Parents of an R. Kelly girlfriend worry about ‘suicide pact’

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Joycelyn Savage, left, and Azriel Clary walk into the Leighton Criminal Courthouse for R&B star R. Kelly’s first court appearance Feb. 23. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

The parents of one of R. Kelly’s live-in girlfriends said they’re afraid their daughter’s life could end in a suicide pact with the musician.

Alice Clary and Angelo Clary, in an interview that aired Wednesday on “CBS This Morning,” said their concern for their daughter, Azriel, 21, is very real, especially considering how she’d already attempted suicide when she was 17.

Asked by Gayle King how she thought her daughter’s relationship could end with the singer, Alice Clary responded: “I’ve heard, like, a suicide pact.”

The interview was taped Tuesday, hours before an anonymous call sent police to the Trump Tower home of R. Kelly in downtown Chicago to investigate someone threatening suicide. The report was unfounded, according to a Chicago police spokesman.

Clary lives at Kelly’s high-rise home with Joycelyn Savage, 23, another of Kelly’s girlfriends.

READ MORE: The R. Kelly Investigation

Last Thursday, both women appeared on the same show and told King they were in consensual relationships and their parents were claiming otherwise in an attempt to get money from Kelly.

Clary’s parents told King their daughter is trapped by the singer and the reason she trashes her parents as money-grubbing opportunists is because she was trying to prove her loyalty to Kelly “by any means necessary.”

In the interview aired Wednesday, Clary’s parents said Kelly met their daughter, an aspiring singer, when she was just 17 and a short time later she was going on tour with him.

They said their daughter previously attempted suicide after a bad breakup and she told her parents that if they didn’t allow her to go on tour with Kelly she’d either again try to kill herself or run away.

“I didn’t want to call her bluff on it,” Alice Clary said.

Three months before Azriel Clary turned 18, her parents signed a letter giving consent for her to go on tour with Kelly and stay with a female chaperone, who, they were told, worked for Kelly’s music label, but later learned was one of Kelly’s employees.

Alice Clary said her daughter has been actively deceiving them for a long time.

“She was lying and duping us and pulling the wool over our eyes from the beginning,” she said.

The parents said they initially had a decent relationship with Kelly and pitched several business ideas to him that went nowhere.

It was the first interview the couple gave since they spoke to producers of the Lifetime documentary series “Surviving R. Kelly.”

Kelly is facing multiple counts of sexual abuse of four separate women, three of whom were minors when the alleged abuse occurred. He was charged last month in Cook County and free on bond.

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