Michael Jackson (66 page)

The
Playboy
lay-out was the culmination of a chain of events that had all but destroyed LaToya’s relationship with her family. She had
been unhappy because the albums she had thus far recorded were all poor sellers. ‘I want platinum albums,’ she complained.
However, Joseph realized that LaToya had limited vocal ability and stage presence; there wasn’t much he could do with her.
He had tried to convince her to model, but she was ambivalent about it even though she was a beautiful young woman. She, like
Michael, has had her nose operated on more than once, though she denies ever having rhinoplasty, and other work, as well.
‘I don’t know who she’s trying to fool,’ Marlon laughed.

When LaToya decided that she no longer wanted Joseph to manage her, she followed the example set by Michael, her brothers
and Janet: she fired him by having her attorney send letters of dismissal to him at home, even though she still lived there
with him. Of course, Joseph ignored the letters. Finally, she decided to confront him. ‘I will sit on you for five years before
I ever let you go,’ he then told her, angrily. After all, she was the only Jackson he had left. There had to be
something
he could do with her, he decided. Later, he thought that he might be able to get her involved in the Jackson – Moonies Project.

‘But they don’t want her, Joseph,’ Katherine told him. ‘They just want the boys.’

‘They’ll take her if I tell them they have to take her, or they don’t get Michael,’ Joseph said.

Katherine wasn’t so sure about Joseph’s logic, especially since she didn’t know how they were even going to convince Michael
to do the tour.

If Joseph couldn’t represent LaToya, then he wanted to be sure no one else could, either. ‘In other words, he was saying I’d
never get anywhere on my own,’ LaToya recalled, ‘and he’d make certain of that.’ When LaToya asked Katherine for assistance,
Katherine said, ‘I don’t want to get in the middle of it. It’s between you and your father.’

Hoping to placate their daughter into remaining with Joseph, he and Katherine hired an outsider, Jack Gordon, to manage LaToya,
under Joseph’s direction. Her parents hoped that she would no longer feel as trapped. Jack, who was in his mid-forties – had
served time in prison for trying to bribe the Nevada State Gaming Commission. He has also been linked to underworld dealings
and allegedly ran a brothel in Nevada for four years. In a short time, Jack became more than LaToya’s business associate.
Before anyone in the family knew what was happening, he and LaToya were plotting a way to extricate her from Joseph and Katherine’s
hold.

‘When I questioned him about some major expenses he and LaToya were running up on Joseph’s account, Jack threatened my life,’
Jerome Howard recalled. ‘The man was dangerous, but LaToya felt that Joseph was dangerous, too. “Do you know my father?” she
asked me once. “No, you don’t,” she answered for me. “You don’t know what he’s like, Jerome. You don’t know what I’ve
been
through.”’

In March 1988 – just three days after Michael moved out of the Encino home – LaToya took off with Jack Gordon. She took just two
suitcases, left her Mercedes in the driveway, and didn’t look back. The family blamed Jack. They all hated him, and he returned
the animus. ‘I love Joseph like poison,’ Jack said.

In order to boost LaToya’s career, Jack made the deal with Hugh Hefner that she would strip for a photo lay-out. He reported
that she would receive a million dollars for disrobing. She probably was paid half as much. LaToya explained her decision,
to Hollywood columnist Frank Swertlow: ‘It was a matter of my letting my family know I am an individual and I want my independence.
That’s very difficult when you come from a large family and you’ve been controlled all of your life.’

When Katherine heard about the photo essay, she couldn’t believe her ears. Neither could anyone else who had known LaToya.
‘LaToya was always the puritanical one,’ said longtime friend Joyce McCrae.

‘I used to always cover my body from head to toe,’ LaToya told
Playboy
. ‘I guess my shyness came from growing up the way I did, being so sheltered and having a strict father.’

