DISGRACELAND - Aaliyah: Married Illegally at 15, Drugs, Corruption, and a Fiery Crash (Rewind)

Episode Date: May 31, 2026

Married to R. Kelly at 15 years old and dead by the age of 22. Aaliyah was supposed to be as big as Beyonce, but drugs, corruption, and a fiery crash prevented that from happening. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com. This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners, including sexual abuse of a minor. This episode was originally published on Novembe 12, 2024. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram YouTube X (formerly Twitter)  Facebook Fan Group TikTokSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Elvis. Joy is essential and it's also elusive, but now there's a new and exciting way to start your journey toward a more joyful existence, Joy 101. It's a new podcast hosted by me, Hoda Kotb. If you're craving inspiration to maximize your joy, tune into these candid, uplifting, and moving on-air chats. Open your free IHeart Radio app.

Search Joy 101 and listen now. Joy 101 with HodaCat. Potby is presented by CVS. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHart Podcast presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne. Yeah. This is my best friend, Janet. Hey.

And we have been joined at the hips since high school. Absolutely. A redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips. This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey. With all the snacks and drinks. Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer?

Oh, they had a bogo. Well, then you got it. Listen to Soccer Moms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Anna Navarro, and on my new podcast, Bleep with Anna Navarro, I'm talking to the people closest to the biggest issues happening in your community and around the world. Because I know deep down inside right now, we are all cursing and asking what the bleep is going on. Every week, I'm breaking down the biggest issues happening in our communities and around the

world. I'm talking to people like Julie Kay Brown, who broke the... the explosive story on Jeffrey Epstein in 2018. The Justice Department threw. We counted four presidential administrations, failed these victims. Listen to Bleep with Anna Navarro on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, this goes, welcome to another rewind installment of the disgrace slam podcast.

We originally released this episode on Alia back in November of 2024. Aaliyah is currently in the news again due to the vinyl reissue of the video. of her album, age ain't nothing but a number. Fans are offended that R. Kelly can still be seen on the album cover. He's blurred in the background, which is the original artwork. He's a sketchy, shadowy figure, literally from Alia's life. Her death had nothing to do with R. Kelly. But a little over a year ago, in the wake of all the Sean Diddy Combs news,

there were wild conspiracies about Diddy's friend, J.Z, also R. Kelly's friend, and Alia's death. Now, none of those wild stories, those wild conspiracy stories turned out to be true about J. Z and Alia. At least to this date, no credible evidence has surfaced proving those theories to be true. Instead, what we have is a story that is already hard to believe. Alia was married to R. Kelly at the age of 15, 15. And there's more to the story, of course, and you can hear it all right now in this rewind episode of the Disgraceland podcast. This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is the story of a pop star, an incredible talent, Alia, a talent whose creative fire burned from deep within. But it's also the story of R. Kelly and an illegal marriage. It's about drugs, corruption.

It's about wild A-list accusatory conspiracy theories. And it's a story about a fiery crash and about great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop for my Melotron called Instant Theme Song, MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Fallen by Alicia Keys. And why would I play you that specific slice of Empire, state of mind cheese, could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on August 25, 2001. And that was the day that a plane carrying Alia and eight others crashed shortly after takeoff in the Bahamas, killing all on board.

On this episode, in illegal marriage, drugs, corruption, conspiracy theories, a fiery crash, and Alia. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace man. August 25th, 2001. If only the mind of 22-year-old Alia Houghton was as clear as the blue skies here in the Bahamas. The sun, the sand, the weather, was all perfect. Everything else was, well, it was complicated. Alia didn't want to be here in the first place, which sounds crazy because here, specifically in the apico, Islands was more than one person's idea of paradise. For Alia, it was work. Leading a team of dancers on a catamaran out in the ocean, wrapping the video shoot for Rock the Boat. The second single from her recently released self-titled album, her third album overall.

