For more than a year, the singer R. Kelly has been awaiting trial on federal sexual abuse charges, facing the prospect of watching his accusers and former sexual partners testify against him.
Then, in the early morning on June 11, one of those potential witnesses in Florida woke up to find the car in her driveway ablaze in flames.
On Wednesday, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said the burning of the car was intentional, as they announced the arrests of three people — Donnell Russell, Michael Williams and Richard Arline, Jr. — who were accused of trying to intimidate or bribe Mr. Kelly’s accusers.
Law enforcement officials have long suspected Mr. Kelly of interfering in criminal investigations. He was famously acquitted at a 2008 trial in Chicago on child pornography charges after a key witness declined to testify, and federal prosecutors in Chicago charged him last year with a conspiracy to intimidate witnesses and conceal evidence before that trial.
The criminal complaints announced on Wednesday did not say whether Mr. Kelly authorized any of the threats. But prosecutors accused his three associates of trying to silence potential government witnesses through harassment.
The threats targeted two of Mr. Kelly’s accusers, according to a person familiar with the investigation. Their names were not made public in the court filings.
One of Mr. Kelly’s accusers received an offer of $500,000 to buy her silence, though no money was ultimately exchanged, the complaint said.
Another woman, who had filed a lawsuit against Mr. Kelly in 2018, was threatened with the public release of sexually explicit photographs that she had previously sent to Mr. Kelly, according to prosecutors.
Mr. Russell and Mr. Arline are friends of Mr. Kelly, while Mr. Williams is the relative of a former publicist for Mr. Kelly, prosecutors said.
A lawyer for Mr. Russell declined to comment. Lawyers for the other two could not immediately be identified.
Thomas A. Farinella, a lawyer for Mr. Kelly, said, “R. Kelly had nothing to do with these alleged acts by these people.”
The new arrests add to the government’s existing case against Mr. Kelly, who has been in custody at a jail in Chicago since his arrest last summer. He faces federal charges related to the sexual abuse of minors in two separate cases — one in Chicago, the other in Brooklyn.
The indictment in Brooklyn accuses Mr. Kelly of leading a decades-long operation to illegally exploit women and girls for his own sexual gratification. Mr. Kelly faces nine criminal counts, including racketeering — a charge that has been commonly used against mob bosses.
Prosecutors have said Mr. Kelly sexually abused minors and produced child pornography, and they listed six unidentified women as his victims. To keep the women and girls under his control, he also engaged in kidnapping, blackmail and extortion, according to the indictment.
Mr. Kelly has pleaded not guilty to the charges. He is scheduled to be tried first in New York, with jury selection beginning on Sept. 29. The date is likely to be postponed if the coronavirus pandemic prevents in-person trials this fall.
Now, prosecutors say Mr. Kelly’s associates were trying to sway potential witnesses ahead of trial. They charged Mr. Williams, 37, with setting fire to an S.U.V. parked in the driveway of one of Mr. Kelly’s accusers in Kissimmee, Fla., at around 3 a.m. on June 11.
The arson described in the criminal complaint matched the description written in an Instagram post in June by Azriel Clary, a former girlfriend of Mr. Kelly, who released a video of the fire and photos of a burned S.U.V. in her driveway.
Ms. Clary initially defended her relationship with Mr. Kelly in a television interview last year after his arrest, saying she was in love with him. But she changed course in January, accusing Mr. Kelly in a videotaped interview of beating and brainwashing her.
The criminal complaint said that the woman whose car had been burned began cooperating with the government in January and has publicly accused Mr. Kelly of abuse. Ms. Clary did not respond to a request for comment.
After the arson, investigators obtained a search warrant for records of anyone who had used Google to search for the woman’s address close to the time of the incident. The records led to Mr. Williams, a family member of a former publicist to Mr. Kelly.
Hours before the arson, cellphone location data showed that Mr. Williams had driven from his home in Valdosta, Ga., to the address in Kissimmee, Fla., where the car was burned, prosecutors said.
A search of Mr. Williams’s Google accounts found that he had visited several websites about women who had made allegations against Mr. Kelly.
Days before the arson, he searched for “countries that don’t have extradition with the united states” and “case law for tampering with a witness,” the criminal complaint said.
Ms. Clary also appears to be the target of the alleged bribes by a different associate of Mr. Kelly.
Prosecutors said Mr. Arline, 31, offered money to a woman who had publicly claimed in a television interview in March 2019 that she did not have sex with Mr. Kelly when she was 17 years old. That description matches Ms. Clary.
In May, the woman received a text message that a “cousin” of Mr. Kelly was trying to reach her to pay for her silence. The woman reported the message to law enforcement officials, who directed her to continue the conversation.
In later phone calls, Mr. Arline proposed paying $500,000 to the woman if she agreed to stop cooperating with the government, prosecutors said. Mr. Arline claimed during a call to have spoken to Mr. Kelly while he was in jail.
“Your story,” Mr. Arline told her, according to the complaint, “they just want that to disappear.”
The plan eventually fell apart, and Mr. Arline never paid the woman.
In a separate scheme, Mr. Russell, 45, is accused of threatening a different woman who had sued Mr. Kelly in 2018. Using an alias, he sent her text messages with sexually explicit photographs of her, threatening to publish the photos and her sexual history if she did not withdraw her lawsuit, according to prosecutors.
Mr. Russell’s LinkedIn profile lists him as the chief executive of an entertainment industry platform in Chicago. He described himself in video interviews on YouTube this year as having been a friend of Mr. Kelly for three decades, prosecutors said.
Mr. Arline was arrested in Illinois and has been released on $10,000 bond. Mr. Williams was arrested in Florida and remains in custody. Mr. Russell was arrested in California and is expected to have an initial hearing by phone on Thursday.
Although Mr. Kelly’s music career has been dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct for more than two decades, he faced renewed scrutiny after several women spoke out publicly in a Lifetime documentary called “Surviving R. Kelly.”
After the documentary aired last year, prosecutors in Illinois, New York and Minnesota filed criminal charges against the singer.
Mr. Kelly’s lawyers have sought to discredit his accusers, questioning their memories and calling them “disgruntled groupies.”
Source: Music - nytimes.com
