Untouchable

by Randall Sullivan

  Veronique Peck, still elegant in her seventies, was on Michael’s arm the evening of October 29, 2008, when he made the public appearance that announced his return to Los Angeles. The occasion was a Halloween party hosted by Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines and her actor husband, Adrian Pasdar. Thinking he was an impersonator, the DJ at the party began to play “Thriller” when Michael walked into the huge room. Several people approached to say that his was absolutely the best Michael Jackson costume they’d ever seen, only to stop frozen in midsentence when they realized it was Michael Jackson. Maines would later tell shock-jock Howard Stern that Michael’s eldest son was perhaps “the most well-adjusted” and “self-assured” child she’d ever met. She wasn’t quite so complimentary toward the boy’s father, who not only had failed to introduce himself after arriving at her home but also allowed his bodyguards to keep her away when she made the effort to meet him. “I think maybe he’s stuck in time as a child,” she told Stern. “I felt like maybe he’s a child. He’s got lots of handlers.”

  Michael wasn’t wearing a mask on the evening of Maines’s party, but he had been three weeks earlier, when he and his children were photographed leaving a comic book store on Melrose Avenue, each of the kids costumed as a Halloween character. The story that accompanied the photograph in London’s Daily Mail (which remained interested in each and every Wacko Jacko sighting) described him as looking “scarier than ever in a surgical mask, giant black sunglasses, and a hooded jumper.”

  Tohme was furious: “I told him, ‘No mask, Michael. Not again, ever, please. Remember who you are.’”

  The newly minted manager, though, was learning quickly that who Michael Jackson was would mean fielding an unceasing swirl of false reports, scandalous claims, and vindictive rumors, whether he wore a mask or not. In Las Vegas, columnist Norm Clarke had just come out with a story that Jackson had turned down the opportunity to perform at the opening of Steve Wynn’s new $2.2 billion Encore Tower “and everybody thought it was because Michael was sick or on drugs,” Tohme recalled. The rumors that Jackson was seriously ill had been fueled by a claim made in Britain’s Sun by Ian Halperin, who was claiming that “sources” had informed him the star’s fading health had left him nearly blind in one eye and in need of a lung transplant that he “may be too weak to go through with.” The absurd story had gained traction so quickly that Tohme had been forced to grant the New York Daily News an interview in which he declared it “a total fabrication.” Just a couple of months earlier, the Wall Street Journal had published an article stating that Jackson was “holed up” in the “rural Nevada compound” of Pahrump, a dusty little census-created community on the edge of the Mojave Desert that was best known for its discount brothels. “Michael had never been near the place,” a baffled Tohme would say. “And this is the Wall Street Journal.” The appearance of the Pahrump story had coincided with the resurfacing of Jack Wishna, who was playing a particularly unattractive version of the spurned suitor as he told the National Enquirer that reports Michael Jackson was about to mount a series of comeback concerts at Tom Barrack’s hotels were wishful thinking. “Sadly, Michael’s incapable of keeping promises, because he hasn’t got the will to even show up anywhere, much less get himself into shape for a world-class performance,” Wishna told the Enquirer. “He might drop by to wave at guests, or do a dance on top of a limo, but a long term show? That dream will never come true, I’m afraid.”

