THE DAY MICHAEL JACKSON WAS EXONERATED, I WAS ASKED what I really thought about the verdicts by FOX star Bill O’Reilly. For months, I had been commenting about the trial for FOX News, saying many things against Jackson, leading viewers to believe the pop star was guilty. When O’Reilly pressed me for an answer on the “not guilty” verdicts, I was stammering. O’Reilly wanted a straight answer, and I finally said I thought the jury did the right thing.
But part of me was still in shock.
As I made one of my last public comments on the case, I realized that I had become one of the media folks who had predetermined the outcome of the trial, wrongly. Many people around me were so sure of Jackson’s guilt. Certain reporters had slanted TV and radio coverage to suit the prosecution, and I was one of the people who followed that dangerous trend.
Somehow, I had missed the truth.
When I read the accounts of the NOT GUILTY verdicts in all the newspapers, I felt ashamed to have been part of the media machine that seemed hell-bent on destroying Jackson. After I thought about it for a few hours, I contacted the jury foreman, Paul Rodriguez, who talked to me about Jackson, who asserted that Jackson had been a target. The jury foreman said Michael Jackson was truly not guilty of the charges. He felt Jackson had been victimized by the media.
Writing a book about Jackson’s innocence never crossed my mind, not during the trial in Santa Maria. I respected Tom Mesereau as an attorney, and I came to see why the jury voted not guilty on every charge, but I had no intention of revealing my own slanted news coverage. Beyond that, I certainly didn’t want to expose any of my media “friends” as being one-sided and unfair.
To make it clear: there were twenty-two hundred credentialed media people at the trial, and less than a handful of people admitted their deliberate attempts to portray Michael Jackson as guilty. Some of those media folks were a part of my inner circle. I have not named names of any media person in this book, other than Mr. Martin Bashir, because it would be in bad taste to point fingers. Viewers who followed the trial know who the culprits are.
I must admit that there was a point during the trial, toward the end, when I came to feel sad about Jackson, when I felt the whole media world was against him. I wanted the fans to know that I wasn’t happy about the media coverage and decided to go down to the gates of Neverland to make peace with his fans. I went to tell people that I wasn’t trying to be unfair to Michael, that I was just reporting the facts. I tried to convince them that I didn’t have an agenda.
But the fans didn’t believe me. They’d seen my newscasts, and many thought I was lying. I stayed for quite a while, trying to tell people that I wasn’t out to smear Jackson, but they weren’t interested.
As I listened to his fans, who had flown in from places like Spain, Ireland, and even Iran, they told me their side of the story. I heard them insist that the American media was tainted, that Americans hated Jackson for all the wrong reasons. Some people brought up the race card. Others talked about Michael’s friendships with children as being acceptable in any part of the world—other than America.
His fans impressed me. Yes, there were a few overzealous people—one woman called me a whore in Spanish—but at the same time, many of his supporters were good-hearted. Some wanted to give me the benefit of the doubt.
I appreciated that.
I took pictures with a few fans at the front gates of Neverland, which was covered in hearts by those who loved Michael. After a while, a small group of us began to laugh about the Arvizo clan and their crazy rebuttal tape. We were mimicking Janet Arvizo, who, on tape, supported Michael Jackson as her only “family.” On the rebuttal tape, Janet wondered why, after the airing of the Bashir interview, there were so many people suddenly showing care and concern for her, when really, only Michael was supportive of her family.
In unison, we repeated Janet’s lines:
“Where were they, when I couldn’t feed my children, even a box of cereal?”
“Where were they, when my children and I would weep?”
“Where were they, when my children and I were lonely?”
“Where were they, when I didn’t have enough money to pay for bus fare?”
“Where were they?” we asked over and over, and we laughed about Janet’s melodramatic rantings.
Because of this visit to Neverland, my reportage took a slight turn. I became more open to the idea that Michael Jackson was not guilty, and I tried to stay away from the negative commentary that filled much of my earlier newscasts. Not only had I been one-sided on TV, I had contributed to Michael Reagan’s radio show (the adopted son of President Ronald Reagan) and had spent weeks on Reagan’s national program—bashing Michael Jackson.
If there was a media conspiracy, I was guilty.
Some weeks later, as every last TV truck pulled out of Santa Maria, I found myself alone there, lost without the presence of Michael, lost without the comfort of having my media “buddies” to help me through another day. I felt upset.
Santa Maria was a nice place, but it became an empty shell for me. The Jackson “event” was over, and I became a stranger in a small town. I thought about my media friends and realized that many of them weren’t my friends at all. They had made use of my input and had already gone off to the next hot story. Some were reporting live from Aruba, in search of a missing teenage girl.
Luckily, I wasn’t worried about the next news tidbit. I had a bigger picture in mind and had compiled all kinds of data. I still wanted to write a book about Jackson, because after all, I wasn’t at the trial simply to report the news. I was there, primarily, as an author.
