Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days

by Bill Whitfield

  Bill: Michael Jackson’s reality was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. That’s what made this job so different. I always considered Mr. Jackson to be different. Never weird, just different. Every day with him was a different direction of thinking. Every day was different from the day before. There was always something new you’d find out, whether it was a request, something he would say. I didn’t understand a lot of the things he did, a lot of the choices he made, but I also could never begin to understand the life he’d lived, which had led him to be that way. That’s what made it so impossible to judge a lot of his actions, one way or another.

  There was this one time we went to a magic shop. He was a big magic buff. We went and saw nearly every magician who played on the Strip. He had a bunch of those take-home magic kits, too, for doing tricks with coins and cards and stuff. Around May or June maybe, he wanted to go to the magic shop at the New York–New York casino. So we started planning that detail.

  The morning we were supposed to go, he called down and asked me to go pick up some gauze. I asked him how much. He said, “Get as much as you can.” I was worried that somebody was hurt. I went out, picked up a couple of bags of medical gauze from the drugstore, and I brought it to him. About half an hour later, he called down again and said, “Bill, I’m ready.”

  Javon got the cars ready to roll. I was out in the driveway, waiting for Mr. Jackson to come around the corner. He came around, and when I saw him, he had on a green coat with a hoodie underneath. But his hands were all wrapped up with gauze. His entire head was wrapped in the stuff too, with little slits for his eyes. He was dressed like a burn victim or something. He looked like the Mummy. At that point, I thought I’d seen everything with Michael Jackson, but this floored me. I called Javon on the two-way radio. I was whispering into the microphone, “Yo, Javon. You ain’t gonna believe what the boss has on.”

  Javon: Bill was trying to call me, but my radio was off. I was in the security trailer, still getting ready to go. So when I stepped outside, I had no idea what was going on. I walked out and I saw what looked like this weird guy, all bandaged up and disfigured, wandering around the property. This alarm went off in my head. I thought, Intruder! and I ran. I booked it across that driveway and I grabbed this guy and I slammed him against the car, yelling, “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  Then Bill started yelling, “Javon, no! Javon! That’s the boss! That’s the boss!”

  I realized who it was, and I backed off and I panicked. I mean, I’d shoved him hard, and he was so skinny and fragile. I was scared I’d broken his arm or something. I started gushing, “I’m so sorry, sir. I didn’t recognize you at all. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. I’m so sorry.”

  Bill: Javon probably apologized about a thousand times, but Mr. Jackson just started cracking up. He thought it was hilarious. I thought for sure he’d be livid; for a minute, I thought that this was going to be the last day we ever worked for the man. But Mr. Jackson thought it was great, that his disguise had actually fooled someone. He just climbed in the car, laughing and saying, “Did you guys really not know who I was?”

  Javon: We got in the car and drove out to the casino, like it was any old regular trip, with him dressed up in this mummy costume in the back. We took the back entrance into the casino, but the magic store was still a few hundred feet from where we entered, and the place was packed with people. Soon as we walked in, they started turning and noticing me and Bill wearing these black suits, following this guy who’s dressed like a mummy. You could hear the whispers, people going, “Who’s that? What’s going on?”

  It was obviously drawing more attention than it was avoiding. If you looked at him even for a minute it wasn’t hard to figure out who he was. He’d gone to all this trouble, wrapping up his face and his hands, but he was wearing the white socks and the hiked-up pants with the slip-on loafers. That’s his signature look. Everybody knows that. Plus he just had a way about him—the way he moved, the way he walked, the way he’d pick something up off a shelf—that was unmistakably Michael Jackson. Everyone on the planet knows how Michael Jackson moves.

  Bill: At one point, as we were walking through the casino, this lady walked up to him, middle-aged woman. She walked right up to him and stood next to him in this mummy getup. Then she sort of gave him this look and said, “I know who you are.”

  Mr. Jackson said, “Hmmm?” He did it in his high-pitched tone, acting like he didn’t know what she was talking about. “Hmmm?”

  She said, “I know who you are. You’re not fooling anyone.”

  Then she just walked off and let him be.

  We finally made it to the magic store, and Mr. Jackson was browsing. The store manager walked up to him two or three times and asked him if he could help him with anything, and he’d just shake his head no. Didn’t really say anything. They had a lot of these kits and magic tricks. Mr. Jackson was picking things up, looking at them, playing with them, putting them back down. I was watching the store manager’s eyes, and I knew exactly what I would have been thinking if it had been my store. I watched this guy pick up the phone, quietly say something, and then hang up real quick. About five minutes later, two police officers walked in and they went over to the manager. They talked for a minute and then he pointed at Mr. Jackson. I was just shaking my head, thinking, No, no, no. Please no. This isn’t happening.

  One of the officers came up and addressed Mr. Jackson. He said, “Excuse me, sir? Do you have an ID?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Do you have an ID?”

  The second time he said it, he kind of grabbed Mr. Jackson’s arm, like he wasn’t messing around. I stepped up and politely tried to get between them and explain the situation. I told them that I was personal security for this man, a high-profile dignitary, and he was in this disguise in order to remain anonymous. “This man is very famous,” I said. “And it would really be best for everyone if we could keep his identity a secret and quietly exit the store.”

