DID
MICHAEL DO IT?
The untold story of the events
that brought down a superstar.
By Mary A. Fisher
Before O.J. Simpson, there was Michael
Jackson -- another beloved black celebrity seemingly brought down by allegations
of scandal in his personal life. Those allegations -- that Jackson had
molested a 13-year-old boy -- instigated a multimillion-dollar lawsuit,
two grand-jury investigations and a shameless media circus. Jackson, in
turn, filed charges of extortion against some of his accusers. Ultimately,
the suit was settled out of court for a sum that has been estimated at
$20 million; no criminal charges were brought against Jackson by the police
or the grand juries. This past August, Jackson was in the news again, when
Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis's daughter, announced that she and the singer
had married.
As the dust settles on one of the
nation's worst episodes of media excess, one thing is clear: The American
public has never heard a defense of Michael Jackson. Until now.
It is, of course, impossible to
prove a negative -- that is, prove that something didn't happen.
But it is possible to take an in-depth
look at the people who made the allegations against Jackson and thus gain
insight into their character and motives. What emerges from such an examination,
based on court documents, business records and scores of interviews, is
a persuasive argument that Jackson molested no one and that he himself
may have been the victim of a well-conceived plan to extract money from
him.
More than that, the story that arises
from this previously unexplored territory is radically different from the
tale that has been promoted by tabloid and even mainstream journalists.
It is a story of greed, ambition, misconceptions on the part of police
and prosecutors, a lazy and sensation-seeking media and the use of a powerful,
hypnotic drug. It may also be a story about how a case was simply invented.
Neither Michael Jackson nor his
current defense attorneys agreed to be interviewed for this article. Had
they decided to fight the civil charges and go to trial, what follows might
have served as the core of Jackson's defense -- as well as the basis to
further the extortion charges against his own accusers, which could well
have exonerated the singer.
Jackson's troubles began when his
van broke down on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles in May 1992. Stranded
in the middle of the heavily trafficked street, Jackson was spotted by
the wife of Mel Green, an employee at Rent-a-Wreck, an offbeat car-rental
agency a mile away. Green went to the rescue. When Dave Schwartz, the owner
of the car-rental company, heard Green was bringing Jackson to the lot,
he called his wife, June, and told her to come over with their 6-year-old
daughter and her son from her previous marriage. The boy, then 12, was
a big Jackson fan. Upon arriving, June Chandler Schwartz told Jackson about
the time her son had sent him a drawing after the singer's hair caught
on fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial. Then she gave Jackson
their home number.
"It was almost like she was forcing
[the boy] on him," Green recalls. "I think Michael thought he owed the
boy something, and that's when it all started."
Certain facts about the relationship
are not in dispute. Jackson began calling the boy, and a friendship developed.
After Jackson returned from a promotional tour, three months later, June
Chandler Schwartz and her son and daughter became regular guests at Neverland,
Jackson's ranch in Santa Barbara County. During the following year, Jackson
showered the boy and his family with attention and gifts, including video
games, watches, an after-hours shopping spree at Toys "R" Us and trips
around the world -- from Las Vegas and Disney World to Monaco and Paris.
By March 1993, Jackson and the boy
were together frequently and the sleepovers began. June Chandler Schwartz
had also become close to Jackson "and liked him enormously," one friend
says. "He was the kindest man she had ever met."
Jackson's personal eccentricities
-- from his attempts to remake his face through plastic surgery to his
preference for the company of children -- have been widely reported. And
while it may be unusual for a 35-year-old man to have sleepovers with a
13-year-old child, the boy's mother and others close to Jackson never thought
it odd. Jackson's behavior is better understood once it's put in the context
of his own childhood.
"Contrary to what you might think,
Michael's life hasn't been a walk in the park," one of his attorneys says.
Jackson's childhood essentially stopped -- and his unorthodox life began
-- when he was 5 years old and living in Gary, Indiana. Michael spent his
youth in rehearsal studios, on stages performing before millions of strangers
and sleeping in an endless string of hotel rooms. Except for his eight
brothers and sisters, Jackson was surrounded by adults who pushed him relentlessly,
particularly his father, Joe Jackson -- a strict, unaffectionate man who
reportedly beat his children.
Jackson's early experiences translated
into a kind of arrested development, many say, and he became a child in
a man's body. "He never had a childhood," says Bert Fields, a former attorney
of Jackson's. "He is having one now. His buddies are 12-year-old kids.
They have pillow fights and food fights." Jackson's interest in children
also translated into humanitarian efforts. Over the years, he has given
millions to causes benefiting children, including his own Heal The World
Foundation.
But there is another context --
the one having to do with the times in which we live -- in which most observers
would evaluate Jackson's behavior. "Given the current confusion and hysteria
over child sexual abuse," says Dr. Phillip Resnick, a noted Cleveland psychiatrist,
"any physical or nurturing contact with a child may be seen as suspicious,
and the adult could well be accused of sexual misconduct."
Jackson's involvement with the boy
was welcomed, at first, by all the adults in the youth's life -- his mother,
his stepfather and even his biological father, Evan Chandler (who also
declined to be interviewed for this article). Born Evan Robert Charmatz
in the Bronx in 1944, Chandler had reluctantly followed in the footsteps
of his father and brothers and become a dentist. "He hated being a dentist,"
a family friend says. "He always wanted to be a writer." After moving in
1973 to West Palm Beach to practice dentistry, he changed his last name,
believing Charmatz was "too Jewish-sounding," says a former colleague.
Hoping somehow to become a screenwriter, Chandler moved to Los Angeles
in the late Seventies with his wife, June Wong, an attractive Eurasian
who had worked briefly as a model.
Chandler's dental career had its
precarious moments. In December 1978, while working at the Crenshaw Family
Dental Center, a clinic in a low-income area of L.A., Chandler did restoration
work on sixteen of a patient's teeth during a single visit. An examination
of the work, the Board of Dental Examiners concluded, revealed "gross ignorance
and/or inefficiency" in his profession. The board revoked his license;
however, the revocation was stayed, and the board instead suspended him
for ninety days and placed him on probation for two and a half years. Devastated,
Chandler left town for New York. He wrote a film script but couldn't sell
it.