But though it was work, it wasn't Aaliyah's vision. The vision belonged to hype Williams, arguably the most in-demand director when it came in music videos for the hottest hip-hop in R&B. artist. When hype insisted they leave Miami for the Bahamas, Alia expressed her displeasure. She hated flying. She hated planes. She was the utmost professional. Despite her

personal reservations, she wasn't going to rock the boat. Sorry, how to do it. There were fights to fight and hills to die on, and Alia knew that this wasn't one of them. So she got her nerves under control, got on the plane, and went to the Bahamas, all the while maintaining that

quiet, reserved demeanor she was for. The same demeanor that simmered on low behind a pair of dark shades or her trademark peekaboo hairstyle, those long strands covering one of her eyes like Veronica Lake, her mother's favorite actress. Under that quiet reserve, however, was The Fire. Or so said Ed McMahon, one-time host of Star Search, a hugely popular TV talent show in the 1980s and 90s. When Alia appeared on the show in 1990, to perform Rogers and Hearts My Funny Valentine at just 10 years old, Ed McMahon, the long time Tonight Show's sidekick to Johnny Carson, saw the fire in Alia before she even sang a note. You weren't taught it. You didn't get it from your parents,

McMahon said. The fire burned inside you, independent of outside influence. For Alia Houghton, that fire burned bright and hot. Her parents knew this. They worked tirelessly to secure opportunities for their daughter to perform. Her auntie Gladys knew this too. That's Gloultice. Gladys hasn't Gladys Knight in the Pips, by the way. Alia's aunt by marriage to her mom's brother, and it was that famous aunt who brought her 11-year-old niece up on stage to sing with her for all five of her sold-out shows at Bally's in Las Vegas. It sounds weird in 2024 to say that Alia was groomed,

but that's exactly what was happening throughout her childhood. She was a megawatt talent from a very young age who was groomed by everyone around her in order to make her a star. Of course, there are gross connotations with the word groomed in for good reason, because the next person to groom Aaliyah, afterstar search and her parents and her auntie was R&B superstar R. Kelly, who, when Alia was just 14 years old, a freshman at Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing Arts, majoring in dance, played the part of Predator Svengali as Aaliyah's professional career was just taking off.

R. Kelly wrote and produced Alia's first record, which yes, bears the unfortunate title, Age ain't nothing but a number. Unfortunate because, again, Alia was 14 and R. Kelly was 27. If the lyrical content R. Kelly was getting Alia to sing wasn't troublesome enough, the fact that the teenager and the grown man were much more than a musical partnership, Apsa fucking Lutely was. Just a few months after the album's release in the summer of 1990, R. Kelly secretly married Alia, who was then 15, just 15.

And he did so by paying off a state employee to create a fake ID that showed that she was 18. But as our guy Kurt Loder pointed out when he broke the news on MTV, Art Kelly wasn't fooling anyone. Because earlier that year, Alia was dropped from the Budweiser Superfest tour, precisely because she was a minor. Based on what we now know about R. Kelly and his decades of sexual abuse and child pornography, One can only imagine that what went on between him and his child bride behind closed doors was, I don't even want to go there.

If you're looking for a deeper dive into that whole saga, check out our episode on Arkellie in the Disgrace and Archive. But I'm getting away from the story here. At least one of Arkellie's victims has claimed that he got Alia pregnant and made her get an abortion during their time as husband and wife. But Alia wasn't talking about it. Not then and not ever. Once her parents stepped into a null-the-marriage in February of 1995, Whatever spell R. Kelly had cast over an innocent and impressionable Aaliyah was broken. She didn't just walk away.

She denied the whole thing it had ever happened, not because it didn't happen for real, because she was moving on. She didn't wish death upon anyone, but still keep that man away from her, which was easier said than done. R. Kelly's crimes were practically being perpetrated out in the open, but no one was calling him on it. Alia's own uncle, Barry Hankerson, the one who was married to Gladys Knight, was a music business insider who continued to work with R. Kelly for years after his niece's illegal marriage.