Katherine telephoned LaToya and asked if it was true. ‘Are you posing for a
Playboy
centrefold? Please, ‘Toya, tell me it’s not true.’ One wonders why Katherine even bothered. Did her famous children
ever
tell her the truth about their activities?

‘Oh, Mother,’ LaToya said, ‘where do you hear these things? Of course it’s not true.’ She then did what Michael always did – she
blamed the media for lying about her. ‘Don’t believe what you hear, Mother,’ she said. ‘You should know better.’

Later LaToya would explain why she lied to Katherine. ‘Mother did ask me if I had posed for
Playboy
. She asked very specifically, “Did you pose for the
Playboy
centrefold?” I told her no, and that was the truth. I did pose for
Playboy
– but
not
for the centrefold. It was for elsewhere in the magazine.’

After speaking to LaToya, Katherine telephoned Michael and, with a sigh of relief, told him that everything the family had
heard about her and
Playboy
was a lie manufactured by the media. However, Michael had already begun his own investigation into the matter and realized
that there was more to the story. He decided to take matters into his own hands.

After making a few more telephone calls, Michael learned that a meeting at Hugh Hefner’s mansion had been scheduled for the
next day, regarding LaToya’s pictorial. That day, he drove to the mansion and, under the guise of wanting to visit Hugh’s
menagerie of animals, snooped around the estate with one of his young friends. When he walked into one of the parlours, he
found a group of men sitting around a table, nervously stuffing colour photographs into their briefcases. ‘What’s goin’ on
in here?’ Michael asked with a ‘caught ya’ grin. Hugh walked over to Michael and shook his head. The two then had a discussion
about LaToya, during which Hugh promised to send Michael the pictures by messenger later in the week, ‘after they’ve been
touched up.’

A week later, Michael received the photographs. ‘I can’t believe this is my sister,’ he told a person who still works for
Michael today. ‘This ruins the family image. That’s it. There’s nothing left.’

Michael’s employee said, ‘All he cared about after seeing the pictures was his mother and her blood pressure. “I’m afraid
that when Kate sees these pictures, she’ll have a heart attack,” he told me. “I’m not even going to tell her I have them.
Hopefully, they’ll touch up ’Toya’s, uh, her, uh, nipples, at least. I mean, do we have to see her
nipples?
”’ Michael hoped that the photographs he received did not represent the actual lay-out. Perhaps all of them had not been utilized
in it. Perhaps LaToya’s nipples
had
been camouflaged in some way. He telephoned LaToya.

She says he told her he thought the photos were lovely, which doesn’t seem likely. When he asked if she had an advance of
the final lay-out, she confessed that she did have it. Would she send it to him? No, she said.

A month later, the lay-out was published. Michael’s worst fears about the spread of eleven photos were realized. Could that
really be LaToya, posing nude with a sixty-pound boa constrictor slithering between her legs? ‘Boas aren’t dangerous unless
they’re hungry,’ she observed in the accompanying text.

After the initial shock, there was shame and embarrassment. Katherine and Rebbie were both humiliated; not only had Latoya
disrobed, but she had clearly had some work done on her breasts. Whereas they had once been small, they were now…
bountiful
.

For Joseph, seeing his daughter sprawled out in
Playboy
with a snake was an agonizing experience. One of his friends claimed that he and Katherine sequestered themselves at Hayvenhurst
for a month, not because they were afraid to be confronted but rather because they were heartsick over what LaToya had done
to them. They also blamed Jack Gordon for convincing her that posing for
Playboy
would be a good career move.

Michael, too, was irate with his sister, but not only for her career choice and the fact that she had further damaged the
family’s image. He certainly did not find artistic merit in the photographs and told one friend that, as far as he was concerned,
they represented pornography. However, Michael was more angry with LaToya because she publicly claimed that he had
approved
of the pictures, and was glad she had taken them. ‘When he started hearing LaToya say on television that he was the only
one in the family who approved, he went nuts,’ said Steven Harris, a former associate. ‘He called his mother, and they had
a long, painful conversation about it. “How can I talk to her about anything if she twists what I say for her own purposes?”
he asked. Katherine and Michael decided it was best if Michael never spoke to LaToya. He changed his number and didn’t give
it to her. Of course, she couldn’t get it from anyone else in the family. No one would dare give it to her once Michael made
it known that he didn’t want her to have it. It was a shame. They had been so close.’

