Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days

by Bill Whitfield

  “Yes, sir.”

  Then he handed me a package. It was wrapped in newspaper and bound up with a few layers of masking tape. It was at least an inch thick. Just from the size and the feel I could tell it was money, a lot of it. Along with the package, he gave me David’s number; he’d be expecting my call when I got into the city.

  As I drove over the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan, I couldn’t help but wonder what David was going to look like. Was he handicapped in some way? In a wheelchair? I didn’t know. When I hit the Henry Hudson Parkway, I called him and we arranged to meet across from Madison Square Garden. I got to the arena, pulled over, got out of the car, and called him to let him know I was there. He said he was a block away. Couple minutes later, I noticed this guy coming toward me, a slim, Caucasian dude with a green hat that was pulled down, covering his face. As he got closer, he looked up and said, “Bill?”

  I tried not to stare. His entire face was scarred from being burned. His ears, nose, and hands were all deformed. I could only imagine what it was like for him, being out in public. I said, “Hey, Dave. How you doing?”

  “I’m good, thanks. How’s Michael?”

  “He’s doing great.”

  I gave him the package. He said, “Thank you, and tell Michael I love him.”

  “I sure will.” I gave him a hug and said, “Take care of yourself.”

  He pulled his hat back down and walked toward the subway station. I got in the truck and headed back to New Jersey.

  Beyond that, there wasn’t a whole lot going on. We just kicked it around the Cascios for almost two months, running errands, going to the mall. Part of it, I think, was that Mr. Jackson was just comfortable there. He didn’t want to leave. The stability he got from their family life was something he didn’t get very often. But it was also becoming obvious that we weren’t leaving because he couldn’t afford to. By the end of October, it wasn’t just payroll that was messed up. There was no more money, period.

  Javon got up one morning and went down to the hotel gym to work out. When he came back, he couldn’t get in his room. He went to the front desk to see what was going on, and they said there were some problems with the card on file. Checkout was at some automatic time. When the payment didn’t go through, he’d been locked out. He called me and I went downstairs and talked to the manager. They told me there was an outstanding balance that needed to be paid. They couldn’t let us back in the rooms until it was taken care of.

  Raymone’s office was dealing with that bill; it went directly to her. Hotel management told me they had been talking to her about it. I called her and of course she wasn’t answering my calls. And she knew it was important why I was calling, because she’d been talking to these people at the hotel. I ended up talking to someone else in her office, and I just got the usual excuse: “Mr. Jackson’s money is tied up right now.”

  We hung out in the lobby for a couple of hours, and finally we were told we could get back into our rooms. I checked with the hotel to see whose credit card had been put up, and it belonged to this woman who worked for Raymone. Some junior person in Raymone’s office was putting up her personal credit card to cover Michael Jackson’s bills.

  Javon: At first, I thought Ms. Raymone was just procrastinating in paying the people, that it was just a temporary thing. Then the reality started setting in. It was very disturbing. What’s going on here? Are we just kicked out for a couple hours, or should I be packing my stuff to go home? Why am I getting kicked out of hotels when I work for Michael Jackson?

  We had a company card that we used to put gas in the trucks. That got cut off too, right around the same time. Bill started using his own money to buy gas. We were already so deep in the hole, and he started going and putting fifty dollars into each truck every couple days just to keep us to where we could function. I told him he was crazy. I said, “Bill, this ain’t your responsibility. We should make an example out of this. The next time there’s an important detail, we’ll just tell Mr. Jackson, ‘We don’t have any gas and we can’t come get you.’ Then they’ll have to do something.”

  Bill said he wasn’t going to do that because it would make us look bad. Bill took it like he was a soldier on a mission; that was his mentality. Just because other people aren’t doing their job doesn’t mean you stop doing your job. He kept saying, “Nah, I’ll put the gas in the vehicle.” I don’t know where he got the money from, who he borrowed it from. All he’d tell me was, “I took care of it.”

