Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days

by Bill Whitfield

  Inside were two Academy Awards. At first, they just looked like generic Oscar statues; I’d never seen one up close. But then I looked more closely at them, and they both had Gone with the Wind on them. One was for Best Picture. I looked it up online. Apparently, these two statues were the most valuable Oscars ever bought at auction; Mr. Jackson paid $1.5 million for them back in 1999. It’s in the Guinness World Records.

  I sat there staring at these two things, like, Damn, I got a couple million dollars sitting on my coffee table. I didn’t sleep too well with that in my house. My brain kept turning over, wondering, What the hell does he want these for? The only reason I could think of was that they were collateral. The way he talked about the briefcase, he said he needed it, like he needed it “just in case.” His finances, something wasn’t right, and these statues were a hard asset. Why else would you need your Gone with the Wind Oscars with you at a horse farm in Virginia? I imagined I’d find out when I got back.

  Raymone was supposed to make the arrangements for us to fly back to Virginia, but her office was not returning my calls. All I got was, “She’s not here. I’ll have her call you right back.” Then she’d never call. Two days went by like that. I called Mr. Jackson to tell him everything was wrapped up in Vegas, and we had a few conversations about Raymone’s security team. He sounded very concerned. He said, “Every time I’m outside with the kids, I hear them calling Raymone. I can tell that they’re reporting everything I do to her. I don’t like that. You know I don’t like that.” He said he felt that they were taking pictures of him. He said, “I don’t trust these guys. When are you going to be back here? You’re flying back, right?”

  I said, “Yes, sir. I’m trying. But Raymone won’t return my calls.”

  He told me to call Greg Cross, but I didn’t. I just didn’t like the sound in Mr. Jackson’s voice, him being so urgent about when I’d get back. I could hear it on the phone, his anxiety about having his kids surrounded by people he didn’t trust. When I was with him, if he said, “I need this,” boom, I could make it happen. But here I was, stuck in a situation where I could not make things happen. It was frustrating. So I just decided. I went to Javon and said, “You know what? We’re gonna do what we gotta do. We’re driving, man.”

  Javon said, “Yo, I’m with you.”

  We loaded up, hit the road. We took both SUVs, drove about sixteen hours a day. We’d get a motel room in whatever little town we were in, get up at 5:30 the next day and do it again. I never even told Mr. Jackson how we were getting back. I just told him that I would handle it. A day into the drive, I got a call from Raymone, being all apologetic. “Oh, sorry I couldn’t get back to you. We’ve been dealing with some financial matters. Let me give you an itinerary.” She started giving me all these details about flights. She didn’t know I was already on the road. I was just driving and saying, “Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sounds good.”

  I was done. Between the thing at the airport, bringing on all these new people, jerking me around about making plans to get back— I knew that us driving back like this, bringing Mr. Jackson’s vehicles, when she found out, it wasn’t going to be pretty. But we weren’t going to sit back and do nothing. So we got in the vehicles and we drove.

  Part of it was our loyalty to Mr. Jackson, certainly. That was a huge motivating factor. But another part of it was that we just weren’t going to be treated like that. The safety and well-being of this man and his children, that was our responsibility. We had a professional responsibility, and we took that very seriously. So when she tried to push us aside, I just felt like . . . no. Uh-uh. I’m not going to let that happen. This is not where it ends.

  11

  Situated an hour west from Washington, D.C., Middleburg, Virginia, has long been a favorite retreat for the wealthy members of the East Coast elite. The rolling hills that surround the tiny village are dotted with idyllic farms and country estates. Its residents still enjoy rarefied sports like fox hunting and steeplechase. Promotional materials for the area proudly declare it “The Nation’s Horse and Hunt Capital.”

  About a ten-minute drive outside of Middleburg sits the Goodstone Inn, where Michael Jackson had decided to spend his summer vacation. A former plantation, the Goodstone is a massive 640-acre estate of open pastures and forested walking trails bordered by a beautiful, winding creek. At the center of the complex is the plantation’s former carriage house, which now houses the inn’s restaurant and main offices. Radiating out across the property is a handful of historic homes and cottages, beautifully restored and converted into freestanding guest suites. The singer and his children were in the stately, four-bedroom Manor House, tucked away in the north corner of the complex.

