When Debbie was sworn in, Michael stared at her with an icy expression. Then it was just one bombshell after another with Debbie, as always seemed to be the case.
First of all, she admitted that she and Jackson never shared a home together – that she never moved into Neverland. It looked as if she was going to testify that her marriage and relationship to Jackson was just a sham. But then, as often happened at that trial, things turned on a dime. Suddenly – and much to everyone’s surprise, especially the prosecutors’ – Debbie began to veer from the story she was expected to tell. First of all, the DA promised the jury Debbie would testify that all of the compliments she made about Michael in the ‘rebuttal video’ had been scripted. She said just the opposite: ‘Mr. Jackson knows no one could tell me what to say.’ However, she did admit that the reason she took part in the video was that she thought she would be ‘reintroduced to them [her children] and to be reacquainted with their dad.’ When asked why, she got choked up, looked at Michael and said, ‘Because he’s my friend.’ Then, when asked if she was able to see her children after making the video, she quietly answered that she had tried to do so for nine months until finally giving up.
Debbie also began to insist that Michael was a great father, that he would never harm a child and that she believed with all her heart that he was innocent of everything he was being accused of during these proceedings. Of course, she had to admit, she hadn’t actually seen him or talked to him for, well, she couldn’t even remember how long, it had been that many years. Still, she said she thought of him as a friend, ‘if he’d just talk to me.’ It was sad. She was incredibly likeable, full of spit-and-vinegar (at one point she claimed one of Jackson’s advisers was ‘full of shit’ and then turned to the judge and apologized). When she learned while on the witness stand that the DA had taped conversations with her without her knowledge, she looked aghast and said, ‘You did? You did? Damn you guys!’
If anything, Debbie Rowe did Michael Jackson quite a big service that day. If she had testified against him, as his ex-wife and mother of his two children, there seemed no way he would ever be found not guilty. After the trial, I interviewed prosecutor Ron Zonen for Court TV and he told me that, indeed, Debbie ‘was probably the biggest surprise of the entire trial. We didn’t see that one coming, did we?’
After Debbie Rowe’s testimony, we all thought, Well, she’s sure going to get to see her kids, now. Unfortunately, even though she probably helped keep Michael out of jail, according to most accounts she would see her children only one time after that trial.
When Michael was in self-imposed exile in Bahrain after the trial, he sent Prince Michael and Paris back to the States for a supervised visit with their mother at a Beverly Hills hotel. It was the first time Debbie had seen them in three years. The tots were told that Debbie was a family friend, not their mother. Certainly that had to have been very painful for her. But that was it. If she ever saw the children again, no one seems to know about it.
Following Debbie’s initial 2003 application for custody, and Michael’s acquittal in 2005, the two of them reportedly came to an agreement for her to give up all parental rights in exchange for about $6 million, staggered in a ten-year deal. She received a lump sum of about $900,000 late in 2006 and then her first installment of about $600,000 on 1 September 2007. The question is: Did she receive the other payments? It’s likely that she didn’t, since Michael wasn’t exactly paying his bills in the last few years of his life. If not, that could influence Debbie’s decision as to whether or not she wants to now claim the children as her own after the death of their father.
As is now well known, Debbie would be notably left out of Michael’s will. Keep in mind, though, that it was drawn up in 2003, a couple of years before the trial. Apparently, though, he didn’t update it after the trial was over.
An Odd Defence
The prosecution rested on 4 May 2005 after forty-five days. The defence began presenting its case the next day.
Ironically, some of us felt that the defence’s witnesses were even more damaging than the prosecution’s! For instance, the first witnesses were Wade Robson and Brett Barnes, two young men called by Michael’s attorney, Tom Mesereau, to testify that as youngsters they had both slept in the same bed as Michael. My stomach twisted into knots as they told their stories. The point was that in Michael Jackson’s world, it was okay to sleep with little kids – it didn’t mean you were having sex with them, it just meant you were having fun, sleep-overs. Never mind the inappropriate nature of the whole thing or the fact that most reasonable people would find it appalling and, at the very least, suspicious.
