Just two days after pleading innocent to 21 felony counts of child pornography, Chicago police are investigating the discovery of another new videotape, allegedly featuring Kelly having sexual relations--possibly, according to MTV News, with underage girls.
Authorities in Orange County, Florida, say a local RV rental agency found four videotapes (all copies of the same video), inside a motor home that had been returned by men who claimed to have worked for the singer. (Kelly was arrested earlier this month in neighboring Polk County, where he rents a home.)
Police then passed the tapes over to Chicago police, who are investigating whether any of the people in the videos are underage.
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"I'm not going to comment at all on the content of the tapes. We are currently reviewing them to determine if there's any criminal activity," says Chicago police spokesman Dave Bayless. But, he adds, "some of the content we haven't seen before, some of it we have."
Orange County Sheriff's Captain Bernard Presha said the tape featured "four different scenes, and four different women...the women came into a room and performed sex acts. In at least one [scene], he was paying the person."
However, "we could not determine that a crime was committed in our jurisdiction, so we simply forwarded the videotapes to Chicago police," he added.
The tapes were handed over not long after Kelly's indictment and arrest in Florida June 5. Police in Polk County also said they served two search warrants on Kelly's home in Davenport, but they are not commenting on whether they found anything.
On Thursday, Kelly's spokesman dismissed these latest sex-tape claims, accusing prosecutors of trying to "prejudice the jury pool" with "misleading information."
"They were not taken from Robert's house which was searched by the Florida police," his rep told Launch.com. "They came from some other unknown source. So we have no idea what they are. And the fact that they are leaking this stuff to the press indicates that they don't feel confident enough to proceed through the normal process of justice."
Of course, Kelly's arraignment in Chicago Wednesday stemmed from just one tape--which allegedly shows the 35-year-old Grammy winner having sex with a 14-year-old girl. Singer and former Kelly colleague Sparkle has said the girl on the tape was her niece, whose name has been withheld because of her age. The girl and her family, however, deny she's on the tape.
A widely bootlegged videotape billed as R. Kelly Triple-X, circulated in major cities and on the Internet, contains footage of a man that's purportedly Kelly engaging in sex with several females. One of Kelly's former backup dancers has sued the singer for invasion of privacy, accusing Kelly of taping them without permission and then allowing the footage to be released publicly. (She is 33 and admits the sex was consensual.)
Since the tape surfaced in February, Kelly has repeatedly denied the underage sex allegations. His next court date is August 7.