The likely reversal of Robson’s case by the Appellate court was somewhat a distraction, but not much of a surprise considering that the powerful forces that did away with Michael Jackson are still fully at work against him.

These forces will never let Michael Jackson rest in peace and will continue with their dirty slander job until they reach their coveted goal of ruining his Estate and shredding Michael’s reputation into pieces. They will tell one lie after another, adjust their fabrications to the newly found evidence of Michael’s innocence, and when their old stories are fully disproven, will claim without batting an eyelid that they never said it (we’ve been there, so we know).

Then they will invent something new and start it all over again – hire more accusers and their so-called witnesses, make other mocumentaries, create more hype, etc. etc. and thus promote their agenda for as long as the public believes their trash and allows it to happen.

Anyone who expected anything different was extremely naïve in thinking that they will ever give up.

Well, all it means to those who know the innocent truth about Michael Jackson is that the truth seekers should not give up either. If Robson’s and Safechuck’s cases have to go to a civil court, so let it be. After all, the court hearings may turn out to be the only chance to tell the general public the real truth about Michael Jackson.

And even if the worst comes to the worst and the verdict is unfair – which may very well happen in the current environment of lies, falsehood and confusion, all it will mean is that the job of proving that Michael Jackson was innocent and was massively framed up will have to go on.

And if this job has to be done for years, let it be. If it has to be done for decades, let it be too. And if it has to be done by a new generation, let us pass to them what we know, so that they take over from us and continue with the job for as long as it takes.

In other words, we should make it clear to those who are keen on degrading Michael Jackson that as long as they attribute to him what he didn’t commit, the people to whom the truth matters will refute their lies and will do what needs to be done to clean his name of all the slander and dirt.

So with this calm and peaceful thought in mind, let us return to our regular job of telling the truth about Michael Jackson and go back to the interview given by Michael’s friend Brett Barnes to journalist Charles Thomson in June 2022 (transcribed only now).

The transcript of the first part of the interview is here, and my comments on some of Brett’s words are in this post. Below you will find the transcript of the second hour of Brett’s interview (0:58-1:59) with another half hour still left and more commentary to be made in the following posts. Please note that the bold type is mine, while the words where Brett was especially emphatic and wanted to stress his point are in italics.

~

BRETT’S INTERVIEW IN 1993

Charles Thomson: Did you observe how he was being affected by this investigation and these allegations?

Brett Barnes: Again, it’s not something that was significant enough for me to remember what it was. He would just I assume, would just keep it away, not let it consume him. So it was not really… and again, since I was young too, so it’s not something that we would have any deep discussions about other than him saying he doesn’t know, like he didn’t know why it was happening. Just didn’t understand why it was.

CT:  Did he seem different to you though? Did he seem depressed or, or withdrawn, or did you not really notice any difference in his demeanor?

BB: Uh, I was pretty young. If I had to make a guess on my memories around that time, I would say that it was a little bit, like looking back on those memories, there was a little bit of that energy gone, if that sort of makes sense.

CT: Amid that whole … because I’ve said at the beginning of this conversation that the only interview you’ve ever given was in 1993 and that was in response to these allegations. And it was you and Wade Robinson together. How did that interview come about?

BB: I don’t remember. We didn’t do the video. We didn’t do the interview at the same time.

CT: Oh, I see. So you were interviewed separately but for the same thing.

BB: Yeah.

CT: Did you know Wade at that time?

BB: We had met him and his mom at the Jam video. [in April 1992]

Brett Barnes in a TV interview in 1993

CT: Now, just for the record, I’ve got some questions about that interview that you did in ‘93. I want to give you the opportunity to put your answers on record. Did you do it voluntarily?

BB: So I don’t really remember, uh, ins and outs of it. And to tell you the truth, it’s understandable in my opinion, because of the things, these sort of things, I guess it’s hard for me to, to be asked these questions, because these type of things aren’t significant to me.

Because it’s not what my life … it’s not things that as an adult would, they would be things that I would be remembering or have committed to memory. But as a child, these aren’t really things that I would commit to memory – because look at, look at things I was doing at that time, the amount of amazing things I’ve seen in my life. These are the things that I’ve committed to memory rather than caring about being in Neverland when it was raided. Things like that just aren’t committed to memory for me.

CT: Okay.

BB: And I’m sorry, I forgot what you asked.

CT: Did you do it voluntarily?

BB: That’s right. Sorry. I went completely off topic (laughs). I don’t remember. I don’t remember the ins and outs of it, but I know I wouldn’t have done something, I wouldn’t have been able to be forced to do something I didn’t want to do. That’s still true today.

CT: Did Michael in any way, coach you or tell you what to say?

BB: I don’t even think that he… He definitely wasn’t there when we, when we did it. It was mum, Karlee, I think, and myself was there. But he wasn’t there, he wasn’t there when it was recorded.

CT: Did anybody else coach you or tell you what to say?

BB: No, of course not. All it was just answer these questions. Tell the truth. That’s all it was.

CT: Were you paid or induced in any other way…

BB: Nope.

CT: ….to do the interview?

BB: Nope. If I was paid, I definitely didn’t see the money.

CT: Okay.  And were you telling the truth in the interview?

BB: Absolutely.

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF $ FOR LIES

CT:  Okay. So at the time the media started flying around with checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars and giving them to people who had some connection with Michael Jackson in return for stories that were negative and a number of people accepted that money. And when they told those stories, they used your name in those stories.

And I want to give you the opportunity to comment, to explicitly say what you think of these claims that were made. So there was a security guard who sold a story saying that he saw Michael Jackson performing oral sex on you in a Neverland changing room. Did that ever happen?

BB: That’s disgusting.  No, of course not. That’s absolutely disgusting. If dude saw that, why didn’t he do anything at that time? Why didn’t he go to the police? Why didn’t… why wasn’t there anything? So you are gonna see something like this happen and then that’s … you’re just gonna walk away from that?

For the lies told about Brett Barnes the security guard Ralph Chacon received from the D.A. office a money bonus and a permit to carry a gun. Here is the story.

CT:  So you refute that story completely.

BB: Absolutely.

CT:  There was a maid called Adrian McManus, who I know you are aware of…

BB: Yeah.

CT:  …who said that she saw Michael put his hand on your butt and kiss you on the cheek. Is it possible that that ever happened?

BB: No.  I don’t think that would’ve happened at all. [her story is here]

CT:  There was, um, a guy called Victor Gutierrez who published a source of erotic novel about Michael, which he claimed was based on the secret diary of Jordan Chandler, although the Chandlers denied having anything to do with Gutierrez.

He in quite graphic terms described you, Michael and Jordan Chandler engaging in group sex together. Is that true?

BB: That’s not true at all. That’s gross and disgusting. Isn’t this the same dude that’d run off without paying what he was expected to?

CT:  That’s him.

Victor Gutierrez, the dude who wrote a pedophilia fantasy about MJ and ran off to his native Chile not to pay $2,7mln in damages for defamation

BB:  Yeah. Yeah.

CT:  That’s him. Yeah. Did he ever contact you before publishing that book?

BB:  Not that I’m aware of.

CT:  Do you recall anyone contacting you to ask you whether Adrian McManus’s story was true before publishing it or broadcasting it?

BB:  No. Not that I’m aware of.

CT:  And the security guard story. Do you recall anybody calling to ask you whether that was true?

BB: No. No, not that I’m aware of.

CT:  It was reported sometime after the Chandler settlement that Sneddon had either personally travelled to Australia or had sent somebody else to Australia on his behalf to try to convince other children to make allegations and it has been reported in the past that your family was approached during that trip. Do you remember that happening?

BB: Uh, yeah. I remember that to a certain detail.

CT:  Was it Sneddon or was it someone else?

BB: I believe it was him. Because my mom has, um, you know… stories will come up every so often, different aspects of our experiences during family gatherings. So like them coming over has been brought up before, and I remember her saying he was definitely there. Because I didn’t at that time, I didn’t really, I didn’t speak to him. So it was him. There was someone else – mom said it was a reporter. But it might not have been. And there was a couple of sheriffs there I believe. And she said that they said to not say that they were there, that they had come. If anyone asked… that they hadn’t come.

But yeah, he was definitely there. So they, because they had asked to speak to me, but mom and dad said no, not to speak to me, but for them to speak to mom and dad. We played in the, um, neighborhood park while they were there because we’d come back from somewhere. I remember we come back from somewhere and there was this car that was parked out at the front of our place and then as we arrived they got out of their car and came up to us. So mum was like, “go play while we speak to these people.”

CT:  Oh, I see. So you didn’t have any face to face interaction with them. You just are aware that that happened?

BB: Yeah. Correct.

CT:  But you had already told the sheriff at the ranch that nothing had happened to you.

BB: Yeah. Correct.

HOW IT FEELS TO LIVE WITH THESE STORIES

CT:  Now, you know, I’ve just asked you some pretty horrible questions really. I mean, I would find it horrible to have somebody ask me these questions.

BB: Mm-hmm.

CT:  But unfortunately the fact that the stories have been placed into the public domain means that really … especially since the people that published them, never gave you the opportunity to comment on them. So I would like to know from you how it feels to know that those stories are out there now, how does it feel to be Brett Barnes and know that people can Google your name and that stuff comes up. What does that do to you?

BB: This is part of the reason why a lot of people don’t know. Because to me, it’s what.. what you’ve got to understand from my viewpoint is …. nothing ever happened to me, I’m categorically… absolutely nothing, 100% nothing has ever… nothing bad has ever happened to me, so from my viewpoint for these things to be said about me “that has happened to me” is shameful because these things never happened to me. So that’s just the personal aspect of it for me, how I feel that anyone can google my name and these are the first things that come up about me. So there’s that aspect of it.

But then there’s also my parents that have to deal with this – that it’s their son that this is being talked about but then as I said before they’re viewed upon as parents who have apparently seen things going on but just let it go to the side just.. just for the sake of being around a famous person, just for clout.

And then you’ve got my sister who has to live through this as well. So her brother’s getting … say that people are saying these things about it and then her as a sister has… what she has to deal with this sort of things.

But then you’ve got my grandparents. This is their grandchild that these things are being said there, and it goes on and on and on.

CT:  Yeah. I can’t imagine. I can’t imagine. I mean, there’s, it is difficult to imagine any remedy now. There’s no way of unringing that bell, if you know what I mean. So how do you cope with it? How do you live with it?

BB: Um (his voice breaks), sorry to be sad…

CT:  Sure.

(Silence)

BB: (with a deep sigh) Keep your life separate.  That’s how you deal with it.  Maintain your privacy.

OUR FRIENDSHIP NEVER STOPPED

CT:  Okay. I’m gonna move on from this subject for the time being. Did your relationship change with him in any way after the, um, the Chandler thing or did you basically have ongoing contacts? Because it would’ve been very easy for him to take advice from someone to just stop hanging around with kids…

BB: Absolutely.

CT:  …or reduce his contact with kids or whatever, so did you notice any change in your relationship with him really or not?

BB: Not really. Like our friendship never stopped it. It never, it never quieted down. We never grew distant. It was always… well, to me, at least to me it was always the same. I never felt a change.

