CHICAGO — In April 2007, while visiting Chicago from Kansas City for the second time in as many weeks, Keith Murrell thought he was in for a payday.
An assistant to R. Kelly, Milton “June” Brown, confirmed that much to him, Murrell testified Friday.
Murrell said he was in Chicago to complete a deal with Kelly’s business manager, Derrel McDavid, in which Murrell would receive $80,000 for the return of a video tape that showed Kelly engaging in a threesome with his then-girlfriend Lisa Van Allen and an underage girl.
Brown told Murrell that he had “a golden egg,” Murrell recalled from the witness stand. Asked what he took that comment to mean, Murrell said: “I knew I was about to get some money for it. That’s how I took it.”
Murrell then took a polygraph test to confirm that no other copies of the tape were floating around. He passed the test, and McDavid — Kelly’s former business manager and, like Brown, a co-defendant in the case — then gave him the $80,000 in a bag, Murrell said.
The second week of Kelly’s federal child pornography trial concluded with testimony from Murrell and Van Allen, Kelly’s former girlfriend who testified that she mailed the allegedly illicit tape to Murrell in 2001 because she didn’t want Kelly to have it. Murrell said he showed the tape to a few friends, but kept it stowed away for six years until Van Allen wanted to return it to Kelly.
In 2007, Murrell said, he copied “a snippet” of the tape onto another VHS “so I can always have a backup in case anything happens.” He then met with Van Allen in Chicago, where they were to return the original tape in exchange for $200,000, to be split between the two of them.
Before they were paid, though, they each needed to pass a lie detector test confirming no other copies were made. Murrell said he failed that first test, and McDavid then gave him and Van Allen each $20,000 before telling them to return to Chicago soon with the original tape.
“I didn’t think they’d know the difference [between the tapes] at the time,” Murrell said. “I didn’t think they would know how long the tape was.”
After traveling back to Kansas City, Murrell soon returned to Chicago with the original tape, and McDavid paid him another $80,000.
Van Allen testified Thursday that, after the tape was returned, McDavid told her that “they should have murked me from the beginning” because she took the tape from Kelly in 2001.
On Friday, under cross-examination from McDavid’s attorney Beau Brindley, Murrell said he’d never heard about any threat against Van Allen.
During cross-examinations, the three defense teams have sought to highlight discrepancies and inconsistencies in sworn statements given by various witnesses over the last two decades.
Another government witness with immunity, Charles Freeman, testified earlier this week that McDavid gave him hundreds of thousands of dollars to recover video tapes that allegedly showed the now-disgraced R&B superstar engaging in sex acts with a 14-year-old girl.
Murrell and Freeman are two witnesses for the prosecution who have testified under grants of immunity.
A federal grand jury in Chicago indicted Kelly, 55, on 13 counts in July 2019, accusing him of producing and receiving child pornography, while also enticing minors to engage in illegal sexual activity. Earlier this year, Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in prison by a federal judge in Brooklyn after he was found guilty of racketeering.
McDavid and Milton Brown, Kelly’s two co-defendants and two of the singer’s former employees, are charged with one count of conspiracy to receive child pornography, while McDavid also faces two counts of receiving child pornography and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Prosecutors allege Kelly and those in his inner circle paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years in an effort to track down video tapes that Kelly made that allegedly show him engaging in sexual activity with underage victims.
