R. Kelly's Manager Surrenders on Threat Charge

The manager, Henry James Mason, 52, of Mableton, Georgia, was wanted on a warrant for terroristic threats and acts against Timothy Savage, whose daughter Joycelyn is believed to be living with Kelly. Savage told police that after he tried to contact his daughter, Mason told him over the phone he would do “harm” to Savage and his family and threatened to kill him.

Mason surrendered to the Henry County Sheriff’s Office, near Atlanta, and was released on $10,000 bond Friday. A lawyer for Mason declined to comment Friday morning.

The police report was filed last May, but a storm of controversy has surrounded Kelly in recent weeks, after “Surviving R. Kelly” aired on Lifetime. The documentary series chronicled decades of allegations against Kelly, including that he operates a so-called sex cult in which he physically and emotionally abuses women and keeps them from their families.

Timothy Savage and his wife, Jonjelyn, who both appeared in the documentary, say Joycelyn is among those women. But Kelly’s representatives say that the women who live and travel with him are doing so voluntarily and that he has not abused any of them. Last year, TMZ released a video in which Joycelyn said she was happy living with Kelly and was there of her own volition.

“They were perfectly consensual relationships,” Kelly’s lawyer, Steven Greenberg, said last week.

Timothy Savage said Mason’s call wasn’t the last time he was warned about speaking out against Kelly.

According to the Henry County police, another Kelly associate, Don Russell, sent Savage a text early in the morning Jan. 3, the day the first episode of “Surviving R. Kelly” aired on Lifetime. Russell sent Savage the text message about 5 a.m., saying that “it would be best for him and the family if the documentary does not air,” according to a police report.

Savage called police. While an officer was at the house, Russell called Savage, who put his phone on speaker so the officer could hear. Russell, the officer wrote in his report, accused Savage of giving Lifetime false information and told Savage that if he continued supporting the documentary, “that they (R. Kelly/Don) would be forced to provide information disproving Timothy” and that the information “would ruin him, his reputation, business and family, because it would show him a liar.”

The call was referred to investigators. Russell, who has not been charged with a crime, declined to comment about the call Friday, and police did not return calls seeking comment.

Gerald A. Griggs, a lawyer who represents Timothy and Jonjelyn Savage, said Friday that he hoped Mason’s arrest would serve as a “message to Mr. Robert Sylvester Kelly and his camp, that no one will be bullied or threatened, and we will pursue legal action against anyone who attempts to bully or threaten the Savages.”

Kelly is not facing criminal charges, but prosecutors in Atlanta and Chicago, where Kelly has had homes, began looking into accusations against him after the documentary aired.

Kelly has been dogged for years by accusations, but has never been convicted of a crime. He was acquitted in Chicago on child pornography charges in 2008, in a case that involved a tape that prosecutors said showed him having sex with a 13-year-old girl. But the girl in the video did not testify and Kelly’s lawyers argued that her identity could not be proved.

He has also settled lawsuits against him going back to the 1990s. Tracy Sampson, a woman who said she was an intern at Epic Records in 1999, told Dateline in an interview to be aired Friday night that Kelly sexually abused her beginning when she was 16. She said she sued Kelly and reached a $250,000 settlement.

Greenberg told Dateline that every woman who had come forward to accuse Kelly of misconduct was lying.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.