And then there was Hype Williams, the director of Alia's Rock the Boat music video here in the Bahamas. Hype worked with everyone in hip-hop and R-M-B, including R. Kelly, with whom hype had made and was continuing to make a ton of content. Alia was a force of nature, street but sweet, as she called herself. But her power wasn't to wipe R. Kelly from the face of the earth. It was to lift herself up. And she did this by following her own gut and by doing things her way. Taking a chance on an unknown and unorthodox music production duo, more on that in a bit. Performing all her own stunts in her movie debut, Romeo Must Die. A month of training to learn one scene.

She went the distance, literally all the way to Australia to film her next movie, Queen of the Damned, while simultaneously recording tracks for her new album at night. She was creatively reborn as an inspired multi-hyphenate and she worked her assesely. off for it. But right now, Aliyah was done with work, and she wanted to go home. She stood anxiously at the Marsh Harbor Airport there in the Bahamas, the island breeze blowing through her hair, and she stared down the Cessna twin-engine plane that was currently being loaded up with luggage that would soon bring her back to the mainland, back to normalcy, back to her boyfriend, Damon Dash, co-founder with Jay-Z of Rockefeller Records. This fucking plane, though, it wasn't big like the one

that had brought her out here. It was a puddle jump. and little piece of shit. They're supposed to carry her and her bodyguard and her makeup artist, two hairstylists, a Virgin Records executive, two employees of Blackground, her uncle's record label, and the pilot, plus all their stuff. She worried it was just too much, too heavy. She called Dame, and he told her to wait. He'd send a private jet tomorrow to bring her home.

She wasn't sure. She just wanted to see him, and both of their schedules were crazy over the next few weeks. If she wanted some quality time with him, she had to go now. She was conflicted, exhausted. The baggage handlers packed in the plane heard her concerns over the way. They said they'd remove some of the stuff and lighten it up. That was helpful, but now she had a headache. She just needed to rest.

Someone offered her a pill. Yes, please, anything to take the edge off. One of the baggage handlers, just a kid really, helping out with the family business, handed her a glass of water to wash the pill down. He was like 13, 14 years old, something like that. Reminded her of when she was that. that age, figuring it all out, making mistakes, finding her way, street but sweet. And within minutes, she was out.

The dream she had was the same one she'd been having all week. It was dark, pitch black. She couldn't see anything, but she was scared. She was running. Something was after her, chasing her, her heart was pounding, her legs ached, and then suddenly, she took off. She was flying. She felt free, as weightless as that Cessna was loaded. She didn't want it to end.

Here, asleep, dreaming, escaping, going to a place where no one could reach her. Alia was untouchable. Pride is an opportunity for you to create your own space, to celebrate your existence. Iheart Radio is proud to be an official sponsor of Pride Toronto Festival and we won't stop. Celebrate Pride. Turn up the love and listen to IHeart Pride Canada. Your 24-7 radio stream

and the only playlist you need for your Toronto Pride celebrations. Pride is so great because it gives a whole bunch of people this visibility that they've never had before. We have a ton to celebrate Toronto. Happy Pride! Iheart Radio. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you saw it was.

Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of family secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything. And me pretending like everything was fine.

He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How could this have happened in City Hall? Somebody tell me that. A shocking public murder. This is one of the most.

dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics. I scream, get down, get down. Those are shots. A tragedy that's now forgotten. And a mystery that may or may not have been political. That may have been about sex. Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Life never plays out the way any of us want or expect it to. There's an old Yiddish saying that basically says,

says, man plans, God laughs. Or as John Lennon put it in one of the last great songs that he ever wrote, life's what happens when you're busy making other plans. For Alia Houghton, life happened all the time, but never in order, chronological order, that is. Her education at Detroit High School for the fine and performing arts where she trained as a dancer was interrupted by her quick fame as a teenager. That meant juggling studies with stardom for four straight years. That meant working just as hard at maintaining a grounded, quote-unquote, normal teenage life as she did working to put out huge records that topped the R&B and pop charts. By the time her senior year rolled around in 1997, the desire for normalcy was so strong that she made the effort to show up