CT:  In 2005, you actually said that you basically continued to visit Michael and spend time with him, you know, roughly speaking once a year until the 2000s.

BB: Mm-hmm

CT:  So it was pretty consistent relationship?

BB: Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, nothing ever changed from the time I was five years old up until he passed. Nothing ever changed.

CT:  I think that’s important because there is a narrative which has been built up, which is that he kind of befriended kids, and then when they got to a certain age, he lost interest in them or ditched them or replaced them or whatever, but that doesn’t seem to have been the case with you and your family. So it kind of disproves that narrative.

BB: Mm-hmm

CT:  As you got older, did your friendship change in terms of… not in terms of, you know, frequency of seeing him or anything like that, but in terms of the content of your conversations or, or was it still just goofing around?

BB: The dynamic? Of the friendship?

CT:  Yeah, exactly. How did it evolve over time?

BB: One of the things that he instilled in me or one of my, um, my core beliefs is to stay young at heart, um, never lose a child within you. So even as I’ve grown up, there’s still a lot of goofing around. So there is definitely that aspect that remained the same. So a lot of the childhood antics, playing pranks, telling jokes, all of that stuff, the goofiness was always, always, always present.

But as I grew and matured, there were a lot more mature conversations happening. So like, he would tell me more about the business side of things that he was doing, just give me like little insights into the things that he was working on. He would have music conversation. Yeah, it was just as I grew and matured there would definitely be more, yeah.

I don’t know how to explain it – just more of a friendship as with all … It’s really weird, it’s the same progression as – because I’ve got friends, like part of my inner circle – two friends of mine that I’ve been friends with since 94, year seven of high school. So it’s the same sort of maturity as I’ve had with them. It’s the exact same type of friendship.

CT:  As you got older, did you ever worry about Michael in the sense that he seemed like and even spoke about actually being lonely and isolated by his fame? And in interviews, he often didn’t sound as if he really enjoyed being famous. As you got older and the pop star mystique faded away, did you ever worry about him?

BB: Not really, not really worried about him. Because it was never, there was never anything that I saw would give me cause to worry. It was just more of a feeling of sadness, more so that he couldn’t experience the normality of life as what we experienced. That he can’t like we… he couldn’t go anywhere, like nowhere. Can’t go down. I need something, I’ve got to go down to the shops. He can’t do it. You need to, you need to organize, you need to pre-plan it, you need to have a secret service style (laughs) itinerary of just going down the shops.  So it was just more sadness that he couldn’t experience those things, that there was such a microscope on his life as well. That you just can’t experience a normal life.

CT:  Yeah, I mean it kind of felt as he entered the 2000s that it was almost sort of emanating a sense of like “I’m really over this now, I’m kind of sick of it”.

BB: To me that wasn’t that, wasn’t so much of…. I don’t put that down to the success, to the fame side of things, that there was definitely a little bit of light lost in his eyes, to use that sort of phrase. What was said about him affected him more so.

CT:  Did you ever feel, because he testified in 2005 or 2006 that he did end up essentially with a painkiller dependency. Do you think that might be what you were seeing when you talk about the light, a loss of light, do you think he was kind of dulled by medication or do you think it was more of an emotional thing?

BB: I would say that it’s more of an emotional thing. I was never around, I was never privy to any of the painkiller medication. I never saw him take painkillers or anything like that. So that part, that part of his life, I was never aware of. I was never really aware of or party to. So I can’t comment on that side of things.

But from my perspective, it would be that if there was that dependency and that was … the light that was dimming, it was because of the whole thing. The root of it all is exactly the same. Either way.

CT:  And when you say the light was dimming, how did that manifest itself? Was it like he didn’t want to do stuff or he seemed groggy? What, what are you referring to when you say that?

BB: It’s not that he seemed groggy or anything like that. There was no physical there, there was nothing like that.  I would say it’s just the accusations, the way he was accused of and the way that it was presented in the media. That has the ability, if that happened to anyone, that has the ability to break a person. So it would be the impacts of that. When you, when you see a person and how they act, the lack of light in the eye is more so to say that the energy that you saw beforehand, the carefreeness, the sense of adventure,  these types of aspects would just dull, dull down a little bit.

CT:  So was it less fun being around him at that point?

BB: To say that is a little bit dismissive. To say it is a quantifiable measure, to say that at one point it was this high and then it’s a little less now than yet. That would be, that’s not to say that it was devoid of fun. It was just… the energy levels just weren’t the same.

CT:  I wonder if there was an impact in the sense of him, it must be difficult to face the world knowing that the world knows that this has been accused of you. So maybe that kind of made him more reticent to engage with the world because he kind of knew that this was hanging over him. Did you get that sense?

BB: I can only say what it was like when I was there, obviously. So it’s not, it’s not like there was ever any talks of, “I need to go do this. No, I need to put out another album, I need to go do another tour, but I don’t really feel like doing it. I don’t really want to face the world.” We never had these type conversations. It’s not the type of thing we talked about.

It’s not to say that he didn’t, he just… it was more so like how I say the goofing off of things sort of was toned down a little bit. Like there was another sort of marker that I noticed as well. It is that after Neverland got raided he was a little bit… like his privacy obviously was invaded. And just like anyone feels… our family house got broken into many years back but still I remember, I’ll never forget that fear of the invasion of privacy, so to have that same sort of thing happen at the house – you’d look at the house a little bit different.

So for him, Neverland was a little bit … his feeling about Neverland had changed as well after it all happened because his privacy was invaded. So it’s the same sort of thing that I feel. And as I said, I can only talk about my experiences, but as I feel his… like it definitely hurt him what he was accused of, what was said about him.

And I think that that’s something that people don’t understand because they’re only seeing the presented side of him and not him as a person. So for him to still carry on and do shows while all this is going on, to perform at such an elite level night after night, to keep doing it, to keep this all going is definitely a testament to him.

CT:  And what effect did fatherhood seem to have on him?

BB: Yeah, that was, that was really cool to see. That was really cool to see. Man, he, yeah, he was a great father. He loved his children. He loved his children. Yeah. That was really, that was a really cool thing to see.

I QUIT MY JOB TO COME AND TESTIFY

CT:  Now, clearly around this time, around the early 2000s, there is a second set of allegations, which result in you going to the trial to testify, which results in another round of intrusion into your life.

BB: Mm-hmm.

CT:  Were you asked to come and testify or did you volunteer to come and testify?

BB:  We, because it was Mom and Karlee as well, we were asked if we wanted to, so we had the choice. I didn’t have to go and testify. So we chose to.

CT:  And you were 23 years old when you testified.

BB: Yep.

CT:  You told the jury, I think the first thing you told them because Mr. Mesereu asked you the question – was that you had actually quit your job as a roulette dealer to come to Santa Maria to testify. Why did you have to quit your job to come to Santa Maria?

BB: They wouldn’t let me take time off to do it, so it was more important to me to do it. I was able to find employment afterwards, which wasn’t too bad. That wasn’t a concern of mine at all.

CT:   Would that mean essentially though that you did actually incur a financial loss as a result of going to Santa Maria to testify?

BB: Yeah.

CT:  So presumably you were not paid to testify.

BB: No.

CT:  So you quit your job and took a financial hit to go and testify at the trial?

BB: Of course. I would think anyone would do that.

CT:   And I’m not going to rehearse your entire testimony because you’ve said quite forcefully earlier in this conversation that nothing inappropriate ever happened between you and Michael.

BB: Mm-hmm .

CT:   So just to, uh, encapsulate it in one question really, there’s nothing about your testimony that you wish to revise or change on that front? Every answer you gave you stand by now?

BB: Sure. Yep. I do.

CT:   I will just ask you a couple of questions in response to stuff they said in ”Leaving Neverland”  just because I think we need to give you the opportunity to give explicit unequivocal answers to these questions. Did anybody try to coach you about what to say on the stand?

BB: No.

CT:  Did Michael try to coach you about what to say on the stand?

BB: No.

CT:   Did he threaten you…

BB: Absolutely not (laughs).

CT:   …in order to get you to testify?

BB: No.

CT:  Did anybody else threaten you?

BB: No. No.

CT:  They threatened you with perjury?

BB: No.

CT:   Or anything like that?

BB: No.

CT:  Threatened you with legal action?

BB: No.

CT:  Some of the former employees who I mentioned earlier did come to court and repeat the stories that they had been paid for 10 years earlier.

BB: Mm-hmm

CT:  So your position remains that those former employees were not telling the truth when they testified at the trial?

BB: Ab-so-lu-te-ly.

CT:  You had already told the prosecutors that those stories were lies.

BB: Mm-hmm

CT:  And you told the sheriffs that nothing had ever happened to you, that those stories were lies.

BB: Mm-hmm

CT:   Did anybody from the prosecution ever contact you and ask you whether those stories were true before deciding to call those witnesses?

BB: No.

CT:  What do you think of that?

BB: That’s very, that’s very strange. It’s the same thing as I don’t understand why there was no rebuttal [in the “Leaving Neverland” movie]. If you want to tell the complete story, why wouldn’t you… why, if you are wanting to tell a story … why wouldn’t you want to include the complete story?

Well, obviously I would like to think that me being named or a part of your version of the story, shouldn’t I be included in that? Shouldn’t my voice be included in that?

And the media is telling a lie that Brett simply “didn’t offer commentary” for Leaving Neverland and, “according to reports, did not want to take part in the project” [March 1, 2019] https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a26582972/brett-barnes-michael-jackson-leaving-neverland/

CT:  The reason you were called to testify or you were asked if you would like to testify specifically because the prosecution had called these witnesses to say that they had seen things happening to you. So in essence it’s the prosecution’s decision to call those witnesses, which made your testimony relevant. If nobody had come to court and said that this had happened, then there would not have been any reason for you to come to court and say that it didn’t. So in that sense, I would imagine it would be quite aggravating that the prosecution would call these witnesses and not even bother to actually ask you whether the stories were true or not.

BB: Mm-hmm, it’s a really bad … that’s a comment on them though, to say how thorough can your job have been done?

CT: How did you feel about the way that you were cross-examined by the prosecution at the trial?

BB: What do you mean?

CT:  It was quite belligerent. It comes across in the transcript. I mean, how did it feel to be questioned in that way, in a room full of people, by the prosecution?

BB: It was Rob Zonen, he was asking me the questions. I didn’t like him. I didn’t like him much at all. He was very, as you say, belligerent. It really was. It was uncomfortable. I didn’t like, I didn’t like that part at all.

CT:  You testified under Zonen’s questioning that you actually continued to share a bed with Michael until you are 19, which I think actually was a bit of a shock to a lot of people because of this narrative that had been built up about befriending boys and then just dumping them or replacing them.  But did there ever come a time where you had a conversation with Michael or, or how did it, how did that stop happening? Did you just feel uncomfortable with it or…?

BB: It didn’t… it’s not that it stopped. And to “share a bed” is a little bit weird to say as well. It’s not that. It’s not like the way that is said. It is just really, it’s really weird to me.  

