R. Kelly's attorneys paint Lisa Van Allen as thief, extortionist

On cross-examination, R. Kelly's attorney Sam Adam Sr. is attempting to paint Lisa Van Allen as a liar and a thief.

Adam got Van Allen to admit that she had relationships with two men convicted for fraud in the federal courts. One - Damon Pryor - is the so-called "mystery witness" who flew into town at the last minute last week. He's the father of Van Allen's child. The other man - Yul Brown - is Van Allen's current partner.

Under questioning from Adam, Van Allen said that she knew Pryor had served time for fraud before they met in 2001. She also knew Brown was a fraudster, she said.

She laughed when Adam asked her if she only dated men with federal fraud convictions.
While they were together, Pryor told her "how you interject yourself into a case - that you go at the last minute" with important testimony, she said. Van Allen agreed with Adam that Pryor was a "conman," describing their relationship as "a mistake."

Adam pointed out that Van Allen had not come forward for nearly five-and-a-half years as a witness against Kelly, suggesting a link between Pryor's advice and her late emergence as a witness.

But Van Allen denied telling Pryor that the tape at the center of the case was a fake, or that she had told him she planned to extort cash from Kelly. She denied telling a Minnesota woman the same thing, also denying that she knew two men called "Chuck and Keith" had staged the tape at the center of the case to get money from Kelly.

The Minnesota woman, Lena Prado, has not been mentioned in court before, but Van Allen said she had known her since 1999. Van Allen denied having a sexual relationship with Prado.
Van Allen did admit to stealing Kelly's $20,000 Rolex from his hotel room. Asked why she had never admitted stealing the watch until today, she said, "That's not what (R. Kelly's) on trial for."

She acknowledged that her current partner, Brown, had been sentenced to probation for a weapons conviction just two weeks after she eventually approached prosecutors, offering to testify against Kelly. But she denied that prosecutors had told her they "needed" her to take the stand. Brown had faced up to 22 years for possessing an AK-47 machine gun, Adam said.

The other molester is finally in town....

Lisa Van Allen -- who allegedly will testify she was in a threesome with R. Kelly and an underage girl -- arrived at the Cook County Criminal Courthouse this morning at 8:50 a.m. It is considered likely she will testify today. They need to escort her right into a cell if you ask me

Van Allen was accompanied by Yul Brown, 38, who says he is her fiance. The couple held hands as they strolled southbound down California Ave., accompanied by a sheriff's deputy. Then they walked up the front steps of the courthouse.

Van Allen, who might testify today after her testimony was put off twice, is wearing a black dress. Her fiance Brown is wearing a green suit.

Pitted against each other as witnesses, Lisa Van Allen and Damon Pryor (Kelly's surprise defense witness) share a past — and a child.

Van Allen, 27, is the prosecution’s star witness who is expected testify she had a three-way sexual encounter with R. Kelly and the underage girl who allegedly appears in a sex video with the singer.

Van Allen, who lives in the Atlanta area, at one time possessed another sex videotape featuring Kelly, sources previously told the Sun-Times. A Kelly aide paid her to get it back, sources said. The tape showed Van Allen, the underage girl, and Kelly engaged in sex acts, a source said.

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- A prosecution witness used images of a lower back mole Thursday to link R. Kelly to a sex tape at the center of the R&B star's child pornography trial.

R. Kelly denies that he was the man featured on a videotape having sex with an underage girl.

The potentially damaging testimony came a week after the singer's own attorneys brought up the mole in their opening statements. A defense attorney argued then that because the man in the graphic 27-minute tape did not have a mole, that man could not be Kelly.

But on Thursday, video forensics expert Grant Fredericks froze several frames of the sex tape where a dark spot was visible on the man's back.For comparison, Fredericks showed the jury a still photo taken of Kelly's back after his arrest in 2002, revealing a dark, fingernail-sized mole.

"There is a mark on the man's back in the exact same position," Fredericks said, referring to the tape.
Kelly and his attorneys looked grim and dejected during the expert's testimony, but prosecutors looked pleased, appearing to smile as they sat at their courtroom table. Watch how guilt or innocence could come down to a mole »
Defense attorney Ed Genson grilled Fredericks in cross-examination, suggesting that the spot on the man's back in the video wasn't in the same place as the mole on Kelly's lower back.


At another point, Genson also said that a spot in the video faded in and out of view and could have been a technical imperfection on the tape.

Kelly, 41, is charged with child pornography for allegedly videotaping himself having sex with a girl who prosecutors say was as young as 13. He has pleaded not guilty and faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
In testimony earlier in the day, an FBI forensic expert testified that the male and female in a sex tape at the heart of the case weren't computer-generated or altered.

In more than an hour of highly technical analysis, George Skaluba said the video appears to depict "real people in a real environment."

The defense maintains that Kelly is not the man in the video and has repeatedly suggested that his likeness could have been computer-generated onto the 27-minute tape. The alleged victim, now 23, also has denied that she is on the video.

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