Michael Jackson (112 page)

‘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?

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.

Apparently, Michael knew the royal family in Bahrain, and so he hunkered down with them. Of course, later on the Prince would
sue Michael for breach of contract, saying they had a deal to make records and Michael reneged.

So what else was new?

It was Michael’s lack of personal responsibility that made me want to have nothing to do with him after the trial. I was able
to get past the molestation accusations in my reporting of him. After all, I believed him to be not guilty in the Arvizo mess
pretty much from the very beginning. However, I simply couldn’t reconcile his total disregard for other people in his life.
In my mind, he owed his family something for their loyalty. Perhaps they had pressured him into participating in ventures
in which he wasn’t interested in the past, but this time I felt he had an obligation to at least try to work with them again.
After all, their support must have meant
something
to him during the trial. There were Jacksons there every single day. Beyond that, I couldn’t understand his lack of loyalty
to all of the people who kept Neverland afloat in his absence during the trial. As soon as the trial was over, practically
everyone was let go without severance pay. Dozens of caretakers, maids and other functionaries – people with children at home
who had given their all to Michael – were just dismissed by him, seemingly without a second thought. Then there was the onslaught
of lawsuits by former attorneys and business associates, one after another after the trial. Of course, Jackson had been anything
but the consummate businessman for at least the previous ten years, but now things were out of control. Did he ever pay anyone
with whom he made a deal? Did he ever sign a contract he didn’t break? It was so obvious to me that he was not a man of his
word and, to be frank – as his biographer and someone who had known him for so long – it just pissed me off. ‘I’m a man of honor,’
he once told me. It was when I had made a joke about his marriage to Lisa Marie Presley on the TV show
Good Morning America
, and he called to chastise me. ‘If you believe anything about me, believe that.’ Indeed, looking back on it now, I guess
I felt let down by Michael Jackson. So for years after the trial, I didn’t want to write about him. ‘But you have to be more
objective,’ one editor told me. ‘Yeah, well,’ I responded. ‘When he starts paying his bills, maybe then I’ll start writing
about him again.’

In my view, Michael Jackson had a golden opportunity to reclaim his career after the trial. I couldn’t understand why he wanted
to blow it on such an epic scale. He kept promising records that never came out, dates that never materialized. He seemed
to not have a place to live: He and his children would live with friends in one city and then migrate to another as if they
were homeless. I didn’t want to know anything about any of it, it all seemed so disappointing and useless to me.

Looking back on it now, I wish I’d had more sympathy for a man so clearly in pain. He never got over the trial; that trauma
was still eating away at him. I understand that now. How could he care about anyone else when he was just trying to get through
the day himself? ‘Anyone who thinks he is just going to bounce back after such public humiliation doesn’t know Michael Jackson,’
his former manager Frank Dileo had told me on that June day when he was acquitted. ‘This is devastating. For a guy like Michael,
this is life-ruining, I’m afraid.’