Just as I said, it’s not something that I concentrate on because it was just sleep. You just go to sleep and that’s it.  So it is not… there was no “All right, this is it. We’re stopping this. This has to stop now”.  There was nothing like that at all.  “We’re not going to go forward with this” – there was never a conversation like that. It just wouldn’t happen, so that it is something that is no clear memory for me as to where it stopped.  And it really actually didn’t…. from, uh, 19 to 23 I didn’t go over there that much, between those time frames. And so it’s not like we had that conversation where nothing happened, it just sort of … just didn’t happen.  I can’t explain why it didn’t, it just didn’t, but afterwards if I… if I’m tired and I need to sleep, I’m sleeping, and if there’s a bed there I’m sleeping in it.

NOTE: No one should doubt Brett’s words because he is not too good at explaining himself. His ingenuousness is exactly the reason why his story is so sincere, frank and so true. It is a liar’s story that will usually sound smooth, glib, seemingly logical and broken into certain “stages of abuse” – all of it because it was very well thought out and was probably even rehearsed.

In real life things are often spontaneous, and 30+ years later it will be nearly impossible to recall what you did when you were a teenager, especially if nothing bad happened to you and your memory certainly didn’t retain any extraordinary details about it.  

CT:  Now there was an exchange between you and Zonen, Mr. Zonen. The prosecution sort of tried to insinuate that you were unable to be honest with yourself about things that Michael Jackson might have done to you out of personal shame. So I’m just going to read you the question and the answer. So Zonen asks you, “Mr. Barnes, do you consider it disgraceful to have been molested?” and you replied, “Absolutely.”

BB:  Yeah. That’s actually something that I wanted to … um, I was thinking about that before, because someone has brought that up because I objected, after that. And I remember that actually clearly.  Well, I guess, yeah, I didn’t understand. I thought he was asking a different question. I thought he was asking, “Is it bad for a child to be molested?” Is it bad for something to happen to a child, rather than being the victim of it?

CT:  Yes. The next day your sister Karlee was on the stand.

BB: Yeah.

CT:  And she was questioned by Gordon Auchincloss, one of the other prosecutors.

BB: Yeah.

CT:  And so the exchange between Mr. Auchincloss and Karlee went as follows: “Do you know if your brother thinks it’s a disgrace to be a victim of child molestation?” “Of course he would. I would too.”

“So if he had to admit that it would be disgraceful, wouldn’t it?” “Well, no, it’s a disgrace that it would happen to a child. Not a disgrace to admit that it happened, because it’s a disgrace that it has happened”.

BB: Right. So Karlee did that same thing.

CT:  Yes. So, I just want to clarify what you actually meant by that statement, because it has been used since then to try to suggest that you were….

BB: (interrupts him) Absolutely. I hate that. And I apologize if anyone has been offended by that. That’s not my intention at all. My position is, is that it’s not… It’s never, ever, ever, ever bad to be a victim. The victim should never be blamed. There is no fault at all [that] should be placed on the victim. It’s the perpetrator that should always have the blame and it’s bad for it to have happened. You’re not a bad person for it to have happened to you.

CT:  Yes. And so essentially what you are, you seem to be saying is that if anything ever had happened to you, you would not have any problem with saying that it happened.

BB:  Absolutely not. I would never be ashamed to be a victim. I would never be ashamed to be a victim. It doesn’t matter who it was. I’m not ashamed to being a victim of anything. So I absolutely… My position would be that I would want the person that – if something had happened to me – I would make sure that that person is punished. I would absolutely do everything in my power to make sure that that person was punished.

THE MATTER OF ‘365 DAYS’

CT:  There’s something else from the testimony that I just want to give you the opportunity to clarify as well, because it too has become part of the sort of Michael Jackson folklore, which is that, uh, when Karlee was on the stand, your sister, it caused quite a stir because she testified that during one two-year period, she estimated that you and Michael had slept in the same room together for approximately 365 days.

And so basically on the stand, she did some crude mathematics and estimated that your family had been with Michael roughly six months of the year for two years in a row. And therefore she believed that you and Michael had shared a room for 365 days, which was quoted endlessly and is still quoted today. Do you believe it is actually true that you and Michael shared a room for 365 days in two years?

BB: I would say that I definitely, definitely for the most part would stay with him.  Definitely 100% for the most part, not 100% of the time, but for the most part I would stay with him, not a question about it.

So whether that is 365 days in the two-year period because that’s how much time we spent there, and yeah, I would say that’s a fair estimate. And again it’s not something … it’s just something that I know… I don’t recall every single time that we did because it was just, it was the sleeping arrangements. It was just a sleep.

NOTE:  Sorry to interrupt again but these 365 days seem to require still another comment (the previous one was in this post).

The thing is that same as his sister Karlee in 2005, Brett is also making his calculations about his stays with Michael Jackson in terms of how much time he missed school in Australia. In the first part of the interview he said:

BB: From my memory we were going across pretty often, from my grade 5 – 6, my years in school, grade 5, grade 6. I was actually there for like half of them, because we were going, like we went over on tour, and we were going back and forth to the States.

Karlee calculated 365 days in two years because she was in grades 7 and 8 in 1992 and 1993 and missed half of each, and Brett was in grades 5 and 6, and missed half of them too.

I am even sure that they exchanged their calculations between themselves and with their parents, who were gravely concerned about the fact, and this is why both Karlee and Brett have so ready an answer about a whole year they stayed away from home. It seems that they are even a little boastful and proud about their adventure being so long.

But a whole year away from home absolutely does not mean that Brett spent all this time in Michael’s room and was “alone” there too.

In August-November 1993, for example, the Barnes family stayed with Jackson for a month and a half only – first in August and then in November, when the Barnes joined the 13-year old Frank Cascio and his younger brother Eddie to accompany MJ on the South American leg of the Dangerous tour.  And during that month all three of them kept Michael company and stayed with him in his hotel room.

Brett also says that this was the time “they spent there”, meaning not only himself but the whole of his family which was travelling “back and forth to the States”. He mentions that Michael Jackson wasn’t with them 100% of the time spent away from their home in Australia, however whenever he was, Brett definitely preferred not to miss the chance and stayed with Michael Jackson in his quarters.

The reason for that is the same as with all other children and Brett spoke about it in the first part of the interview:

 “The thing is that he was such a magnet for all people – like everyone just wanted to be around him all the time because that’s just the type of person he was. So it just would’ve been that fact of just never wanting to leave his side. Just everybody wanted to be around him 24/7. So it just would have evolved from that.”

But there is still one more point to all of the above, overlooked by many.

Considering that the 365 days story is so favorite a darling with the MJ naysayers, Brett could easily deny it when speaking to Charles Thomson thirty years later, claim that he didn’t remember it or say that his sister was wrong in her calculations, however he does nothing of the kind, and this alone is proof enough that Brett is being exceptionally frank, honest and sincere with us, even at the danger of being misunderstood by his listeners.  

And if he is so honest and open about that, why should anyone doubt his other statements about Michael Jackson? For example, the statement he made under oath at the 2005 trial and repeats on all other occasions – that MJ neither intended nor did a single bad thing to him during the many years of their close friendship with each other.

 In other words, when Brett Barnes bares his soul to us, even at the risk of doing potential damage to himself, you cannot be selective towards what he says, and believe one thing and disbelieve another.  

THE DINNER WITH WADE ROBSON DURING THE TRIAL

CT:  Now you actually stayed at Neverland during the trial. How did Michael appear to be faring physically and mentally at that point?

BB: He was definitely a different person because he was ….you could tell he was going through it. You could really tell he was going through it. That’s when I would probably say that he was frail.

CT:  There’s a story in “Leaving Neverland” about a dinner. It’s a story that Wade Robson and, I think, possibly his sister tell in the TV show where they say that everybody was sitting around the table having dinner and Paris was trying to get Michael’s attention. And he appeared to be basically mentally not there, just completely checked out.

And Wade Robinson cites that dinner as having strengthened his resolve to testify in Michael’s defense.  But you went public on Twitter and you said that actually your memory accorded with Taj that that dinner had actually occurred after Wade Robson’s testimony and not before it.

BB: Mm-hmm. Because I remember when that came out, and a question, and I asked Mom and Karlee if they remembered, and they both said the same thing.

CT:  So you remember it being after.

BB: Yeah. Because I remember it was the next ….

CT:  Because you and Wade testified on the same day.

BB: Yeah. Because we, the way that it went is that we went there one day when we were expecting when… the prosecution was expected to rest. They didn’t rest that day. They rested the next day, which is when we went or it might have been the end of that day. So we, we were called to testify the next day. And then the following day was when the rest of our families like his mom and his sister, my mom and my sister were called as witnesses. And then the day after that, they left. And we had the dinner the night before they left. So it was after testifying.

CT:  And that recollection, is it part of the reason, you know you are remembering the same dinner, presumably is because of that incident with Paris. Would that be fair to say?

BB: It’s not the incident with Paris is how I remember it. The way the dining room was set up is that there’s multiple tables, so because we were staying at the ranch the whole time, whereas they weren’t – I don’t know where they were staying or what they were doing – but because we were there for the whole time, like we were having dinner with our bread all the time, so we decided that it would be, um, fair for them to sit on the main table.

And then, um, Karlee, me and Taj were sitting on another table, but in the same room. So I wasn’t at that table when this supposedly happened, but I was in the same room. But the way that I remember it is that it couldn’t have been, it couldn’t have been something to have happened for him to, um, attribute his testimony to it because the dinner happened after the testimony. I remember having the dinner because the next day they were leaving.

CT:  Okay. So in essence, the reason that you know that it’s the same dinner is because you were staying there and you were having dinner in the dining room every day.

BB: Yeah.

CT:  And that was the only day that the Robsons were there for dinner.

BB:  Yes. Correct.

CT:  Right. I understand. I understand. Okay. Did you talk to Wade at that time? Did he, did you have any conversations about having testified?

BB: Uh, not really because we weren’t allowed to. Because the only time that I spoke to him was that, as I said, when we were waiting for the prosecution to rest, so we were holed up in the back room somewhere in the back, because we were there, there were eyes on us, so we weren’t allowed to talk about what the goings on, so we just small talked, talked about other stuff.

CT:  What about after you had testified?

BB: I think that his sister and his mom were on the same day as us, but my parents, my mom and my sister were the next day, because I went back to the courtroom for them but just stayed in the back again. They were the only times that I really spoke to him. I never spoke to him at the ranch or any time after that.

CT:  Okay. How long did you stay at the ranch then? Around the trial?

BB: About three weeks in total.

CT:  Were you there for three weeks before you testified and then you left? At what, what point in the trial do you think you would’ve arrived and left? Were you gone by the verdict?

BB: Uh, yeah, definitely. I was back home.

CT:  Okay. In the three weeks that you were there did Michael seem to deteriorate? What did he seem to be pretty steady?

BB: Uh, he was pretty steady. I didn’t see him really deteriorate. He was just, as I said real frail, and you could tell that he was going through it.

CT:  So what was your memory of the verdict? Were you watching on TV?

BB: No, I was asleep at the time. My sister called me up. She woke me up, called on the phone and she, um, was crying and I was like, what’s wrong? []

I thought it was something bad. She’s like, “No”, it turns out they were happy tears. He’s being found not guilty. And so then I went and turned on the TV straight away. Yeah, it was just such, it was like all this emotion poured out because it was just such, such a relief.

