NEW YORK – A former runner for R&B superstar R. Kelly told a federal jury in New York on Friday that he escorted young girls around on Kelly’s behalf and helped keep them confined to specific rooms at the singer’s suburban Chicago mansion more than a decade ago.
Anthony Navarro, who worked as a low-level assistant in Kelly’s music studio for more than two years beginning in 2007, was the first witness with experience in Kelly’s operation to testify in the singer’s racketeering trial in Brooklyn, which is now in its third day.
Navarro testified that while he was on tour with Kelly in November 2008, he saw Kelly’s associates hand out the singer’s phone number to people in the audience at shows and sometimes also at malls or restaurants.
Navarro also told the jury he was often tasked with shuttling Kelly’s girlfriends and occasionally other guests to the Olympia Fields mansion. Navarro was not allowed to speak to the girls as he drove them around or when they were in the house, he said.
And after he escorted a guest to her designated room, she was supposed to stay there, he testified.
“If they’re not where they’re supposed to be, you’d have to tell Rob or a manager,” he said. “They weren’t supposed to be wandering around, they weren’t supposed to leave the room.”
Prosecutors have alleged that Kelly had rules confining girls and young women to their rooms, sometimes for days at a time.
Once, while watching security footage at the Olympia Fields mansion, Navarro said he saw two people — one of whom he recognized as a previous guest at the house — run across the lawn after apparently having hopped the fence, he testified.
“They looked really young,” he said. “One girl in particular who had been there before looked really young. … I thought they were like mid-aged teenagers.”
When prosecutors displayed a photo of Jerhonda Johnson Pace, Navarro identified her as one of the guests, though he did not recall her name.
Pace testified on Wednesday and Thursday that Kelly had sex with her repeatedly when she was 16 after meeting him in Chicago. During their time together, his abuse and control of her escalated, she said, and he made her follow manipulative “rules” that prosecutors said are central to his alleged criminal scheme.
On direct examination by prosecutors Thursday, she said Kelly at least once made particular requests about her wardrobe when they had sex.
“He wanted me to put my hair up in pigtails and dress like a Girl Scout,” she told the jury, in steady, measured tones.
Working at Kelly’s lavish Olympia Fields mansion was a “weird time” in his life, Navarro said.
“The things you had to do was a bit uncomfortable,” he said. “… it was almost like The Twilight Zone. You went into the gate, it was just a different world.”
In the years since, Navarro has worked with Taylor Swift, Jay-Z, and Kanye West, he said, which were very different experiences.
“Most of the work (for them) is just professional work,” he said.
On questioning from Kelly’s attorneys, Navarro said that guests to Kelly’s mansion usually got their ID’s checked twice: once at the front gate and once at the front desk. And none of the guests he picked up seemed underage, he said.
Navarro also said he never witnessed Kelly having sex on the property or any physical abuse.
The guests’ requests for “most things,” including food, had to be approved by Kelly or a manager, Navarro said.
Sometimes, the girlfriends wanted to leave but could not, since they couldn’t get a ride, or because nobody could get ahold of Kelly, he testified.
But on cross-examination, Navarro conceded that if they wanted to leave they could have walked out the door.
And while some of the rooms he had to clean in Kelly’s mansion had terrible odors, Navarro said he never saw buckets of urine or feces.
Prosecutors allege Kelly, 54, was the head of a criminal enterprise that for decades leveraged his outsized fame to target young victims, groom them, abuse them, and manipulate or blackmail them to keep them under his control.
Kelly’s lawyers, meanwhile, told jurors in opening statements Wednesday that Kelly is the victim of scorned women who are lying to make a name for themselves or earn a payday.
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(Megan Crepeau reported from New York and Jason Meisner from Chicago.)
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