Defense paints key R. Kelly witness as profit-seeking liar
Prosecution rests after woman testifies she had encounters with Kelly, minor
The
R. Kelly prosecution finished its case Monday with dramatic testimony from the first person to assert direct knowledge of an inappropriate sexual relationship between the R&B superstar and the girl depicted in a sex tape at the heart of the child pornography case.
Lisa Van Allen, 27, detailed three-way sexual encounters with the singer and the alleged victim. But Van Allen didn't leave the stand before defense attorneys ruthlessly challenged her credibility by calling her a liar and asking her if she demanded $350,000 to change her story.
She denied trying to extort money from Kelly, an ex-lover whom she began seeing when she was 17. The
Georgia woman offered a smug smile and occasionally rolled her eyes as Kelly's lawyers portrayed her as a thieving blackmailer who they say only came forward to spare her fiance from going to prison.
"I want to do what is right," Van Allen said of her motives before Cook County Judge Vincent Gaughan.
Like 14 previous witnesses, Van Allen, who is four months' pregnant, identified Kelly and his then-minor goddaughter as the participants in the 27-minute video.
She further bolstered the charges against Kelly by telling the jury that the Grammy Award winner made a similar sex tape with herself and the alleged victim in late 1998. Van Allen testified that video, which she said was filmed in the same location as the one at the center of the trial, could not be entered into evidence because she sold it to the singer's business manager for $20,000 last year.
As she ran her hand over her small baby bump, Van Allen denied she had blackmailed her former boyfriend. Rather, she described the payment as a gratuity for helping him recover the tape.
"I didn't try to extort anyone," she said.
First meeting recalled
Van Allen testified she met Kelly while working as an extra in his "Home Alone" video in 1997. He allegedly invited her to his on-set trailer, where the two talked for a bit and then had sex, she said.
She says Kelly asked if her mother would mind if she came to Chicago. When Van Allen promised it wouldn't be a problem, the two exchanged phone numbers.
After a few short visits, Van Allen said she moved to Chicago to be with Kelly, who was married. She said she joined him on a two-month concert tour, in which he would "pick" her from the audience each night and pull her up on stage to have simulated sex with him.
"I traveled with him," Van Allen said of their relationship. "We went to the mall, movies, things like that."
Kelly introduced her to the alleged victim in late 1998 and told her that the girl was 16, Van Allen testified. On the night they met, Kelly brought them to his log cabin-themed basement, set up a video camera and recorded a three-way sexual encounter, she said.
A year later, Kelly brought the teens back to his house and filmed them having group sex on a futon mattress placed on Kelly's indoor basketball court, she said. Van Allen wept as she testified that during the filming she began crying and the singer angrily accused her of ruining the recording.
"He got upset," she said, wiping away tears. "He said he couldn't watch that. He couldn't do anything with me crying."
Van Allen testified she sometimes would see the alleged victim at Kelly's recording studio with her parents or among the singer's entourage. She said they had a third three-way sexual encounter in 2000, but it was not recorded.
By 2001, Van Allen said, she returned to Atlanta but remained in contact with Kelly. When he traveled to Georgia later that year, they spent the weekend shopping and having sex, she said. She also admitted stealing a diamond watch from him valued at $20,000 during the visit.
"Before I ended up leaving, I took a Rolex watch from him," she said.
Van Allen said she knew Kelly had been indicted in June 2002 for a sex tape featuring the
Oak Park teen. But she says she kept quiet because she was preoccupied with the birth of her first child.
"I had just had my daughter," she said. "My mind was not on getting involved."
Kelly's defense team, though, grilled her as to why she didn't come forward as the case languished for nearly six years. Her first foray into the case came in March 2007, when she says she contacted Kelly about a videotape she had of the threesome.
Van Allen testified she took the tapes from the singer's duffel bag without his knowledge.
"He carried [the bag] everywhere with him," she said. "Wherever he was at, the bag would follow."
After telling Kelly she took the tape, the singer flew her to Chicago and put her up in a hotel near his Olympia Fields mansion, Van Allen said. She said she told him she didn't have the video with her and he offered to pay her $250,000 to secure it.
He tried to offer me money," she said. "I did not extort him."
Kelly then arranged for a male acquaintance of Van Allen's to fly in with the video, she said. Van Allen and the man met with Kelly's business manager, Derrel McDavid, in the presidential suite of a downtown Chicago hotel to view the video, she said.
Van Allen testified that once McDavid decided the tape was legitimate, he paid both she and the acquaintance $20,000 apiece. He promised additional money after they handed over the master tape, she said.
McDavid, a longtime Kelly associate, denied her allegations Monday evening.
"Lisa Van Allen is an admitted thief and liar who wouldn't know the truth if she tripped over it," he said in a statement. "If there was any crime committed here, it was her attempt to extort money from R. Kelly."
Authorities contacted
Van Allen testified she did not speak with law-enforcement officials until early March, when her fiance, Yul Brown, contacted the state's attorney's office. Van Allen said two prosecutors flew to Atlanta to speak with her and suggested her testimony would be critical because the alleged victim and her parents denied her participation in the video to the grand jury.
A few weeks before the meeting, Brown had been arrested on charges of drug possession and illegally possessing an AK-47 assault rifle. He faced up to 22 years in prison, but received probation. The defense suggested Cook County prosecutors interceded on Brown's behalf, though Van Allen said she had no knowledge of such an intervention.
A Cook County state's attorney spokeswoman would not comment, citing a gag order placed upon parties in the case.
In a telephone interview after his fiance's testimony, Brown denied receiving any favors because of this case.
"I paid for a great attorney," he said. "Whether I had a gun charge or not it had nothing to with [Van Allen's] testimony. Now that people know the truth, that's all we're really concerned about."
Kelly's team contends Van Allen tried to extort money from Kelly this month during a meeting with defense attorney Sam Adam Jr. and hinted she would switch her story for the right price. According to the defense, Brown said the couple had a $350,000 book deal in the works and it was time Kelly "made things right."
Under intense questioning during cross-examination, Van Allen said she and Brown told Adam they would only tell the truth.
