The Latest Breaking News from Milton June Brown

CHCAGO — Derrel McDavid, R. Kelly’s former business manager and current co-defendant, has taken the stand in his own defense Wednesday in the final days of the disgraced singer’s Chicago federal trial.

CHICAGO — High-profile federal conspiracy trials like the one unfolding in Chicago against disgraced R&B singer R. Kelly don’t typically have many made-for-TV bombshells.

CHICAGO — R. Kelly’s voice had been heard a few times in three weeks of testimony at his Chicago federal trial: crooning one of his biggest hits at the 1998 Grammys, rapping on a music video, and allegedly cajoling his then-14-year-old goddaughter to perform sex acts on tape.

CHICAGO — Attorneys for R. Kelly and his co-defendants will have the chance to present witnesses Thursday after federal prosecutors rested their case-in-chief against the disgraced singer earlier this week.

CHICAGO — The Kansas City man at the center of an alleged scheme to hide a sex tape showing R. Kelly in a threesome with a 14-year-old girl told a federal jury Friday that he only handed over a partial copy of the tape to Kelly’s associates because he “didn’t…

CHICAGO — The continued cross-examination of a key witness against R. Kelly got off to an extraordinarily contentious and emotional start Friday. Within 15 minutes, the exchange had grown so argumentative and circular that the judge intervened, and within about 20 minutes the witness had broken down in tears.

CHICAGO — A former girlfriend of R. Kelly’s sobbed in a federal courtroom Thursday as she testified that Kelly’s longtime business manager told her in 2007 they should have killed her instead of paying her to return an incriminating videotape of Kelly having sex with her and a 14-year-old girl.

Featured prominently in the 2019 Lifetime docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly,” Van Allen is now a key witness in an alleged early-2000s conspiracy to recover tapes of Kelly sexually abusing an underage girl and to rig his earlier 2008 child pornography trial in Cook County.

Kelly attorney Jennifer Bonjean tried to tick through all the crimes Charles Freeman could have been charged with had he not secured an immunity deal. The judge cut her off but she quipped, “It would take me too long to go through them all.”

The witness, using the pseudonym “Susan,” had difficulty with details and sometimes seemed at a loss for answers, particularly when asked why she let her daughter stay in contact with Kelly after rumors of Kelly’s abuse first surfaced.

The now-37-year-old woman, referred to as Jane, was the central figure in Kelly’s 2008 state court trial, but declined to testify then. That trial ended with Kelly’s acquittal.