I was at Burbank airport, soon to depart, when Mother called about the raid. She was understandably frantic. All I could think about was the state Michael would be in and how quickly I could get to Nevada. When I finally got to Michael’s hotel and walked through the door into the hallway of his suite, the remnants of his rare fury were littered all over the floor. ‘What the …??! Michael? … MICHAEL?’
His room looked like a typhoon had hit it and my immediate thought was that the cops had been there, too. I don’t remember seeing the kids, so I guess Nanny Grace had them out of there by the time I arrived. Randy and Rebbie were also on their way. As I trod among the debris, I walked into a back room, where I found Michael sitting in a chair, calmer but still simmering, trying to distract his agitation with an animation project he’d been working on.
‘You okay?’ I asked.
Head down, he didn’t say anything.
‘We’re going to get you through this,’ I said.
His eyes looked up at me and all I saw was my kid brother again, hiding in a hotel room, not wanting to fly through turbulence. Scared and lost, and as Rebbie said later, looking ‘deranged’ by the insanity of the situation now encircling him. He looked up at me. ‘I haven’t done anything – I haven’t done anything!’
‘We know,’ I said, ‘We know.’
‘So why? Are they going to arrest me? For what? They can’t do this to me! I haven’t done ANYTHING …’ He was pacing now.
Rebbie and Randy had arrived, with Mother not far behind. Rebbie was bent down, clearing up the mess, saying nothing in the awkward silence. The phone was ringing off the hook. Outside, the paparazzi had descended. In the air, the ‘eyes in the sky’ were hovering. Then, hotel management told us the activity was invasive for other guests and asked if we ‘would consider vacating the hotel.’ We decamped to the Green Valley Ranch, but everything was happening so fast and the pressure felt overwhelming.
After blowing up and venting, it was amazing how Michael restored his composure for the sake of the kids. Children are intuitive and they kept asking questions but their father reassured them that everything was going to be okay, even if he couldn’t tell himself that. I saw him hold and hug Paris; she squeezed him tight. He closed his eyes and gulped it down.
Time to be courageous now, little brother. Your reason to fight is here and all around you.
THE DAY AFTER THE RAID, DA Tom Sneddon held a press conference, announcing that he had issued a warrant for Michael’s arrest on ‘multiple counts of child molestation.’ He called on my brother to turn himself in and surrender his passport. Giving it the whole, unnecessary fugitive vibe.
He didn’t reveal the accuser’s name but everyone knew it was Gavin Arvizo and his allegation would be that he was abused and held against his will to make him co-operate with the damage limitation PR after the Bashir documentary. Sneddon would ask a jury to believe that Michael and his associates had done this when his friendship with Gavin was under the media’s scrutiny, rather than before the documentary when no one had known the boy. Standing before a cluster of microphones, he said bail was set at $3 million and the maximum prison sentence per count was eight years. His presidential-length speech went on and on to justify why this case was very different to the 1993 allegations, and then he fielded questions.
‘Could Michael Jackson’s children be taken away from him?’ shouted one reporter.
‘That’s a decision that would be made by a juvenile court,’ he said.
You mother-f*****. Go on, add to Michael’s torment. Make him think about the loss of all that is precious to him, I thought.
‘Is there a possibility of any more victims?’
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘We would encourage the public to come forward if they have any information about other victims in the community.’
You’ve got nothing. That’s why you’re inviting more onto the bandwagon.
‘If Michael Jackson’s watching this right now, or his people, what’s your message?’
‘Get over here and get checked in!’ said Sneddon. The press conference burst out laughing, but the humour wasn’t over as another reporter waded in with another vital point: ‘Excuse me, I haven’t asked a question yet. Sheriff, are you going to be serving us members of the media lunch after this press conference?’
‘You obviously don’t know we have a budget problem!’ said Sneddon. More laughter.
‘What do you say to parents who let their children go to Neverland?’
‘My advice is don’t do it,’ said Sheriff Jim Anderson. More laughter. It was a double-act now.