  For Michael Jackson, the best part of his new retreat was not the luxurious accommodations but the fact that he’d managed to disappear. When he left the Monte Cristo house, local papers reported that he’d moved into a different Vegas home. Other rumors spread that he was maybe somewhere on the East Coast. Random sightings were reported here and there in the D.C. area, but no specifics about his location leaked out. He was completely off the map, which allowed him, finally, to relax and enjoy time with his family.

  Bill: We hit Middleburg around eleven-thirty at night. Normally, I wouldn’t call Mr. Jackson that late, but I called him and told him that we’d arrived. He said, “You’re back? Great. How was your flight?”

  I said, “We didn’t fly, sir. We drove back, and we brought your vehicles.”

  “You drove back?! Wow. That is so great.”

  Javon: The next morning, we went over to the main house. We drove up and Raymone’s security team was sitting outside in their trucks. When they saw Bill and me, they were clearly not happy. We went into Mr. Jackson’s house. He called the kids into the room and said, “Look who’s back!”

  The kids all ran over and gave me and Bill big hugs, saying, “Welcome back, Javon! We missed you!”

  “I missed you guys too!” I said. And I really had. I’d been worried about them.

  Bill: We’d brought the kids a lot of their favorite toys, some of the boys’ action figures, some of Paris’s dolls. So they were excited about that. I had the silver briefcase with me. That was the first order of business I wanted to take care of. All morning, I’d been thinking he was going to be really excited about getting it, but when I handed it to him, he acted like it was nothing. He just put it down, off to the side, like it was no big deal. He didn’t even check to see if the contents of the case were inside.

  We talked about the trip. I told him how I’d decided to drive when I hadn’t heard from Raymone. That set him off. “These guys tell her everything,” he said. “I had them take me to the magazine store and they were on the phone telling her my every move.”

  Now that we were back with Mr. Jackson’s vehicles, he suggested that we didn’t need Raymone’s people anymore. He said, “Tell her they’re dismissed.”

  I didn’t want to have that conversation with her. I really didn’t. I knew she was going to be furious about my upsetting her arrangement here. So when he asked me to do that, I kind of hesitated. He said, “You want me to tell her?”

  “I’d prefer that, sir.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell her.”

  Javon: We watched as her guys left the house. Those dudes walked off with an attitude; I tried to chat with them, but they wouldn’t speak to me. They went down and packed up the house they were staying in and left. Then me and Bill moved over to that house, and we went back to work. Simple as that.

  Bill: The Fourth of July celebration was just a few days away. There were fireworks stands on the side of the road, all throughout the county. Mr. Jackson was really excited about buying some, and he sent me out to get a bunch. I went and bought about five-hundred dollars’ worth. On the night of the Fourth and for several nights after, we’d see Mr. Jackson and the kids out in the fields after dark, setting off firecrackers and bottle rockets and Roman candles. We’d watch them from our house down the way.

>   Javon: Most days, they didn’t do much. The kids would play outside in these big, open fields, and Mr. Jackson was taking it easy inside. We ate most of our meals in the restaurant, spent our mornings and afternoons patrolling the area, keeping everything straight, running errands or planning details whenever he wanted to go somewhere.

  Bill: The people at the Goodstone gave us a list of activities and points of interest in the area, things to do with the kids. There were several Civil War battlefields nearby that offered tours. We weren’t too far from Hersheypark, the amusement park in southern Pennsylvania. That was on the list along with a few other things, including a hot-air balloon ride. When I first saw the list, I figured the balloon ride was the last thing in the world that Michael Jackson was going to want to do. Turned out, it was the first thing he picked. He called and said he wanted to take the kids up in the hot-air balloon. I couldn’t believe it. I turned to Javon and said, “Hot-air balloon? He knows brothers don’t do that, right?”