  The only good thing about all the stories coming out of Nevada was that they seemed to make Michael increasingly content to stay in Southern California, Tohme said. By the middle of November, Jackson was telling his manager that he wanted to start looking at houses in Bel Air. Tohme was delighted, until he discovered that the first home to capture his client’s imagination was the most expensive on the entire LA market, a lavish estate that had just been built at the top of Bel Air’s most exclusive street, Nimes Road, by the former owner of the Ritz-Carlton Hotels, Mohamed Hadid. “Le Belvedere,” Hadid called his mansion, a 48,000-square-foot palace that offered 280-degree views and was barricaded by a thousand-foot-long, 36-foot-high wall made of stones imported from Jerusalem. The 2.2-acre grounds were breathtaking, heavy with specimen plantings that surrounded a “swan lake” and an infinity pool, all set against the property’s majestic vistas. Among the home’s many interior amenities, Michael’s favorite was a sixty-seat home theater that was set up in the style of an opera house. Hadid had just put the place on the market for $85 million and Michael was trying to convince both the owner and his manager that he could afford it. “I told him, ‘Michael, it’s too much. It’s not worth it,’” Tohme recalled. Hadid refused when Tohme asked if his client could rent Le Belvedere, but said he would allow Jackson to spend the night in the house with his children “in order to feel the place.” It was agreed that Hadid and his son would vacate the property on Thanksgiving morning to spend that day and night in Santa Barbara. Tohme and his wife prepared a feast, then transported it, along with their own children, Michael, and Michael’s children to Le Belvedere, where they all dined together. “We stayed late, then left Michael and his children and returned home,” Tohme recalled. “The next morning I went and picked up Michael and his children and took them back to the Hotel Bel-Air. On the way Michael said he didn’t want Hadid’s house. He said he heard some bad voice there. Michael was a very spiritual guy, and he was guided by that in his decisions.”

  Over the next few days, Tohme convinced Michael that renting a home was the right move, at least until they returned from London after the O2 shows. With the help of a real estate broker friend named Joyce Essex, Tohme located an estate on Carolwood Drive in Holmby Hills, a neighborhood that—with Beverly Hills on one side and Bel Air on the other—formed the fabled “Platinum Triangle.” The property’s 17,171-square-foot, three-story, French chateau–style mansion belonged to Christian Audigier’s senior partner in his Ed Hardy stores: Hubert Guez. Designed by Richard Landry, LA’s reigning architect to the ultrarich, the home was situated on 1.25 acres enclosed by walls and gates, with a breathtaking slate-patioed pool. There were seven bedrooms, thirteen bathrooms, twelve fireplaces, a gourmet kitchen, a wine cellar, a theater and family rooms, a huge curving staircase, and a wood-paneled library that Michael adored the moment he saw it. He was also pleased that the house had formerly been the Los Angeles home of Sean Connery—Sir Sean Connery. Before being pulled off the market the property had been advertised at a price of $38 million. Quite a few people snickered, naturally, when Tohme Tohme said that Michael had moved into the Carolwood chateau, which was being rented for $100,000 per month, “to save money.” But that was less than it cost to live full-time at the Hotel Bel-Air. Anyway, AEG was paying the bill, though Michael tended to forget that the cost was being subtracted from his future earnings. The chateau was actually a rather modest spread for this particular neighborhood, which encompassed Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion and the monstrous 57,000-square-foot, 123-room palace that TV producer Aaron Spelling had built after tearing down Bing Crosby’s lovely old house on South Mapleton Drive.

  What most who knew him wondered was whether Michael’s move into the Holmby Hills mansion was a break from the past or a return to it. Much of his personal history was nearby. Gregory Peck’s place and Berry Gordy’s mansion were over the hill on the other side of Beverly Glen Drive. The house in which Jackson’s former wife Lisa Marie Presley had grown up could be found just around the corner on Monovale Drive. The Hayvenhurst compound, where Michael had lived even longer than at Neverland, was a ten-minute drive from Carolwood when traffic was light. And the Guez chateau was much closer than that to the intersection in Beverly Hills where the Jeep Michael was driving one day in May 1992 had broken down, at Wilshire and Lindley, a location that for Jackson was loaded with more bad memories and dark juju than just about any other spot on the planet. It was the point, really, at which he had come to the beginning of his end.

  An arresting sight it must have been on that sunn
y afternoon when thirty-three-year-old Michael Jackson, wearing a black turban fitted with a veil and large black sunglasses, stood in the right lane of Wilshire Boulevard, kicking the tires of his stalled Jeep. It must have sounded pretty strange to Mel Green, who took a phone call from his wife telling him whom she had just seen stranded in traffic. Sensing a moment of opportunity, Green sped to the rescue, then phoned Dave Schwartz, his boss at Rent-A-Wreck, a used-cars-for-hire agency situated about a mile away in West Los Angeles. He would be arriving within minutes, in the company of a very special guest, Green told Schwartz. “You sure it’s not some impersonator?” the boss asked. Green seemed pretty certain, so Schwartz phoned his wife June and told her to get over to the shop and to bring their six-year daughter Lily and June’s twelve-year-old son from a previous marriage, Jordan Chandler.