They say fame dehumanises people, but I think authority does a much worse job.
As everyone laughed, all I could think about was Michael wrecking his suite, curled up in his chair, pacing the rooms, going out of his mind. Holding Paris. I thought about Mother crying and praying. I saw Rebbie picking up the pieces of Sneddon’s work. And I felt this anger bubbling. Then, to drive it home, the DA reminded reporters that he hoped, ‘you all stay long and spend lots of money because we need your sales to support our offices’. Presumably, that was a joke, too.
But he underestimated Michael. By now, my brother had gone through 24 hours of every possible emotion and, as hesitant as he was about co-operating with authorities he didn’t trust, he started talking about wanting his day in court. He knew he’d left the door ajar for trouble with that civil settlement in 1994. ‘It was bad advice,’ he said, ‘and I knew it then. Now I’ll show them what I wanted to show them before – that I am innocent.’
Sneddon had presumably forgotten that Michael had requested a criminal trial in 1993, but a judge hadn’t permitted it. But, as Michael would say: ‘Lies run sprints, but the truth runs marathons. The truth will run this marathon in court.’ And that truth had been running now, gathering pace for 10 years.
MICHAEL FLEW BY PRIVATE JET INTO Santa Barbara, where the police were waiting by arrangement in an airport hangar. Every move was played out on television: his take-off, his landing, his transfer to the police station, and his arrival there in handcuffs. As he got out of the police car, he bounced his bound arms behind his back – a gesture to the news helicopters, as if to say, ‘See! See what they’re doing to me?!’ He wanted the world to know.
Afterwards, I wanted to know what that world was being told. Some in the family couldn’t bear to watch the television coverage, but I couldn’t stop myself from tuning in to CNN. Its anchor, Kyra Phillips, was with a blonde girl from Entertainment Tonight and a court expert, both of whom were making disparaging comments about Michael and condemning him. First, the Sneddon side-show. Then, the handcuffing, and now two rent-a-quotes pretending to sound informed. I might have been extra-sensitive at this time, but this kind of speculative opinion is a media game that the public takes seriously and it left me fuming.
The final straw was when the blonde said something derogatory about the family and I flipped, smashing my fist into the television screen, shattering it. I then dialled CNN and demanded to be put on air, because it’s very simple in our family: if you hurt one of us, you hurt all of us.
I don’t think Kyra Phillips believed it could be me with everything going on, but I wasn’t there for a friendly one-on-one and my voice was shaking with anger. I’ve never gone on radio, television or stage so spontaneously or furious but I’d heard enough. ‘Michael is a thousand per cent innocent,’ I said, building up to my rant, ‘and we’re tired of people – I’M SICK AND F****** TIRED of people – speaking on my brother’s behalf and my family’s behalf, who do not know us. You put these people on national TV, international TV, and they say these things and the public is saying, “Oh, wow, is he really like this?” My brother is NOT an eccentric. My brother is about peace. At the end of the day, this is nothing but A MODERN-DAY LYNCHING. THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT TO SEE – HIM IN HANDCUFFS. YOU GOT IT! BUT IT WON’T BE FOR LONG, I PROMISE YOU!’
She said she had no idea what we were going through.
‘NO, YOU DON’T! You
don’t walk in my shoes or my family’s shoes, but you put these people on television to say things. We are family, and we will continue to be family. That’s my love right there. And we support him one thousand per cent. I have nothing else to say. Goodbye.’
When I slammed down the receiver, my hand was shaking. I sat down, looked at the shattered TV screen, put my head in my hands and just wept.
ONCE THE FIRST PHASE OF INDIGNITY was out of the way and we had all released our pressure valves, Michael returned to Vegas and started to talk. It was less an opening up and more of an unloading of concern about a group which I’ll call ‘The Men’s Club of Beverly Hills’ – a group of well-connected power brokers from the music industry who, he said, were behind everything and ‘trying to bring me down’ and he added: ‘They don’t want me around … They want me in jail … They want to finish me.’