in person to school events as much as she could. She even attended her senior prom, wearing a powder blue pants suit, cropped top, a fashion statement that didn't just lock the expectations of what a prom outfit should look like, but one that played a riff on the kind of fashion. that she was now modeling for Tommy Hilfiger. Her appearance in the industry giant's wildly successful campaign that year revitalized the Hilfiger name by aligning it with R&B and hip-hop culture, while simultaneously elevating ALEA in status at age 18. To repeat, when Alia attended her high school prom, she did so while she was already a famous

singer and a model on the come-up. She was everywhere. MTV, BET, The Tonight Show, Showtime at the Apollo, and now in Detroit, and now in Detroit, at school, just trying to be normal. But there was nothing normal about any of it, just like there was nothing normal about the music she was making. Her second album, One in a Million, released the year prior in 1996,

was unlike anything in the R&B world at that time. It wasn't diva music like Mariah. It wasn't baby-making music like Boys to Men, and it was purposefully divorced from the jailbate fantasy once propagated by her infamous ex. One in a million was funky, Trippy, a stew of R&B, hip-hop, and electronica that, for some, was actually a little too weird. Like, what were those sounds on that track? Are those crickets?

A lot of radio stations hesitated to put the title track on air at first because it didn't fit in, which was exactly the point. This new record was Alia's chance to wipe the slate clean, to reintroduce herself to the public, and the first step in this new creative direction was to hire a new production duo out of the Dirty South. Alia took a chance on Virginia native as Missy Elliott and Tim Moseley, aka Timbalin, when many others would not, and the chance paid off. The title track from 1 in a million went to number one on the R&B chart, and to number 5 on the pop chart.

More success followed, including Golden Globe and Oscar Award nominations at 1998 for her contribution to the Anastasia soundtrack. She couldn't beat Celine Dion and My Heart will go on from Titanic. Nobody could, but Alia still made history. 19 by becoming the youngest artist ever to perform at the Academy Awards. And soon, she wasn't just making history. She was making some of the most defining music of the era, against all odds. Timbalin got the call at one in the morning.

It was Barry Hankerson, Alia's uncle, Auntie Gladys' ex, owner of Blackground Records, the label that had partnered with Atlantic Records to release Alia's music. Tim was in L.A., but Barry was back east in New York, where it was three hours later in the morning, but still, way too fucking early. Tim wanted to know what was so important that couldn't wait until tomorrow. Barry told Tim that a huge opportunity just presented itself, that Alia had been offered the lead single on the soundtrack to Dr. Doolittle, the highly anticipated summer comedy starring Eddie Murphy. But there was a catch. The movie was weeks away from release that had to produce the track now, tonight, and deliver it by 11 a.m.

Again, it was 1 a.m. out in Los Angeles, 4 a.m. in New York. The track was due at 11 a.m. Was at East Coast or West Coast time? Does it fucking matter? My point is that Timbalin and Alia had hours to conceive and record this song, that Atlantic Records in 20th Century Fox, the studio putting out the movie, were betting on to be a huge hit and thus sell Boku soundtrack CDs. Timbalin's first reaction was to push back. He'd just come off stage in Los Angeles and he was exhausted, and now he was expected to churn out a hit song. In what, 10 hours? Barney was out of his mind. They needed more time. But there was no more time. In fact, Barry had bluffed and told Atlantic that they already had a track in the can. There was, however, good money in it, $400,000,

which Timbalin and Alia were welcome to split down the middle, and to sweeten the pot. The song was already written and ready to go. It was called, Are You That Somebody? And it was the brainchild of Stephen Ellis Garron, aka Static Major, a songwriter and producer who, umbino it's to most, was currently in a secret relationship with Alia. The promise of a pretty sweet payday lit a fire under Timbalin. He put up the bat signal and assembled Alia, Static Major, and Tim's right-hand man and engineer Jimmy Douglas at Village Studios over on the west side of L.A. There they get to work.