Months later, Chandler returned
to L.A. with his wife and held a series of dentistry jobs. By 1980, when
their son was born, the couple's marriage was in trouble. "One of the reasons
June left Evan was because of his temper," a family friend says. They divorced
in 1985. The court awarded sole custody of the boy to his mother and ordered
Chandler to pay $500 a month in child support, but a review of documents
reveals that in 1993, when the Jackson scandal broke, Chandler owed his
ex-wife $68,000 -- a debt she ultimately forgave.
A year before Jackson came into
his son's life, Chandler had a second serious professional problem. One
of his patients, a model, sued him for dental negligence after he did restoration
work on some of her teeth. Chandler claimed that the woman had signed a
consent form in which she'd acknowledged the risks involved. But when Edwin
Zinman, her attorney, asked to see the original records, Chandler said
they had been stolen from the trunk of his Jaguar. He provided a duplicate
set. Zinman, suspicious, was unable to verify the authenticity of the records.
"What an extraordinary coincidence that they were stolen," Zinman says
now. "That's like saying 'The dog ate my homework.' " The suit was eventually
settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.
Despite such setbacks, Chandler
by then had a successful practice in Beverly Hills. And he got his first
break in Hollywood in 1992, when he co-wrote the Mel Brooks film Robin
Hood: Men in Tights. Until Michael Jackson entered his son's life, Chandler
hadn't shown all that much interest in the boy. "He kept promising to buy
him a computer so they could work on scripts together, but he never did,"
says Michael Freeman, formerly an attorney for June Chandler Schwartz.
Chandler's dental practice kept him busy, and he had started a new family
by then, with two small children by his second wife, a corporate attorney.
At first, Chandler welcomed and
encouraged his son's relationship with Michael Jackson, bragging about
it to friends and associates. When Jackson and the boy stayed with Chandler
during May 1993, Chandler urged the entertainer to spend more time with
his son at his house. According to sources, Chandler even suggested that
Jackson build an addition onto the house so the singer could stay there.
After calling the zoning department and discovering it couldn't be done,
Chandler made another suggestion -- that Jackson just build him a new home.
That same month, the boy, his mother
and Jackson flew to Monaco for the World Music Awards. "Evan began to get
jealous of the involvement and felt left out," Freeman says. Upon their
return, Jackson and the boy again stayed with Chandler, which pleased him
-- a five-day visit, during which they slept in a room with the youth's
half brother. Though Chandler has admitted that Jackson and the boy always
had their clothes on whenever he saw them in bed together, he claimed that
it was during this time that his suspicions of sexual misconduct were triggered.
At no time has Chandler claimed to have witnessed any sexual misconduct
on Jackson's part.
Chandler became increasingly volatile,
making threats that alienated Jackson, Dave Schwartz and June Chandler
Schwartz. In early July 1993, Dave Schwartz, who had been friendly with
Chandler, secretly tape-recorded a lengthy telephone conversation he had
with him. During the conversation, Chandler talked of his concern for his
son and his anger at Jackson and at his ex-wife, whom he described as "cold
and heartless." When Chandler tried to "get her attention" to discuss his
suspicions about Jackson, he says on the tape, she told him "Go fuck yourself."
"I had a good communication with
Michael," Chandler told Schwartz. "We were friends. I liked him and I respected
him and everything else for what he is. There was no reason why he had
to stop calling me. I sat in the room one day and talked to Michael and
told him exactly what I want out of this whole relationship. What I want."
Admitting to Schwartz that he had
"been rehearsed" about what to say and what not to say, Chandler never
mentioned money during their conversation. When Schwartz asked what Jackson
had done that made Chandler so upset, Chandler alleged only that "he broke
up the family. [The boy] has been seduced by this guy's power and money."
Both men repeatedly berated themselves as poor fathers to the boy.
Elsewhere on the tape, Chandler
indicated he was prepared to move against Jackson: "It's already set,"
Chandler told Schwartz. "There are other people involved that are waiting
for my phone call that are in certain positions. I've paid them to do it.
Everything's going according to a certain plan that isn't just mine. Once
I make that phone call, this guy [his attorney, Barry K. Rothman, presumably]
is going to destroy everybody in sight in any devious, nasty, cruel way
that he can do it. And I've given him full authority to do that."
Chandler then predicted what would,
in fact, transpire six weeks later: "And if I go through with this, I win
big-time. There's no way I lose. I've checked that inside out. I will get
everything I want, and they will be destroyed forever. June will lose [custody
of the son]...and Michael's career will be over."
"Does that help [the boy]?" Schwartz
asked.
"That's irrelevant to me," Chandler
replied. "It's going to be bigger than all of us put together. The whole
thing is going to crash down on everybody and destroy everybody in sight.
It will be a massacre if I don't get what I want."
Instead of going to the police,
seemingly the most appropriate action in a situation involving suspected
child molestation, Chandler had turned to a lawyer. And not just any lawyer.
He'd turned to Barry Rothman.
"This attorney I found, I picked
the nastiest son of a bitch I could find," Chandler said in the recorded
conversation with Schwartz. "All he wants to do is get this out in the
public as fast as he can, as big as he can, and humiliate as many people
as he can. He's nasty, he's mean, he's very smart, and he's hungry for
the publicity." (Through his attorney, Wylie Aitken, Rothman declined to
be interviewed for this article. Aitken agreed to answer general questions
limited to the Jackson case, and then only about aspects that did not involve
Chandler or the boy.)
To know Rothman, says a former colleague
who worked with him during the Jackson case, and who kept a diary of what
Rothman and Chandler said and did in Rothman's office, is to believe that
Barry could have "devised this whole plan, period. This [making allegations
against Michael Jackson] is within the boundary of his character, to do
something like this." Information supplied by Rothman's former clients,
associates and employees reveals a pattern of manipulation and deceit.