CT: When did you next speak to Michael after the verdict?

BB: I think it was… again I don’t really recall because it was such a frequent thing for me to do, it’s not something that I paid attention to, so I don’t remember it being too soon after, but not too far after. So it probably would’ve been a few months.

A VISIT TO BAHRAIN

CT: Did you ever actually see him in person again after the trial?

BB: Yeah, I went to Bahrain in 2006.

CT: Oh, wow. Okay. So tell us about that. How did Michael seem?

BB:  He was … from having seen him going through it during the trial to seeing him then – he was a lot more like he used to be. He was, um, definitely more upbeat. He was actually real positive about the future, like he said he was doing a lot of good things that were happening. I never really heard details of any business dealings or anything that he was planning or anything of doing, but he would always allude to stuff and say he [wished] those big things coming.

So yeah, there was a lot of that happening. He was, he was having heaps of meetings. Um, he was looking to buy out there as well. Buy a place out there. Yeah, it was, it was really cool.

CT: Was it just you or was it you and your family in Bahrain?

BB:  No, it was just me at that time. It was actually because I was going through a little bit of something in my personal life. And so I was, um, a little bit, uh, unhappy at the time and … He always was calling and stuff. It was actually mom [who] said to him that I was a little bit going through something. So he flew me out there to, um, try and make things better.

CT: How long were you there for?

BB:  About three weeks.

CT: Did it make things better?

BB:  Yeah. Of course it did. [both laugh]

CT: How did that… how did he help?

BB:  Just, um, as I said, with a skewed perspective… not skewed, but a different perspective on life to see what all life had, what opportunities people have in life, to see how far people can go and just to be part of that upper echelon of, of being, being the person that he is. It was just so life-giving.

It was, it was real refreshing. I don’t know what he… I am on a different vibrational level or something. I don’t l know what it is, but it’s that magnetic effect that I was talking about before, how everyone wanted to be around him 24/7. It’s just something that he gives off, that you can’t be anything, you can’t be anything but happy after being around him.

CT: Yeah. Again, it’s, um, it stands in stark contrast to the narrative, which is pedaled about Michael befriending kids and then basically disregarding them or replacing them or dumping them.

BB:  Mm-hmm.

CT:  The fact that even, even as you were – how old would you have been by then – so you would’ve been in your mid twenties and you’re going through something?

BB:  Yeah. Yeah.

CT: I suppose it makes me wonder, there were people that did disappear from his life. Did you ever understand or hear about how and why certain people had actually ended up being pushed out of his circle? You were kept around, you had a long lasting friendship. Other people clearly have been left with the impression that they were cast out for some reason. Did you ever have any impression as to whether maybe there was a reason that people have been cast out?

BB: I’m not the type of person to… like I said, I live in the moment. Whatever is happening is happening. Whatever happens, it happens. Someone’s around, someone’s not, it’s not really my place or need to know why. It’s not something that ever crossed my mind. I was just happy to be there always, always.

So I really know what makes me so special. I really don’t know what makes me so special that, that I would have been someone that, as you say, was kept in the inner circle while others were pushed out, I don’t know why. That is the case. I don’t know why people were pushed out. My assumption would only be, I can only go off what my perspective or my experiences were, but I was never one to take advantage of the situation.

Let’s just say like, I would, we would go to toy stores and, and he would let me buy stuff, but it was never like, oh, I want this, I need this, can I have this, can I do this, can I meet this person, can I do this? And I never gave cause to him to never trust me.

So I guess that that’s what it would be. It would be more of a trust issue. I can only see that as a reason why, like he did something that happened where he wasn’t comfortable with, the way that this person acted. And this is just my assumption only, whether this person acted, or something they did, or something they said, or whatever it would have to be. That’s the only thing that I could see, that would have to be something like this, that they would have lost his trust or his belief in him or something. That’s the only reason why I would see that he would shut someone out, if that is the case.

CT:  What did his life seem to be like in Bahrain? Where was he? Was he living in a hotel or was he still with the prince?

BB:  No, he was in a house.

CT: Oh, okay.

BB:  It’s not really my position whose house is this. It was a beautiful place, really hot roofs, the ceilings are massive, the grounds are beautiful. It was a nice place. And it’s like in the middle of the desert, it’s such a surreal area of the world, you’ll see just sand dunes, but then these mansions with palm trees and green grass, and like there was a pool there, it was really cool.

CT: Did he seem happy?

BB:  He did. He did. The kids were there as well. It was really cool. It was really cool.

I SPOKE TO HIM A WEEK BEFORE HE PASSED

CT: How regularly would you say you were in touch with him in those final years after Bahrain?

BB:  Again, it’s not something that I recall the frequency of. I just know, because it’s always, it, it just always has been. So I can’t tell you the frequency between them, but it was definitely really regular. It’s not like I never spoke to him for years on end. It would’ve been the last time I spoke to him was a week before he passed.

CT: What do you remember speaking to him about on that occasion?

Goofing around (1992)

BB:  We would always, around that time, we would always reminisce about things that we did. Um, adventures we had, we went on places we’d gone.  “Do you remember this time? Do you remember doing that? Remember when that happened?”

Yeah, he was looking forward to doing the shows but I think that it was taking a lot out of him as well.

ST: Do you say that because he sounded tired or because he expressed any kind of concern about it?

BB:  Not really. He didn’t really express any kind of concern, but he definitely was tired. He definitely was tired.

CT: I think, when I spoke to you previously, you mentioned that actually you were supposed to be in London when the shows happened.

BB:  Yeah, I was supposed to, he told me he was going to fly me out to London.

CT: How did that conversation end? Do you remember it?

BB:  The last time?

CT: Yeah.

BB:  No, not really. I was just seeing, like it was just like any other normal conversation. I didn’t know what was … what was about to happen.

CT: So how did you find out about Michael’s passing?

BB:  It happened when I was um… again it was another thing when I was asleep because of the time difference over here. I was living at home at the time, maybe a little too past my prime to be living at home, but that’s another story. Yeah, I was asleep, mom came in my room and because I had a missed call from someone. Actually someone had called, because my mobile phone was on the bedside table next to me, somebody called it and I saw who it was and I just um ignored it because I was so sleepy. And this person was not someone who would be calling me at that time usually, so that’s why I was just like I’ll call that person back later and then went back to sleep.

And then mom came in and told me, and then I didn’t believe it, turned on TV and I just, yeah…… it was not …. (his voice breaks)… it was a very sad day.

CT: How did you react immediately? I mean, I know a lot of people who actually just assumed, you know, that it was fake news. I mean, it had been reported by the media previously that Michael had passed away and it had been incorrect. I mean, what was your immediate reaction to the news? Did you believe it?

BB:  No, but then when I was watching the TV, I did. It’s yeah, I just didn’t want to believe it. That’s really all I am going to add to that.

CT: Did you go out for either of the funerals, either the Staple Center Memorial or the actual funeral?

BB:  No, I didn’t…  The thing about the way that … (sighs), and I guess it’s one of the reasons, getting back to why I was always around… Well honestly, it’s not just me, it’s my whole family. We never pushed the point, never took advantage, never did anything like that.

So our only real dealings, especially personally, my only real dealings, like I was his friend and his friend only. So once he passed there was no real way for me to…  Because he was always the one, which I’m extremely grateful for, because he paid for it every time I went anywhere, anytime I did anything, he was always the one that would pay for it, because we don’t have the means to do stuff like that of course, because we’re just absolutely regular people.

So when he passed, there was no real way for me to go over there, to reach out to someone because I didn’t know anyone’s contacts. So there was no real way for me to go across there. And to tell you the truth, I don’t handle death real well, so I’m not sure how I would have gone if I had gone.

CT:  Is there any part of you that wishes you had gone?

BB:  Yeah, absolutely. Like I haven’t been back since 2005 when we went for trial, I haven’t been back to the States since then.  It’s something that I’d definitely like, I would love to do, but I’m not sure if I want to either, at the same time, so there is a part of regret that I didn’t, but for me it wouldn’t have… my grief wouldn’t have been any easier or anything, if I had gone over there if you know what I mean, if that makes sense.

CT: As part of preparing for this interview, I did go back over your Twitter history and I noticed that you do make a point every year of posting about, you know, the anniversary or posting about Michael’s birthday. You know, you leave little messages to him on Twitter. Would you say that you’re still grieving?

BB:  Yeah, absolutely. But it’s the same thing, like I still grieve my grandparents’ death. He was, he was really a member of the family.

CT: Has it made it more difficult to cope with the loss of Michael to see what has happened since he passed away in terms of the resurfacing of the allegations and particularly the fact that your name continually comes up, does that make it more difficult for you?

BB:  Absolutely. That’s not how I want to be associated with it.

MY CLEAR CONSCIENCE WILL GIVE ME COMFORT

CT:   On May the 8th, 2013 I noticed this as I was going back through your twitter…

BB:  Okay. Stalker (laughs)

CT: (laughs too). But I prefer the term diligent researcher.

(both laugh)

CT: On the 8th of May, 2013 TMZ broke the news that Wade Robson was now claiming he had filed a suit for money saying that Michael had, um, abused him. And on the same day you published a tweet and it said “I wish people would realize, in your last moments on this earth all of the money in the world will be of no comfort. My clear conscience will”.

Brett Barnes, May 8, 2013

I just want to get into it with you briefly.  You are exceptionally clear that nothing ever happened between you and Michael.  But what is it that convinces you that nothing happened to anyone else either?

BB:  I guess that is a brash statement for you to make. But my viewpoint on the matter is that I spent a great deal of time with him up until he’s passing. For most of my life he was… he was a part of my life and my experiences with him for that great amount of time… for nothing, for nothing to not only ever happened to me, for me to have not seen anything that would cause me concern to have happened to anyone else.

And no one had spoken to me. I’ve been around a lot of people around him, and for no one to have said anything to me. Not to say that anyone would, but the reason I say this is that I have never had any perception that anything, uh, bad was happening.

So for me to have been spending all this time, and I guess it is only the time that I was spending around, so I can only comment on that and then projecting it on to the rest of his life. There’s no way that I could see it happening, that him doing anything, um, bad, to anyone happening. So there’s that viewpoint of it that I can’t see him doing anything.

But for me as well, to put my foot down and stamp it is more of a loyalty thing than for him to have these accusations about him. That’s my friend that’s having this happen to.

THE “PATTERNS”

CT: Well, I suppose the other thing is that where the allegations, where there are allegations where Michael is concerned, there are also almost inextricably allegations of a pattern, of a pattern of grooming and of a pattern of abuse.  And certainly in the TV show “Leaving Neverland” they associate you with that pattern. So it is their case that there was a pattern and that you were part of that pattern.

And so I just want to put to you some of what is said about you in “Leaving Neverland” because the people that made it never gave you the opportunity to comment on it. So I thought maybe we should afford you that opportunity.

BB:  Mm-hmm.

CT:  So the first mention of you, you are not mentioned by name, but you are shown in archive footage and photographs. So James Safechuck is speaking…

BB: (breaks in) Did you notice how, sorry, sorry to cut you off there. Did you notice how there were montages or not montages, but photos of other people around, but only my face is clear, everyone else’s is blurred out? But sorry, continue.

