Michael Jackson

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  One day, according to the testimony, there was an unexpected telephone call asking Gavin and Starr to take part in the filming of Martin Bashir’s documentary, Living with Michael Jackson. Then, after the documentary aired and caused a big sensation because of Michael’s misguided comments, Gavin and his family were asked to take part in a rebuttal video intended to be used for damage control. Gavin, his two siblings – Starr and Davellin – and mother, Janet, then met Michael in Florida, as he testified, and that’s when Michael supposedly gave him wine in a Diet Coke can and called it Jesus Juice.

  The sexual misconduct between Michael and Gavin was said to have taken place back at Neverland between 20 February and 12 March 2003 (again, after the airing of the Bashir documentary). As the story went, the Jackson camp then supposedly kept the Arvizos under strict surveillance and effectively kidnapped them. (Tom Mesereau had a great line about this in his cross-examination of Gavin’s brother Starr: ‘How many times did your family escape Neverland and then go back so you could escape again?’)

  The climax of the Arvizo testimony would come in the video recording of Gavin’s questioning by Santa Barbara police, which was shown to the jury in the last days of the trial. Gavin again described the five times he claimed Michael made him drink alcohol and then abused him. ‘He said boys have to masturbate because if they don’t they go crazy,’ Gavin told the police. ‘He said that he wanted to show me how to masturbate. I said, “no”. He said he would do it for me. He grabbed me in my private area. He put his hand in my pants... he started masturbating me. I told him I didn’t want him to do that... He kept on doing it.’

  Something about this story didn’t sit right with me. Maybe it was the conspiracy charge – the allegation that a gaggle of Michael’s cohorts kept the Arvizos at Neverland against their will at Michael’s behest. That seemed ridiculous to me. My feeling was that if the district attorney concocted that charge, and it seemed to me that he had, what else in his case was fiction? If I couldn’t believe the conspiracy charge, could I believe the rest of the charges of giving alcohol to minors and sexual molestation? But more than that, the so-called ‘rebuttal video’ was troubling. In it, Gavin and his family were seen praising Michael Jackson beyond all reason while insisting that he was not capable of doing anything inappropriate with a child, and that anyone who thought so after watching the Bashir documentary was very wrong. And they were adamant about it, too. However, to explain it, the prosecution claimed the whole thing had been scripted and the Arvizos had been forced to say what they said.

  Whatever the case, I felt certain that District Attorney Tom Sneddon hated the idea of having to play that video for the jurors. After all, it made his case against Jackson look very suspect. The fact that he was in possession of this video and still went ahead with his prosecution made me question his motives. In fact, it made me think he had it in for Michael Jackson, maybe because he was never able to prosecute him for what he believed happened between him and his first accuser, Jordan Chandler, ten years earlier. In my opinion, once he saw the video of the Arvizos singing Michael’s praises, he should have just said, ‘Case closed. These people are probably liars. And even if I’m not absolutely sure they’re liars, they just might be liars and that’s reason enough not to proceed with the ruination of another man’s life.’

  The worst day, though, was the one we members of the press privately called ‘Porn Day’. That was the day – and it may have been more than one, I can’t recall perhaps because I’ve tried to block it – the prosecution showed, on an enormous screen, pornographic images of magazines found at Neverland. It was awful. I remember sitting there watching Michael’s mother, Katherine – a devout Jehovah’s Witness – as she was forced to look at the lurid display. I just remember the back of her head being very still, as if frozen in place. (At one point I believe I remember her not appearing at all for one of the sessions.) None of it was gay porn, though. None of it was kiddie porn. So why show it? The prosecution suggested that it was straight porn used by Michael to turn on young heterosexual kids so that he could then have sex with them. It didn’t make sense to me. And why show so many images? One magazine, maybe. Two? Maybe. But stacks of them? I wasn’t even sure they were Michael’s, to tell you the truth. In my mind, it seemed like a manoeuvre to destroy him and his family.