Again, flexing the weirdo muscle, the one that drew raised eyebrows, and then earned them a coveted number one slot with one in a million. Timberlin's stuttering beat, the clicks and the clacks and the off-kilter inverted funk of it all, inspired, and I'm not kidding here, by the umpalumpa song and the Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory film, that odd sonic play setting was then balanced out so delicately by Alia's compelling vocal, so confident, so cool and collected. The genius of this track, and I remind you that it was created at the last minute in the wee hours of an early summer night turned morning is how skillfully it balances avant-garde and mainstream sensibilities.

Perhaps it was difficult to see at the time when it came out on the soundtrack for a Siliati-Murphy comedy. But there is something so radical about this track that it's subversive. And I haven't even mentioned one of the song's most indelible elements, which is the sampled sound of that baby cooing during the hook. A sound that Timberland, in his delightfully strange and subversive way, added at the last minute, right before they mixed and mastered and shipped, argue that somebody to the label. That baby sound, by the way,

it comes from a 1964 album called Authentic Sound Effects, Volume 8, and if you think it sounds familiar, his role of badass prints had used the same exact sample some 16 years prior at the very end of his song, Delirious. But back to the story. The creative partnership between Alia and Timbalin was a crystal ball of sorts, gazing into the future of R&B and hip-hop.

It was coming down the pike at them. And that fact is a bit easier to see now in hindsight, but at the time, it was just life-haping. Calls in the middle of the night, songs whipped together under great pressure, necessity being the mother of invention. All of that. Three years later, in 2001, life was still happening, though still not in the way it's expected to happen. God laughing while we're busy making other plans and so on. Alia and Blackground Records were now partnered with Virgin Records to release her third eponymous album.

Timbaland, who was busy with other high-profile projects, barely had time to contribute, though Aaliyah was a very good. though Aaliyah was able to corner him to work on three of the album's tracks. The album was poised to level her up once again. The biggest tour of her career was on the horizon, with the goal being to make Aaliyah as much of a household name as Madonna. That was the dream. But first, Aaliyah had to wake up from another dream. Once she was having at an airport in the Bahamas while she was waiting to fly back home,

and back to that long-lost sense of normalcy. We'll be right back after this word. Word, word. Pride Month, Toronto. Pride is an opportunity for you to create your own space, to celebrate your existence. Iheart Radio is proud to be an official sponsor of Pride Toronto Festival, and we won't stop. Celebrate Pride. Turn up the love and listen to IHeart Pride Canada, your 24-7 radio stream and the only playlist you need for your Toronto Pride celebrations.

Pride is so great because it gives a whole bunch of people this visibility that they've never had before. We have a ton to celebrate Toronto. Happy pride. Iheart Radio. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you saw it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro.

And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air. So much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the eye. Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything, and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move, and he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him.

Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHart Podcasts presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne. This is my best friend, Janet. And we have been joined at the hips since high school. Absolutely. A redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips.

This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey. with all the snacks and drinks. Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? Oh, they had a bogo. Well, then you got them. Listen to soccer moms on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Alia, a man never woke enough from that dream.

That dream, by the way, the one I described earlier, in which she is running from something in the darkness, only to lift off, take flight, and escape. She described it as a dream that she kept having when she gave what would turn out to be one of her final interviews to a German reporter in Paris. This was just weeks before she traveled to the Bahamas to shoot the video for Rock the Boat with Hype Williams. Once again, according to the 13-year-old luggage carrier

who was helping out with his family's business at the Marsh Harbor Airport, the one who saw someone give a pill to Alia before she passed out, once it was time to board the Sessna 402B twin-engine plane traveling from the Bahamas back to Miami on August 25, 2001. Alia was still asleep

and had to be carried onto the plane. plane, which leads to the obvious question, what was that pill? And who gave it to her? But I'm getting ahead of myself. Getting on the plane unconscious may have been the only way Alia would have agreed to do it, seeing as how she had a lot of anxiety about boarding the aircraft in the first place. It was small, and she worried it was over the weight limit. Directly preceding her being carried onto the plane, an argument took place among airport personnel about the total weight of the passengers and their luggage. The pilot was complaining to anyone that would listen, and the baggage handlers, too. There was too much luggage on board one minute, and there wasn't too much luggage on board the next.