Rothman has a general-law practice
in Century City. At one time, he negotiated music and concert deals for
Little Richard, the Rolling Stones, the Who, ELO and Ozzy Osbourne. Gold
and platinum records commemorating those days still hang on the walls of
his office. With his grayish-white beard and perpetual tan -- which he
maintains in a tanning bed at his house -- Rothman reminds a former client
of "a leprechaun." To a former employee, Rothman is "a demon" with "a terrible
temper." His most cherished possession, acquaintances say, is his 1977
Rolls-Royce Corniche, which carries the license plate "BKR 1."
Over the years, Rothman has made
so many enemies that his ex-wife once expressed, to her attorney, surprise
that someone "hadn't done him in." He has a reputation for stiffing people.
"He appears to be a professional
deadbeat... He pays almost no one," investigator Ed Marcus concluded (in
a report filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, as part of a lawsuit against
Rothman), after reviewing the attorney's credit profile, which listed more
than thirty creditors and judgment holders who were chasing him. In addition,
more than twenty civil lawsuits involving Rothman have been filed in Superior
Court, several complaints have been made to the Labor Commission and disciplinary
actions for three incidents have been taken against him by the state bar
of California. In 1992, he was suspended for a year, though that suspension
was stayed and he was instead placed on probation for the term.
In 1987, Rothman was $16,800 behind
in alimony and child-support payments. Through her attorney, his ex-wife,
Joanne Ward, threatened to attach Rothman's assets, but he agreed to make
good on the debt. A year later, after Rothman still hadn't made the payments,
Ward's attorney tried to put a lien on Rothman's expensive Sherman Oaks
home. To their surprise, Rothman said he no longer owned the house; three
years earlier, he'd deeded the property to Tinoa Operations, Inc., a Panamanian
shell corporation. According to Ward's lawyer, Rothman claimed that he'd
had $200,000 of Tinoa's money, in cash, at his house one night when he
was robbed at gunpoint. The only way he could make good on the loss was
to deed his home to Tinoa, he told them. Ward and her attorney suspected
the whole scenario was a ruse, but they could never prove it. It was only
after sheriff's deputies had towed away Rothman's Rolls Royce that he began
paying what he owed.
Documents filed with Los Angeles
Superior Court seem to confirm the suspicions of Ward and her attorney.
These show that Rothman created an elaborate network of foreign bank accounts
and shell companies, seemingly to conceal some of his assets -- in particular,
his home and much of the $531,000 proceeds from its eventual sale, in 1989.
The companies, including Tinoa, can be traced to Rothman. He bought a Panamanian
shelf company (an existing but nonoperating firm) and arranged matters
so that though his name would not appear on the list of its officers, he
would have unconditional power of attorney, in effect leaving him in control
of moving money in and out.
Meanwhile, Rothman's employees didn't
fare much better than his ex-wife. Former employees say they sometimes
had to beg for their paychecks. And sometimes the checks that they did
get would bounce. He couldn't keep legal secretaries. "He'd demean and
humiliate them," says one. Temporary workers fared the worst. "He would
work them for two weeks," adds the legal secretary, "then run them off
by yelling at them and saying they were stupid. Then he'd tell the agency
he was dissatisfied with the temp and wouldn't pay." Some agencies finally
got wise and made Rothman pay cash up front before they'd do business with
him.
The state bar's 1992 disciplining
of Rothman grew out of a conflict-of-interest matter. A year earlier, Rothman
had been kicked off a case by a client, Muriel Metcalf, whom he'd been
representing in child-support and custody proceedings; Metcalf later accused
him of padding her bill. Four months after Metcalf fired him, Rothman,
without notifying her, began representing the company of her estranged
companion, Bob Brutzman.
The case is revealing for another
reason: It shows that Rothman had some experience dealing with child-molestation
allegations before the Jackson scandal. Metcalf, while Rothman was still
representing her, had accused Brutzman of molesting their child (which
Brutzman denied). Rothman's knowledge of Metcalf's charges didn't prevent
him from going to work for Brutzman's company -- a move for which he was
disciplined.
By 1992, Rothman was running from
numerous creditors. Folb Management, a corporate real-estate agency, was
one. Rothman owed the company $53,000 in back rent and interest for an
office on Sunset Boulevard. Folb sued. Rothman then countersued, claiming
that the building's security was so inadequate that burglars were able
to steal more than $6,900 worth of equipment from his office one night.
In the course of the proceedings, Folb's lawyer told the court, "Mr. Rothman
is not the kind of person whose word can be taken at face value."
In November 1992, Rothman had his
law firm file for bankruptcy, listing thirteen creditors -- including Folb
Management -- with debts totaling $880,000 and no acknowledged assets.
After reviewing the bankruptcy papers, an ex-client whom Rothman was suing
for $400,000 in legal fees noticed that Rothman had failed to list a $133,000
asset. The former client threatened to expose Rothman for "defrauding his
creditors" -- a felony -- if he didn't drop the lawsuit. Cornered, Rothman
had the suit dismissed in a matter of hours.
Six months before filing for bankruptcy,
Rothman had transferred title on his Rolls Royce to Majo, a fictitious
company he controlled. Three years earlier, Rothman had claimed a different
corporate owner for the car -- Longridge Estates, a subsidiary of Tinoa
Operations, the company that held the deed to his home. On corporation
papers filed by Rothman, the addresses listed for Longridge and Tinoa were
the same, 1554 Cahuenga Boulevard -- which, as it turns out, is that of
a Chinese restaurant in Hollywood.
It was with this man, in June 1993,
that Evan Chandler began carrying out the "certain plan" to which he referred
in his taped conversation with Dave Schwartz. At a graduation that month,
Chandler confronted his ex-wife with his suspicions. "She thought the whole
thing was baloney," says her ex-attorney, Michael Freeman. She told Chandler
that she planned to take their son out of school in the fall so they could
accompany Jackson on his "Dangerous" world tour. Chandler became irate
and, say several sources, threatened to go public with the evidence he
claimed he had on Jackson. "What parent in his right mind would want to
drag his child into the public spotlight?" asks Freeman. "If something
like this actually occurred, you'd want to protect your child."