Since I was at the trial as a freelance TV reporter, I was left on my own to get myself shipped out, to get everything shipped back home. Sitting in Santa Maria with my thoughts, trying to determine what to do with all the documentation and stacks of notes I’d written about the trial, I decided to ship every last thing, just in case the book materialized.
As I made my journey back to the East Coast, I thought about the financial waste that so many people, especially California taxpayers, had been subjected to. It was impossible to calculate the exact amount of dollars wasted, but the numbers had to be in the millions. The Jackson trial was one of the largest events in
U.S. history. The amount of money spent on security alone, was simply outrageous.
I considered the expensive “impact fee” I was asked to pay to Santa Maria, something I never encountered in any trial I attended in the history of my crime-writing career. I wondered why I was asked to pay so much money to be seated at a public proceeding that was supposed to be open to any U.S. taxpayer.
And finally, I wondered why some folks in the mainstream media seemed to think of me as “less than” a reporter, especially when there were people like Marcia Clark, who unsuccessfully prosecuted the O. J. Simpson trial, standing outside the Santa Maria courthouse as a reporter for Entertainment Tonight. It was amazing to me that certain network talent saw me as incapable of doing a TV reporting job. Even though I’d been a TV reporter and TV commentator for years, all throughout the Jackson trial, I knew I was being trashed behind my back. Sometimes I was attacked verbally by reporters, even to my face.
I wondered why I had been put through so much drama and expense and agony—all for nothing. When I traveled to New York, I discovered that no American publisher wanted to touch any Michael Jackson book at all—especially one that would be an account of Jackson’s side of the story.
I was devastated.
But then I thought about Michael.
I wondered how he felt, and realized that he was the one who’d been through hell. He was the one who was subjected to a mainstream media machine that wanted him destroyed. He was the one people trashed behind his back.
Less than a month after his acquittal, I learned that Jackson, his three children, and their nanny, had moved to the Persian Gulf Kingdom of Bahrain, and I understood why. At least as a guest of the royal family’s Sheik Abdullah, Jackson would have his privacy back, and he could find a way to recuperate, to unwind, and to think about a comeback. Reportedly, the star was being asked to open a vineyard or an amusement park, but Jackson wasn’t interested. Michael Jackson had bigger plans, but for the moment, he just wanted the nightmare behind him.
Months later, I contacted Judge Rodney Melville, who wrote a court order allowing me to review and photograph all the evidence from the criminal trial. I spent time making numerous trips to Santa Maria, pouring over documents, taking pictures of Michael’s private Neverland, recording all the evidence that I’d seen during the trial, requesting copies of transcripts. Readers should note that all of the quoted testimony in this book comes directly from the trial transcripts.
I had an epiphany when I sat in the Santa Maria Superior Court Complex basement, reviewing hours of never-released footage. With a court clerk monitoring my notes, I paused at that moment when the accuser told police that he “wasn’t sure” about certain things. I rewound the tape of the police interview with the accuser, and asked the court clerk what she thought about it. I wanted to know if she had sons, if boys age thirteen already know about their sexuality. The court clerk looked at me and shook her head.
“Of course boys know about that,” she said, “certainly by age thirteen.”
With that, I had my answer. I decided to contact a Jackson advocate, Pearl Jr., who also covered the Jackson trial, and we had lunch together in Los Angeles.
Pearl Jr. encouraged me to write the book about the Jackson trial, however, I still felt I would be fighting an uphill battle.
A few weeks later, I happened to run into Tom Mesereau, not once, but twice. And I took it as a sign.
I felt that, no matter what the media, the skeptics, and even my friends and family had to say, I needed to stand up for Michael Jackson. As I began to write, I noticed that people everywhere were making fun of me. A pro-Jackson book? Impossible.
The more people poked and prodded me, the more I became infuriated. As I struggled through thousands of pages of trial transcripts, with people discouraging me from the start, I began to think the book would never get done. It became my most arduous work, ever, and at times it felt like I had the whole world on my shoulders.
I wondered if Michael lived his life this way.
To keep my spirits up, I kept thinking about the time that Michael said hello to me during the trial. It was in the hallway during a break, and I was staring at him like he was a wax figure. Suddenly Michael looked at me and said, “Hi!”
When he spoke, it startled me.
He was being funny, and I loved it.
People always ask me if I’ve ever met Michael Jackson, and I tell them yes. But really, I never introduced myself, and he certainly doesn’t know me.
Only once did I ask him a question from the media pen. It was early on, when Jackson was still responding to media questions, and I asked him if he was talking to his fans at the gates of Neverland. Michael was already past the media throng, but he turned, and looked back at me and said, “I love my fans, I love my fans!” It was as if they were the only people who mattered.