  The cop said, “Famous? Who the hell is he?”

  By now a crowd was starting to form. The manager had come over. The other police officer was stepping in behind me. I was reluctant to identify Mr. Jackson, but I felt the only way we were going to get out of there was to be straight with these officers and get them on our side. So I leaned in to the guy and I whispered, “It’s Michael Jackson.”

  “Who?”

  “Michael Jackson.”

  “Get the fuck outta here.”

  I said, “Look, we’ll just leave.”

  Then this cop turned to his partner and he said—and he said it real loud and arrogant, like I was some jerk—“Hey, this guy says he’s doing a security detail and that guy in the bandages over there is Michael Jackson.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw the first camera flash pop. Shit. Then I heard this murmur of voices start to ripple through the crowd: “Michael Jackson?” “Michael Jackson?!” “Michael Jackson?!”

  I grabbed him and said, “Mr. Jackson, this way.” I ushered him quickly toward the back of the store, moving his body through the aisles, left, right, as fast as I could hustle him. I looked around, found the door to the stockroom, and rushed him in there. The manager followed us back, and I asked him, “Is there another way out of here?” He pointed me to a back door that led to a little service hallway and out to the parking lot. I radioed Javon and told him to get the truck and meet us outside.

  You could hear the crowd outside. It was intense. I was really worked up, agitated. Like an idiot, the store manager had even gone back out and confirmed that it was Michael Jackson. Now he was all excited about it. Now he was like, “Hey, Michael Jackson is in my store!” It was turning into a mob scene. We could hear people screaming, “Mi-chael! Mi-chael! Mi-chael!” The two officers were stuck out front doing crowd control, dealing with what they’d started.

  I stayed in the back with Mr. Jackson. I was on full alert. My pulse racing. Looking this way and that. Watching the door, listening to
this crowd, trying to figure out what was going to happen next. Was there going to be more trouble with the police? The paparazzi? Meanwhile, Mr. Jackson was just chilling, like this was any other day. The crazed mob of people screaming his name outside the door? Like it wasn’t even happening. He was just wandering through the stockroom shelves, casual as you please, checking out these little magic tricks. Dude was still shopping. He pulled this one thing down and brought it over to me and said, “Bill, can you find out how much these are?”

  I wanted to say to him, “Really? We’ve got a couple hundred people breathing down on us, and you want me to stop and do a price check on some Houdini tricks?”

  But he just shrugged the whole thing off. “This is what happens all the time,” he said. “They should have left us alone. People should mind their own business.”

  Finally, Javon radioed me to say that he’d pulled the car around. The two cops came back into the storeroom to escort us out. Just as we started to leave, one of the officers came over to me and he leaned in and said, “Hey, one more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think maybe he’d mind signing an autograph?”

  I turned to Mr. Jackson. “Sir, the officers would like to know if you could sign an autograph.”

  “Oh, sure,” he said. “Just give me a pen.”

  The officers gave him their report pads and he signed each one and then we left. We just bounced. He didn’t even buy anything.

  It was times like that we’d be left scratching our heads. But it wasn’t our place to say anything. I felt like the only person who really understood Michael Jackson was Grace, the nanny. The way they’d go at it with each other, you’d think they were a couple sometimes, or brother and sister. But Grace had some health issues. Nothing too terribly serious, from what I understood, but she would leave from time to time. After those first couple months, it got to the point where she was not around as much. She’d be gone for a week and be back in town for a day or two and then be gone again. That was happening with more frequency.

  Javon: When he had Neverland, he had dozens of people to run the place. Now, except for the teacher and Ms. Grace, on and off, all his domestic work had basically fallen to me and Bill. We were personal assistants, couriers, handymen. We did the grocery shopping, took the dog to the vet, babysat the kids. Bill was even holding the family’s medical insurance cards and their passports.

  I was just hired to be a foot soldier, you know? Drive the car and watch the gate and go home. But this was something else. To say we had no idea what we’d gotten ourselves into would be a huge understatement. There were days I’d walk around thinking, How the hell did I end up here?

  Bill: With Feldman gone and Grace away, I felt this huge sense of added responsibility. Some days, I really couldn’t believe that this was the Michael Jackson and I’d basically become his point man. Everything started coming to me. I was getting documents, faxes, emails. Someone had to get these documents to him. Michael Jackson doesn’t exactly come down to the gate to sign for packages.

  I never opened his mail, but a lot of this information was faxed, so I could see it plain as day. There were a lot of numbers floating around. A lot of numbers. I’m talking about $35 million here, $100 million there. I saw the words “a billion dollars” on one of these documents.

  Whenever payroll was late, Raymone would always give us these vague excuses. “Mr. Jackson’s money is tied up.” Now, being put in this point-man position, I was starting to see things. I knew I was only looking at a couple of pieces of the puzzle, but I was starting to get a glimpse at the bigger picture of his finances.

  That June, the first iPhones came out. He wanted one. Javon went and stood in line for two and a half hours to get it. When I first brought him the phone, he came back to me and told me it didn’t work. He said, “It doesn’t do anything.”