Jackson asked his then-lawyer, Bert
Fields, to intervene. One of the most prominent attorneys in the entertainment
industry, Fields has been representing Jackson since 1990 and had negotiated
for him, with Sony, the biggest music deal ever -- with possible earnings
of $700 million. Fields brought in investigator Anthony Pellicano to help
sort things out. Pellicano does things Sicilian-style, being fiercely loyal
to those he likes but a ruthless hardball player when it comes to his enemies.
On July 9, 1993, Dave Schwartz and
June Chandler Schwartz played the taped conversation for Pellicano. "After
listening to the tape for ten minutes, I knew it was about extortion,"
says Pellicano. That same day, he drove to Jackson's Century City condominium,
where Chandler's son and the boy's half-sister were visiting. Without Jackson
there, Pellicano "made eye contact" with the boy and asked him, he says,
"very pointed questions": "Has Michael ever touched you? Have you ever
seen him naked in bed?" The answer to all the questions was no. The boy
repeatedly denied that anything bad had happened. On July 11, after Jackson
had declined to meet with Chandler, the boy's father and Rothman went ahead
with another part of the plan -- they needed to get custody of the boy.
Chandler asked his ex-wife to let the youth stay with him for a "one-week
visitation period." As Bert Fields later said in an affidavit to the court,
June Chandler Schwartz allowed the boy to go based on Rothman's assurance
to Fields that her son would come back to her after the specified time,
never guessing that Rothman's word would be worthless and that Chandler
would not return their son.
Wylie Aitken, Rothman's attorney,
claims that "at the time [Rothman] gave his word, it was his intention
to have the boy returned." However, once "he learned that the boy would
be whisked out of the country [to go on tour with Jackson], I don't think
Mr. Rothman had any other choice." But the chronology clearly indicates
that Chandler had learned in June, at the graduation, that the boy's mother
planned to take her son on the tour. The taped telephone conversation made
in early July, before Chandler took custody of his son, also seems to verify
that Chandler and Rothman had no intention of abiding by the visitation
agreement. "They [the boy and his mother] don't know it yet," Chandler
told Schwartz, "but they aren't going anywhere."
On July 12, one day after Chandler
took control of his son, he had his ex-wife sign a document prepared by
Rothman that prevented her from taking the youth out of Los Angeles County.
This meant the boy would be unable to accompany Jackson on the tour. His
mother told the court she signed the document under duress. Chandler, she
said in an affidavit, had threatened that "I would not have [the boy] returned
to me." A bitter custody battle ensued, making even murkier any charges
Chandler made about wrong-doing on Jackson's part. (As of this August [1994],
the boy was still living with Chandler.) It was during the first few weeks
after Chandler took control of his son -- who was now isolated from his
friends, mother and stepfather -- that the boy's allegations began to take
shape.
At the same time, Rothman, seeking
an expert's opinion to help establish the allegations against Jackson,
called Dr. Mathis Abrams, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist. Over the telephone,
Rothman presented Abrams with a hypothetical situation. In reply and without
having met either Chandler or his son, Abrams on July 15 sent Rothman a
two-page letter in which he stated that "reasonable suspicion would exist
that sexual abuse may have occurred." Importantly, he also stated that
if this were a real and not a hypothetical case, he would be required by
law to report the matter to the Los Angeles County Department of Children's
Services (DCS).
According to a July 27 entry in
the diary kept by Rothman's former colleague, it's clear that Rothman was
guiding Chandler in the plan. "Rothman wrote letter to Chandler advising
him how to report child abuse without liability to parent," the entry reads.
At this point, there still had been
made no demands or formal accusations, only veiled assertions that had
become intertwined with a fierce custody battle. On August 4, 1993, however,
things became very clear. Chandler and his son met with Jackson and Pellicano
in a suite at the Westwood Marquis Hotel. On seeing Jackson, says Pellicano,
Chandler gave the singer an affectionate hug (a gesture, some say, that
would seem to belie the dentist's suspicions that Jackson had molested
his son), then reached into his pocket, pulled out Abrams's letter and
began reading passages from it. When Chandler got to the parts about child
molestation, the boy, says Pellicano, put his head down and then looked
up at Jackson with a surprised expression, as if to say "I didn't say that."
As the meeting broke up, Chandler pointed his finger at Jackson, says Pellicano,
and warned "I'm going to ruin you."
At a meeting with Pellicano in Rothman's
office later that evening, Chandler and Rothman made their demand - $20
million.
On August 13, there was another
meeting in Rothman's office. Pellicano came back with a counteroffer --
a $350,000 screenwriting deal. Pellicano says he made the offer as a way
to resolve the custody dispute and give Chandler an opportunity to spend
more time with his son by working on a screenplay together. Chandler rejected
the offer. Rothman made a counter demand -- a deal for three screenplays
or nothing -- which was spurned. In the diary of Rothman's ex-colleague,
an August 24 entry reveals Chandler's disappointment: "I almost had a $20
million deal," he was overhear telling Rothman.
Before Chandler took control of
his son, the only one making allegations against Jackson was Chandler himself
-- the boy had never accused the singer of any wrongdoing. That changed
one day in Chandler's Beverly Hills dental office.
In the presence of Chandler and
Mark Torbiner, a dental anesthesiologist, the boy was administered the
controversial drug sodium Amytal -- which some mistakenly believe is a
truth serum. And it was after this session that the boy first made his
charges against Jackson. A newsman at KCBS-TV, in L.A., reported on May
3 of this year that Chandler had used the drug on his son, but the dentist
claimed he did so only to pull his son's tooth and that while under the
drug's influence, the boy came out with allegations. Asked for this article
about his use of the drug on the boy, Torbiner replied: "If I used it,
it was for dental purposes."
Given the facts about sodium Amytal
and a recent landmark case that involved the drug, the boy's allegations,
say several medical experts, must be viewed as unreliable, if not highly
questionable.