CT:  Yes. Um, so there’s, so James Safechuck is talking over footage in photographs of you and Michael.

BB:  Yep.

CT: And he says, this is his verbatim quote:

“There was one particular boy who sort of entered and replaced me. And so I saw him grow closer and closer to that boy. And I was pushed out more and more, and that was really difficult to handle. One specific night that was really tough. It was at the Avenue of the Stars, you know, spending the night there and the boy was there and the boy would sleep in Michael’s room. And then I would sleep downstairs on the sofa. It’s like being cast out. And it was like a realization that like, okay, I’m not number one. And I just wanted to go home. Michael is my, like, partner. And then he’s gone”.

So all this stuff about the particular boy who replaced me and is now sleeping in Michael’s room and I’m downstairs on the sofa – this is, I mean, this is all being said over footage and photographs of you.

BB:  Mm-hmm.

CT:  I mean, was it your impression that you were replacing anybody?

BB:  Not at all. Not at all.

CT: When he says Avenue of the Stars, would that be referring to the, um, the Hideout?

BB:  I would assume so.

CT: So did the Hideout have an upstairs and a downstairs?

BB:  Uh, yeah. It was three levels – the garage was down the bottom, middle level was like a lounge room and kitchen and then upstairs was a games room again and bedroom.

CT:   Oh, I see. I would be my reading, just reading through this:

“There was a particular boy who entered and replaced me. I saw him grow closer and closer and I was pushed out. The boy was there and the boy would sleep in Michael’s room. Michael was my partner and then he’s gone”.

I mean that seems to be a very clear inference that you are Michael’s romantic partner which is something that you would expect somebody to give you a right of reply about, if they’re going to broadcast it on television all over the world, but they didn’t. Nobody asked you to, uh, to comment on that.

BB:  Mm-hmm.

CT: What would you have said if they had asked you to comment on that?

BB:  Yeah, it’s um, absurd. I can’t see how that would’ve taken place. It completely… it doesn’t make sense to me at all. It didn’t happen and it doesn’t make sense to me that… that any aspect of our friendship could be described as such.

ANGRY.“My memory is in the entire time we’ve lived here since 1991, we’ve only been at the ranch with Michael on four occasions in 14 years. Every other time we’ve been here without him” – from Joy Robson’s testimony at the 2005 trial. [The photo is dated Sept.30, 2016]

“I don’t think he liked to mix us”. I mean, he liked to keep these relationships separate. I remember it being particularly hard with Brett because I found out and I knew that he was Australian. Oh, it’s a new Australian boy as well. Like feeling really replaced.”

Is it true that Michael kept kids separately from one another?

BB:  No. I was never, like I said, I was never locked away, there was never anything.

As I said, I spent time with Jordy, spent time, only a little bit of time with Wade. There’s been his cousins who have been around, other friends have been around, there’s always been people around.

CT: Macaulay Culkin also. I think you testified in 2005 that he actually stayed in the room…

BB:  Yeah.

CT: …with you and Michael on occasion.

BB:   I think so, he was at the ranch one time.

CT: This bit where Wade says he found out that you were Australian and that Michael had replaced him with a new Australian boy – I mean it kind of is insinuating again that there’s some kind of … because Wade is alleging that he was abused when he says that he’s been replaced with a new boy, that is sort of alleging that you must have been abused as well.

BB:  Mm-hmm , that’s how I take it.

CT: So that’s your interpretation. I think that’s a reasonable person’s interpretation. So had “Leaving Neverland”s producers, makers bothered to give you any sort of, right of reply, what would you have said that?

BB:  I absolutely refute it, it’s not …. Again I don’t understand this term “replacement”. Because my understanding of being friends with someone is that you’re friends with that person, and there’s nobody that’s going to take your place. You’re not taking the place of anybody else. It’s a friendship. I can’t fathom the idea that someone was being replaced. Because I was never replaced from what that statement is saying. But like I said, my friendship continued, would still be continuing to this date, so I can’t… I don’t understand the replacement part of things. There was no replacement.

CT: Let’s reiterate it again. Wade’s mother Joy says:

“After a while I realized there was a pattern. Every 12 months there was a new boy in his life”.

But you’re saying that there was no such pattern.

BB:  Not in my experience. There was no disruption to our friendship throughout the entire span of it. There was none. I was never left out in the cold, there was, there was, there was nothing in our friendship for the whole time where I ever felt like I was being replaced, I ever felt slighted by him. And maybe it’s just my perspective that I was happy to be there. I don’t know, but that’s never anything that I felt from his side of things, that I was ever, that I wasn’t his friend anymore, I wasn’t a “favorite” of his, there was never anything like that.

THE PATTERN CAN BE REVERSED

CT: I think that what’s important about this is that they are pointing to you as evidence of the pattern. So there is to some extent a pattern in the sense that you were all the children of families who actively sought out Michael Jackson, because you were fans and you all, at some point became a bit like surrogate families and you all were invited to Neverland or to participate in music videos, or go on tour or whatever.

BB:  Mm-hmm.

CT: And you all ended up staying with him in his room at some point. And so their contention is that this is a grooming pattern, which is extremely similar. And so what they are saying is if we say we were abused, then Brett must have been abused. That seems to be what they’re saying, because it’s the same pattern.

BB:  Which I guess is the [chimera [?].  It’s the exact opposite. It’s the same thing but from a different perspective, on my side of things.

CT: Exactly. Yes.

BB:  It never happened to me, so it couldn’t have happened to anyone else.

CT: Yes, so that’s what I wanted to put to you really, if they are pointing to you and saying you are proof of the pattern, then you feel it’s reasonable for you to say, well, actually nothing happened to me. And therefore I feel it’s reasonable for me to believe that probably nothing happened to you. That’s essentially where you are coming from.

BB:  That’s my viewpoint, yes.  And, but like I said, I can’t … I can only comment on what my perspective of what I’ve experienced. I can’t comment on what happened when I wasn’t there, but I can make a reasonable judgment in my opinion.

CT:  Yes. So, and your opinion, I take it, is that you don’t believe that Michael ever did abuse any children.

BB:  I couldn’t, I can never… I could never see him doing anything bad to another human being, let alone a child.

~

Robson&Safechuck: “We say that we were abused, so Brett must have been abused too”                                                       Brett Barnes: “But it never happened to me, so it couldn’t have happened to anyone else.”

~

Oh my God, how refreshingly new and true this last maxim is!

When Brett says that the usual pattern imposed on us from every corner can actually be reversed and mean exactly the opposite, he hits the nail on the head.

Why don’t many of us realize that when hundreds of people who had personal experience with Michael Jackson knew him to be a decent, honorable and innocent person, and only a couple of opportunists call him guilty as sin, the pattern is not on the opportunists’ side and actually points to them being phony as a three-dollar bill?

And if the Barnes family was indeed invited to be Michael Jackson’s guests for 365 days in two years in a row, why did Michael prefer to innocently spend so much time with them and not with Wade Robson who claims that he was abused right at that time?

Though his words definitely contradict his own mother’s complaints that MJ didn’t take Wade on a tour and during the many times they visited Neverland, Michael was there on four occasions only?

All of it is worth a serious thought, so let’s wrap it up for now and leave it until the next time.

If anyone asks you to comment on Jordan Chandler’s description of Michael Jackson’s genitalia and whether it matched the photos of his private parts (it did not), or talks about Bill Dworin’s views on the so-called evidence they had against Michael Jackson back in 1993, or brings up the two books with boys on the beach seized by the sheriffs in MJ’s home, there is a universal answer to all of the above which comes from the best source you could ever imagine.

This source is Tom Sneddon, the Santa Barbara District Attorney, who in 2004 made a written statement to court that the materials gathered during their prior investigation in 1993-1994 were irrelevant for Gavin Arvizo’s alleged molestation case that eventually led to Michael Jackson’s trial (and his full acquittal too).

This incredible answer about the “irrelevance” of earlier materials was given to Michael Jackson’s Defense team in reply to their request to provide them with everything the Prosecution collected (discovery in legal terms) in the Jordan Chandler case.

The fun of the situation is that the Defense attorneys insisted that this discovery was relevant for the forthcoming trial as they were sure that it contained the exculpatory evidence proving Michael Jackson’s innocence, however the Prosecution claimed that it was not relevant, and resorted to all sort of excuses not to provide it to the Defense.

So if you listened to the prosecutors speaking to the media, you would learn that they were in possession of some “damning” evidence against Michael Jackson and were dying for a chance to present it to the public, but when facing the judge during the 2004 pre-trial proceedings the prosecution claimed exactly the opposite and stated that any evidence from the past case was irrelevant for their new molestation investigation, thus making it clear that they never had any evidence against Michael Jackson and the earlier allegations were totally groundless and unsubstantiated.

This alone should tell you all you need to know about the Chandler case and the collection of fiction stories it is based on.

Below you will find an excerpt from my post of long ago about the many other secrets revealed by the 2004 court documents, only this time I will focus solely on this “irrelevance” issue. The post will also have some added materials relating to further adventures of the Defense team in their quest for the evidence from the 1993-1994 investigation.

The page you see here is different from the regular posts in this blog as it is meant to be a vault of the respective documents retrieved from the Santa Barbara Superior Court archive.

Unfortunately, the archive was taken down several years ago, but some documents were saved on my computer, so this page will serve as a kind of a temporary storage for them. Every link provided here will take you to the respective document uploaded in this blog in full.

Here is an excerpt from the post made seven years ago.

~

SO WHICH OF THEM WANTED TO SUPPRESS THE 1993 EVIDENCE?

On September 3, 2004 the Defense asked the prosecution to turn over to them all discovery and forensic tests made by the prosecution in the course of the 1993/94 criminal investigation, but the prosecution refused to provide that discovery and said that it was “irrelevant”.

Let me say it again and slowly this time:

The Defense asked Tom Sneddon to turn over to them all evidence the prosecution collected against Michael Jackson in 1993/94, but the District Attorney refused to provide it and said that it was irrelevant.

What an incredible turn to the story.

Michael Jackson’s detractors are trying to make us believe that the poor District Attorney wanted to introduce some “damning”  evidence from the 1993 case, only the judge didn’t allow it, and now we learn that it was the defense who was asking for it and was ready to discuss it at the trial, however the District Attorney refused them and said that it was “irrelevant”.

The “damning” evidence was “irrelevant”!  Have you ever heard anything like it?

This truly historic answer from District Attorney Tom Sneddon is hiding in a document with a noncommittal title “Notice of Motion and Motion to Compel Discovery; Memorandum of Points and Authorities; Declaration of Steve Cochran; Exhibits [unsealed pursuant to 6/16/05 Court’s order].

To make sure that everyone understands that the situation with the 1993 evidence was exactly the opposite from the way it is described by MJ’s haters I’ve partially retyped this breathtaking document.