  At the end of the day, Randy Jackson looked at me as he left the courtroom and gave me a thumbs-up and a big smile. It seemed odd under the circumstances. But I returned the gesture. That evening I went back to my room and thought about that moment with Randy. It seemed somehow familiar to me. And then I remembered that almost thirty years earlier, Randy had been in an automobile accident and doctors said he would never walk again. At a press conference at the hospital, they rolled the young eighteen-year-old Randy Jackson out in a wheelchair, both legs in a cast. They said he would never walk again. I remember feeling sick about it. What a tragedy. And I remember that Randy looked at me standing among the other members of the press and gave me a thumbs-up and a big smile. Of course, Randy not only walked again, Michael said he danced and went on with his life in remarkable fashion. Say what you will about the Jacksons, hope springs eternal for that family – and maybe with good reason.

  I’ll never forget another moment at the trial. It was one of the many days Michael hobbled by me, smiled and nodded his recognition. I smiled back. And as he passed, I remember that he smelled like old, musty clothing. It was as if he was a wax figure in a museum, and one that had been there too long and was in need of care and attention. Later, one of the other reporters came over to me and said, ‘You’re putting your objectivity in jeopardy by smiling at the defendant. People are going to think you’re on his side.’ I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Yeah, well... ’ I muttered as I walked away. I thought it was a little late to be concerned about objectivity, especially after ‘Porn Day’.

  ‘I don’t recall seein’ any head lickin’’

  I have so many memories of that infamous trial. Sometimes they hit me in waves when I least expect it, especially since Michael’s death.

  For instance, I remember the day Gavin’s mother, Janet Arvizo, testified. Her testimony on 13 April 2005 was so preposterous, so unlikely – what with her allegation that she believed Michael was going to kidnap her children and take them away in a hot air balloon – many of us in the press corps actually began to feel as if we’d been duped. After all, we’d spent months before the trial at court hearings in Santa Maria about evidence that had been sealed. We had no idea what the DA had on Jackson, we just knew it had to be pretty bad. But the testimony thus far provided by the DA seemed weak and inconsistent, and when Janet Arvizo came to town with her quirky manner, it became clear to a lot of people that this wasn’t such a cut-and-dry case. Could it be that Michael was being set up by a family intent on making money, maybe, or a DA determined to finally nail him? After Janet’s testimony, one CNN reporter came over to me and said, ‘You know what, pal? I feel so...so...used.’ It was as if he’d been promised something by a suitor and been betrayed. A friend of mine named Michael Lawler – an ardent Jackson admirer who had followed the proceedings so closely he knew the evidence better than even I did – had flown in from New York to attend the trial. I helped him get into the courtroom for Janet’s testimony. He was so disgusted by it that he couldn’t help but mutter something derogatory under his breath. Overheard by the officials, he promptly got tossed right out of the courtroom. ‘The next time you help someone get into here,’ a sheriff deputy told me later, ‘you’d better tell him to keep his trap shut even if the witnesses are crazy as freaking loons.’

  I also well remember the day Bob Jones testified, the twenty-ninth day of testimony.

  I had known Bob since I was ten years old and had more than thirty years of history with him. He was a formidable man. As head publicist at Motown and later the man in charge of Michael’s PR, he was the person I had to clear in order to get to Diana Ross, The Supremes, The Temptations, The Jackson 5 and all
of the other Motown stars when I wanted to do interviews and features about them. He never made it easy, either. He could be incredibly intimidating and combative. He was also, at heart, a big softy. I can’t count the number of favors we did for each other, mostly involving me writing about some obscure Motown artist not one person on the planet cared about in exchange for an interview with a true legend like Stevie Wonder or Smokey Robinson.

  When Bob Jones left Motown to work for Michael Jackson, he made it tough for all of us in the press to get to Michael, as we expected would be the case. He’d known Michael since the pop star was eight, so of course he was protective of him. However, when there was a press day or some other function at Neverland, we’d all find ourselves in a bus together headed out there to cover the event. I remember him once telling me, ‘If I see you take even one picture on the property, I’ll throw you into the lake with my own two hands.’ And he meant it, too.