  Bill: It had come to the point where we were just barely holding things together. Last week of October, Mike LaPerruque and I took Mr. Jackson into the city for a dinner with Peter Lopez at Mr. K’s, this Chinese joint on Lexington Avenue. I didn’t sit in on the dinner or anything, but I have to assume it was related to the phone call they’d had back in Virginia: “Can you help me find my money?”

  Javon: On the night of the Ebony photo shoot, we were driving Mr. Jackson through Midtown on our way back to the hotel. We were near the Apple Store, around 57th street, and we saw a billboard for Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?, this movie that Janet Jackson was starring in. She was front and center on this big poster up on the side of a building. We were sitting at a red light and Mr. Jackson looked up at the billboard and said, “Is that my sister? What is that? Is that a play she’s in?”

  I said, “No, that’s her movie, sir. She’s in a movie.”

  “When does it come out?”

  This movie had been out for a few months. The billboard for it was all torn and faded around the edges—that’s how long it had been in the theater. But I didn’t want to tell him that. I said, “It just came out, sir.”

  Then real soft, almost in a whisper, he said, “Oh. I wonder why no one told me.”

  Me and Bill looked at each other. We were shocked. Like, how does he not know that his own sister is in this big movie? We knew he was isolated. We knew he didn’t have many friends. But how had he not even had a casual conversation with someone in all these months to say, “Hey, Janet was really great in that movie”? How was he that cut off from the people in his own life?

  As we drove off, he said, “I wonder if it’s a good movie.”

  I said, “Yes, sir. I’ve seen it. It’s an excellent movie.”

  And that was all he ever said on it. He never mentioned it again.

  Bill: At the time, seeing how much his affairs were out of order, I thought, This is just how it is. Now, looking back, I honestly believe that if his relationship with his family had been better, if he’d had the same relationship with his own family that he had with the Cascios, his life would not have been like this. That’s where the problem was.

  There were a few conversations that I had with Grace about the early days, when his life was more organized. I remember one time she said that when Mr. Jackson was married to Lisa Marie Presley, that was a really good time for him. Grace felt that she really loved him and that he really loved her too. Things were more in order because of that trust they had. Lisa Marie made sure the wrong people weren’t getting in his ear, that people weren’t using him. Or she tried to, anyway. And if you’re in a position like Michael Jackson was, you have to have that person who’s in your corner, someone who’s not there to get a paycheck, someone who doesn’t have an agenda.

  When we first got there, and Mr. Jackson wouldn’t let his family past the gate without an appointment, I thought that was messed up. But with all the nasty stuff we’d been told about them, it sort of made sense. We’d heard that the family was rotten, that they were trying to feed off him, that they wanted to control him. We heard that they were going to try and kidnap him. Whenever nasty stories turned up in the tabloids, we’d hear that someone in the family had leaked it.

  But honestly, after being around for a while, with most of the family I never got any kind of rotten vibe. With Randy? Yes. Randy was just Randy. He and Michael had that falling-out over some business deal. And Jermaine, he was friendly enough, but whenever he called or c
ame around, he always seemed to have an angle, some deal he was working that he was going to get himself in on. Jermaine was the one that left the group first; he was supposed to have the solo career that blew up, but that never really happened for him. There might have been some jealousy there. Jermaine also tried to sell a book during the trial, and I don’t think Mr. Jackson ever forgave him for that. Jermaine wasn’t as tight with Michael as some people may think, at least not from what we could see.

  But everyone else? Jackie and Rebbie and Tito and the rest? I never got a bad vibe. They were always cordial, always respectful. The only vibe I ever got from them was concern. They were concerned about their brother. Even Joe Jackson. As nasty as he was to me the times I met him, as terrible as the stories are about him in the press—people want to make him the bad guy but it was more complicated than that. That was another thing Grace said that stuck with me. She said the only person who never stole from Michael Jackson was his father.