  Javon: Bill let it be known he wasn’t going up in any hot-air balloon. I said, “I ain’t going up there neither. No way. Nuh-uh.” Neither of us wanted to do it, but one of us was supposed to be with Mr. Jackson at all times. So the whole time leading up to the trip we were thinking, Who’s it going to be? One of us was going to have to submit.

  Bill: We had to leave the house at five-thirty in the morning to get to the launch site by six-thirty. It was a husband-and-wife team operating the balloon ride. Per usual, they didn’t know who they were going to be taking. They thought it was just going to be a family of regular tourists. We arrived and they went through the whole drill, telling the kids about how the balloon worked, safety precautions, that sort of thing. There was a little breakfast spread arranged for them before the ride started.

  When it came time to take off, the kids were so excited they couldn’t get in that balloon fast enough. They ran over and jumped right in with big smiles. Me and Javon sort of shuffled and stood back, and Mr. Jackson said, “Aren’t you guys coming?”

  I looked at Javon, like, I think Javon’s got this one, sir.

  Javon said, “Nah, I’m good. I’m good.”

  There was a bit of an awkward pause. Mr. Jackson said, “What, are you guys afraid?”

  I wasn’t about to tell the man I was scared of riding in that damn balloon. I said, “Nah, we ain’t afraid. It’s just . . . you know—”

  “It’s okay if you’re afraid. You can just say so.”

  “Nah, nah. It’s not that. It’s just, you know, we just feel like—”

  He said, “Okay. Why don’t you just stay down here and follow us in the truck? I think we’ll be fine.”

  I said, “I think that’s a good idea, sir. We’ll keep an eye on you from down here.”

  So we followed the balloon in the truck. They were pretty high up. It was a nice summer day, not much wind blowing. Still, I was glad I wasn’t up there.

  When they finally landed, Mr. Jackson came over to me and said, “Bill, the guy who flew the balloon, I think he took a picture.”

  Sometimes you’d think that he was being overly paranoid about that sort of thing—and sometimes he was—but just as often he’d be proven right. I went over to the guy and said, “Hey, I need to see your phone.” He had one of the new iPhones. I went through the photos and, sure enough, this guy had tried to snap a picture on the sly. All he got was the back of Blanket’s head, but it was the breach of privacy that mattered to Mr. Jackson. Even just relaxing and trying to have fun on vacation, he couldn’t trust anyone. That picture got erased.

  Javon: It was one thing to keep Michael Jackson hidden in Las Vegas. The town is practically built for it. Lots of high rollers with personal security, restaurants with private rooms that cater to A-list stars who want total secrecy. It was a very different challenge moving the man around suburban Virginia. He didn’t exactly blend. We didn’t blend, either.

  Bill: One day, he decided he wanted to go to Walmart to do some shopping. It was just me and him; Javon was off with the kids. We went in the store, he had the veil on, dressed in all black. He went in first and I was five feet behind him in plainclothes. There was a security guard at the entrance, an older guy. Mr. Jackson walked in with that veil on, and this guard looked at him as we went by. I heard him say, “Did you see that guy? He’s dressed like he’s gonna rob the place.”

  We went inside. Mr. Jackson grabbed a cart and went strolling through the aisles. He was looking at stuff—clothes, DVDs—just shopping like a regular dude. We’d been in there for about twenty minutes when I heard a radio and looked over and saw a cop coming our way. This was soon after the magic-shop incident in Vegas, so I immediately thought to myself, Oh, shit. Here we go again.

  The officer came over and approached Mr. Jackson and said something to him. People began to stop and stare. I went over to the cop and tried to intervene, giving him the usual spiel. I’m doing private security for a high-profile dignitary, etc. Same as before, the cop wanted to know who the guy was. I did not want a repeat of the magic store. I did not want to say it was Michael Jackson, but this guy was pressing me for a name, being real persistent. “Who is it?”

  I made a snap decision. I said, “It’s Prince.”

  “Who?”

  “Prince.”

  “The guy from Purple Rain?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Why is he all covered up?”

  “He’s trying to be incognito.”

  “Oh. We thought he was here trying to rob the place.”