  Bob left Michael’s employ in 2004 after almost seventeen years – not counting all the years at Motown – in what seemed an unfair way, by letter, not even a phone call. Michael just wrote him off and abandoned him for reasons that are still unclear to me and, it seems from talking to Bob about it, to him as well. Then Bob wrote a scathing book about Michael with reporter Stacy Brown. Even I was shocked by it, and I don’t shock easily when it comes to this subject matter. Of course, the prosecution loved every rage-fueled word, especially in regard to Jordie Chandler, the boy Michael was accused of having molested in 1993. And before the book was even officially published, they put Bob on the witness stand to face his former employer and tell – under oath – some of the stories about Michael and Jordie that were in his book. What must it have been like for Bob to look out from the witness stand and stare into Michael’s eyes after having written such a book? Whatever his feelings, in terms of doing what was expected of him, Bob couldn’-t – or wouldn’-t – pull it off for the prosecution. He’d spent so many years protecting – and loving – Michael Jackson, he simply couldn’t do it. He acted – or maybe it wasn’t acting, I’m not sure to this day – as if he hadn’t even read the book, let alone written it with Stacy. ‘I don’t recall seeing any head lickin’,’ Bob said when asked about a particularly strange passage in his own book. (I have to admit, that became a favorite line for a lot of us in the media.)

  Tom Sneddon never really broke Bob Jones – no one was ever able to do that, not to my knowledge, anyway. Bob left the witness stand after not saying anything very damaging about Michael. In fact, in some ways, I felt he sacrificed his own dignity for Michael that day, maybe his final gift to his former friend and employer. He didn’t seem to care that the DA had made him look like a liar, as long as he didn’t betray Michael Jackson on that witness stand. Still, I had a sinking feeling that, as far as Michael was concerned, Bob was dead to him now anyway. Bob died a couple of years later without ever reconciling with Michael.

  On that same day, June Chandler – Jordie’s mother – testified. She spoke of the gifts Michael gave her and the pleading and begging he did to allow him to spend time with Jordie ten years ago. She looked so devastated as she spoke about the way her relationship with her son had been ruined – she hadn’t spoken to him in eleven years, by his decision – and how much she regretted ever having trusted Michael with her son. She said that Michael lavished her with all sorts of expensive presents in order that she trust him and, maybe by extension, allow her boy to spend private time with him, on at least thirty occasions!

  When I wrote about the Jordie Chandler business as it unfolded in 1993 and 1994, I was never certain what to think about it. Michael had been so adamant in my interviews with him at the time – anguished telephone calls from abroad – that he was not guilty, it was difficult for me to accept that he was that good a liar. Also, I had many credible sources who felt certain that Michael was being blackmailed, that he was innocent. But some of the stories in which Jordie was concerned were so disturbing, I wasn’t sure what to make of them. Where Gavin Arvizo was concerned, however, I came to the conclusion that Michael wasn’t guilty based on testimony presented in court. But when it came to Jordie Chandler, I wasn’t as certain. How could I be?

  Many of Michael’s fans and family members have been angry with me over the years for not being unequivocal about Michael’s innocence where Jordie Chandler was concerned. I understand that they feel Michael’s denials to me in interviews should have been enough to convince me, and of course his commentary about it went a long way. But the fact of the matter is that I was never in the same room with Michael and Jordie. How could I know for sure what went on between them? And, most important – unlike the situation with Gavin – I wasn’t presented with more than sixty days of sworn testimony to help me make up my mind. I wanted to believe that Michael was innocent of any wrongdoing with Jordie Chandler, of course. I hoped that was the case. But that doesn’t necessarily make it so. In the end, in my view, blind faith is a wonderful thing reserved only for family members and very, very close friends. The rest of us just have hope – and that’s not the same as knowledge.