It says that the defense insists on having the 1993 discovery as their exculpatory evidence, however the prosecution is not only dragging its feet, but even declines to produce it:

PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that on September 16, 2004 at 8:30 am, or as soon thereafter as the matter may be heard, before the Honorable Rodney S. Melville, defendant Michael J.Jackson (“Mr. Jackson”) through his counsel, will and hereby does move for an order compelling discovery.  Specifically, Mr. Jackson requests an order requiring the prosecution to produce information and materials gathered during the 1993-1994 investigation conducted by police and prosecutors in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties. Additionally, the results of forensic tests done by the prosecution must be produced.

This motion is brought pursuant to Penal Code #1054.1. The discovery requested is relevant. The prosecution relies on information from the prior investigation in these proceedings, including the affidavit to justify searches in this case. That material also contains, or is likely to lead to, exculpatory evidence.

The results of forensic testing by the prosecution are long overdue. The production of that information should now be compelled.

The parties have met and conferred to impasse. The prosecution declines to produce this discovery”.

• So it was the defense who insisted on having all discovery materials from the 1993 case, but the prosecution declined to produce them.
• The defense said that the evidence was relevant, but the prosecution said that it was not.
• The defense wanted all forensic tests and said that it was exculpatory evidence for Michael Jackson, but this is exactly why the prosecution was refusing it (under no circumstances did they indend to provide an expert’s determination that the MJ photos and Jordan’s description did not match).

In fact the prosecution did not even respond to the requests of the defense – this is how the Defense Motion describes the prosecutors’ reaction to their appeals:

THE MEET-AND-CONFER ON THIS ISSUE

Defense counsel have informally requested the materials from the prior investigation. Correspondence containing this request is attached hereto as Exhibit A.  The prosecution has not responded in writing to this request. The prosecution has stated in court, however, that discovery from the prior investigation is irrelevant. See Declaration of Steve Cochran.

THE RESULTS OF FORENSIC TESTS HAVE NOT BEEN PRODUCED

Police reports produced thus far indicate that the prosecution has commissioned forensic examinations of all kinds. Among other things, analyses of computer data, DNA and fingerprints have been done by the California Dept. of Justice and/or the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The defense informally requested the results of such tests long ago. A copy of that correspondence is attached hereto as Exhibit B. To date, virtually no reports of the results of forensic tests have been produced. See Declaration of Steve Cochran.

The Defense attorneys stress that the 1993 discovery is indispensable to them and the prosecution is obliged to produce it as it is the exculpatory evidence for Michael Jackson.

According to discovery rules it is indeed an obligation of the prosecution to turn over all exculpatory evidence to the other side. “Exculpatory” is the evidence that can exonerate the defendant of any guilt or suspicion, and it is exactly for this reason that the Defense insist on its provision.

Incredibly, they even have to explain to the Prosecution that since the latter raised the 1993 issue themselves, the discovery from that period is falling within the necessary requirements of the current case and should be provided by all means. This is why the prosecution is obliged to do it:

III.     THIS DISCOVERY SHOULD BE COMPELLED BECAUSE THE PROSECUTION HAS RELIED ON INFORMATION FROM THE PRIOR INVESTIGATION AND THAT MATERIAL IS LIKELY TO CONTAIN OR LEAD TO EXCULPATORY EVIDENCE

Materials from the investigation of 1993-1994 are within the purview of discovery in this case.

The prosecution has already utilized information developed during that investigation and innuendo from the settlement of civil proceedings initiated by the complainant in that matter.

The prosecution relies on so-called information from the prior investigation to justify the scope of the November 2003 search of Mr. Jackson’s ranch.

Resort to that information as part of this case obliges the prosecution to provide discovery.

Mr. Jackson’s right to receive exculpatory information from the prosecution also requires production of materials from the prior investigation. Law enforcement unquestionably developed information rebutting allegations of misconduct from the many people who testified before the grand juries or submitted to informal interview.

The volume of material generated during the prior investigation appears to be large. Ample time is necessary for the defense to review and follow up on that information. The prosecution has already waited too long to provide this discovery.

IV. THE PROSECUTION SHOULD BE COMPELLED TO PRODUCE THE RESULTS OF FORENSIC TESTS

The prosecution has not yet produced the results of forensic examination going on for weeks, if not months. The forensic work covers a wide array of areas from fingerprints to computers to DNA.

Ample time is needed to review results obtained by the prosecution and conduct independent analyses. Accordingly, the prosecution should be ordered to produce promptly the results of all forensic examinations of all kinds.

CONCLUSION

The materials gathered during the prior investigation are relevant and exculpatory, as are the results of forensic tests. Accordingly, Mr. Jackson respectfully requests an order compelling the prosecution to provide discovery.

Dated September 3, 2004

Respectfully submitted,

by Steve Cochran, Defense attorneys for Michael Jackson

 

What a fantastic situation indeed!

Michael’s haters are shouting on every corner that “the wealth of 1993 evidence” was “damning” for Michael Jackson, but in reality it was damning for Sneddon and his team.

It could reveal that they had nothing against Jackson, and what they did have was actually exculpatory for Michael and cleared him of any guilt. And this is why the prosecution tried extremely hard to avoid the disclosure of this sensational fact.

Do you want to know what Tom Sneddon replied to this defense motion?

He gave his reply only two weeks later, on September 17, 2004. His response said that they were “diligently investigating every possible lead to relevant discovery in this case”, only their resources were “limited” and the “task is extremely complex and demanding in time” (apparently 10 years prior to that were not enough time).

However since the judge “expressed a concern that ongoing discovery may cause a delay in trial” the prosecution “share the Court’s concern” and promise to “make every effort to provide prompt discovery pursuant to Penal Code section 1054.1”

The prosecution also says that “upon further consideration the People do not oppose the defendant’s request for discovery of police reports” (only police reports), and as to forensic reports they will “canvas all involved agencies” (as if that description and those photos were not lying on Sneddon’s desk right at that very moment).

They promise “to obtain and discover such reports on and before October 8, 2004. On the same date, the People will provide defendant and the court with a status report on all forensic investigations that have yet to be completed and the expected date such reports will be completed and discovered to the defense.”

And this is all, guys.

So what Sneddon essentially says here is the following:

• as per September 2004 the prosecution still did not have any forensic reports (for example, from Dr. Strick about MJ’s photos and Jordan’s description) though full ten years had already passed since then
• Sneddon pretended that they needed to “canvas all involved agencies” for this information (and this way admitted that they themselves had nothing).
• he also made it look like they simply didn’t want to raise anything “from the past” but “upon further consideration did not oppose it” (hello to Michael’s haters and their stories about “the wealth of evidence the prosecution was keen to introduce”).
• Sneddon didn’t oppose the disclosure of police reports only (but not forensic evidence)
• and as regards forensic reports (like the FBI evidence or expert’s opinion about those photos) the only thing Sneddon promised was that they would try to obtain it for themselves by October 8, 2004.  On this historic date the prosecution would provide to the defense – no, not any discovery – only information on the “status of their forensic investigations”.

What a jaw-dropping answer indeed.

Isn’t it a clear statement that the 1993 investigation didn’t produce a single shred of evidence against Michael Jackson and that all this time – what’s the right English word for it – all of them were “taking us for a ride”?

(end of excerpt)

~

And here is what happened then.

By October 8, 2004 the prosecution thought better of it and surprisingly, did provide the defense with some materials from their 1993-94 investigation, listed in the document called People’s Response to Court Ordered Discovery Compliance and Status Report [redacted]

”On October 8, 2004, the Defense was given reports, photographs and numerous tapes (see Exhibit 5 – 5A), complying with the discovery request for the 1993-94 investigation into child molestation allegations against the defendant […]”

Here is  Exhibit 5 – 5A:County of Santa Barbara District Attorney

October 8, 2004

Re. The People of the State of California vs. Michael Joe Jackson

Superior Court Case No. 1133603

Dear Mr. Sanger,

Enclosed please find the following discovery items downloaded onto 6 CD-R’s.

1. Reports and photographs from the 1993-1994 investigation downloaded onto 6 discs.
2. DVD’s (11) from 93-94 investigation

(1) Interview male juvenile from Vancouver

(2) (a) & (b) interview of [blacked out] (2 discs)

(3) Titled [blacked out] 9-13-93 (the tape was blank)

(4) (a) & (b) [blacked out] (2 discs)

(5) (a) & (b) & (c) [blacked out] (3 discs)

(6) Copy of Beta Tape of Neverland

(7) [blacked out] Sexual Assault

3. Audio tapes (26) of interviews from 93-43 investigation

(1-4), (5) 2 tapes, (6), (7) 2 tapes, (8-14), (15) 2 tapes, (16), (17) 2 tapes, (18-22) [all of them blacked out]

Very truly yours,

Gordon Auchincloss

Senior Deputy District Attorney

As you see almost all information in the above document is blacked out, however we can still fish something out of it.

1) Firstly, there are no details of the reports and photographs provided by the prosecution, but it is clear that the photos of MJ’s genitalia were not among them, as several months later at the close of the 2005 trial, Tom Sneddon only threatened to produce them, though he knew perfectly well that the photos were inadmissible in the absence of the accuser (Jordan Chandler) according to the 6^th Amendment to the US Constitution.

It was a purely histrionic gesture on Sneddon’s part meant for the unitiated who don’t know that the 6th Amendment says that the accused person has the right to confront his accuser and have him grilled in a cross-examination. And in the absence of the accuser any photos he may refer to are out of the question.

However, forget the photos. According to Tom Sneddon’s own admission they were irrelevant anyway.

2) Point two of the prosecution document lists seven discs of DVD interviews with the most important witnesses as they were video (and not audio) recorded. Over here we find the video of the Neverland ranch, some blank video tape and most importantly, the video interview of a “boy from Vancouver”.

This boy was a sham victim from Canada who was coached by Victor Gutierrez’s friend, a certain Rodney Allen who was later convicted of pedophilia and sentenced for life. But when Rodney Allen was still free he summoned the notorious Diane Dimond to Canada to report the case and malign Michael Jackson even further. However to her disappointment the Canadian police exposed the boy’s allegations as a fabrication. But even despite that, the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s office apparently considered the sham victim important enough for recording a video interview with him.

3) The rest of the materials from 1993 are twenty two audio interviews with those witnesses who were apparently even less important than the sham victim, judging by the fact that the prosecutors didn’t even bother to video tape them.

And that was all the prosecution had to produce???

~

The Defense attorneys were utterly dissatisfied with all of the above and made a new Motion that sounded more like a lone voice crying out in the wilderness, asking for the forensic evidence which the other side certainly failed to provide.

The Motion was made on October 12, 2004 and was called Reply in Support of Motion to Compel Discovery and Response to Status Report Re: Production of Forensic Data.

Judging by its text the Defense attorneys spoke about the overall discovery (for both cases) expected from the Prosecution side. Among other things the Defense said:

The prosecution’s approach to discovery puts the trial date in jeopardy. It is plainly unfair for the prosecution to have almost a year to conduct other investigation and provide discovery to the defense, over time, up until weeks before the trail. The defense must be provided with ample time to conduct independent investigation, find out what really happened and cogently present the information at trial. The prosecution should be compelled to produce additional discovery forthwith.

The Defense attorneys’ immediate concern was the absence of any forensic tests that were more or less promised by the Prosecution but which the other side nevertheless failed to present.

