Are felons and females the new power couples for 2008? first its T.I. and Tiny Papoose and Remy Ma now its Lisa "Jazzybelle" Van Allen Yul "AK-47" Brown and Damon "Fake I.D." Pryor. Here's the recap from Monday's testimony and courtroom quotes.
LISA "JAZZYBELLE" VAN ALLEN
As for her reasoning for coming forward: "It was the right thing to do." She was also given state and federal immunity for testifying in the case, Van Allen said.
Van Allen admitted on the witness stand that she had been in jail for a month after a fight with another woman when she was 19. She also acknowledged she spent two days in jail for a domestic battery charge in 2006 after finding her boyfriend with another woman.
Van Allen testified she met Kelly while working as an extra in his "Home Alone" video in 1997. He allegedly invited her to his on-set trailer, where the two talked for a bit and then had sex, she said.
She says Kelly asked if her mother would mind if she came to Chicago. When Van Allen promised it wouldn't be a problem, the two exchanged phone numbers.
After a few short visits, Van Allen said she moved to Chicago to be with Kelly, who was married. She said she joined him on a two-month concert tour, in which he would "pick" her from the audience each night and pull her up on stage to have simulated sex with him.
"I traveled with him," Van Allen said of their relationship. "We went to the mall, movies, things like that."
Kelly introduced her to the alleged victim in late 1998 and told her that the girl was 16, Van Allen testified. On the night they met, Kelly brought them to his log cabin-themed basement, set up a video camera and recorded a three-way sexual encounter, she said.
A year later, Kelly brought the teens back to his house and filmed them having group sex on a futon mattress placed on Kelly's indoor basketball court, she said. Van Allen wept as she testified that during the filming she began crying and the singer angrily accused her of ruining the recording.
"He got upset," she said, wiping away tears. "He said he couldn't watch that. He couldn't do anything with me crying."
Van Allen testified she sometimes would see the alleged victim at Kelly's recording studio with her parents or among the singer's entourage. She said they had a third three-way sexual encounter in 2000, but it was not recorded.
The last encounter between the three took place in 2000 in Kelly's trailer at the video shoot for "A Woman's Threat" in Chicago, she testified.
She said Kelly recorded the encounter, as well, though it was interrupted when someone came knocking on the trailer door.
"[The alleged victim] had to run into the bathroom naked" because Kelly did not want her to be seen, Van Allen said.
By 2001, Van Allen said, she returned to Atlanta but remained in contact with Kelly. When he traveled to Georgia later that year, they spent the weekend shopping and having sex, she said. She also admitted stealing a diamond watch from him valued at $20,000 during the visit.
"Before I ended up leaving, I took a Rolex watch from him," she said.
Van Allen added that she recognized the room where the encounter between the alleged victim and Kelly took place as the log cabin-themed room. Van Allen testified that Kelly kept all of his tapes with him at all times and put them in a black duffel bag.
"If he was in the studio, it was in the studio with him. If he went to Hoops [basketball court], it went to Hoops with him," she said. "The bag would follow him."
Van Allen testified she took the tapes from the singer's duffel bag without his knowledge.
"He carried [the bag] everywhere with him," she said. "Wherever he was at, the bag would follow."
After telling Kelly she took the tape, the singer flew her to Chicago and put her up in a hotel near his Olympia Fields mansion, Van Allen said. She said she told him she didn't have the video with her and he offered to pay her $250,000 to secure it.
"He tried to offer me money," she said. "I did not extort him."
Van Allen said she knew Kelly had been indicted in June 2002 for a sex tape featuring the Oak Park teen. But she says she kept quiet because she was preoccupied with the birth of her first child.
"I had just had my daughter," she said. "My mind was not on getting involved."
Lisa Van Allen, 27, detailed three-way sexual encounters with the singer and the alleged victim. But Van Allen didn't leave the stand before defense attorneys ruthlessly challenged her credibility by calling her a liar and asking her if she demanded $350,000 to change her story
She further bolstered the charges against Kelly by telling the jury that the Grammy Award winner made a similar sex tape with herself and the alleged victim in late 1998. Van Allen testified that video, which she said was filmed in the same location as the one at the center of the trial, could not be entered into evidence because she sold it to the singer's business manager for $20,000 last year.
As she ran her hand over her small baby bump, Van Allen denied she had blackmailed her former boyfriend. Rather, she described the payment as a gratuity for helping him recover the tape.
"I didn't try to extort anyone," she said
YUL "AK-47" BROWN
Yul Brown - is Van Allen's current partner.
A few weeks before the meeting, Brown had been arrested on charges of drug possession and illegally possessing an AK-47 assault rifle. He faced up to 22 years in prison, but received probation. The defense suggested Cook County prosecutors interceded on Brown's behalf, though Van Allen said she had no knowledge of such an intervention.
