The Kansas City man at the center of an alleged plan 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 a partial copy of the tape to Kelly’s aides. At first because they “didn’t think they’d know the difference.”
Keith Murrell, 45, is a key witness for prosecutors who are trying to prove that Kelly and two of her co-defendants, Darrell McDavid and Milton “June” Brown, hid and concealed Kelly’s years of sexual misconduct. Conspired to buy back the tapes.
Murrell’s testimony, which limited the second week of Kelly’s trial at the Dirkson US Courthouse, helped to shore up key elements of the indictment. But he also denied another central witness, his friend Lisa Van Allen, on several key points, including why he sent her the tapes, the number of sexual encounters she had, and whether the money was motivating Kelly to return. was the factor.
Murrell entered the court wearing a blue suit and dark sunglasses. He remained depressed and seemed a little nervous, in contrast to his friend and previous witness, Charles Freeman, who was calm and smiling at the stand.
Testifying at the Missouri draw, Murrell said that he met Kelly in the mid-1990s, when he was in an R&B group called K-Os. He was sent to Chicago in 1997 to record with Kelly’s label, he said, after he was impressed by a song he sang in his voicemail to Kelly.
It was at that time that Murrell said he met Van Allen, a romantic partner of Kelly’s, who testified this week that he participated in a threesome with Kelly and his then-minor granddaughter, which Kelly recorded on video.
Murrell said he eventually moved back to Kansas City in the early 2000s. While there, Van Allen sent him a videotape for him to “hold” in, which he said he watched immediately. “It was Lisa, Rob, and another girl having sex,” he testified.
Murrell said he showed the video to several friends — including Freeman — but never gave it to anyone else. He was stunned in 2007, he said, when McDavid called him out of the blue and said he knew he had a tape.
Brown later called her and asked to bring her to Chicago, but before leaving, Murrell made to bring a copy of the “snippets” of about 8 to 10 minutes of tape. “I didn’t think they’d know the difference,” he testified.
After moving to Chicago with a copy of the tape, he meets with Brown and McDavid at a hotel in the city, where he fails a polygraph test when asked whether he has made a copy. Murrell said that McDavid gave him $20,000 in cash and told him to go back to Kansas City and get the original tapes, and that if he did he would receive a total reward of $100,000. He said McDavid told him “they weren’t playing.”
Murrell later moved back to Chicago with the original tapes, he said. When he arrived, Brown told him he had a “golden egg, or something like that,” Murrell testified. He handed over the tapes to McDavid, who arranged for him to undergo a second lie detector test.
After she left, McDavid “sayed ‘thank you’ to me and he shook my hand and gave me a hug. And then he gave me money.” Murrell says it was a bag containing $80,000 in cash.
In his testimony on Thursday, Van Allen cried out how McDavid threatened her after failing a polygraph test about the tapes, saying that “they should have killed me from the start”—that is, they should. should have killed him.
Murrell said Van Allen never told him about the alleged threat. During the cross-examination, he was also asked whether McDavid had ever threatened him. After initially saying no, Murrell said that McDavid drew his attention to an older member of Kelly’s security team who was also in the room.
“They said if I didn’t come back, this guy would come here to see me,” Murrell said.
Murrell admitted at cross-examination that he asked Van Allen to send him the tapes because he wanted to see it, and he never told him that there was anything inappropriate or illegal in it.
He said when he saw it it didn’t look like anything criminal. And there was only one sexual encounter on tape, Murrell said — while Van Allen testified that there were three separate scenes, two of which only involved Kelly and her young granddaughter.
Earlier on Friday, Van Allen’s relentless cross-examination met with an extraordinarily controversial debut. Within 15 minutes, Kelly’s exchange with attorney Jennifer Bonjean had become so argumentative and circular that the judge intervened, and within about 20 minutes the witness broke down in tears.
Van Allen, 42, initially admitted she was “tired” and didn’t want to come to court on Friday after spending nearly five hours on the stands the day before.
Kelly attorney Jennifer Bonzen noted repeatedly that Van Allen had said over the years that she first met Kelly when she was 17, but admitted in the lawsuit that she was 18. He was informed by the authorities that the music video shoot where they met was filmed after his 18th birthday.
Bonjean shows Van Allen’s growing enthusiasm with the failure of when she actually met Kelly and how old she was at the time. At one point, as Van Allen said again that she was confused by a question, Bonjean threw her hands up into the air and looked at the ceiling, exhaling a heavy sigh.
“Why do I do all that math when I’m trying to tell the truth?” Van Allen said, growing frustrated. “… it wasn’t me when I testified against him. It was about Jane.”
Bonzen said that Jane was young when Van Allen had sexual contact with her and Kelly: “You’re here to testify for her? This is the person you sexually abused?”
Van Allen’s lower lip began to tremble. She reached for a box of tissues and patted his eyes. Then she wept bitterly.
“I’m not proud of him. I don’t know which woman would be proud of him,” she said through tears. “But I’m here to admit my wrongdoings and hold her accountable for what she’s done.” So you can sit here and try to make me the bad guy you want.”
As Van Allen cried for several uncomfortable minutes, Bonjean stood up at the lecture with his arms crossed. “Tell me when you made yours,” she said.
Bonjean also asked Van Allen how many threesomes he had with Kelly and where and when and why. She showed Van Allen a statement she gave to authorities in 2019, in which she said she participated in threesomes because she felt bad that Kelly was molested when she was younger.
With that, the jurors learn about a painful part of Kelly’s history that doesn’t require Kelly to take a stand.
Van Allen said she reached out to Kelly to help her retrieve the offending video, but then Kelly volunteered to give her money if she could fix it. It’s not logical, Bonzen said, “it doesn’t make sense unless it’s about money, Ms. Van Allen.”
“It makes sense that there shouldn’t be a sex tape. Especially with a minor,” Van Allen said.
After more than two hours of questioning, Bonjin told the judge that he had “nothing further.”
“Well,” Van Allen said loudly into the microphone, prompting Bonjean to turn around and say, “Oh!”
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Van Allen gave her a big smile.
On redirected examination, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Julian read for jurors Van Allen’s testimony from Kelly’s 2008 trial to show that her story had remained coherent and was not motivated by propaganda. Van Allen, at the time, did not have a book deal, and was not on television.
The prosecutor’s final questions sought to counter defense attorneys’ insistence that Van Allen’s display of emotions was just a fake show for jurors.
“Were your feelings fake yesterday?” Julian asked.
“No,” replied Van Allen.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com
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