Untouchable

by Randall Sullivan

  Physicians and pharmacists weren’t the only ones sweating the investigation into Michael Jackson’s drug history. At least two dozen former and current employees or entourage members were suspected of having in some way facilitated Jackson’s procurement of controlled substances, mostly by letting him use their names on prescriptions and/or picking up the drugs at various pharmacies in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Santa Barbara, Las Vegas, and Miami. Whether people like his ranch managers Joe Marcus and Jesus Salas had deniability was unclear, and the same might be said of Frank Cascio, whose real name and his alias Frank Tyson had both been used on prescriptions. The names of at least two of Michael’s employees at the time of his death, Kai Chase and Michael Amir Williams, were listed among the “aka’s” in the search warrants served on Conrad Murray’s home and office, as were Paul Farance, Bryan Singleton, Jimmy Nicholas, Roselyn Muhammad, Faheem Muhammad, Fernand Diaz, and Peter Madonie. The name of Michael’s oldest son, Prince, as well those of the long-dead novelist Jack London and the legendary 1930s cabaret performer Josephine Baker were also listed on search warrants as among those Jackson was suspected of using to get prescription drugs during the last months of his life. Items seized in the raid on Conrad Murray’s office included a CD inscribed “Omar Arnold,” the name Michael had used for years on his drug prescriptions. Even those like Joey Jeszeck who had cooperated with authorities and described Michael’s drug use freely back in 2003 and 2004 were being forced to submit to further questioning from various law enforcement agencies, with the threat of prosecution if they failed to disclose all they knew.

  Dr. Murray, though, continued to be the primary target. On August 28, 2009, the day after the coroner’s report officially ruling that Michael Jackson’s death had been a homicide, the LAPD announced that it was referring the case to prosecutors who would decide whether to file criminal charges. Murray was left to twist in the wind for weeks afterward while the media speculated endlessly about the strength of the case. Jackson’s history of drug abuse, which had long predated Murray’s presence in his life, was mitigating but not exculpatory. Of far greater concern to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office was that the LAPD had not secured the Carolwood chateau in the days after Michael’s death, permitting Jackson family members to reportedly remove not only the cash secreted under the rugs but entire truckloads of other property, which was certain to raise chain-of-custody issues at a criminal trial. Among the missing items was Michael’s personal computer.

  Murray remained free on his own recognizance and was living in Houston that November when he made his first public comments in connection to the case to the fellow members of his Galilee Missionary Baptist Church. “I know what trouble is,” the doctor told them, then attempted to paint himself as a well-intentioned physician who was being made into a scapegoat: “I, with my compassion, was only trying to help my fellow man. But it appears I was at the wrong place at the wrong time.” He had not been convicted of any crime, and was still licensed to practice medicine, Murray reminded the parishioners; he would continue to see patients at his clinic in the Acres Homes area. His attorney Chernoff explained why, in a statement issued that same day: “Because of deteriorating financial conditions and prompting by many of his beloved patients . . . Dr. Murray plans to attend to patients in both Las Vegas and Houston. His decision to first return to practice in Houston was made because of the greater need these low-income patients have for his services and the prohibitive cost of reopening his clinic in Las Vegas.”

  The effect in Los Angeles was stepped-up pressure on authorities to initiate a process that would, at the least, strip Murray of his medical license. In January 2010, as leaks out of the DA’s office suggested charges were imminent, Chernoff posted a statement on his Web site announcing that his office was “negotiating with the district attorney’s office the surrender of Dr. Murray.” On February 8, 2010, Murray was officially charged with involuntary manslaughter, a crime that carried a maximum sentence of four years in state prison. After a plea of not guilty was entered at his arraignment, the district attorney’s office revealed that it would use the public forum of a preliminary hearing rather than the private setting of a grand jury proceeding to bring Dr. Murray to trial.