No wonder they didn’t – the prosecution case against Michael Jackson both in 1993 and 2004 was based on words only, with nothing to prove them, no forensic evidence in either of the cases and no foundation.

The text below refers to providing the computer examinations that were made already in February 2004 and were ready in April, but were not made available to the Defense even half a year later:

II.   THE PROSECUTION SHOULD BE ORDERED TO PRODUCE THE RESULTS OF FORENSIC TESTS IMMEDIATELY

In mid-September 2004, as a result of a defense motion made weeks earlier, this Court ordered the prosecution to provide all results of forensic examinations by October 8, 2004. That was a date proposed by the prosecution, which also promised a status report if forensic date was not available for delivery.

Characteristically, everything was not produced by the prosecution on the so-called due date. Some forensic date was produced but the prosecution indicates that discovery of forensic information will not be complete for approximately six (6) weeks.

An additional six (6) week delay of receiving the results of forensic examinations was not contemplated by this Court and is unacceptable to the defense. An accused is entitled to at least as much protection as a civil litigant. A strict deadline for production of forensic data is necessary to insure adequate trial preparation and avoid surprise at trial.

Furthermore, the major forensic reports from the FBI relating to the contents of computer harddrives were delivered to the prosecution on April 5, 2004. This Court and Mr. Jackson have been told by the prosecution that these reports would not be completed until now because the work was not done. The fact is that the reports show that the FBI work was done at the Sheriff’s department, in the presence of Sheriff’s detectives in February and March 2004.

It is incredible to learn that the tests were not only completed in February and March, but that the reports were in the hands of the Sheriff’s detectives on April 5, 2005. This Court should do more than nothing about the delay and the misrepresentations which accompanied this delay. [ ]

Dated: October 12, 2004

Let me remind you that the FBI found NOTHING incriminating Michael Jackson on the many (17 as far as I remember) computers seized from the Neverland ranch.

We know it from the FBI files released to the public much, much later, and only after Michael’s death.

~

Seventeen days after the Defense nearly cried for help the prosecution finally obliged them with some additional evidence, but the drag with the discovery from the 1993-94 case still continued.

In the Status Report for Discovery of October 29, 2004 which covered both cases that were ten years apart, the defense stated that the production of the ’93 materials was still incomplete. By then they had received approximately 18,168 documents all in all.

VII.  Meet and Confer re. ’93 Materials

The parties met and conferred about the incomplete production of the ’93 materials. The prosecution represented that it will provide the defense with additional ’93 materials forthwith.

It should be noted that the defense has received approximately 18,168 documents as of the date of this status report. Of these approximately 13,383 documents were produced in the last three weeks, and approximately 9000 of them related to the earlier allegations which the prosecution had in its possession for over 10 years. Additionally produced within this short time period are over 300 audio tapes and 40 CDs\DVDs.

Due to the overwhelming number of discovery received just recently, it is virtually impossible to effectively litigate, investigate and prepare this case for trial, which is only three months away. In this regard, the defense may be forced to seek a trial continuance.”

If the statement about the audio tapes and DVDs refers to the discovery in the 1993 investigation, this must have been a substantial contribution to the earlier portion. What exactly was produced is unknown to us, but it is clear that at that moment the Defense was already overwhelmed with the materials from the prosecutors, who strategically placed it at a time when the Defense virtually had no opportunity to examine them.

The Defense attorneys were naturally resentful that though the prosecution had kept the ’93 discovery for more than 10 years, they provided it only three months before the trial, which left the Defense too little time to analyze it and summon the relevant witnesses.

But let us recall Tom Sneddon’s initial statement that all discovery from the earlier investigation was irrelevant for the Arvizo investigation, so whether 9000 documents or 90,000, all of them were of no relevance for the new “molestation” case in any case.

Of course, it was exceptionally reckless on the part of D.A. Tom Sneddon to make a written statement about that irrelevance, and he surely regretted it later, but as the saying goes, once a bell is rung, it cannot be unrung.

We can go on and on, looking for the documents that cover the battlefield between the defense and prosecution, but the fact will still be there – according to Sneddon’s own statement the materials related to the 1993-1994 investigation were irrelevant for the Arvizo case.

~

And the above should be added to the fact that the Arvizo story was a bald lie in and of itself. In order to provide you with just a sample of their (and the prosecutors’) gross lies, here is one more excerpt from the 2004 discovery process which is worth making a note of.

The excerpt comes from the document called Status Report Re. Discovery made on November 1, 2004, and it has to do with the Arvizos’ and prosecution willful changes in the dates of the so-called molestation, which were initially hand noted by the investigators at an early state of discovery, but later changed and were presented as such to the Grand Jury.

The Defense insisted that initial investigators’ notes should be provided as part of the discovery process:

“The defense pointed out that chronologies prepared by those other than the district attorney were important because the dates regarding the alleged molestation in the original complaint were different from those in the Indictment.

The dates are different because the Doe family [the Arvizos] apparently provided different dates in their interview before the criminal complaint was filed and then changed the dates for the grand jury proceedings.

The chronologies are crucial to the defense because they will reveal not only the inconsistent dates of the alleged molestation, but also the inconsistent facts and dates regarding other alleged acts in the Indictment. The defense requests that the prosecution produce all such chronologies (handwritten and typed).²

It should be noted that Defense Request No. 10 calls for prosecution teams’ investigative notes, documents, chronological records and logs, audio and/or video tapes, and police reports concerning or relating to the case. These documents constitute exculpatory and impeachment material. They are exculpatory because they contain inconsistent statements by the Doe family (and possibly other witnesses as well) which will demonstrate that Mr. Jackson is completely innocent. They are impeachment material because they will show that the charging allegations by the Doe family and their cohorts against Mr. Jackson in the Indictment are entirely false, fabricated or both.

———————-

² One version of the chronology was presented as an exhibit to the grand jury.

“The prosecution repeatedly says it has complied. The investigation of this case began in February of 2003, approximately 20 months ago. The prosecution has in its custody, possession, control and/or access the chronologies, yet not a single chronology has been produced. The defense respectfully requests that the prosecution be ordered to produce all items encompassed in the law, as set forth above, including chronologies.“

The reply of the prosecution?

The prosecution said that “all of the handwritten notes by officers and investigators were destroyed”.

We start where we left off several months ago – with the discussion of Brett Barnes’s interview with journalist Charles Thomson.

A short reminder who Brett Barnes is for those who have already forgot   He is an Australian who met Michael Jackson in December 1991 when he was about 10 and who remained Michael’s close friend until his last day.

At the age of 23 Brett Barnes defended Michael Jackson at the 2005 trial and said that despite the huge amount of time they had spent together he never experienced or seen anything inappropriate on MJ’s part. Moreover, he is sure that Michael was simply incapable of doing anything bad to another human being, let alone a child.

Brett Barnes never wavered in his support of MJ, and when he heard of Robson’s sudden allegations in 2013 he took to Twitter (now X) and shamed him in a somewhat impersonal but stern way for the lies the latter was telling, :

• I wish people would realise, in your last moments on this earth, all the money in the world will be of no comfort. My clear conscience will.

However the plain truth from Brett Barnes doesn’t fit the agenda of some people, so the media either ignores Brett or makes heinous innuendoes about him as the makers of ‘Leaving Neverland’ fantasy film did. In a written statement to the HBO producers of that despicable show Brett demanded that they stop implying him to be “another victim”, but to no avail.

The media has ridiculed Brett Barnes for about two decades now, thus turning his and his family’s life into a nightmare. They haunted and harassed him, twisted and doubted his every word, so no wonder the young man refused to meet the press – until last year when he spoke to Charles Thomson in his first interview since the time he defended Michael on TV in 1993 when he was a child.

You will find this interview here and the transcripts of the first parts of the conversation as well as some comment here, here and here.

One of Brett’s observations made so an indelible impression on me that it kept gripping me until I finally realized that there is a certain deficiency in our search for the truth about Michael Jackson and the hard work of examining lies about him – and it is high time we did something about it.

The problem is that despite all our good intentions we have unwittingly upheld the naysayers’ faulty logic and followed their lead.  And Brett somehow managed to point out where the flaw is.

It happened in that part of the interview where Charles Thomson and Brett Barnes discuss the all-too-common narrative the media and Robson/Safechuck are so vigorously promoting: “If they say that they were abused, Brett and all others must have been too”.

Here is the respective part of the interview.

CT: And you all ended up staying with him in his room at some point. And so their contention is that this is a grooming pattern, which is extremely similar. And so what they are saying is if we say we were abused, then Brett must have been abused. That seems to be what they’re saying, because it’s the same pattern.

BB:  Which I guess is the [chimera]. It’s the exact opposite. It’s the same thing but from a different perspective, on my side of things.  It never happened to me, so it couldn’t have happened to anyone else.

CT: Yes, so that’s what I wanted to put to you really, if they are pointing to you and saying you are proof of the pattern, then you feel it’s reasonable for you to say, well, actually nothing happened to me. And therefore I feel it’s reasonable for me to believe that probably nothing happened to you. That’s essentially where you are coming from.

BB:  That’s my viewpoint, yes. I can’t comment on what happened when I wasn’t there, but I can make a reasonable judgment in my opinion.

CT:  So, and your opinion, I take it, is that you don’t believe that Michael ever did abuse any children.

BB:  I couldn’t, I can never, I could never see him doing anything bad to another human being, let alone a child.

The above idea is simply staggering, so it is worth reading and rereading it again. It is like looking at one and the same thing as a glass half-empty or half-full.

What I mean is that if someone’s accusatory statement is made out to look like all others are “victims” too, the exact opposite should be true – someone’s statement about his innocent life-long friendship with MJ should equally suggest that similar relationships with others were similarly innocent.

At the very least, if it is the word of one against the word of another, there should be no preference for either of the sides because one thing negates the other, and the result is a draw.

And Brett absolutely hit the nail on the head when he pointed to it. He managed to show us that people’s whole perspective is somewhat askew and that we are also dragging at the tail of media propaganda unwittingly following their logic, and that there is a completely different and a much sounder way of looking at those allegations.

Robson & Safechuck:  “We say that we were abused, so Brett must have been abused too”

Brett Barnes:  “But it never happened to me, so it couldn’t have happened to anyone else either.”

This simple maxim escaped us for too long because the media consistently works on keeping all of us under a sort of a hypnotic spell.  At the slightest suggestion of some “impropriety” on the part of MJ the media pundits immediately point to it as a sign of a certain “pattern” and imply that “if this happened to him, the same must have happened to the others”.

The saying goes that a lie flies around the whole world while the truth is still putting on its shoes, and when the lie is inflated by the media out of all proportion and comes from every direction even skeptics begin to doubt.

As a result, if some charlatan says something bad about Michael Jackson, it casts a shade of doubt on hundreds of all other Michael’s child friends, even though the story is not verified, is only words and may be told out of spite, revenge, for profit or other reasons.

We are perfectly aware of the nasty media ways, but the real scope of their distortion and vicious bias against Jackson becomes clear only when you reverse the situation and look at it from the opposite side.

