R. Kelly’s former tour manager testified Friday about how the singer decided to marry 15-year-old singing sensation Aaliyah after finding out she was pregnant and how he bribed a public employee with $500 to get her a fake ID so the wedding could happen.
Demetrius Smith took the stand to discuss the inappropriate relationship that then-27-year old Kelly had with the teen singer around 1994, when they were wed.
“I thought they were kind of too friendly,” said Smith adding that he was concerned that Kelly was “seducing” Aaliyah, who he worked with and helped write songs for.
When Kelly told Smith there was nothing inappropriate going on between him and Aaliyh, Smith said, he believed him.
That began to change in August 1994, when Kelly revealed to Smith that Aaliyah was pregnant.
“Aaliyah’s in trouble man. We gotta get home,” Smith recalled Kelly saying as he took the stage at a concert in Orlando.
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“Aaliyah man, she thinks she pregnant,” the crying singer added on the plane back to Chicago that night.
Smith noted that Kelly did not tell him who the father was.
From there, a plan was hatched to have Kelly and Aaliyah, whose full name is Aaliyah Haughton, get married. But Aaliyah needed ID that said she was 18.
Smith, who said he did not approve of the marriage due to Aaliyah’s age, still told Kelly he could procure her a fake ID because he wanted to remain in the singer’s good graces.
He went into a public assistance office in Chicago and approached a woman he didn’t know and offered the cash bribe.
“Hey, want to make some money?” he asked her, offering her $500 to make Aaliyah the fake ID.
“She took the money… Aaliyah came in. She went and took the ID and we left.”
Kelly and Aaliyah were married in a small ceremony in a hotel room in Aug. 1994. The marriage was later annulled.
Aaliyah died in 2001 in a plane crash in the Bahamas.
Smith’s testimony, which is set to continue Monday, was often contentious, as the feds had to get a subpoena to get him to testify. Smith wanted to plead the Fifth Amendment because he feared he’d incriminate himself. Prosecutors offered him immunity.
“I feel like I’m on trial for Aaliyah. S–t,” Smith said at one point.
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But the testimony was key to proving the first racketeering act that prosecutors made in the indictment against Kelly: that he and his posse bribed a public officer to make Aaliyah a fake ID.
Earlier in the day, another former employee for Kelly testified that working for the singer was far stranger than his other gigs with artists like Kanye, Jay-Z and Taylor Swift.
“It was almost like the Twilight Zone,” said Anthony Navarro, who worked for Kelly during 2008 and 2009 at his mansion in the Chicago suburbs.
“Once you went into the gate… It’s just a strange place,” Navarro testified at Kelly’s trial on sex trafficking charges in Brooklyn Federal Court.
“It was a weird time for me. The things that you had to do was just a bit uncomfortable,” he said.
As a music production worker and assistant, he handled many chores around Kelly’s massive complex in Olympia Fields, Ill. He said he drove young women to and from the airport, cleaned the house and picked up food.
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Girls staying in the mansion would call to Navarro in the studio for food. Navarro said that before he could buy their food, he had to get permission from Kelly or one of his managers.
On top of that, he was not allowed to speak to any girls that Kelly had as guests, said Navarro, who testified under a subpoena from federal prosecutors.
“That’s one of Rob’s rules for us,” he said. “They had to get permission to do most things.”
The girls also had to remain where Kelly wanted them in the house, Navarro testified.
“The general rule was, if they’re not where they’re supposed to be, you’d have to call Rob or a manager,” he said.
Smith testified during what is expected to be the month-long trial of the 54-year-old “I Believe I Can Fly” singer, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly. Smith was expected to continue testifying on Monday.
Kelly is accused of running an enterprise that trafficked women and girls for illegal sexual activity. He is also charged with knowingly giving herpes to some of his victims, which is a crime in some states.
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