing, just days before Kelly’s scheduled appearance at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, made McDavid suspicious that the tapes were fake or nonexistent -- simply an effort by Hankerson to sabotage the Olympics appearance.
“Jane and her family had denied it over and over and over and over again, I had no reason to doubt it,” he said. “ … Hankerson was a powerful man, he was known to do anything he had to do to get what he wanted. He wanted to destroy Robert.”
Hankerson was also the uncle of R&B ingenue Aaliyah, whom Kelly married when she was just 15 years old. Judge Harry Leinenweber has repeatedly ruled, however, that jurors should not hear about that connection.
The tape obtained by DeRogatis ultimately led to Kelly’s indictment in Cook County in 2002 on child pornography charges. He was acquitted on those charges in 2008 — in part because, federal prosecutors now allege, Kelly and his associates pressured and paid off Jane and her family to lie to authorities.
McDavid seemed more subdued on the witness stand Thursday, taking his time with many of his answers and appeared to struggle at times to come up with the right word.
He kept his gaze on his attorney, Beau Brindley, throughout the questioning except for one time, when he was asked to describe how he was mostly focused on Kelly’s performance at the Olympics in February 2002, not the threat of the sex tape going public.
“Of course this was important,” he said, swiveling in his chair to face the jury directly. “But I was focused on the Olympics.”
McDavid’s defense depends in large part on the claim he believed Kelly was actually innocent during the time period of the alleged cover-ups, and that he only ever acted at the behest of all the lawyers and investigators he hired.
Defense attorneys at this trial, 20 years later, have not directly challenged the fact that Kelly and Jane are depicted on the sexually explicit footage. Prosecutors presented extensive testimony from Kelly’s goddaughter, who testified under the pseudonym “Jane,” that Kelly had sexual contact with her “innumerable” times beginning when she was just 14, then pressured her to lie about it.
And jurors have seen excerpts from videos that McDavid allegedly conspired to recover before they wound up in the hands of law enforcement, including one where Kelly allegedly instructs Jane to refer to her “14-year-old” genitalia.
On the stand Wednesday, McDavid said he came to believe early on that Kelly’s many accusers were merely liars looking for a payday. So when rumors surfaced about a videotape depicting Kelly sexually abusing his teenage goddaughter, “Jane,” McDavid said he believed the singer, who said he “couldn’t believe anybody would make up this kind of a rumor about his goddaughter.”
On Thursday, McDavid said he hired legendary criminal defense attorney Ed Genson to represent Kelly in the criminal investigation. Genson himself met with Jane, but shooed McDavid out of the room, so McDavid was not privy to their talk.
Afterward, Genson told McDavid, “I believe her, the tape is a fake, and I’m going to prove it,” McDavid said.
Genson was “like a dog with a bone,” McDavid said, bound and determined to show that the tape was phony.
And Genson said it was imperative to seek out any other tapes with Kelly on them to make sure they didn’t taint the jury pool, McDavid said.
McDavid was particularly concerned that there might be a tape out there of Kelly with another man, he said. Years beforehand, Kelly had told McDavid that a man in Florida claimed to have such a tape, and he mentioned it in a way that made McDavid think Kelly was feeling him out to see how he’d react, McDavid testified.
When he told Genson about it, the attorney continued to be adamant, McDavid said.
“Genson said, ‘You better damn make sure you get all those tapes,’” McDavid said.
McDavid’s testimony on Wednesday also provided a counterpoint to that of prosecution witness Charles Freeman, who told jurors Kelly’s team hired him to recover incriminating video footage while Kelly was under investigation.
But Freeman was actually the one who approached Kelly’s associates, in an attempt to extort them with a video that turned out to be nothing but a fuzzy VHS tape of Kelly with an unidentifiable woman, McDavid testified.
Kelly, 55, faces an indictment charging him with 13 counts of production of child pornography, conspiracy to produce child pornography and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Also charged are McDavid and Milton “June” Brown, who are accused in an alleged scheme to buy back incriminating sex tapes that had been taken from Kelly’s collection and to hide years of alleged sexual abuse of underage girls.
____