On the second day of testimony, Joy Robson, Wade’s mother, testified about walking her ten-year-old son across the street from the hotel in which they were staying to a condo in which Michael was staying and dropping him off there to spend the night with Jackson. And, as far as she was concerned, it was all innocent. Why? Because she knew Michael loved children. ‘Michael Jackson is a very special person,’ she said. ‘Unless you know him, it’s hard to understand him. He’s not the boy next door.’ I was more than a little perplexed. I couldn’t imagine that the jury would think this kind of thing made sense. But still, Joy seemed like a reasonable person, so maybe it did. In Michael’s world, what made sense and what seemed like lunacy often converged into a reality that was not easy to describe.
At one point, Joy Robson recalled tension and jealousy among the boys who were sleeping with Jackson, including actor Macaulay Culkin and his brother Kieran. There was also jealousy among the families: Robson said she told June Chandler that ‘there was tremendous emotional impact on the children when Michael moved on to another boy’. Moreover, she said she thought that June was ‘a gold digger’ who wanted to be ‘mistress of Neverland’.
Marie Lisbeth Barnes testified that her son, Brett, spent dozens of nights in bed with Michael, even accompanying the pop star on concert tours to South America and Europe. During the tours, Brett Barnes and Michael would share one hotel room, while the rest of the Barnes family stayed in another, the mother said. ‘You just feel when you can trust someone and not trust someone, and I have complete trust in him,’ Barnes explained. Was I the only one who thought this did not speak well of Jackson? I didn’t think so. Looking around the room, I saw a lot of confused faces. Then, when Brett’s sister Karlee said that Michael slept with her brother for a total of ‘365 days’ over a two-year period when Brett was ten or eleven years old, I threw my hands in the air and decided that this defence made no sense to me at all.
In fact, throughout the defence’s case, there were stories of Michael sleeping with boys in what was maintained to be innocent behaviour. Even Macaulay Culkin was called to the witness stand on the fiftieth day to pretty much testify to the same effect. But in my opinion, the defence was at its best when pointing out inconsistencies in the Arvizos’ stories and in those of the other witnesses against Michael. It was at its worst when trying to make Michael’s inappropriate behaviour sound reasonable and understandable.
It wasn’t all high-stakes melodrama, though. Some memories of Santa Maria actually make me laugh. For instance, I remember the day we were all in court ready for the proceedings to begin when there was a ruckus in the back of the room. It was 3 June 2005, and Tom Mesereau was on the second day of his closing arguments. All heads turned to see three attractive black women trying to make their way to the front of the courtroom – all three were teased, weaved and adorned with clanging jewelry. It was orchestrated chaos; think The Supremes trying to get to the floor-show stage from the back of a crowded nightclub and you’ll get the picture. It was Janet, LaToya and Rebbie making, doubtless, the best entrance of the trial dressed in matching black-and-white outfits. The three Jackson sisters marched up the center aisle in perfect unison, led by Janet as if she’d just said, ‘Okay, girls... let’s hit it. One. Two. Three. Go.’ They sat in the front row as Thomas Mesereau finished his closing argument. ‘It only takes one lie under oa
th to throw this case out of court by you,’ Mesereau told jurors. ‘And you can’t count the lies here.’ When he was finished, the judge announced that Ron Zonen was about to begin the prosecution’s brief rebuttal. Just then, on cue, all three Jackson sisters stood up, turned around and promptly marched right out of the courtroom.