  I said, “Sir, you have to get it set up, create an account.”

  He said, “I thought you already did that.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Oh. Can you?”

  I had all his personal information, so I said sure. I first tried to set it up in his name, but after running Michael Jackson’s Social Security number, AT&T wanted a $1,500 deposit. Just to turn on a cell phone. That’s how bad his credit was. I went ahead and set up the account in my name. Then he wanted an iPhone for his mom, so he could send her pictures of the kids. I set up his mother’s cell phone in my name too.

  But it was strange. Even as I was doing that, I still never thought of him as being broke. The King of Pop, as a business, was still a thriving concern. Between the publishing rights that he owned, his album sales, he never stopped earning millions. It was a question of what was being done with it. He spent lavishly. Trips to FAO Schwarz and buying bookstores. The tabloids always focused on those things, like he was toy-shopping his way into bankruptcy. But to be honest, the money I watched him spend on those shopping trips was nothing. It was nickels and dimes compared to the figures I was seeing in these documents. There was a ton of money changing hands all the time. Lawsuits, creditors, bank loans, attorney’s fees. Millions of dollars would come in and go right back out.

  Javon: The lawsuits were constant. It seemed like a new one was filed against him every week. I can’t even tell you how many times we’d be on shift, standing out at the front gate, and somebody would come up with one of those envelopes, trying to serve him papers.

  One time, I was walking the dog, and this gentleman was parked outside. We thought he was a fan or something. I circled the block with Kenya, and right as I opened the gate to go back in, he came up and said, “Is this the Jackson residence?”

  I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He said, “Take this.”

  He tried to hand me these papers. I jumped back. “I’m not taking nothing,” I said.

  He threw it at my feet and said, “You’ve been served. Make sure he gets it.”

  I just left it on the ground. You’ve got to put that envelope in somebody’s hand. Doesn’t count as long as it doesn’t touch you. People would come up and drop these things through the gate, onto the driveway, and we wouldn’t go near it. We’d just go get the water hose, wash it right back out into the street.

  I’ll never forget this other time, this one lady. The gate was open because we were loading some stuff into the house, and she walked right up the driveway, waving this envelope, trying to hand it to me. “You’ve been served,” she said.

  I didn’t touch it. I said, “Ma’am, you need to get off this property. I ain’t taking nothing from you.”

  This woman was pissed. She started screaming, “You better fucking take them, ’cause you’re gonna wind up in line to get paid just like everybody else! He’s not going to pay you, neither!”

  I said, “Lady, what are you talking about?”

  Her face got all twisted up. There was just this crazy anger in her voice. “Tell him to pay his fucking bills! He’s not gonna fucking pay you guys like he hasn’t fucking paid us! Just you fucking watch!”

  Bill: I’d hear Raymone and Greg Cross bickering back and forth with Mr. Jackson on the speakerphone about business. Oftentimes they would call me and I would hold the speakerphone toward Mr. Jackson in the backseat. He would only put it to his ear and talk if the conversation turned to sensitive information. This one conversation, from what I could tell, Raymone was trying to get him to take out a loan with this one bank, and Greg Cross was advocating for a different one. They each were giving their reasons why. Then it turned into a screaming match.

  That was not the beginning of Raymone and Greg disagreeing about Mr. Jackson’s affairs. That was going on when I got there. The two of them were always at odds. Late that June, we were at the house, and I was asked to set up a conference call for the three of them. I arranged the call on my phone, got Raymone and Greg on the line, put them on hold, and then went around to the back of the house where Mr. Jackson was waiting for the call. I kn
ocked on the glass door to the kitchen area. He was sitting at the breakfast counter, this huge marble countertop that could sit fifteen people. I handed him my phone and walked back to the security trailer.

  About half an hour later, I heard this crash. Plate glass shattering. Loud. I jumped up and ran around the corner to the kitchen and I saw Mr. Jackson. He was sitting in the same chair as before, and the glass door was smashed in a million little pieces all over the ground. My phone was lying in the middle of it, cracked. I asked him if everything was okay. He just quietly looked up at me with this blank expression on his face. Then he looked down at the glass and he sort of sighed and said, “I’m sorry, Bill. You’re going to need a new phone.”

  I asked him again if he was okay. He didn’t really answer. He’d buried his head in his hands, kind of exasperated. “They’re all devils,” he said. “I should call my father and tell him to come kick their asses.”

  I told him I’d get it cleaned up. We had a new door installed a couple of days later and that was pretty much it. We didn’t discuss it again. That was shortly before we left for Virginia.

  It had been discussed for a while that he was going to be taking a trip back east; that’s why I’d been sent for the laptop, to look at the pictures of houses in Maryland and Virginia. Now those plans started to crystallize. Raymone called me and said, “The boss wants to take a vacation.” The kids were out of school. It was their summer break. Mr. Jackson wanted to take them and get outdoors, get out in the middle of nowhere, where they’d have room to move around. We were going to fly to D.C. and stay at a place called the Goodstone Inn near Middleburg, Virginia. Raymone and Greg were both based in D.C., too. I think they wanted him closer to them, to try and get some of these business issues settled.