  Jordie was a beautiful kid (a fact that would be employed against Jackson later) with caramel-colored skin, dark eyes, perfect white teeth, and flawless features. June Chandler Schwartz, born June Wong, was herself an exotic Eurasian with a hint of African blood, full lips, and lustrous black hair. At Rent-A-Wreck, she told Michael that Jordie was a big fan of his, had in fact sent him a drawing in 1984 after his hair caught fire filming that Pepsi commercial, then handed Michael a business card on which she’d written the family’s home phone number.

  In the weeks that followed, Michael began calling Jordie, as he had called many other boys over the years, and the two became phone friends. According to June, Jackson invited her son to visit him at his condo in Westwood—“the Hideout”—but she was unable to take him. Michael left on a three-month promotional tour a short time later (accompanied by two other boys, an eleven-year-old Australian named Brett Barnes and nine-year-old Prince Albert von Thurn und Taxis of Bavaria) but still found time to call Jordan Chandler on a regular basis. According to Jordie, Michael described the wonders of Neverland, “a place where boys have rights,” and promised to have him there soon as a guest. The pledge was kept when Michael returned from his tour; Jordie, June, and half-sister Lily visited Neverland a number of times in late 1992 and early 1993. On the family’s first visit, Jordie and Lily were treated to an after-hours shopping spree at Toys “R” Us in which the kids piled more than $10,000 worth of merchandise into their shopping carts. The next evening, Jordie would say, he and Michael took a ride together on the Neverland Ferris wheel, which stopped when their gondola was at the apex of its revolution.

  “Do you know how much time I spend up here alone?” Michael asked the boy, sweeping his arms across the sea of lights beneath them. “I have all this, yet I have nothing.”

  “You have us now,” Jordie replied, and slipped his arm around Michael’s shoulder.

  “My new little family,” Michael said, and smiled, according to the boy’s account.

  Michael invited Jordie, June, and Lily back to Neverland the next weekend, and arrived personally at their front door in a limousine on Friday afternoon to take them to the ranch from Los Angeles. When he climbed into the limo, Jordie would say, he found Brett Barnes already inside, sitting on Michael’s lap. Michael spoke mostly to Brett during the ride, according to Jordie and his mother, and when they arrived at Neverland instructed his staff to take the Australian boy’s things to his own bedroom. Jordie, like his mother and half-sister, slept in a guest room. When Michael invited the family to join him on a trip to Las Vegas, though, that all changed, according to both Jordie and his mother. He and Michael watched The Exorcist together, Jordie said, and he was so frightened that he sought comfort in Michael’s bed that night. “There was no physical contact” on that occasion, according to Jordie’s sworn statement, but his mom was upset when she saw that the boy’s own bed hadn’t been slept in, questioned him about it, then warned her son, “Never do that again.”

  Jordie told Michael what his mother had said and, according to June, Jackson came to her wearing an injured expression. “How could you think I would hurt Jordie?” he asked. During the conversation that followed, June claimed later, Michael explained his theory that children were sexually innocent and remained that way until they were “conditioned” by adults to develop prurient thoughts. What he wanted for Jordie, Michael said, was that the boy remain “pure,” free of the contamination with which adult society would try to ruin him. The very next day, Michael presented June with a $12,000 ruby-and-diamond bracelet from Cartier. “It’s nothing,” Michael told her, according to June. “I just love you.”

  After that, Jordie and Michael slept in the same bed every night they spent together. Michael was as innocent as a young child himself, June told her husband and friends: “I really don’t think he has a devious bone in his body.” Her ex-husband, Jordie’s father Evan Chandler, expressed doubts, but seemed to have been swiftly won over by Michael’s sweet personality and extraordinary generosity.

  Evan, though, was a man of complex motives. He had been born in the Bronx in 1944 as Evan Robert Charmatz, and dutifully but unhappily followed his father and brothers into the field of dentistry, opening a practice in West Palm Beach, Florida, in 1973. Within the next few years he changed his last name to Chandler (he thought Charmatz “too Jewish-sounding”), married June Wong, whom he regularly introduced as “an ex-model,” and moved to Los Angeles, where he hoped to establish a career as a screenwriter.