  The Jackson family had long since decided that Conrad Murray wouldn’t be the only one to pay. It had taken the Jacksons little time to come to a collective recognition that claims of “foul play” were not necessarily their best hope for profiting from Michael’s death. The suggestion that Tohme Tohme was the ringleader of the “cabal” who were behind it all was undercut by the family’s gradual realization that Tohme had not been around during the last weeks of Michael’s life. While Murray was the primary target of law enforcement, a civil lawsuit against the doctor was unlikely to yield any payday at all, given the number of creditors who had already filed claims on the man’s rapidly diminishing assets. As the summer of 2009 drew toward an end, the vague outline of a legal strategy was emerging from the family’s garbled insinuations. Joe Jackson began to suggest that Michael had been “driven” to his death by people intent upon exploiting his talent, and reminded reporters that AEG, not his son, was Dr. Conrad Murray’s employer. As if picking up on a cue, La Toya Jackson confided to a British reporter that Paris Jackson believed her father had been pushed to a breaking point by the producers of the “This Is It” shows: “She said, ‘No, you don’t understand. They kept working him and Daddy didn’t want that, but they worked him constantly.’ I felt so bad.”

  The family had watched with obvious discontent as it dawned on them that, rather than being stuck with the $30 million in losses reported in the media in the days after Michael’s death, AEG was likely to make a substantial profit from the “This Is It” deal. A coroner’s finding of death by drug overdose might make it difficult for AEG to collect insurance payouts to recoup the estimated $25 million it had invested in preparations for the London shows, but the company shrewdly offered ticket holders for the O2 Arena shows the choice between a full refund and a special “souvenir” ticket that featured a three-dimensional image of Michael Jackson. As many as half of the nearly one million people given this option had chosen the souvenir ticket, meaning that AEG could keep nearly 50 percent of the $85 million it had collected. The high-definition video footage of Michael’s rehearsals for the “This Is It” shows held in an AEG vault at the Staples Center set off a bidding frenzy among Hollywood studios when it was offered up as the raw material of a motion picture. Sony put up a bid of $50 million right out of the gate. AEG was also said to be considering a televised tribute concert at the O2 that would incorporate the staging and the choreography of the “This Is It” shows, a spectacle that could run for weeks or even months and produce millions more in profits.

  Patrick Allocco and AllGood Entertainment were now locked in a legal battle with the Jackson estate, demanding $300 million that the company argued should be paid out of profits from the planned “This Is It” movie and out of revenues from the Sony/ATV catalog. AllGood’s claim that Frank Dileo, representing himself as Michael Jackson’s manager, had made a written promise that Jackson would tour for the company created some potentially complex problems. Dileo hadn’t been Michael’s manager at the time of the AllGood agreement, according to the Jackson estate, which was currently paying Dileo for supposedly serving as the entertainer’s manager during the run-up to the O2 shows—a deal that had been negotiated entirely by Tohme Tohme, whom the estate wasn’t paying at all. Also named as a defendant in the AllGood lawsuit was AEG Live, which continued to be in business with the Jackson estate and was keeping Dileo tucked comfortably under its wing, knowing he might be needed as a witness in the separate lawsuits the company anticipated would be filed against it by both Tohme and the Jackson family. In the end, the fact that the AllGood contract was so badly written, and that the company had failed to make the initial binder payment promised in that agreement, rendered all other issues moot, and the case was dismissed in federal cour
t on a motion for summary judgment made by Howard Weitzman.