"It's a psychiatric medication that
cannot be relied on to produce fact," says Dr. Resnick, the Cleveland psychiatrist.
"People are very suggestible under it. People will say things under sodium
Amytal that are blatantly untrue." Sodium Amytal is a barbiturate, an invasive
drug that puts people in a hypnotic state when it's injected intravenously.
Primarily administered for the treatment of amnesia, it first came into
use during World War II, on soldiers traumatized -- some into catatonic
states -- by the horrors of war. Scientific studies done in 1952 debunked
the drug as a truth serum and instead demonstrated its risks: False memories
can be easily implanted in those under its influence. "It is quite possible
to implant an idea through the mere asking of a question," says Resnick.
But its effects are apparently even more insidious: "The idea can become
their memory, and studies have shown that even when you tell them the truth,
they will swear on a stack of Bibles that it happened," says Resnick.
Recently, the reliability of the
drug became an issue in a high-profile trial in Napa County, California.
After undergoing numerous therapy sessions, at least one of which included
the use of sodium Amytal, 20-year-old Holly Ramona accused her father of
molesting her as a child. Gary Ramona vehemently denied the charge and
sued his daughter's therapist and the psychiatrist who had administered
the drug. This past May, jurors sided with Gary Ramona, believing that
the therapist and the psychiatrist may have reinforced memories that were
false. Gary Ramona's was the first successful legal challenge to the so-called
"repressed memory phenomenon" that has produced thousands of sexual-abuse
allegations over the past decade.
As for Chandler's story about using
the drug to sedate his son during a tooth extraction, that too seems dubious,
in light of the drug's customary use. "It's absolutely a psychiatric drug,"
says Dr. Kenneth Gottlieb, a San Francisco psychiatrist who has administered
sodium Amytal to amnesia patients. Dr. John Yagiela, the coordinator of
the anesthesia and pain control department of UCLA's school of dentistry,
adds, "It's unusual for it to be used [for pulling a tooth]. It makes no
sense when better, safer alternatives are available. It would not be my
choice."
Because of sodium Amytal's potential
side effects, some doctors will administer it only in a hospital. "I would
never want to use a drug that tampers with a person's unconscious unless
there was no other drug available," says Gottlieb. "And I would not use
it without resuscitating equipment, in case of allergic reaction, and only
with an M.D. anesthesiologist present."
Chandler, it seems, did not follow
these guidelines. He had the procedure performed on his son in his office,
and he relied on the dental anesthesiologist Mark Torbiner for expertise.
(It was Torbiner who'd introduced Chandler and Rothman in 1991, when Rothman
needed dental work.)
The nature of Torbiner's practice
appears to have made it highly successful. "He boasts that he has $100
a month overhead and $40,000 a month income," says Nylla Jones, a former
patient of his. Torbiner doesn't have an office for seeing patients; rather,
he travels to various dental offices around the city, where he administers
anesthesia during procedures.
This magazine has learned that the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is probing another aspect of Torbiner's
business practices: He makes housecalls to administer drugs -- mostly morphine
and Demerol -- not only postoperatively to his dental patients but also,
it seems, to those suffering pain whose source has nothing to do with dental
work. He arrives at the homes of his clients -- some of them celebrities
-- carrying a kind of fishing-tackle box that contains drugs and syringes.
At one time, the license plate on his Jaguar read "SLPYDOC." According
to Jones, Torbiner charges $350 for a basic ten-to-twenty-minute visit.
In what Jones describes as standard practice, when it's unclear how long
Torbiner will need to stay, the client, anticipating the stupor that will
soon set in, leaves a blank check for Torbiner to fill in with the appropriate
amount. the appropriate amount.
Torbiner wasn't always successful.
In 1989, he got caught in a lie and was asked to resign from UCLA, where
he was an assistant professor at the school of dentistry. Torbiner had
asked to take a half-day off so he could observe a religious holiday but
was later found to have worked at a dental office instead.
A check of Torbiner's credentials
with the Board of Dental Examiners indicates that he is restricted by law
to administering drugs solely for dental-related procedures. But there
is clear evidence that he has not abided by those restrictions. In fact,
on at least eight occasions, Torbiner has given a general anesthetic to
Barry Rothman, during hair-transplant procedures. Though normally a local
anesthetic would be injected into the scalp, "Barry is so afraid of the
pain," says Dr. James De Yarman, the San Diego physician who performed
Rothman's transplants, "that [he] wanted to be put out completely." De
Yarman said he was "amazed" to learn that Torbiner is a dentist, having
assumed all along that he was an M.D.
In another instance, Torbiner came
to the home of Nylla Jones, she says, and injected her with Demerol to
help dull the pain that followed her appendectomy.
On August 16, three days after Chandler
and Rothman rejected the $350,000 script deal, the situation came to a
head. On behalf of June Chandler Schwartz, Michael Freeman notified Rothman
that he would be filing papers early the next morning that would force
Chandler to turn over the boy. Reacting quickly, Chandler took his son
to Mathis Abrams, the psychiatrist who'd provided Rothman with his assessment
of the hypothetical child-abuse situation. During a three-hour session,
the boy alleged that Jackson had engaged in a sexual relationship with
him. He talked of masturbation, kissing, fondling of nipples and oral sex.
There was, however, no mention of
actual penetration, which might have been verified by a medical exam, thus
providing corroborating evidence.
The next step was inevitable. Abrams,
who is required by law to report any such accusation to authorities, called
a social worker at the Department of Children's Services, who in turn contacted
the police. The full-scale investigation of Michael Jackson was about to
begin.
Five days after Abrams called the
authorities, the media got wind of the investigation. On Sunday morning,
August 22, Don Ray, a free-lance reporter in Burbank, was asleep when his
phone rang. The caller, one of his tipsters, said that warrants had been
issued to search Jackson's ranch and condominium. Ray sold the story to
L.A.'s KNBC-TV, which broke the news at 4 P.M. the following day.