  Chandler supported his family in the meantime by working at the Crenshaw Family Dental Center, a clinic catering to low-income patients on the edge of South Central Los Angeles. He got into trouble with the California Board of Dental Examiners in December 1978 for performing restoration work on sixteen of a single patient’s teeth during one visit. An investigation of the work resulted in a judgment by the board that Chandler was guilty of “gross ignorance and/or inefficiency,” and a ruling that his license be revoked. After an appeal, the revocation was reduced to a ninety-day suspension, plus thirty months of probation.

  Chandler dealt with his suspension by moving back to New York to write a screenplay but was unable to sell it. By 1980, the year Jordie was born, the family had returned to Los Angeles, where Evan worked at a series of dentistry jobs and complained that each one made him more miserable than the last. Over the next few years, his marriage deteriorated, in large part, June claimed, because Evan couldn’t control his violent temper. After their divorce in 1985, June Chandler was awarded full custody of their son and $500 per month in child support.

  By 1990, both Jordie’s mother and father had remarried, June to Dave Schwartz, Lily’s father, and Evan to a corporate attorney named Nathalie who bore him two sons. Evan had a successful dentistry practice in Beverly Hills by then, but in 1991 found himself once again in trouble due to claims of carelessness or incompetence. A model he was contracted to do restoration work for had suffered severe damage to her teeth and sued him for negligence. Chandler claimed the woman had signed a consent form accepting the risks involved in the procedures he’d undertaken, but he was unable to produce it when subpoenaed, telling the court that the document had been stolen from the trunk of his Jaguar. Eventually the suit was settled out of court.

  In 1993, right around the time his son Jordie met Michael Jackson, Evan finally found some success in Hollywood when one of his scripts was rewritten by Mel Brooks and turned into the film Robin Hood: Men in Tights. A lucrative career as a screenwriter did not result, however, and Evan soon fell behind on his child support payments; eventually his debt to June approached $70,000, with interest. June would claim that her ex-husband had been largely an absentee father to Jordie, rarely spending time with his son until Michael Jackson appeared. Evan’s brother Raymond disagreed. Evan tried to be a good dad, Ray insisted, and before Michael Jackson came into their lives, “Everybody liked everybody and the kids all played together, even though there were divorces.”

  There are conflicting accounts of what took place after Evan and Michael got to know each other. Michael’s story—or at least the story his representatives put together for him—was told most authoritat
ively in an article for GQ magazine written by journalist Mary A. Fischer in close collaboration with Anthony Pellicano, the private investigator who was working for Jackson attorney Bert Fields and handling most of the early contacts with the Chandler family. Evan’s brother Raymond (who would also change his name from Charmatz to Chandler) called Fischer “a dupe” and Pellicano “a thug,” claiming that the two had combined to terribly “distort the picture” of Evan’s behavior and Michael’s as well. In police interviews and court testimony, June Wong Chandler Schwartz told yet another version of the story, one that disagreed in numerous ways with both Evan Chandler’s account and Michael Jackson’s. What Jordie Chandler himself said happened would eventually be laid out in interviews with psychiatrists and police officers.

  Not in dispute is that early in the relationship between Michael and Jordie, Evan began to invite the two to spend time together at his home in Brentwood. “They hung out together, they talked about movies, about writing screenplays together, about writing songs together,” said Ray Chandler. “Evan readily admitted that he fell under Michael’s spell. He thought Michael was a highly intelligent, well-read, well-rounded guy. He liked Michael and he was excited about Michael and he really believed that he and Michael were going to do great work together and be friends forever.” The Fischer/Pellicano account was that Evan pitched story ideas to Michael and suggested that Michael could pay him by building an addition onto the house, one that would create enough space to give them all more privacy. When zoning restrictions prevented that, according to Fischer and Pellicano, Evan proposed that Jackson simply build him a newer, larger home. Michael, Pellicano told Fischer, shrugged off that idea. Ray Chandler, though, said it was Michael who proposed to either build a new wing on the house, or to build a new house entirely, so that they could all live together.