  It would not be so easy, though, for AEG and the estate to free themselves from claims by the Jackson family and Tohme Tohme. AEG had seen the Jacksons coming almost from the start, and recognized that the family was using both Michael Jackson’s enormous fan base and the media to develop a PR case against the company. “It’s easy to make us look like corporate villains who took advantage of Michael Jackson,” Randy Phillips complained to Fortune magazine in October 2009. “It’s quite the opposite—we were the people who empowered Michael Jackson and gave him his dream back.” Key witnesses Frank Dileo and Kenny Ortega were clearly allied with AEG. Each man had made multiple public comments about how fit and ready Michael Jackson appeared to be in the final days and weeks of his rehearsals for the O2 shows. “I saw a guy that wanted to perform,” Dileo told ABC. “But he wanted to do it right. And he was strong enough. He was working out every day. If he wasn’t healthy, if there was something wrong, I would have stopped him. There was nothing to stop.” Recalling that final “great week” of rehearsals, Ortega recalled a Michael Jackson who “couldn’t wait to get to London,” and described Michael’s death as “an accident”: “I don’t think that everybody contributed to his life in the most positive way,” Ortega allowed in one interview, “but I don’t think you can hold those people responsible. Michael was a fifty-year-old man. A father. A professional. A businessman.” With Dileo already in their pocket, AEG and the estate had seemingly secured Ortega as well by endorsing him as the director of the This Is It film being made from the rehearsal footage.

  The This Is It film itself presented a Michael Jackson to the world who was, as always, different things to different people. Many reviewers and fans agreed with the Wrap.com description of the star as “a surprisingly spry and energetic presence, bounding around the stage and exhorting the backup dancers and musicians to give their all—a far cry from the Howard Hughes–like figure withering away in his final days that had been portrayed in the tabloids.” Others who knew Michael personally, though, said that it pained them to see how diminished he had looked in the film. “He was doing the very same things he had done on the HIStory tour,” complained Dieter Wiesner. “I could see in his eyes how sad that made Michael, to be doing the same thing all over again, only not so well.” Tohme Tohme said that he had seen a Michael who was shockingly more gaunt and fragile-looking than the entertainer he had traveled to London with in March 2009. “In the film he was dancing mostly with his hands, he could barely move his lower body,” Tohme said. “He was not the same Michael I saw in March and April.”

  Remarks such as that might have made Tohme an excellent witness for the Jacksons in a claim against AEG, but Michael’s former manager was far from disposed toward the family, still convinced that Joe and Katherine had conspired with Dileo and Leonard Rowe against him, and that by doing so had contributed to their son’s death. “If I am there, no way will this Dr. Murray be in that house,” Tohme said. “I would never have let Michael lose so much weight. I would not have let that happen to him. He would still be alive if those people hadn’t separated him from me.”

  Tohme’s adversarial relationship with the Michael Jackson estate, and with the estate’s three general counsels—John Branca, Howard Weitzman, and Joel Katz—had also hardened as the end of 2009 approached. Branca and his legal team were backing Frank Dileo’s claim that he had been Michael Jackson’s manager “in life and in death.” It was widely reported that the estate was putting Dileo up at the Beverly Hilton and paying him some undisclosed sum of money for services that were not detailed in public records.

  Tohme felt betrayed that Randy Phillips now seemed to be going along with the story that Dileo was Michael Jackson’s manager. Without Phillips, there was no way that Frank Dileo would have been credited as a producer on the This Is It movie, Tohme knew. “I alone made the This Is It deal,” he said. “Randy knows that. He has said so in public. And yet Dileo is the one who receives credit and money for the movie.” Tohme was unsettled by his belated discovery that Phillips had given Dileo an office at AEG during the last weeks of Michael Jackson’s life, and even more disturbed to learn that AEG was still taking care of Dileo in an assortment of ways, even using the company’s cars and chauffeurs to carry Frank to various music industry events, including the Grammy Awards ceremony. Phillips had told various media outlets, including Rolling Stone magazine, that Tohme remained Michael’s manager right up to the end. It was Randy, Tohme pointed out, who had insisted he should be the one to join Jermaine Jackson at UCLA in announcing Michael’s death. That day, Phillips introduced Tohme to people as Michael Jackson’s manager, but in his dealings with Branca and the estate, Phillips was reportedly not so sure. Under pressure from AEG’s attorneys not to comment, Phillips would only say of the dispute over who managed Michael Jackson that “There was a great deal of confusion, some of it created by Michael himself.”