After that, Ray "watched this story
go away like a freight train," he says. Within twenty-four hours, Jackson
was the lead story on seventy-three TV news broadcasts in the Los Angeles
area alone and was on the front page of every British newspaper. The story
of Michael Jackson and the 13-year-old boy became a frenzy of hype and
unsubstantiated rumor, with the line between tabloid and mainstream media
virtually eliminated.
The extent of the allegations against
Jackson wasn't known until August 25. A person inside the DCS illegally
leaked a copy of the abuse report to Diane Dimond of Hard Copy. Within
hours, the L.A. office of a British news service also got the report and
began selling copies to any reporter willing to pay $750. The following
day, the world knew about the graphic details in the leaked report. "While
laying next to each other in bed, Mr. Jackson put his hand under [the child's]
shorts," the social worker had written. From there, the coverage soon demonstrated
that anything about Jackson would be fair game.
"Competition among news organizations
became so fierce," says KNBC reporter Conan Nolan, that "stories weren't
being checked out. It was very unfortunate." The National Enquirer put
twenty reporters and editors on the story. One team knocked on 500 doors
in Brentwood trying to find Evan Chandler and his son. Using property records,
they finally did, catching up with Chandler in his black Mercedes. "He
was not a happy man. But I was," said Andy O'Brien, a tabloid photographer.
Next came the accusers -- Jackson's
former employees. First, Stella and Philippe Lemarque, Jackson' ex-housekeepers,
tried to sell their story to the tabloids with the help of broker Paul
Barresi, a former porn star. They asked for as much as half a million dollars
but wound up selling an interview to The Globe of Britain for $15,000.
The Quindoys, a Filipino couple who had worked at Neverland, followed.
When their asking price was $100,000, they said " 'the hand was outside
the kid's pants,' " Barresi told a producer of Frontline, a PBS program.
"As soon as their price went up to $500,000, the hand went inside the pants.
So come on." The L.A. district attorney's office eventually concluded that
both couples were useless as witnesses.
Next came the bodyguards. Purporting
to take the journalistic high road, Hard Copy's Diane Dimond told Frontline
in early November of last year that her program was "pristinely clean on
this. We paid no money for this story at all." But two weeks later, as
a Hard Copy contract reveals, the show was negotiating a $100,000 payment
to five former Jackson security guards who were planning to file a $10
million lawsuit alleging wrongful termination of their jobs.
On December 1, with the deal in
place, two of the guards appeared on the program; they had been fired,
Dimond told viewers, because "they knew too much about Michael Jackson's
strange relationship with young boys." In reality, as their depositions
under oath three months later reveal, it was clear they had never actually
seen Jackson do anything improper with Chandler's son or any other child:
"So you don't know anything about
Mr. Jackson and [the boy], do you?" one of Jackson's attorneys asked former
security guard Morris Williams under oath.
"All I know is from the sworn documents
that other people have sworn to."
"But other than what someone else
may have said, you have no firsthand knowledge about Mr. Jackson and [the
boy], do you?"
"That's correct."
"Have you spoken to a child who
has ever told you that Mr. Jackson did anything improper with the child?"
"No."
When asked by Jackson's attorney
where he had gotten his impressions, Williams replied:
"Just what I've been hearing in
the media and what I've experienced with my own eyes."
"Okay. That's the point. You experienced
nothing with your own eyes, did you?"
"That's right, nothing."
(The guards' lawsuit, filed in March
1994, was still pending as this article went to press.)
Next came the maid. On December
15, Hard Copy presented "The Bedroom Maid's Painful Secret." Blanca Francia
told Dimond and other reporters that she had seen a naked Jackson taking
showers and Jacuzzi baths with young boys. She also told Dimond that she
had witnessed her own son in compromising positions with Jackson -- an
allegation that the grand juries apparently never found credible.
A copy of Francia's sworn testimony
reveals that Hard Copy paid her $20,000, and had Dimond checked out the
woman's claims, she would have found them to be false. Under deposition
by a Jackson attorney, Francia admitted she had never actually see Jackson
shower with anyone nor had she seen him naked with boys in his Jacuzzi.
They always had their swimming trunks on, she acknowledged.
The coverage, says Michael Levine,
a Jackson press representative, "followed a proctologist's view of the
world. Hard Copy was loathsome. The vicious and vile treatment of this
man in the media was for selfish reasons. [Even] if you have never bought
a Michael Jackson record in your life, you should be very concerned. Society
is built on very few pillars. One of them is truth. When you abandon that,
it's a slippery slope."
The investigation of Jackson, which
by October 1993 would grow to involve at least twelve detectives from Santa
Barbara and Los Angeles counties, was instigated in part by the perceptions
of one psychiatrist, Mathis Abrams, who had no particular expertise in
child sexual abuse. Abrams, the DCS caseworker's report noted, "feels the
child is telling the truth." In an era of widespread and often false claims
of child molestation, police and prosecutors have come to give great weight
to the testimony of psychiatrists, therapists and social workers.
Police seized Jackson's telephone
books during the raid on his residences in August and questioned close
to thirty children and their families. Some, such as Brett Barnes and Wade
Robson, said they had shared Jackson's bed, but like all the others, they
gave the same response -- Jackson had done nothing wrong. "The evidence
was very good for us," says an attorney who worked on Jackson's defense.
"The other side had nothing but a big mouth."
Despite the scant evidence supporting
their belief that Jackson was guilty, the police stepped up their efforts.
Two officers flew to the Philippines to try to nail down the Quindoys'
"hand in the pants" story, but apparently decided it lacked credibility.
The police also employed aggressive investigative techniques -- including
allegedly telling lies -- to push the children into making accusations
against Jackson. According to several parents who complained to Bert Fields,
officers told them unequivocally that their children had been molested,
even though the children denied to their parents that anything bad had
happened. The police, Fields complained in a letter to Los Angeles Police
Chief Willie Williams, "have also frightened youngsters with outrageous
lies, such as 'We have nude photos of you.' There are, of course, no such
photos." One officer, Federico Sicard, told attorney Michael Freeman that
he had lied to the children he'd interviewed and told them that he himself
had been molested as a child, says Freeman. Sicard did not respond to requests
for an interview for this article.
