R. Kelly: Trapped in the Courtroom
The ugly word in the Chicago music world was that, yeah, Kells fooled with that girl, but he did it with her family’s knowledge. As one radio host put it, “They pimped her out.” The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, the state’s child-welfare agency, investigated the allegations but ran into the same wall of silence as the police.
One relative who did cooperate was Sparkle. And now she was here to air the family’s dirty laundry. Straight from Vegas, she diva’d it up for the witness stand: hair pulled taut, hoop earrings, spike heels, miniskirt and—in what may have been a first for 26th and California—her trademark Swarovski crystal, glittering below her left eye, like a tear.
It was a family with big musical ambitions, she explained. Along with three cousins, Reshona was a member of 4 the Cause, which had a hit in Germany with a cover of “Stand by Me.” Sparkle had sung backup on Aaliyah’s
Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number. In late 1997, she was recording her debut album with Kelly.
One evening, at the end of a session, Sparkle asked Reshona’s parents, Greg and Valerie, to bring the girl down to the studio, “because I wanted him to hear her rap.”
Kelly had written Sparkle’s signature song, “Be Careful.” Her debut on Kelly’s label did well enough, but she wanted to work with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Kelly didn’t appreciate rivals. Sparkle put out one poorly received follow-up, on Motown, then disappeared from the industry.
This turncoat required the spine-removal tactics of a veteran interrogator. Edward Genson, Kelly’s lead attorney, stood up. Genson began his career as a Clarence Darrow wannabe but found his calling when he helped Jimmy “the Bomber” Catuara, an Outfit racketeer, beat a federal fraud charge. That made him the Mob’s man at 26th and Cal. Recently, Genson defended press baron Conrad Black, who is now doing time in a federal prison. He needed this win to justify his $700-an-hour fee. Since he suffers from dystonia, a neurological disorder, Genson navigates the courthouse on a motorized scooter. But he’s strong enough to limp to a lectern. It wins the jury’s sympathy, he once said.
Spreading out his papers like a conductor with his sheet music, Genson accused Sparkle of fabricating the tape with Kelly’s ex-manager, Barry Hankerson, as a shakedown scheme. This was a variation on the
Little Man defense, trotted out the day before: Sam Jr. had suggested that a special-effects wizard might have morphed Kelly’s head into the tape, in the same fashion that Marlon Wayans’s head was grafted onto a midget. He was nearly laughed onto California.
“You have no idea if that tape was put together from tapes of old footage, tapes of other people, in order to make money off Robert, do you?” Genson asked.
“Sir, that’s Robert and Reshona on that tape,” Sparkle replied. “I know my family.”“
You know and believe that your niece had Robert give her money to have sex?” Genson prodded.
“Just like he made her do. She’s a robot on this tape.”
“You know that your niece is taking money for sex?”
“I know who made the tape,” Sparkle said. “Robert made the tape.”
“He passed her money—”
“Like a prostitute!” Sparkle wailed.
After the verdict, Sparkle told
Blender that her family had covered up for Kelly to preserve its connection to a music-industry big shot. But they had more personal motives, too. “They were humiliated,” she said.
Greg Landfair’s career benefitted from his association with Kelly. Greg played guitar on four albums—
R.,
TP-2.com,
Chocolate Factory and
TP.3 Reloaded—two of which came out after Kelly was charged with possession of child pornography.
Sparkle believes “without a doubt” that the Landfairs received money from Kelly and says that Reshona, now 23, has become a “fixture” at Kelly’s suburban compound, a hip-hop Playboy mansion with a shark tank, game room, theater, recording studio and an indoor pool.
“I set up everything with my family, in hopes that R. Kelly would help us musically,” Sparkle said.
Soon after meeting Kelly, Reshona was hanging out at Trax studios, telling Sparkle that her mother had dropped her off or her father was playing guitar. When Kelly’s entourage related concerns of an affair, Sparkle confronted Reshona’s mother.
“I told my sister, ‘Look, Val, you’ve got to keep an eye on her, because there are rumors,’” Sparkle said. “She would say to me, ‘He would never do anything like that. He’s her godfather.’”
The tape divided a family that had once gathered for Sunday dinners. After Sparkle was shown a copy of the tape in 2001 by an associate of a Chicago personal-injury lawyer, she tried to persuade her siblings to watch it as well. Only her brother Bennie—who also testified for the prosecution—agreed. Greg and Valerie refused. They no longer speak to Sparkle. Neither does Reshona. Sparkle last saw her niece two years ago, at the home of the girl’s grandparents. Reshona looked away, put her head down and walked out the door.
Before his trial, Kelly had always been able to buy his way out of teenage-sex lawsuits, at up to $250,000 a girl, according to press reports. His weakness, and his willingness to settle, created an R. Kelly extortion industry. Lisa Van Allen, whatever the truth of her claim to sex with Kelly, was part of it.
On the day Van Allen was scheduled to testify, spectators bickered over seats. They went home frustrated. Instead of salacious tales from Kelly’s seraglio, they heard … a forensic video expert. Grant Fredericks identified 17 frames in which Kelly’s mole was visible. Kelly’s lawyers looked like they’d been lined up against an adobe wall. “We thought we were getting the dessert, but we got the meat,” a reporter whispered. “This could be the day that convicts him.”
By quarter to 7, the sex-chat crowd had gone home. Only Jerhonda Johnson and her Best Friend for the Trial, Keyonia Jones, remained in the courtroom, slumped against each other for support. All they ever got from Kelly was a smile and a curt nod. Those were real fans.