  For me, I’m the youngest of six. My relationship with my father wasn’t the best. He was a former military man who played by very strict rules. He was the disciplinarian. I was on the other end of that coming up. That was true for a lot of black families from that time. The world wasn’t always a safe place for young black people, and the odds against making it felt so overwhelming. Gangs. Crime. Trouble at school. So if you got out of line, the belt came out. That’s how it was. Mr. Jackson even made that comment to me once, when we were talking about our families. He said he didn’t know why the media had made such a huge deal over the way his father used to discipline them. It was not uncommon back then. And to take a family from where they were? From Gary, Indiana, to as far as they made it? I think it’s hard to judge Joe Jackson if you didn’t live Joe Jackson’s life. If he hadn’t been who he was, who knows if the world would have ever heard of Michael Jackson.

  I understood why he wasn’t close with some of his siblings. But all of them? The whole family? It didn’t make sense. Out of eight siblings, with all those nieces, nephews, and cousins, they couldn’t all be bad people. That’s just not possible. But we were given direct instructions that no one in the family was allowed to reach him except his mother. She was the only one who had his number, but the siblings would always convince her to divulge it. After I set up that iPhone for him, I must have changed his number four times in the first six months. Each time, it was to get away from his own family.

  Even his mother—she had an open invitation to visit or call, but sometimes she’d call me and wouldn’t ask to speak to him. Maybe she didn’t want to bother him, didn’t want him to think she was intruding. She’d call me and I’d ask if she was trying to reach her son and she’d say no. She’d just say, “Is he okay? Is he eating?”

  “Yes, ma’am. He’s good. He’s watching a movie with the kids.”

  “Oh, good. Thank you so much.”

  And that was it. She was just checking on him, like mothers do.

  And that was the vibe I got from most of his family too. They were just checking in on him. Which is why I had the feeling that his relationship with his family had suffered under all these handlers over the years. And without anyone from his family there, too many different people were able to reach in and put their hands in the basket and pull some money out, or manipulate him in the fragile state he was in. He really didn’t have anyone protecting him on that angle. He had security to protect his physical being. He had the best lawyers in the country taking care of his record deals and his publishing catalog. He had all that. What was missing from the organization was people who really gave a fuck about Michael Jackson.

  14

  After two months in New Jersey, Michael Jackson suffered two serious blows in rapid succession. That October, Sheikh Abdullah of Bahrain, weary of trying to extract a settlement from Jackson’s lawyers, filed a lawsuit against the singer in London, seeking to recoup the $7 million he’d paid for the never-delivered album and stage musical promised under the deal for Two Seas Records. Unlike the frivolous claims that ate up so much of Jackson’s time, this suit was potentially crippling. The all-encompassing language of the contract Jackson and Abdullah had signed gave the sheikh rights to any new recording or live-performance projects the singer might undertake. Jackson insisted that he’d been misled into signing a contract whose terms weren’t fully explained. Abdullah claimed he’d been used and deserted. Either way, Jackson’s ability to work was all but paralyzed until the issue could be resolved.

  Just days after Abdullah’s claim was made, Fortress Investment Group made a move to foreclose on Neverland. On October 22, the group filed a Notice of Default and Election to Sell with the state of California. Jackson owed the full principal of his $23 million mortgage on the estate, plus $212,963 in interest. He had just ninety days to settle the account, or Neverland would be sold to the highest bidder.

  In the autumn of 2007, Michael Jackson found himself marooned in the New Jersey basement of Connie and Dominic Cascio, his resources tapped. As he had done so many times before, when beset by trouble, Jackson turned to a wealthy, powerful figure for help.

  Bill: One evening, after we’d been in New Jersey for a while, Mr. Jackson had us pick him up at the Cascios’ house and take him to meet with Londell McMillan, another one of these high-powered entertainment attorneys. Londell handled business for Prince, Stevie Wonder, Lil’ Kim, and he’d done some cases for Mr. Jackson in the past. I knew of Londell from other clients I used to work for, but I hadn’t heard his name come up with Mr. Jackson until that night.

  They met at a mall off Route 4, the Westfield Garden State Plaza. We pulled our car into the parking lot, and Londell pulled up in his vehicle alongside ours. It was about nine o’clock and it was dark, starting to get cold out. Londell climbed in the back with Mr. Jackson, and Javon and I got out and stood outside to let them discuss what they had to discuss. They signed some documents. Whole thing lasted less than half an hour.