When he said this – to Mother, to me, and several others, inside and outside the family – his fears were calmly expressed, like someone who could see clearly once the dust had settled. He would also hint about his suspicions later during a radio show hosted by Jesse Jackson, saying there was ‘a big fight going on … and there’s a lot of conspiracy.’ That fight he referred to centred on his music catalogue.
When he spoke about this, it was the sincerity of his tone that got me thinking because – whether true or not – we as a family could see the financial rationale in where he was pointing us: that if he went to prison, what control would he have over the catalogue as a convicted criminal? And with countless lawsuits against him lining up like planes from certain business dealings, he’d likely lose them all from prison. This outcome would have ultimately led to big losses and him defaulting on his bank loan – and his share of the catalogue would revert to Sony. That wasn’t some theory; that was a distinct probability in the event of a conviction.
In my opinion, his fears were legitimate: he held the music industry equivalent of the Koh-i-Noor diamond. But it was more than that: he had been talking about a ‘conspiracy’ long before events turned against him and his suspicions now seemed to be increasingly valid.
THE POLICE INVESTIGATION STARTED TO STINK when we learned of an official letter from the Department of Child and Family Services and discovered that its social workers had been the first to speak with Gavin Arvizo and they closed their file within 13 days because there was no case to answer.
The letter, ‘a brief summary of a child abuse investigation completed by the Sensitive Case Unit’, explained that ‘the child was interviewed … and denied any form of sexual abuse.’ The mother, Janet Arvizo, had said Michael was ‘a father figure’ and had never shared a bed with her son. The Department had ‘concluded the allegations of sexual abuse to be unfounded’ – a view shared by the LAPD, it added.
That letter vindicated Michael, and was dated 26 November 2003 – five days after his arrest. But, of course, Sneddon would dismiss its significance, saying that to call the DCFS case ‘an investigation is a misnomer – it was an interview.’ I don’t what know he thought there was left to investigate when the boy, backed by his mother, had categorically said Michael hadn’t touched him, let alone sexually abused him. He had said the same to the Dean at his school, but none of this would matter. All we knew was that in February 2003, the Arvizo family was adamant about my brother’s innocence, as were the authorities, but by the June, Gavin was saying he had been molested and he said it took place after that interview with social workers. What he did not say was that his family had also consulted an attorney about a civil lawsuit – an attorney who had advised on the 1993 Jordie Chandler case. And with that about-turn accepted in law, Sneddon convened a Grand Jury and decided the case should go to trial.
AFTER HIS ARREST, AND BEFORE WE left Vegas, Michael wanted to discuss his security arrangements and he said, ‘I don’t feel as secure as I should, and that feeling imprisons me.’
Nanny Grace had already explained to me that the current security set-up wasn’t working for him and I suggested to him that he needed people who were not afraid of anyone and shared his trust in God. I knew the sons of Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, and he had a team of bodyguards ideally suited for the job. Sure of what he had read about Islam, and everything Muhammad Ali had told him, Michael liked this idea but 9/11 was still America’s open wound. He knew the distinction between true Muslims and the extremists who abuse Islam, but the matter had to be handled discreetly.
‘You’re going to have a set of new suits and ties with black faces around you – no one will notice,’ I reassured him.
Of course, people did notice, which led to suggestions that ‘fundamentalists’ surrounded him and would brainwash him. People forgot that Michael’s faith in God was too strong to be swayed by any movement and the Nation was there for its effective security, not any kind of ideology. But the fuss amused us both and we wondered what Ali would make of it all. Anyhow, after a meeting in Vegas with the Nation of Islam, Michael was happy with the people who called him ‘Sir’ and gave him respect. He felt comfortable that everything was locked down again.
Meanwhile, our brother Randy had started working for Michael as his right-hand man and once more they shared the closeness they had enjoyed at Hayvenhurst before Randy left. Randy’s contacts led Michael to defence attorney Tom Mesereau, a man unfazed by the celebrity culture and uninterested in grandstanding. His only concern was ‘the integrity, decency, honour, charity, innocence and vindication’ of Michael. There was no doubt we had the right man for the job.
