R. Kelly is locked up for the next 30 years, and judging by the evidence against him in his trial this August, the singer may never get out of prison.
The government is looking to admit a mountain of evidence against R. Kelly, and his co-defendants, and former managers, Derrel McDavid and Milton Brown.
All three men are charged with conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and receiving child pornography in the form of videos.
From 1996 to 2001, R. Kelly had sex with girls as young as 13 years old, videotaped on a camcorder, and then transferred them to VHS tapes to watch his perverted actions.
Prosecutors say R. Kelly kept dozens of videotapes behind a false wall at his George Street house in Chicago. Whenever he traveled, R. Kelly would pack the tapes in a gym bag, which he carried with him everywhere he went.
A woman only identified as “Individual D” with whom R. Kelly liked to have threesomes went through the bag and stole one of the videotapes from the singer around 2001.
Derrel McDavid, an unidentified private investigator and another associate of R. Kelly known as “Individual B,” working on behalf of the singer, sprung into action on behalf of the singer to retrieve the tape.
R. Kelly agreed to pay Individual D $100,000 and Individual B $1 million to return the tape and agree that no copies were made.
But Individual D had already given the videotape to a man in Georgia. Individual B went to Georgia and retrieved the tape in question.
McDavid and the private investigator met Individual B at a hotel room in Kansas City, where a new problem arose for R. Kelly – Individual B also made copies of the videotape.
R. Kelly made monthly payments to Individual B for almost ten years, although he never received the total $1 million the singer promised.
R. Kelly also told Individual B he would be “dead” if more copies of the tapes emerged.
Throughout the years, Derrel McDavid and Milton Brown played cat and mouse and acted on behalf of R. Kelly to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to multiple people who had copies of the videos.
R. Kelly, his former managers, lawyers, and other individuals also forced the victims to take numerous polygraph tests to prove they did not have copies and sometimes threatened violence.
In 2002, R. Kelly was charged with 21 counts of making child sexual abuse videos after a copy of one of the videos was sent anonymously to the Chicago Sun-Times.
But his scar tactics were enough to force the victim and her family to lie under oath to investigators and leave town, eventually leading to R. Kelly’s acquittal of child porn charges in 2008 after prosecutors could not prove the identities of the man and girl in the sex tape.
The girl’s mother is expected to testify during R. Kelly’s upcoming trial.
Three different polygraphers will also take the stand, and the government has also retrieved records from the private investigator’s business.
Prosecutors also have falsified documents, travel and credit card records, and bank documents they will present as evidence against R. Kelly, Derrel McDavid, and Milton Brown.
But the most damning evidence will be three videos the Feds have in their possession showing R. Kelly having sex with four different minors.