It kept going back and forth. Malia's team, that's her bodyguard, her makeup artist, two hair stylists, and three record label employees, were all getting restless. The plane was scheduled to take off at 4.30 in the afternoon, but now it was almost six, and they were still at a standstill. Temperes flared. The pilot threw up his hands, and he conceded. He didn't even know. He didn't even know what he was arguing about anymore. He just wanted to get his bird up in the air and get these irritated flatlanders back home. It was 6.45 that evening when the Cessna finally boarded. Over two hours past its original departure time. The skies were blue, and the weather was calm. The plane's twin propellers began to squeak and twirl as the engine fired and then kicked

into full speed. The sound like dual-super-sized lawnmower was burning hot and loud. The The passengers settled in as the pilot taxied the aircraft to the top of the runway, and the call came in over the radio that they've been cleared for takeoff. The pilot increased the throttle, and the plane rumbled and sped forward, gaining speed as it traveled down the runway. More throttle, more rumbling, more speed, and they were airborne. The Cessna gradually making the climb from the ground to the clouds. Steady, up a little higher, steady and higher still, steady.

And then, after just 60 seconds, some 100 feet in the air, the plane suddenly veered to the left, way off course. And as it did, the nose began to turn from ascent to descent, from skyward to earthbound, and the Cessna was in a free fall, straight down. The plane dropped like a stone within seconds, crashing even the marsh line with bushes. It exploded upon impact, and the wreckage was in flames. First responders found an aircraft ripped to pieces.

The bodies of all seven passages as well as the pilot were strewned throughout the crash site. Someone was screaming. Three of the people on board, Alia's bodyguard, her hairstylist, and one other unidentified person, were found alive, though all three soon died either at the hospital or on the way. Everyone else was pronounced dead at the scene, including Alia, who was discovered approximately 20 feet from the mangled sea. smoking twist of steel strapped into her seat, curled up, head between her legs, covered in burns with signs of massive head trauma. An investigation into the crash blamed it on engine failure,

adding that, as Alia herself suspected, the overloaded cargo and passengers on board could have contributed to that failure. But overloading an engine failure quickly took a backseat when new revelations came to light. Revelations about the pilot, the charter company, a legal drugs and massive fraud. The kinds of things that make a plane go into a nosedive after takeoff. The kinds of things that ensure that life never plays out the way it's supposed to. Two weeks before we flew the Cessna that crashed and killed Alia, her team, and himself, the pilot Louis Morales III, was in a Florida courtroom. He was facing four felonies, including one for possession of crack cocaine. He pleaded no contest. In exchange for that plea, Louis Morales was sentenced to three

years probation. Since he was technically not convicted of a crime, his pilot's license was not revoked. All the same, he wasn't supposed to be in the cockpit of that Cessna on August 25, 2001. We know this now because Louis Morales was not listed on the charter plane company's official certificate for the flight. This information was revealed days after the initial crash. It wasn't until close to a year later that an even bigger bombshell was revealed. That being an autopsy report, which proved that there was cocaine and alcohol in Louis Morales' body at the time of the accident. Now, Louis Morales wasn't the only one involved in this tragedy who had a record. Black Hawk International Airways, the charter company in charge of the flight,

have been fined by the FAA four times in the last three years for violating safety standards, for failing to comply with maintenance standards, and for failing to test its employees for illegal drug use. Even more, Blackhawks' owner, Gilbert Chacon, had his own criminal record for fraud, and not some rinky-dink con job either. The guy was part of a huge $400 million insurance scam. His home address was listed as the address of another country, company called Sky Street, which was the owner of the Cessna 402B.