The moment I met this unflappable character and heard his optimism on how each witness would fold under cross-examination, I felt a sliver of hope that had been impossible to find in Sneddon’s injustice. That hope would grow during the trial as Tom exposed a prosecution case built on sand. He’d also found out that the 1993 accuser Jordie Chandler had refused to testify and ‘even if he had, we had witnesses who were going to say he told them it never happened and he would never talk to his parents again for what they made him say.’ (The boy hadn’t spoken to his parents for 11 years.) No wonder Michael felt emboldened by Tom’s presence as the case went to trial.
It was the end of February 2005.
COME DAY ONE OF THE TRIAL, the family were at Neverland. Michael rose early to make sure he was mentally prepared, his hair done, his costume pristine, and his makeup perfect, as applied by Karen Faye. Everyone was pensive; everyone ate lightly. It was hard not to view the whole scene as some backstage venue, waiting to walk on for a show we never wanted to do. And this was our time to find out what we were made of as a family, as brothers and sisters. Everything we had ever avoided or not confronted came down to the following weeks because this was about looking an ugly reality in the face; it wasn’t about superficial fame or success, or being the best or Michael being the King of Pop – we had to leave all those cloaks at the door. Inside that courtroom it was about raw human truth – the good, the bad and the ugly – and being out of control.
On that first day, as we sat inside Sneddon’s house of cards, I looked at Michael, dressed in a military jacket with red arm-band, and was amazed by how crystal-sharp he seemed; arriving with an attitude that said: ‘Bring it on. Give it your best shot’. He walked in there head held high … and smelling good. That was because he wore a Dolce & Gabbana cologne with a red top that was my favourite, too. If I wear it today around Prince and Paris, they say, ‘You smell just like Daddy!’
There was one day when we were driving into court and Michael was spraying it all over his clothes in a swirl of mist. Mother – who complained that she was allergic to perfumes – started coughing. ‘You all putting on too much! I cannot breathe! Stop it now …’
Michael started laughing and sprayed some more. ‘It smells good, Mother … you want some, Jermaine?!’
So I added a quick squirt to my neck. Mother tutted, tried to keep a serious face and then couldn’t help but smile at the wind up. Moments like that always did help break the tension that pre
ceded a day in court.
On the days when I travelled with Michael in the black SUV, security sat up front and Joseph was seated behind. Mother, Michael and I shared the same row. Leaving Neverland, there were always lots of fans at the gate, holding up their banners of love and innocence, cheering us off. I’ll never forget the moment when Michael made the driver stop because he’d spotted an image a woman was holding out. He lowered the window, shook her hand and took from her a photo of a baby that caught his eye. ‘It’s beautiful … what a beautiful child,’ he said.
‘I love you Michael!’ she said.
‘WE LOVE YOU MICHAEL!’ the entire crowd cheered, and we pulled away. He often took the seat on the right against the blackened window, ear-phones plugged in, listening to music. One time, during that first week, I passed him my CD player and ear-phones. ‘Listen to this … it’s a strong song,’ I said.
‘Run Johnny Run’ was a song I’d written for Tito before any of this police stuff happened, but its theme seemed kind of apt because this secret soundtrack to our ride into court was about a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman in an old southern town and ‘Johnny’ needs to run because the whole town’s convinced he did it. As those first lyrics say: ‘You telling me and I know you didn’t touch her/But the white man don’t trust ya/He’ll bring you in and handcuff ya/Tie you up on a tree and then cut ya/All the things said is what they say/It goes around and become heresay …’
Michael was listening as he looked out the window, foot tapping to the chorus. By the time we took the off-ramp to the court house, he was playing it for a second time (not that anyone would have told Tom Mesereau because he didn’t want no race talk in the public arena). As the SUV pulled up and security jumped out, Michael handed me back the ear-phones. ‘Great story. Would make a great video!’ he said, mischievously.
‘Are you ready, Michael?’ asked his security, interrupting the spark of an idea.