‘You know what?’ he told his attorney, John Branca. ‘I can’t control her, just as they [presumably his family] can’t control
me. So, good for her, I guess. She did what she had to do and she didn’t care about any of us, did she? When I do that kind
of thing, they all come down on me, hard. So, good for her if she can take it. Good for her.’ Michael then instructed the
rest of his staff never to bring up the subject of LaToya’s
Playboy
lay-out in his presence. ‘I don’t want to hear one more word about my sister’s big breasts,’ he concluded. ‘I just want to
forget the whole thing ever happened.’

‘We need Michael Jackson.’

‘We must have Michael Jackson.’

‘How do we get Michael Jackson?”

In February 1989, faxed communications from Kenneth Choi flooded into Jerome Howard’s office regarding the ‘Jackson – Moonie
Project’. Still, no one wanted to approach Michael just yet; they were afraid he would give them an instant ‘no,’ and that
would be the end of it. ‘Finally, in desperation, the Koreans came up with an idea,’ Jerome recalled, ‘a reward. A bounty
was placed on Michael’s head. The price: one million dollars. Anyone – family member or business associate – who could get Michael’s
signature on the contract would get a million dollars, money which would come straight from the Moonies. Now,
everyone
wanted to approach Michael,’ Jerome concluded with a chuckle, ‘and right away.’

Katherine decided to take the proverbial bull by the horns and telephone Michael at Neverland to give it her best shot. As
she gently tried to explain the proposed tour, feeding him information about it as gingerly as possible, Joseph stood nearby,
pacing. Finally, he was about to burst. He snatched the phone from her hand. ‘Michael, now you listen here,’ he declared.
‘You said you wanted us to be a family again,’ he said, referring to their last telephone conversation from Japan. ‘Now, look.
I got these rich Koreans and they got this big deal and I want you to do this thing, Michael, ’cause we’re gonna make a lot
of money and we
need
this money and you
know
we do and – ’

‘Joseph, put Mother back on the phone.’

Michael then told Katherine to forget about it. He wouldn’t even consider another family venture, especially if Joseph was
involved in it. He reminded Katherine of the time (in 1985) when Joseph aligned with a Hollywood producer to develop a film
based on ‘Beat It’ which was to star Michael – and Michael didn’t know anything about it. He later had to disavow the project
which, he said, was embarrassing. ‘He’s always doing things to get me involved in projects with him, and I’m not going along
with it,’ Michael said. He didn’t want to tour with the brothers again, either. ‘That’s over,’ he told his mother. ‘I mean
it,’ he concluded. ‘Forget it, Kat. [Michael often calls his mother ‘Kat’.] I won’t do it and I want you to please just drop
it. Do you understand?’

The good ol’ days when Katherine was able to convince Michael to do anything she asked of him were clearly in the past.

By February 1989, financial matters had gotten so desperate for Joseph and Katherine that they could no longer afford to pay
Jerome Howard his salary; he had settled for $3,000 a month, even though they had originally agreed to pay him $10,000, and
now he wasn’t getting anything. Therefore, he became even more interested in concluding the Jackson – Moonie Project not only
to generate revenue for the family, but for himself, as well. He decided to go directly to Frank Dileo for assistance. Unfortunately,
no one in the family knew how to get to Frank. The brothers barely knew him, and Katherine and Joseph never liked meeting
with him about anything because, they claimed, he would then go back to Michael and misrepresent what they had said. Katherine,
in particular, didn’t like Frank – especially after he said she was ‘crazy’ for thinking Michael could do a better show with
his brothers.