All along, June Chandler Schwartz
rejected the charges Chandler was making against Jackson -- until a meeting
with police in late August 1993. Officers Sicard and Rosibel Ferrufino
made a statement that began to change her mind. "[The officers] admitted
they only had one boy," says Freeman, who attended the meeting, "but they
said, 'We're convinced Michael Jackson molested this boy because he fits
the classic profile of a pedophile perfectly.' "
"There's no such thing as a classic
profile. They made a completely foolish and illogical error," says Dr.
Ralph Underwager, a Minneapolis psychiatrist who has treated pedophiles
and victims of incest since 1953. Jackson, he believes, "got nailed" because
of "misconceptions like these that have been allowed to parade as fact
in an era of hysteria." In truth, as a U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services study shows, many child-abuse allegations -- 48 percent of those
filed in 1990 -- proved to be unfounded.
"It was just a matter of time before
someone like Jackson became a target," says Phillip Resnick. "He's rich,
bizarre, hangs around with kids and there is a fragility to him. The atmosphere
is such that an accusation must mean it happened."
The seeds of settlement were already
being sown as the police investigation continued in both counties through
the fall of 1993. And a behind-the-scenes battle among Jackson's lawyers
for control of the case, which would ultimately alter the course the defense
would take, had begun.
By then, June Chandler Schwartz
and Dave Schwartz had united with Evan Chandler against Jackson. The boy's
mother, say several sources, feared what Chandler and Rothman might do
if she didn't side with them. She worried that they would try to advance
a charge against her of parental neglect for allowing her son to have sleepovers
with Jackson. Her attorney, Michael Freeman, in turn, resigned in disgust,
saying later that "the whole thing was such a mess. I felt uncomfortable
with Evan. He isn't a genuine person, and I sensed he wasn't playing things
straight."
Over the months, lawyers for both
sides were retained, demoted and ousted as they feuded over the best strategy
to take. Rothman ceased being Chandler's lawyer in late August, when the
Jackson camp filed extortion charges against the two. Both then hired high-priced
criminal defense attorneys to represent them.. (Rothman retained Robert
Shapiro, now O.J. Simpson's chief lawyer.) According to the diary kept
by Rothman's former colleague, on August 26, before the extortion charges
were filed, Chandler was heard to say "It's my ass that's on the line and
in danger of going to prison." The investigation into the extortion charges
was superficial because, says a source, "the police never took it that
seriously. But a whole lot more could have been done." For example, as
they had done with Jackson, the police could have sought warrants to search
the homes and offices of Rothman and Chandler. And when both men, through
their attorneys, declined to be interviewed by police, a grand jury could
have been convened.
In mid-September, Larry Feldman,
a civil attorney who'd served as head of the Los Angeles Trial Lawyers
Association, began representing Chandler's son and immediately took control
of the situation. He filed a $30 million civil lawsuit against Jackson,
which would prove to be the beginning of the end.
Once news of the suit spread, the
wolves began lining up at the door. According to a member of Jackson's
legal team, "Feldman got dozens of letters from all kinds of people saying
they'd been molested by Jackson. They went through all of them trying to
find somebody, and they found zero."
With the possibility of criminal
charges against Jackson now looming, Bert Fields brought in Howard Weitzman,
a well-known criminal-defense lawyer with a string of high-profile clients
-- including John DeLorean, whose trail he won, and Kim Basinger, whose
Boxing Helena contract dispute he lost. (Also, for a short time this June,
Weitzman was O.J. Simpson's attorney.) Some predicted a problem between
the two lawyers early on. There wasn't room for two strong attorneys used
to running their own show.
From the day Weitzman joined Jackson's
defense team, "he was talking settlement," says Bonnie Ezkenazi, an attorney
who worked for the defense. With Fields and Pellicano still in control
of Jackson's defense, they adopted an aggressive strategy. They believed
staunchly in Jackson's innocence and vowed to fight the charges in court.
Pellicano began gathering evidence to use in the trial, which was scheduled
for March 21, 1994. "They had a very weak case," says Fields. "We wanted
to fight. Michael wanted to fight and go through a trial. We felt we could
win."
Dissension within the Jackson camp
accelerated on November 12, after Jackson's publicist announced at a press
conference that the singer was canceling the remainder of his world tour
to go into a drug-rehabilitation program to treat his addiction to painkillers.
Fields later told reporters that Jackson was "barely able to function adequately
on an intellectual level." Others in Jackson's camp felt it was a mistake
to portray the singer as incompetent. "It was important," Fields says,
"to tell the truth. [Larry] Feldman and the press took the position that
Michael was trying to hide and that it was all a scam. But it wasn't."
On November 23, the friction peaked.
Based on information he says he got from Weitzman, Fields told a courtroom
full of reporters that a criminal indictment against Jackson seemed imminent.
Fields had a reason for making the statement: He was trying to delay the
boy's civil suit by establishing that there was an impending criminal case
that should be tried first. Outside the courtroom, reporters asked why
Fields had made the announcement, to which
Weitzman replied essentially that
Fields "misspoke himself." The comment infuriated Fields,
"because it wasn't true," he says.
"It was just an outrage. I was very upset with Howard." Fields sent a letter
of resignation to Jackson the following week.
"There was this vast group of people
all wanting to do a different thing, and it was like moving through molasses
to get a decision," says Fields. "It was a nightmare, and I wanted to get
the hell out of it." Pellicano, who had received his share of flak for
his aggressive manner, resigned at the same time.
With Fields and Pellicano gone,
Weitzman brought in Johnnie Cochran Jr., a well-known civil attorney who
is now helping defend O.J. Simpson. And John Branca, whom Fields had replaced
as Jackson's general counsel in 1990, was back on board. In late 1993,
as DAs in both Santa Barbara and Los Angeles counties convened grand juries
to assess whether criminal charges should be filed against Jackson, the
defense strategy changed course and talk of settling the civil case began
in earnest, even though his new team also believed in Jackson's innocence.