The Verdict
‘You have the best seat in the house,’ one of the Santa Barbara sheriffs told me the night before he thought the verdict was to come down, on 13 June 2005. It had taken sixty-six days to get the case to the jury – -forty-five days for the prosecution and fifteen for the defence. The jury got the case on 3 June and deliberated for ten days. ‘Because when Jackson is found guilty – and he will be found guilty, I assure you,’ the sheriff continued, ‘we’re going to grab him and take him out of there so fast, your head will spin.’ I wondered why. ‘Because we’re afraid there’ll be such an uproar, his brothers will jump the bar [which separates the spectators from the judge, defendant and lawyer] and cause a riot.’ I was taken aback by the imagery. I had assumed Michael would be found not guilty. The prosecution’s case was weak, at least in my view. The kid Gavin Arvizo was not believable, and his mother seemed emotionally unbalanced to me – as did many of the other witnesses. It’s funny how the worst moments stand out in a person’s mind in a trial like this one, and come back to you when you try to sort it all out. For instance, Starr Arvizo testified that Michael walked into a room completely naked and aroused and that the boys were horrified. Michael, according to Starr, said it was ‘perfectly natural’ and they shouldn’t give his erection a second thought. But Gavin testified that Jackson walked into a room naked, saw them and tore back out again suggesting that maybe he didn’t know they were in there – and there was no mention at all from Gavin of Michael being aroused or of him saying it was ‘natural’. A minor distinction? Maybe. But still... it made me wonder if the boys just forgot to get their story straight. In fact, so many kids’ names were mentioned and so many had testified, one of the questions back from the jury to the judge during deliberations was: ‘Which boy are we talking about, again?’
But what if I was wrong? What if Michael was found guilty and sent to prison? ‘He’ll never survive it,’ his brother Jermaine told me. ‘He just never will. It will be the end for him.’
I was scheduled to be in the courtroom for the verdict on that fateful 13 June 2005, and then planned to immediately race outside and report the results for the CBS News television audience. The reporters sitting next to me in court that day who also felt Jackson was not guilty wondered how they would keep their objectivity if the verdict came in otherwise. ‘I have this awful feeling that I’ll break down into tears,’ one female news reporter, a personal friend, told me. ‘And how will that look on TV? But it’s Michael Jackson,’ she reasoned. ‘We have loved him since he was ten.’ I nodded. In this case, with this kid and his family, I was sure that Michael was not guilty. Most of the evidence – or lack of it – had proved as much to me. Therefore I was truly scared for him. When I watched him walk slowly and painfully into the courtroom on the day of the verdict, he already seemed like a broken man and he hadn’t even gotten news of his fate yet. Watching him, it was as if he was walking to a gas chamber. He had given up. I wasn’t surprised. His dignity stripped from him, his career in a shambles, the humiliation alone would have done in most people, let alone a person as fragile and complex as Michael Jackson.
Of course, the verdict was that Michael was found not guilty on all counts.
I sat and watched Michael listen to the ‘not guilty’ decisions as they were read one by one, and as the drama unfolded, it hit me like a thunderbolt: This man is on so many different kinds of drugs, I don’t even think he understands he’s been found not guilty!
‘A lot of people are going to be surprised, and you don’t need a law degree to understand this verdict,’ said CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. ‘It is an absolute and complete victory for Michael Jackson, utter humiliation and defeat for Thomas Sneddon, the district attorney who has been pursuing Michael Jackson for more than a decade, who brought a case that was not one that this jury bought at all. This one’s over.’
Later in the hallway, there was chaos as the media tried to race out of the courthouse to report the news. Michael’s fans went berserk with joy outside, while the media scurried about trying to find their camera and production crews. It was total pandemonium. For a moment, I found myself shoulder to shoulder with Michael. I looked at him, this guy I had known since the age of ten. I smiled at him. He forced a smile back, but his expression was vacant, his eyes empty. Having been vindicated, it should have been one of the happiest days of his life, but it was as if he wasn’t even present to enjoy it. For all intents and purposes, Michael Jackson was gone.
I went on the air to give my first-person account of what had gone on in the courtroom for CBS News. For me, it was emotional; I barely got through it.
