Jurors in R. Kelly’s federal trial in Chicago heard testimony from a polygraph test administrator on Tuesday, Aug. 23, as prosecutors sought to show how the disgraced singer and associates allegedly tried to cover up and deflect an earlier sexual assault and child pornography complaints and investigations.

As the Chicago Tribune reports, the prosecution’s star witness today was Charles Freeman, one such fixer, who made merchandise for Kelly in the ’90s and later befriended the singer.  According to Freeman, Kelly called him around 2001 with a specific task: “to retrieve some tapes.”

Freeman said he then heard from one of Kelly’s co-defendants, Derrell McDavid, as well as notorious private investigator Jack Paladino, who allegedly told Freeman that he would receive a “reward” if he retrieved the video (Paladino, who Kelly, as well as Bill Clinton and Harvey Weinstein, died after being attacked last February.) Freeman claimed he didn’t know what was on the tape at the time, saying only that McDavid described it as “performance tape” and that if Freeman took it back, “I’d be taken care of.”

In August 2001, Freeman signed a contract saying he would get $100,000, plus expenses, if he recovered the tape.  He also testified that McDavid told him he could earn $1 million for the job, though McDavid reportedly emphasized, “We need the originals and make sure this is the real evidence tape … It would look bad if we gave you a million dollars for a tape and it’s not the tape we want.’

As for who had the tapes, Freeman said he was told they were taken by one of Kelly’s ex-girlfriends, Lisa Van Allen, who had given them to some people in Atlanta.  Freeman said he drove to the home of the people who supposedly had the tape and told the woman who answered the door, “I’m here to retrieve the MF tapes you stole from Robert Kelly.” 

One of the tapes, Freeman said, showed Kelly “with a young lady having sex” (the other two were a Disney movie and a family video, he said).  When asked how old the woman looked to him, Freeman replied, “Young.”  He also said he made several copies of this video with some blank tapes and a video recorder he bought after the tapes were recovered. 

Freeman testified that he still had copies of the tape as recently as 2019 and only turned them over to authorities through his attorney after learning that police were investigating him in connection with Kelly.  Asked why he didn’t immediately turn the tape over to the police after he got it in 2001, Freeman replied: “Because the police weren’t going to pay me a million dollars.”

While Freeman handed the tape to McDavid and Paladino, the pair allegedly had him take a lie detector test.  Previously, the jury heard from Lawrence Berkland, a polygraph test administrator, who said a lawyer hired him in August 2001 to interview someone about whether they had made copies of a certain videotape.  Birkland said the man he interviewed refused to give his name and was uncooperative until Birkland told him the lawyer who had hired him said the person would get $200,000 if he passed the test. 

During his testimony, Freeman said that after he took his polygraph test, Palladino contacted him and said he knew he had another tape.  Freeman said he gave that tape and got a bag of cash in return. 

In addition to recovering the 2001 tape, Freeman said McDavid contacted him again in either late 2003 or early 2004 to retrieve another tape.  “Derrell said it’s another performance tape, the sex tape is what he described,” Freeman said.  “With Lisa Van Allen, Robert and the young lady on tape.”  Freeman’s description of the tape reportedly matched the description prosecutors used of Video 4 — one of four tapes they don’t have and can’t show the jury.

Yesterday, August 22, the jury heard some crucial testimony from a woman identified as ‘Susan’, who is the mother of ‘Jane’, Kelly’s former godmother who claims Kelly began sexually abusing her – and videotaping this abuse – when she was 14 Jane and her family had initially pushed back against investigators looking into allegations of abuse against Kelly in the early 2000s, and Susan even denied it was Jane on the tape during grand jury hearings at the time.  But after Jane testified about her own experiences last week, Susan backed up many of her claims — including that it was her in the video — while on the stand Monday. 

Susan said she lied to the jury about the video because “we were scared for our lives and we were scared.”  Susan also testified that she felt threatened during a meeting with Kelly and McDavid in the early 2000s, during which the pair allegedly told her she “had to get out of town immediately” and Kelly allegedly told her he asked: “Are you with us or not?”

“They were going to hurt us if we didn’t do what they told us to do,” Susan testified.  “We were scared … we packed our bags and left town.”