An associate of R. Kelly took a plea deal on Monday for attempting to silence a witness in the singer’s racketeering case by setting her car ablaze.
Michael Williams, 38, pleaded guilty to one count of arson for destroying the vehicle that was rented by the woman’s father and parked in front of her home in Kissimmee, Florida, where she and her family lived.
Due to his plea in a Brooklyn federal court, prosecutors agreed to drop the witness tampering charge against him. He still faces a minimum of 60 months in prison and a maximum of 71 months under federal sentencing protocols.
“The plea agreement is fair in that the witness tampering charge as it relates to Kelly will be dismissed at sentencing,” defense lawyer Todd Spodek said.
PROSECUTORS CHARGE THREE R. KELLY ASSOCIATES WITH THREATENING ALLEGED VICTIMS
Hours before Williams set the vehicle on fire, he used his phone to search for the address where the car was located. The vehicle exploded soon after it was torched. A witness at the scene said there was an individual fleeing “whose arm appeared to be lit on fire,” the complaint alleged.
Williams’s vehicle was allegedly captured on toll plaza cameras traveling from his home state of Georgia to Florida before the arson incident.
He was charged in 2020, along with Donnell Russell and Richard Arline Jr., who are each accused of attempting to silence Kelly’s alleged victims through intimidation tactics and bribery. Arline pleaded guilty in February.
Kelly, 52, is awaiting trial in Brooklyn federal court without bail on more than a dozen criminal counts of sex trafficking, racketeering, coercion, and abuse against four women between 1998 and 2010. Three of the women were between the ages of 13 and 16 at the time of the alleged crime.
He pleaded not guilty to 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse in 2019.
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Williams’s relation to the R&B singer is described by prosecutors as a relative to one of Kelly’s former publicists.