  “No, sir. We’re just shopping.”

  So the one cop told the other cop and he told the floor manager, and as word started to circulate, the crowd dispersed. If it was Michael Jackson, it was a mob scene. If it was Prince, people didn’t seem to care. That’s just how it was.

  When we got back into the car, Mr. Jackson said, “What happened back there?”

  I said, “I told them you were Prince.”

  “Prince?”

  “Yeah.”

  He just laughed and said, “No wonder they left us alone.”

  Javon: Once a week, the kids got to pick a special place to go, and one of their favorite places was Chuck E. Cheese’s. Since Middleburg was in the middle of nowhere, the nearest one was forty-five minutes away in Alexandria, south of D.C. We took the kids there maybe three times. Two of those times, Bill and Mr. Jackson just dropped the kids off with me and Ms. Grace. We stayed at the restaurant while they drove around and went shopping. But this one particular time, we took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese’s, and Mr. Jackson wanted to go in too. He wanted to watch them play. I escorted the kids in first. Mr. Jackson came in about ten minutes later with Bill.

  The kids were playing, and Mr. Jackson was sitting in the corner with a hat and a black veil over his face. The kids knew that whenever their daddy was in a public place, they couldn’t run up to him or approach him; that was against the rules. Can you imagine having to learn to stay away from your own father when he’s sitting just across the room? That’s what they had to do. It was a precaution, like using their code names. But Paris? She loved her daddy. There was no telling her, “Don’t talk to your daddy.” She wasn’t having it. She was going up to the top of these slides, yelling, “Look, Daddy! Daddy! I’m going down the slide! Look!”

  I’d just reminded her not to do that, but she was so excited she was up there doing it anyway. It wasn’t really a big deal. There were lots of fathers in there; she could have been yelling at anyone. But a few minutes later, she was playing with this other girl in that big pool of plastic balls they have. All of a sudden, Paris ran over to her dad, gave him a big hug, and pulled his veil down and gave him a kiss on the cheek and then put the veil back and ran back to the play area.

  The little girl Paris had been playing with watched this happen. She just stood there, in the middle of all these plastic balls, with this stunned look on her face, staring at this man in the veil. It was like she lost her breath for a minute, like she was too
excited to speak. Then she finally got her breath and she pointed and screamed as loud as she could, “Mommy! It’s Michael Jackson! It’s Michael Jackson, Mommy! Mommy! Michael Jackson!”

  Bill: The whole room got quiet. All these heads turned to look in our direction. Mr. Jackson shot straight up and walked out the door. He didn’t run, just a fast-paced walk, but he was out of there in a hurry. I walked out right behind him. I gestured to Javon to stay with the little ones. When I got outside, Mr. Jackson had gone over to the truck, but he couldn’t open it, so he’d sort of crouched down between the cars. I ran over there, and he said, “Bill, open the door.”

  I couldn’t open it, either. Javon had the keys. I was on the driver’s side and I saw his head going away from the car and heading toward the street. He ran across the street and right into a Staples. I was nervous, looking around, thinking people were going to start coming after him any minute. But the amazing thing was nobody followed us out.

  Javon: Inside the restaurant, people were looking around, and you could hear them talking. “Michael Jackson?” “Did she say Michael Jackson?” “No way. Couldn’t be.” It didn’t cause a scene because no one believed it, because who would believe that Michael Jackson was hanging out at a Chuck E. Cheese’s in Alexandria, Virginia, on a Tuesday night? This poor little girl, everyone thought she was making things up, but she was dead sure she’d seen what she’d seen. She kept insisting on it to her mom. Finally, she walked over to Paris and said, “Is Michael Jackson your dad?”

  Paris was like, “Yeah, I wish!”

  She was pretty quick on her toes with that one.

  Bill: One afternoon, Mr. Jackson called me and said, “Paris wants to ask you something. Can you come to the house?”

  I went over. Paris was sitting there with him, and he nudged her. “Go ahead, ask him.”

  She said, “Prince has Kenya, but he never lets me play with him. So I’d really, really like it if you could find me a kitten.”