A Cook County state's attorney spokeswoman would not comment, citing a gag order placed upon parties in the case.
In a telephone interview after his fiance's testimony, Brown denied receiving any favors because of this case.
"I paid for a great attorney," he said. "Whether I had a gun charge or not it had nothing to with [Van Allen's] testimony. Now that people know the truth, that's all we're really concerned about."
DAMON "Fake I.D." PRYOR
Damon Pryor - is the so-called "mystery witness" who flew into town at the last minute last week. He's the father of Van Allen's child.
Among the most damning of those witnesses could be Van Allen's ex-boyfriend, Damon Pryor, a 33-year-old Georgia man who came forward last week claiming he had information that could undermine her testimony.
Pryor apparently gave a deposition Thursday in which he said Van Allen and two others plotted to blackmail Kelly with the sex tape. He also told attorneys that he and Van Allen—who share a 5-year-old daughter—watched the sex tape and Van Allen told him that the male participant wasn't Kelly.
He also tried to interject himself into the federal child molestation trial of cult leader Malachi York in 2004, but was not allowed to testify. The defense contends that he told Van Allen the best way to make a splash in a high-profile case was to wait until the last minute and then come forward with claims of critical information.
Van Allen disputed the accusation, saying Pryor was a liar. When the defense suggested she thought enough of him to give birth to his child, Van Allen rolled her eyes.
"Yes," she said. "My mistake."
Van Allen denied telling Pryor that the tape at the center of the case was a fake, or that she had told him she planned to extort cash from Kelly. She denied telling a Minnesota woman the same thing, also denying that she knew two men called "Chuck and Keith" had staged the tape at the center of the case to get money from Kelly.
The Minnesota woman, Lena Prado, has not been mentioned in court before, but Van Allen said she had known her since 1999. Van Allen denied having a sexual relationship with Prado.
DEFENSE
Adam asked Van Allen, 27, who had said earlier that she came forward because it was "the right thing to do" why she didn't do so much earlier, like in 2002 when Kelly was first charged.
"I was young," Van Allen said.
"You were younger yesterday, that's not the question," Adam responded.
The questioning then turned to Van Allen's skills in choosing a mate. Turns out both her former boyfriend, defense witness Damon Pryor, and her fiance, Yul Brown, were convicted on federal fraud charges.
"What, do you have some thing where guys have to have some federal fraud charge before you are interested in them?" Adam quipped.
Many in the courtroom, including Van Allen, laughed.
"I see you laughing, is that funny?" Adam asked. "No," Van Allen responded.
Adam went on to ask Van Allen whether she told Pryor, a defense witness, that the sex tape at the heart of the case was part of a scheme with two associates to extort money from Kelly. Her part in the plan, Adam said, was to go to Kelly and arrange for payment.
Van Allen denied the allegations.
Kelly's team contends Van Allen tried to extort money from Kelly this month during a meeting with defense attorney Sam Adam Jr., who traveled to Atlanta to interview her upon learning that she was planning to testify for the prosecution and hinted she would switch her story for the right price. According to the defense, Brown said the couple had a $350,000 book deal in the works. Van Allen went on to say that she knew nothing of accusations that Brown tried to broker a deal with Adam Jr., saying that "Kelly knows what he has to do to make this right."
Under intense questioning during cross-examination, Van Allen said she and Brown told Adam they would only tell the truth.
"The truth is Robert Kelly is a pedophile," she said. "So you don't want the truth."
Under questioning from Adam, Van Allen said that she knew Pryor had served time for fraud before they met in 2001. She also knew Brown was a fraudster, she said.
Adam pointed out that Van Allen had not come forward for nearly five-and-a-half years as a witness against Kelly, suggesting a link between Pryor's advice and her late emergence as a witness.
PROSECUTION
She acknowledged that her current partner, Brown, had been sentenced to probation for a weapons conviction just two weeks after she eventually approached prosecutors, offering to testify against Kelly. But she denied that prosecutors had told her they "needed" her to take the stand. Brown had faced up to 22 years for possessing an AK-47 machine gun, Adam said.
Also Monday morning, the judge denied a request from Assistant Cook County State's Atty. Shauna Boliker to exclude the testimony of a defense witness from the trial. The witness, Damon Pryor, is a former boyfriend of Van Allen and the father of her 5-year-old child. He was flown in last week as a last-minute witness, and his testimony could undermine some of Van Allen's testimony today.
JUDGE GAUGHAN
Judge Vincent Gaughan admonished the witness, Lisa Van Allen, that some of her testimony could be self-incriminating, but did not specify what he was referring to.
"Whether Mr. Pryor is credible, that is up for the jury to decide," Gaughan said
SOURCE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, CHICAGO SUN TIMES
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