  After that, I started hearing Londell’s name in a lot of places where I used to hear Raymone’s. Before that, it was always “Call Raymone.” Now it was “Call Londell.” I got the feeling that was the beginning of Raymone being on the way out.

  Javon: While we were in Virginia, Reverend Jesse Jackson had come down for a visit. He was a longtime friend of the family, and while he was there, he’d invited Mr. Jackson to attend his birthday party, which was going to be in Los Angeles the first week of November. We didn’t hear about it again until New Jersey. We were about two, maybe three, weeks out from the party, and Mr. Jackson said he wanted to go, that he promised Jesse Jackson that he would be there.

  Bill: Getting to L.A. was a story in itself. First, Mr. Jackson wanted to drive back. He wanted to rent a luxury bus and spend a few days on the road. He had me looking into that. He also asked me to start looking at houses to rent in Vegas, and he gave me specific instructions not to tell Raymone I was looking at houses. So I started making calls to realtors, got some listings and printed them out for Mr. Jackson. Then everything with the trip came to a complete stop. I called Raymone to discuss the travel itinerary, and she said, “That’s not happening. I don’t know how you guys are going to get back to the West Coast.”

  I said, “Do you mean that you don’t know how we’re going to get to Jesse Jackson’s birthday party, or you don’t know how we’re getting out of New Jersey, period?”

  She just said that he couldn’t afford it, that he didn’t have the money to send everyone back. She said they could maybe afford to fly out just Mr. Jackson and the kids, without security or the schoolteacher or anybody else. I told Mr. Jackson that she’d proposed that, and he said, “That’s such an idiot statement. She’s such an idiot. What about you guys? Who’s going to protect my kids? No.”

  He told me to call Londell. Londell was the fixer now. I called him, told him the whole story. Londell called Jesse Jackson, who agreed to put up the money for us to travel and stay in L.A. So arrangements were made for us, Mike LaPerruque, Mr. Jackson,
his hairstylist, the kids, and the schoolteacher to be flown into L.A. three days before the party.

  We flew out commercial. We drove in to JFK from New Jersey, and I made arrangements with some people I knew to meet us at the airport and take the trucks back to the Cascios’ house; the plan was to have them shipped back to Las Vegas for us to use once we returned there. Prince’s dog had to be shipped too. We could take the cat on the plane in a carrier, but the dog was going to have to stay with the Cascios and be shipped later. Prince, he cried his eyes out when he had to leave that dog behind. He was in that backseat, sobbing the whole way to the airport. I asked Mr. Jackson, “Is he okay?”

  He said, “Yeah, he’ll be fine. He’s just upset, but I told him you’ll make sure Kenya’s okay. You’ll take care of it, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  At JFK, we were met by airport security and a few management officials. They knew we were coming in, and Mr. Jackson and the kids were cleared to go straight to the plane. Javon and Mike LaPerruque escorted them to the gate. I stayed with the bags. Mr. Jackson told me, “Bill, make sure you count the bags, because a lot of my stuff has gone missing at airports.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There were about thirty bags. I was keeping a special eye on the case with the Oscars. He also had a Louis Vuitton briefcase and another leather case with all his jewelry and makeup. These two TSA guys were scanning each bag. I was watching and keeping track. The Louis Vuitton case was the last to go through. As that was being scanned, they said to me, “Sir, we can’t see inside this bag through our scanner. We need to open it.”

  I said, “I don’t have the key, and I don’t know the combination.”

  They said, “We have keys to open it. May we?”

  “Sure.”

  They opened it. I couldn’t see what they were looking at; they were on the other side of the scanner. But they opened up this briefcase, and one guy looked at the other guy, and that guy looked up at me and gave me this stunned, wide-eyed look. Yo, you talk about nervous? I didn’t know what was in that bag. I was getting ready to say, “That shit ain’t mine,” when they said, “Sir, could you step over here?”