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  The competing schemes, hidden agendas, and factional conflicts that churned and seethed beneath the superficially united front of the Jackson family provided all the points of vulnerability that John Branca required to break down their challenge to his administration of the Michael Jackson estate.

  By the late summer of 2009, Randy Jackson was leading the opposition to Branca, in coordination with his father. Both men, and most of the Jackson family for that matter, were suspicious of the July 2, 2002, will and the Michael Jackson Family Trust document that Branca had produced out of his law firm’s files. They had what several attorneys told them were solid reasons for that suspicion. Branca’s possibly questionable decision to permit his own firm to prepare a will that named him as the executor of an estate that included one of the most valuable properties in the entire entertainment industry—a half-share of the Sony/ATV catalog—was just one of several potential fault lines.

  Attorneys who specialized in probate law agreed almost unanimously on how badly drawn both the will and the trust appeared to be. Each document was much shorter, much simpler, and much less detailed than one would have expected in the disposition of such a large personal fortune. The absence of provisions that would have protected Michael Jackson’s estate from tax burdens was perplexing to a number of lawyers who had read the trust agreement. The failure was so glaring that it raised questions about a breach of fiduciary duty, several of them said. Then there was the fact that the trust had been prepared and executed in March 2002, nearly four months before the date on the signature page of the will. Commonly (though not always) a person’s will and his trust agreement are executed on the same day.

  The observation that resonated most loudly among Michael’s family, though, was that his children had not been listed by their proper legal names. The oldest boy’s name in the will was written “Prince Michael Jackson, Jr.” when in fact his name is Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr. (no “Prince”); the girl’s name in the will omitted the hyphen between Paris and Michael, and the youngest was identified as “Prince Michael Joseph Jackson II” when it is actually Prince Michael Jackson II (no “Joseph”).Every one of the Jacksons, along with most of those who had spent any time with Michael during the previous decade, understood how particular he was when it came to his kids. “Michael would never sign something where his kids’ names were not spelled right,” Joe Jackson said, and for once his entire family agreed with him.

  The biggest questions of all, though, continued to be how and why John Branca had managed to remain in possession of Michael Jackson’s will and trust agreements until July 2009. Jackson lawyer Brian Oxman had secured a copy of the letter with which Michael had dismissed Branca as his attorney in February 2003. In it, Branca had been “commanded” to “deliver the originals” of “all of my files, records, documents, and accounts” to the new attorney, David LeGrand. He did in fact deliver several boxes of papers to LeGrand. In 2004, after LeGrand was dismissed, Brian Oxman took possession of those documents. “I had access to every file and I had to
go through them,” he said. “And I did. There was no will. There was no trust. It just showed up after he died.” Randy Jackson said (and eventually signed a sworn statement to this effect) that he had made a follow-up demand to Branca for Michael’s documents in 2004, specifically mentioning the will. Branca had told him he would turn over the documents still in his possession only if he was paid monies he claimed to be owed for recent services. Under United States law, an attorney is obligated to turn over all documents upon request whether bills have been paid or not. Branca never sent the will, Randy Jackson said.

  Branca’s failure to turn over the will the first time he was asked to surrender all documents would have been a reasonable basis for referring him to the State Bar for disciplinary action, Oxman said. That he had refused two subsequent requests for his former client’s documents nearly ensured that Branca would have faced some sort of investigation from the bar, added Oxman, who was in a position to know, having been twice suspended by the State Bar himself for failing to follow proper procedures.

  The Jacksons knew about Oxman’s reputation in the local media for unseemly pursuit of television airtime. The family also knew, though, as did a good many attorneys in Los Angeles, that however bad his personal judgment might be, Oxman was a smart lawyer and a terrific researcher. When he suggested hiring a team of private investigators to see if there were still more reasons to be suspicious of the Michael Jackson will that Branca had submitted to Judge Beckloff, Randy Jackson agreed and so, eventually, did the rest of the family.