  Then there was the small fact that Michael paid Jordie more than $25 million. Certainly that didn’t help clear his name, as far as I was concerned. I remember interviewing Michael right after the settlement was made and telling him that I was extremely disappointed that he’d paid the Chandlers so many millions. I told him that from that moment on, people would always believe he was guilty as charged. It was the first time I’d ever heard Michael swear. ‘I don’t give a [expletive deleted] what people think,’ he told me angrily. He said that the litigation had ruined his life, that he was absolutely innocent but that he also had the money to make the whole thing go away. It was the first time, I thought, Jackson didn’t make a decision with an eye toward how it would play out in the public arena. In some ways, I remember thinking it was a defining moment for him. I wondered if maybe all of the image-making days were behind him and I hoped he’d now be able to lead a more authentic life. Maybe he didn’t do it after all, I mused, and he just wanted to get on with his life and forget that the Chandlers ever existed. But then, ten years later, I sat studying June Chandler on the witness stand, this shell of a woman with dead eyes. She looked as if her whole world had come crashing down around her the day she and her boy met Michael Jackson. And I wasn’t sure what to think. She was, I felt, the prosecution’s strongest witness, and not so much because of what she said – it wasn’t much, actually – but because of how she appeared while saying it. Ruined. Totally destroyed by the circumstances of her son’s relationship with the King of Pop.

  Debbie Rowe’s Testimony

  Debbie Rowe’s testimony on 28 May 2005 – the fortieth day – was probably the most dramatic of the trial. She hadn’t seen Michael in many years; he wouldn’t speak to her. As far as he was concerned, she’d betrayed him more than once by wanting to see the two children – Paris and Prince Michael – she’d had for him. ‘Sometimes she wants them,’ he’d once told me in a phone conversation, ‘and sometimes she doesn’t, and I’m not gonna screw my kids up by dropping her into the picture and then out of the picture. I’m mad at her now.’

  Michael was certainly angry when Debbie made a play for the children right after he was arrested in 2003. In a legal declaration at the time, she claimed that she kept up her visiting rights to the children for about a year but relinquished them because she couldn’t handle all of the publicity surrounding the relationship and thought it would be ‘in the children’s best interests’. However, according to her statement:

  ‘During the past few years I maintained contact with persons close to Michael so that I could keep updates on the children. I have their pictures throughout my home and often reflected on the fabulous life they must have enjoyed with their father. I was always told that our children were treated like royalty and were very happy children. I wanted to speak with Michael over the past few years to talk about our children but he did not want to speak with me. Michael never ret
urned any phone calls nor initiated any conversation with me, so I unfortunately continued to rely on observations of others that had personal knowledge of the children and their welfare.’

  She also maintained that child abuse charges against Jackson had forced her to reconsider, adding: ‘I believe that I will provide a more stable environment for our children at this particular time. I believe that I have a responsibility to protect and be involved with my children’s life and well-being until such time as a full investigation can be conducted to determine really what is in the children’s best interests. If I did not intercede now to help our children I would not be fulfilling my responsibility as a parent.’ Fearing that Jackson was about to flee the country with her children before his trial, she requested that the children’s passports be immediately surrendered. She wrote: ‘Michael has close, influential and rich friends all over the world. He has the ability to rent a private jet at a moment’s notice, have the children taken from the United States and never returned.’

  To Michael, a deal was a deal, no matter what – and as far as he was concerned Debbie had signed away her parental rights in 2001 and had also received a sizable payment from him: millions, in fact. He definitely had a stubborn way about him, which I always presumed he got from his father, Joseph. A person can never reason with Joseph Jackson when he has his mind made up about something, and Michael was exactly the same way. Also, once someone had been cut out of Michael’s life, that person was – except for a few occasions – never thought of again by Michael. So Debbie was out of the picture, we all knew it – and now she was being called by the prosecution. Everyone suspected her testimony was going to be very damaging. Certainly the prosecution thought as much, based on their pre-interviews with her, or they wouldn’t have called her.