Ex-manager says R Kelly thought Aaliyah, 15, was pregnant with his baby

R&B artist R Kelly was minutes from taking the stage at a concert in 1994 when he got some unsettling news: A teenage girl might be carrying his child, one of the entertainer’s former tour managers testified Friday.

The girl was Aaliyah, one of the most celebrated music stars of the 1990s. Her marriage to Kelly prompted the first significant scrutiny of his encounters with underage girls.

“Aaliyah’s in trouble, man,” the manager, Demetrius Smith, recalled Kelly telling him during the third day of the singer’s trial. “We need to get home.”

Kelly’s accountant, Smith said, suggested a complex scheme: To avoid potential prosecution for statutory rape, Kelly, who was 27, could marry the young recording artist.

“I told him that he couldn’t marry Aaliyah. She was too young,” Smith testified, adding that, “he asked me whose side I was on.”

In the days that followed, Smith said, Kelly and his inner circle carried out the plot. Smith, 65, said he bribed an Illinois government employee to obtain a fake ID for Aaliyah, who was 15 at the time. The group went to a hotel and called around to find a minister, who married the couple there.

The details of the marriage came at the end of the opening week of Kelly’s long-awaited criminal trial in US District Court in Brooklyn. He faces one count of racketeering and eight counts of violating the Mann Act, which prohibits transporting people across state lines for the purpose of prostitution.

Kelly, 54, has denied all of the accusations.

On Friday, Smith, who said he had stopped working for Kelly shortly after the marriage scheme was concocted, outlined Kelly and Aaliyah’s time together. He described their first meeting at her family home in Michigan in 1992, how the relationship continued through the recording and release of her debut album and then the evening on tour that led to their illegal union.

Smith testified that on the night in 1994 that preceded the illicit marriage, Kelly asked him to arrange an unplanned, round-trip flight to Illinois because of an issue related to Aaliyah.

Smith said that he was surprised by what he viewed as an unusual request — coming midway through a tour and minutes before Kelly was to take the stage — and that he suggested contacting Barry Hankerson, Kelly’s manager and Aaliyah’s uncle. Hankerson had introduced the two.

But Kelly said it “was deeper than that” and not to call Hankerson, Smith said.

On the flight, Smith testified, Kelly was quiet and cried at one point. Eventually, Smith added, the full story was revealed: “‘Aaliyah, man. She thinks she’s pregnant,’” Smith recalled Kelly telling him. “It was a shock.”

Smith said that he, Aaliyah, Kelly and Kelly’s accountant firmed up the details of their plan at a Sheraton hotel in the Chicago suburbs. Smith, who said he had disagreed with the plot but feared being shut out of conversations, testified that he told the others that he knew an employee at a nearby government office who he believed would be receptive to a $500 bribe.

Smith said he and Aaliyah drove to the office, and as Kelly waited in the car, the group obtained the ID that was used to get the marriage license.

Smith will continue his testimony, including under cross-examination by Kelly’s lawyers, when the trial resumes Monday.

Potentially criminal activity that dates to the early 1990s would normally fall outside the statute of limitations. But the racketeering charge, which presents Kelly as the ringleader of a decadeslong, criminal scheme to recruit women and underage girls for sex, allows prosecutors to introduce evidence from any time within when the alleged conspiracy occurred.

Other witnesses are expected to testify about Kelly and Aaliyah’s interactions. He began working with her around 1992, when she was 12, prosecutors said this week, and initiated a sexual relationship with her shortly after that.

One witness is expected to testify that she observed their sexual contact, around the time Aaliyah was 13. And prosecutors say a second woman, who is one of the accusers at the center of the case against Kelly, will tell jurors he once admitted to her that he married Aaliyah because he believed she was pregnant and was seeking legal protection against her possible testimony.

Aaliyah, whose full name was Aaliyah Dana Haughton, died in 2001 in a plane crash at 22. She has been identified in court documents as Jane Doe No 1. Smith, who first met Kelly in 1985, said he had cause for concern early on. Kelly and Aaliyah were often alone together at his recording studio and at his apartment, Smith said, sometimes for up to an hour. At first, Smith said, it appeared to be related to music, and he gave it little thought.

But as the weeks and months passed, Smith said, some of the interactions made him uneasy.

“At times, I was concerned,” he testified. On at least one occasion, Smith said, their behaviour had prompted him to ask, “Robert, you ain’t messing with Aaliyah?”

He said he meant “flirting, being flirtatious. Seducing her.”

Kelly’s marriage to Aaliyah brought attention to his relationships and dealings with women more than two decades ago after Vibe magazine reported on the marriage license, which listed her age as 18.

“This was, of course, a huge problem for him,” Maria Cruz Melendez, one of the prosecutors, said during an opening statement. “If she was pregnant, that meant there would be questions: At the very top of that list of questions — who is the father of that baby?”

Aaliyah was 14 when she released her 1994 debut album, “Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number,” which Kelly produced. Her music, which had long been unavailable on streaming platforms amid legal disputes, was released Friday.

Outside the jury’s presence Friday, Smith said he had intended to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when called to testify.

“I don’t want to be here, period,” he told Judge Ann Donnelly, adding that he was uncomfortable with discussing Aaliyah in connection with Kelly.

But Smith was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony, and Donnelly told him he could face penalties if he did not cooperate. After consulting with his lawyer, he agreed to testify.

Jurors had already heard several graphic accounts, including from the first of the singer’s accusers to testify against him in the decades of allegations he has faced and a longtime doctor who gave credence to prosecutors’ claims that Kelly had knowingly exposed sexual partners to herpes.

Even as Kelly’s sexual conduct takes centre stage, the actions of those in his inner circle — managers, bodyguards, drivers and members of his entourage, among others — will be critical to the jury’s verdict.

To win a conviction on the racketeering charge, prosecutors must prove the existence of a criminal enterprise that extends beyond Kelly.

An initial window into how the government intends to make that case came Friday, when one of Kelly’s former employees took the witness stand.

The employee, Anthony Navarro, testified that he was an assistant at Kelly’s recording studio in the Chicago area in the 2000s. He said he had worked with other music superstars over the years, but that his experience with Kelly was markedly different.

“It was almost like 'The Twilight Zone,’” Navarro told jurors. “You went into the gate and it was a different world.”

In his role as Kelly’s assistant, Navarro said, he was often responsible for errands that seemed highly personal — driving the entertainer’s girlfriends around and picking up his medication. It was unusual, he testified, compared with his later experiences in the music industry and a “hard time” for him.

“The things that you had to do was just a bit uncomfortable,” Navarro, who was in his early 20s when he worked for Kelly, told the jury. “The music and production stuff was really good. All the other stuff was kind of strange.”