CHICAGO — The Kansas City man at the center of an alleged scheme to hide a sex tape showing R. Kelly in a threesome with a 14-year-old girl told a federal jury Friday that he only handed over a partial copy of the tape to Kelly’s associates because he “didn’t think they’d know the difference.”
Keith Murrell, 45, is a key witness for prosecutors, who are trying to prove that Kelly and his two co-defendants, Derrel McDavid and Milton “June” Brown, conspired to buy back incriminating tapes and hide Kelly’s sexual misconduct.
Testifying in a Missouri drawl, Murrell, who currently works at a Kansas City convenience store, said he met Kelly in the mid-1990s when he was in an R&B group named K-OS. After impressing Kelly with a song they sang into his voicemail, they were flown to Chicago to record with Kelly’s label in 1997, he said.
