On Tuesday, Charles Freeman told a wild tale to jurors about how R. Kelly and his associates allegedly agreed to pay him up to a million dollars in the early 2000s to hunt down videotapes of the R&B singer sexually assaulting a young teen girl.
Now, defense attorneys will get their chance to try to pick apart that account by Freeman, a man described by Kelly’s attorney in opening statements last week as a con man, extortionist and criminal.
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Freeman is set to retake the witness stand on Day 8 of Kelly’s federal trial in Chicago Wednesday morning for what promises to be a lively and lengthy cross-examination by Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, as well as attorneys for Kelly’s two co-defendants.
How Freeman, who was colorful and loose on direct examination, holds up under antagonistic questioning by the defense will be closely watched, particularly since he’s a key witness to the heart of the indictment alleging there was a conspiracy to cover up sexual misconduct by Kelly.
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Even U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber, 85, who has been on the federal bench for nearly 40 years, quipped on Tuesday he was “looking forward” to the defense questioning.
Kelly, 55, is charged with 13 counts of production of child pornography, conspiracy to produce child pornography and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Also on trial are Kelly’s former business manager, Derrel McDavid, and another associate, Milton “June” Brown, who, according to the indictment, schemed to buy back incriminating sex tapes that had been taken from Kelly’s collection and hide years of alleged sexual abuse of underage girls.
Freeman testified Tuesday that he was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years in exchange for getting at least one of those incriminating tapes back.
The plot as described by Freeman spanned almost a decade, and unfolded in cities from Chicago to Kansas City and Atlanta, at Kelly’s music studio, concert venues and even the singer’s sprawling Olympia Fields mansion, where Freeman said he was told to strip naked and get in a pool to prove he wasn’t wearing a wire.
Freeman is testifying under an immunity agreement from prosecutors. In one of his more memorable statements on the witness stand Tuesday, Freeman said he did not tell the police about the child pornography he’d recovered “because the police wasn’t going to pay me a million dollars.”
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