Why would Jackson's side agree to
settle out of court, given his claims of innocence and the questionable
evidence against him? His attorneys apparently decided there were many
factors that argued against taking the case to civil court. Among them
was the fact that Jackson's emotional fragility would be tested by the
oppressive media coverage that would likely plague the singer day after
day during a trial that could last as long as six months. Politics and
racial issues had also seeped into legal proceedings -- particularly in
Los Angeles, which was still recovering from the Rodney King ordeal --
and the defense feared that a court of law could not be counted on to deliver
justice. Then, too, there was the jury mix to consider. As one attorney
says, "They figured that Hispanics might resent [Jackson] for his money,
blacks might resent him for trying to be white, and whites would have trouble
getting around the molestation issue." In Resnick's opinion, "The hysteria
is so great and the stigma [of child molestation] is so strong, there is
no defense against it."
Jackson's lawyers also worried about
what might happen if a criminal trial followed, particularly in Santa Barbara,
which is a largely white, conservative, middle-to-upper-class community.
Any way the defense looked at it, a civil trial seemed too big a gamble.
By meeting the terms of a civil settlement, sources say, the lawyers figured
they could forestall a criminal trial through a tacit understanding that
Chandler would agree to make his son unavailable to testify.
Others close to the case say the
decision to settle also probably had to do with another factor -- the lawyers'
reputations. "Can you imagine what would happen to an attorney who lost
the Michael Jackson case?" says Anthony Pellicano. "There's no way for
all three lawyers to come out winners unless they settle. The only person
who lost is Michael Jackson." But Jackson, says Branca, "changed his mind
about [taking the case to trial] when he returned to this country. He hadn't
seen the massive coverage and how hostile it was. He just wanted the whole
thing to go away."
On the other side, relationships
among members of the boy's family had become bitter. During a meeting in
Larry Feldman's office in late 1993, Chandler, a source says, "completely
lost it and beat up Dave [Schwartz]." Schwartz, having separated from June
by this time, was getting pushed out of making decisions that affected
his stepson, and he resented Chandler for taking the boy and not returning
him.
"Dave got mad and told Evan this
was all about extortion, anyway, at which point Evan stood up, walked over
and started hitting Dave," a second source says.
To anyone who lived in Los Angeles
in January 1994, there were two main topics of discussion -- the earthquake
and the Jackson settlement. On January 25, Jackson agreed to pay the boy
an undisclosed sum. The day before, Jackson's attorneys had withdrawn the
extortion charges against Chandler and Rothman.
The actual amount of the settlement
has never been revealed, although speculation has placed the sum around
$20 million. One source says Chandler and June Chandler Schwartz received
up to $2 million each, while attorney Feldman might have gotten up to 25
percent in contingency fees. The rest of the money is being held in trust
for the boy and will be paid out under the supervision of a court-appointed
trustee.
"Remember, this case was always
about money," Pellicano says, "and Evan Chandler wound up getting what
he wanted." Since Chandler still has custody of his son, sources contend
that logically this means the father has access to any money his son gets.
By late May 1994, Chandler finally
appeared to be out of dentistry. He'd closed down his Beverly Hills office,
citing ongoing harassment from Jackson supporters. Under the terms of the
settlement, Chandler is apparently prohibited from writing about the affair,
but his brother, Ray Charmatz, was reportedly trying to get a book deal.
In what may turn out to be the never-ending
case, this past August, both Barry Rothman and Dave Schwartz (two principal
players left out of the settlement) filed civil suits against Jackson.
Schwartz maintains that the singer broke up his family. Rothman's lawsuit
claims defamation and slander on the part of Jackson, as well as his original
defense team -- Fields, Pellicano and Weitzman -- for the allegations of
extortion. "The charge of [extortion]," says Rothman attorney Aitken "is
totally untrue. Mr. Rothman has been held up for public ridicule, was the
subject of a criminal investigation and suffered loss of income." (Presumably,
some of Rothman's lost income is the hefty fee he would have received had
he been able to continue as Chandler's attorney through the settlement
phase.)
As for Michael Jackson, "he is getting
on with his life," says publicist Michael Levine. Now married, Jackson
also recently recorded three new songs for a greatest-hits album and completed
a new music video called "History."
And what became of the massive investigation
of Jackson? After millions of dollars were spent by prosecutors and police
departments in two jurisdictions, and after two grand juries questioned
close to 200 witnesses, including 30 children who knew Jackson, not a single
corroborating witness could be found. (In June 1994, still determined to
find even one corroborating witness, three prosecutors and two police detectives
flew to Australia to again question Wade Robson, the boy who had acknowledged
that he'd slept in the same bed with Jackson. Once again, the boy said
that nothing bad had happened.)
The sole allegations leveled against
Jackson, then, remain those made by one youth, and only after the boy had
been give a potent hypnotic drug, leaving him susceptible to the power
of suggestion.
"I found the case suspicious," says
Dr. Underwager, the Minneapolis psychiatrist, "precisely because the only
evidence came from one boy. That would be highly unlikely. Actual pedophiles
have an average of 240 victims in their lifetime. It's a progressive disorder.
They're never satisfied."
Given the slim evidence against
Jackson, it seems unlikely he would have been found guilty had the case
gone to trial. But in the court of public opinion, there are no restrictions.
People are free to speculate as they wish, and Jackson's eccentricity leaves
him vulnerable to the likelihood that the public has assumed the worst
about him.
So is it possible that Jackson committed
no crime -- that he is what he has always purported to be, a protector
and not a molester of children? Attorney Michael Freeman thinks so: "It's
my feeling that Jackson did nothing wrong and these people [Chandler and
Rothman]
saw an opportunity and programmed it. I believe it was all about money."
To some observers, the Michael Jackson
story illustrates the dangerous power of accusation, against which there
is often no defense -- particularly when the accusations involve child
sexual abuse. To others, something else is clear now -- that police and
prosecutors spent millions of dollars to create a case whose foundation
never existed. |