As I was making my way through the crowd to do a live shot elsewhere on the grounds, a woman came up to me, a perfect stranger who recognized me. She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me in so she could make sure I heard her over the cacophony. ‘Oh, no,’ she said, her eyes wide with alarm. ‘What if he really is innocent?’ It was as if the thought had just hit her and that she needed to express it immediately, and I just happened to be the one standing nearby when it came to her. ‘After all of this,’ she said, ‘what if he really is innocent?’ As I looked at the startled expression on her face, I felt a chill shoot down my spine and I thought to myself... Oh, my God! What if he really is?
Aftermath
Bahrain is not an easy place to visit in the summer. Desert covers most of the thirty islands that make up the country, and in August it’s so hot, humid and miserable that temperatures regularly exceed 110 degrees Fahrenheit. But this remote nation does offer one attraction. It’s the perfect place for a troubled man to put distance between himself and his problems. Which may explain why it was there, in the Persian Gulf, that Michael Jackson sought sanctuary after the trial.
In August of 2005, Michael turned forty-seven. He had his freedom. But, in truth, his problems were far from over. Rather than relish his new independence, Michael had sunk into a deep depression, often suffering from panic attacks and insomnia as if traumatized by the trial. He refused to speak about it. This was not the ‘victory’ that his friends and fans had fought for. After the verdict, the pop star all but disappeared from public view. There were no post-trial parties, no triumphant press conferences. In truth, Michael was in no fit state to celebrate. He was too ill. A couple of days after the verdict, he checked into a hospital in Santa Barbara to be treated for exhaustion and dehydration. Not long after he was released, he took off, leaving Neverland, never to return.
‘He went into total seclusion,’ a source close to the singer told me. ‘He was depressed, anxious, unable to eat or sleep. He almost lost it all: his freedom, his family, his career. You don’t just bounce back after something like that. He told me, “To this day, I wake up feeling upset and scared to death, and it takes me a half hour to remember that it’s over.” ’
The only person Michael saw in the weeks after the trial – other than his children and their nanny, Grace Rwaramba – was a therapist. For the first time in his life, Jackson decided to seek counseling. It was definitely a step in the right direction. He knew he needed help, and maybe it was an indication of growth that he actually sought it instead of ignoring the signs. ‘He felt totally victimized by Gavin, the rest of the scheming Arvizos, and also by the Santa Barbara district attorney, Thomas Sneddon,’ one of Michael’s inner circle told me. ‘He had a difficult time getting past the fury he feels about the whole situation. One day he told me, “God forgive me, and don’t tell Katherine I ever said this, but I hate that kid. I so hate that kid.” Then I remember he looked at me for a moment and he said, “Part of me thinks, no, that’s not right. You shouldn’t hate. But then I think, I can’t help it. I hate that kid for
what he did to me. My therapist is telling me that I need to get real with myself and feel what I feel, not suppress it like I usually do. Well, how I feel is that I hate that kid. I do.” ’
As described to me, what Jackson had been experiencing sounded akin to post-traumatic stress syndrome. He had persistent nightmares about the trial, replaying in his head the lurid evidence against him, the many witnesses, the pornography shown to the jury, the look of anguish on his mother’s face. It was the worst thing that had ever happened to him, and it made him feel raw and, if at all possible, even more disconnected.
Michael didn’t want to talk to anyone who reminded him of what had happened in Santa Maria, even the people who were at his side throughout the trial. His family was out, as far as he was concerned. He seemed to want nothing to do with most of them. Some of the Jacksons were talking about a reunion tour again, and this time it must have felt to Michael as if he really owed them the honor – but, still, he wasn’t going to do it. He felt pressured into becoming involved in other family matters, not to mention his collapsing financial empire, and he simply didn’t want to traffic in either world. So he took off. He went to Bahrain, which was about as far away as he could get. The rejection hurt his family, deeply. Joseph desperately wanted Michael to make an appearance at a birthday party for him in Germany. Michael couldn’t bring himself to do it. In the end, Joseph had to hire a Michael Jackson impersonator.
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