As all of these facts were revealed to the public in the weeks following the crash, the FAA employee who had cleared the flight took his own life. It gets even more complicated from here. It turns out that Blackhawk wasn't originally hired to charter the flight. That was supposed to have been the responsibility of another company called SkyLimmo, partnering with a shipment company called ProFrate Cargo Service. Pro Freight had actually determined that the luggage was heavy enough to require multiple planes to get everyone and everything back to the mainland safely.

But when the original flight time had to be rescheduled, someone used that blip in the plan to hastily replace Sky Limo with Black Hawk, someone, who we still don't know, and why? Most likely, because Black Hawk was cheaper and cut more corners. Of course, there are other narratives out there about why Blackhawk, a cheap, company with a bad rep was chosen last minute to bring Aaliyah home. The R&B singer Mary J. Blige, for one, not a close friend of Aaliyah's but a known acquaintance, speaking on the BET show, 106 and Park, claimed that Aaliyah's death was not a simple accident, but rather, quote, a murder, a spiritual murder, unquote.

She went on to say, quote, I could go a lot deeper, for a lot of people, I would have to bring proof, unquote. More recently, there's Jaguar Wright, a singer-songwriter who was a singer-songwriter who was working with the roots in Jay-Z around the same time that Alia's star was on the rise. In the wake of the recent allegations against Sean Diddy Combs, Jaguar Wright has gone on the offensive publicly. In a series of impassioned interviews that have been circulating on social media, she lays out a conspiracy surrounding Alia's death that lays the blame not on Diddy, but instead on Jay-Z, the one-time business partner of Damon Dash, the Rockefeller

executive whom Alia was dating at the time. And look, I'm not even going to touch that one right now. You can go look it up for yourself and see what she has to say. It's wild. And then there's Damon Nash, who in 2001 was the love of Aaliyah's life and the major motivation for her to return back home on the day that she did. In an interview on entertainment tonight, Dame alleged that Lenny Kravitz offered to send a private jet to the Bahamas to pick up Aaliyah, but instead Hype Williams took that jet, leaving Aaliyah stuck with the whole Blackhawk debacle. When asked if he'd ever confronted Hype Williams about this, Dame replied, Fuck yeah. But when pressed to divulge the details of that confrontation,

Dame only said, ask him. And just earlier this year, 2004, Dame Dash was talking again about his relationship with Leah and how that immeasurable loss affected both his life and the music world. This time, he was speaking on the PBD podcast. This time, Dame said, quote, I know what happened, but I'm not going to tell you what the truth is at this moment. We're in public. Maybe that truth will come out in time, if there really is a hidden truth behind this great tragedy.

Until then, we do know this. In 2002, one year after the accident, Alia's family filed a lawsuit for wrongful death and negligence that named, among others, Black Hawk, its owner Gilbert Chacon, Skystream, Hype Williams, and Virgin records. In addition to being accused by one attorney of, quote, putting profits over people, unquote, Virgin also failed to honor a verbal promise to pay a Nassau mortuary to prepare the bodies of Aaliyah and other passengers. Ultimately, the R&B singer Maxwell stepped up to foot the bill for Aaliyah's funeral,

but that's another story itself. One year after the lawsuit was filed, the family settled with Black Hawk, Skystream, and Chacon for an undisclosed sum. The details of that settlement are confidential. But the incredible talent, the fire that burned deep in the heart and soul of Aaliyah, that's in the public record.

The fact that that public record only lasted until two, 2001, now more than 20 years in the past, when Alia Houghton was just getting started. That's a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis, The Exactly Right Network, and IHeart Podcasts. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member,

Thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelampod.com slash membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad free. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at DisgracelandPod. And on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at Disgraceland Pod. Rockerola. All right, discos, what did you think of this Alia episode?

Give us a call. Let us know. 617-90666-6-6-3638 voicemail and text. Hit me at Disgraceland pod on the socials. Coming up next in Disgraceland, our new episode on Adele. Do not go anywhere.

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