In fact, when the opposite happens and some honest person testifies that his interaction with Michael was impeccable during the many years of their very close friendship, this is supposed to be no news and a disappointment which is always followed by a skeptical remark like “well, if it didn’t happen to him, it doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen to others”.

This kind of a reaction actually boils down to a death verdict for the unfortunate target of the media propaganda because essentially it means that if a person is accused just once, he will be considered guilty forever after irrespective of what other people ever say.

But this imbalance is lurid, because the opposite variant has every right to be true too.

If the accused person had every opportunity to inappropriately behave, say, with a helpless child, and never once took advantage of the situation and for many years too, there is a very high probability that he never did anything improper to anyone else either.

And this high probability will grow into a one hundred per cent confidence if it is not just the word of one against the word of another, but if it is the word of hundreds of people like Brett Barnes who never experienced anything bad during their interaction with Michael Jackson and who stand by their word no matter what.

And we know it for a fact that Brett Barnes is not alone here. The word about Michael’s complete innocence is heard from hundreds if not thousands of MJ’s friends and acquaintances, who were once his child friends and are now grown-up people, and who remember their time with him as joyful, great and impeccable in every way.

[Dr. Wayne Dyer about Michael Jackson]

But the above could hold true only for normal circumstances, while we find ourselves in a situation when a huge part of the Establishment and its servile media consistently distort the picture, push their own narrative and shape people’s perception by taking one thing out of all proportion and turning a blind eye to the sea of everything else.

By now there can’t be any doubt that there is a whole machine working against Michael Jackson. They finance one false documentary after another, they are able to even amend the legislation to fit the needs of a certain accuser, and they have always tried to provoke an avalanche of “victims” by openly inviting people to a crime – by big money, huge publicity and guarantees of safety in case their scam is exposed.

And as a result of their colossal effort for the past 30 years they did manage to come up with five accusers all in all, which is a ridiculous number for real child molesters, but seems to be at least something to talk about.

Okay, but how good is the “quality” of these accusers if we take a closer look at them?

Out of these five characters two are even officially liars.

• Gavin Arvizo is an official liar because each and every of his allegations was disproven in 2005 in the court of law where Michael Jackson was found not guilty on all charges.

In fact, the Arvizo case was so big a sham and a disgrace for everyone involved that it is even awkward to remind you of it. Suffice it to mention that according to the official version the alleged molestation began after the whole world was shocked by Martin Bashir’s film and began to suspect MJ of wrongdoing, so the chronology alone suggests that it was Michael’s own decision to support people’s suspicions about him in order to be later prosecuted and tried in court!

• Wade Robson is also officially a liar as he testified at the 2005 trial and when under oath said that he had never been touched by Jackson.

Not figuratively speaking, but literally not touched – he was asked about every part of his body, and each time Robson said that he was touched neither here nor there, except probably for his hair which Michael may have shuffled on some occasions. Being relaxed and confident of what he was saying, at that time Robson laughed off even the possibility of abuse and this way turns out to be a liar in any case, because he either lied then or is lying now.

Facing the dilemma of when exactly he was lying, Robson decided that is much more profitable to say that he had lied on the stand. And it doesn’t matter that this way he becomes an official perjurer. California Penal Code classifies perjury as a felony punishable by up to 4 years in jail or prison, but in the current social environment it is highly unlikely that Robson will face the music for his crime.

On the other hand, if his present lies sound convincing enough, there is a big fat chance that he will get a billion dollars which is a decided advantage over the other alternative. How do we know that the sum at stake is a whole billion? Well, this is what he demanded from the MJ Estate, at least initially (see here). In fact, he himself told us of his big plans for the future by accidently leaving a note in his diary: “It’s time to get mine!”

• James Safechuck is a liar too but not officially yet. He escapes perjury accusations as he defended Jackson only in a witness statement in 1993 when he was 15, and he wasn’t involved in the 2005 trial at all.

This makes his stories about Michael’s telephone calls urging him to testify in his defense a flat fabrication because Safechuck was not even on the prosecution list of the alleged victims to be mentioned in court. The prosecution didn’t want to have anything to do with him due to his total unreliability because, as they said, he was “a little screwed up in the head”.

Well, screwed up or not, but the puppy-eyed money grabber saw his chance when he watched Robson on TV on May 16, 2013 where the latter made his allegations against MJ for the first time. This is when Safechuck suddenly recalled that he had been abused too, or to be more exact, formally remembered it after a brief (13,5 hours long) therapy initiated by him immediately thereafter.

The factor that surely contributed to Safechuck’s recollection was the $24 million lawsuit that had been filed against the Safechucks just two days prior to Robson’s interview, so it must have been a kind of an eureka moment for James Safechuck and his mother, seen by them as a miraculous Bingo way on how to fix the family problem.

On May 14, 2013 the Safechuck family business was served with a $24mln lawsuit. On May 20, 2013 James Safechuck discloses alleged childhood sexual abuse from Jackson. Later hires Robson’s lawyers to file a civil lawsuit

[caption from 'Square One' documentary]

The good money on the horizon is probably why Safechuck’s mother looked so joyful in the ‘Leaving Neverland’ film when speaking about the alleged abuse of her son – the prospect of getting hundreds of millions from the MJ Estate must have been too lovely a prospect to be able to stifle the anticipation of it.

Safechuck’s lawsuit took two years in the making and was added to Robson’s in 2015. The complaint was by no means sloppy, and was so thorough, vast and comprehensive that it included almost every lie ever told about Jackson. There was no evidence of course, but its lack was compensated for by much emotion that was later reproduced in the ‘Leaving Neverland’ horror film.

However the big drawback of Safechuck’s venture is that though he was supposed to be the first alleged victim of MJ, his case against him is so much filled with “later” details that it made Michael’s behavior escalate in reverse.

In fact, the lawsuits of both Robson and Safechuck abide in horrors never claimed by anyone else before them. Consequently, their stories make it look like the alleged misdeeds on MJ’s part grew graver and graver as we go back in time, and the earlier year it was the worse was the “abuse”.

This made MJ look his most rampant self when he was a shy, young and devoted Jehovah Witness and when, as we remember it, he was so fearful of God’s retribution that he was afraid to raise the Almighty’s fury even by celebrating Christmas which is not accepted by the JW religion.

Needless to say, this escalation-in-reverse defies all logic and contradicts common sense, not to mention the fact that it is also totally opposite to the behavior of real perverts who only want more and more as time goes by.

But the two rogues wanted so hard that their cases be really thick with horrors that in their ardor somewhat overdid themselves. Safechuck, for example,  included  a story about “sex” inside the Neverland railway station though that at the time of the alleged abuse it wasn’t even there and was built several years later.

Robson’s memory also made its crazy somersaults – it “evolved” from remembering virtually nothing about his first visit to Neverland at the age of 7 to recalling his every breath there in his minutest detail. And as soon as he was found to face huge (and documented) inconsistencies in his story, his memory immediately evolved again and recalled the same in a different way.

A certain insight therapy and some prompts from his mother certainly helped Robson’s recollection process – his mother Joy even emailed him that she had “several versions” of what happened at Neverland and she would see which one was “the best to her son’s benefit”.  What a family indeed!

• As to the remaining two accusers we remember the case of Jason Francia, the son of MJ’s personal maid Blanca Francia that took place twenty years prior to Robson & Safechuck.

Initially Jason refused point-blank to take part in a scam against Jackson, and during his interview with the police he even wanted “to get up and hit them in the head”.  But things changed when the good old Santa Barbara D.A. Tom Sneddon put him and his mother under a “therapy and counseling program” to help him recollect – and approximately six months later Jason Francia did remember something.

Sure, it was none of the horrors endured by sufferers like Robson and Safechuck. Jason Francia recalled just three cases of “no skin-to-skin” tickling which lasted for several seconds each and occurred during the tickling contests Jason liked to have with MJ. As a reward for this long-awaited revelation Tom Sneddon provided Blanca Francia with an officer from his own D.A. office who became Francia’s attorney (more about it here). The attorney squeezed from MJ’s lawyers 2 million dollars thus repaying the Francias for their services to the country, and the family lived happily ever after since then.

The only inconvenience was that Jason had to stay in further “therapy and counseling” for five years more, and the D.A. office kept an eye on the family until the 2005 trial where both were requested to testify against Jackson which they obligingly did.

Blanca Francia even recalled that she had seen Wade Robson in a shower with MJ which Robson readily included into the amendment to his complaint. However when she was deposed by Robson/Safechuck’s attorney in 2016, Blanca Francia revealed that she had never seen anything but a shadow of MJ behind the fogged glass and she only assumed that there was someone else there because when she peeped there for a second  Michael was making a little hee-hee-hee sound amid the music that was blasting there (see this post for details).

But most importantly, Blanca Francia’s deposition revealed that the shower episode took place in 1989 while Robson and his family met Jackson for the first time only in 1990, so none of it had anything to do with Robson in addition to the fact that it never happened at all. Well, they shouldn’t have looked for a black cat in a dark room, especially when it is not there…

• And lastly we come to Jordan Chandler as the fifth accuser or actually the first of them. His story is the crux of the whole matter, because if it hadn’t been for his allegations and that unfortunate $15,3mln settlement the rest of the accusers would have never emerged.

The essence of his case was best described by his own uncle, Ray Chandler who wrote in his book about Jackson:

“Had Michael paid the twenty million dollars demanded of him in August… he might have spent the next ten years as the world’s most famous entertainer, instead of the world’s most infamous child molester.”

Even in so frank a statement Ray Chandler couldn’t resist a lie – the Chandlers initially demanded $30 million and Ray lessened the sum of their claim by a third for the family to not look that greedy for money.

As to the evidence to support the claim there was none, and even the infamous description of MJ’s private parts provided by Jordan turned out to be all wrong in its every possible aspect (see points 1 and 2 of this post).

Jordan Chandler never refuted his allegations publicly but the “Square One” documentary directed by Danny Wu in 2019 contains a very interesting testimony by Josephine Zohny who was Jordan Chandler’s fellow student in one of their university programs.

She reveals that she directly heard Jordan Chandler saying that he didn’t believe that Michael Jackson was capable of the things he was being accused of.

Josephine Zohny

Josephine Zohny was one of those witnesses-in-reserve who would have faced Jordan Chandler at the 2005 trial if he had agreed to take part in that travesty of justice, however Jordan vehemently refused to do it and even threatened the police to sue them if they insisted on his participation.

This is why we hear her testimony only now. Here is some of it in more detail.

Josephine Zohny:  “Immediately after the Martin Bashir documentary aired we had a program meeting and there was a discussion about, you know, whether or not Michael Jackson was a child molester. People were calling him “freak”. 

Josephine disagreed and this is when Jordan Chandler who was sitting somewhat apart from the group “chimed in” and made this spontaneous remark:

“During that conversation Jordan Chandler chimed in and said that he too believed that Michael Jackson wasn’t capable of the things he was being accused of. And he said that voluntarily and he said it without my prompting and he wasn’t asked.”

Recently the same was confirmed by Carol LaMere who was Michael’s hairstylist. Back in 1993 she overheard Jordan Chandler talking to Michael Jackson in a telephone conversation that took place almost immediately after the allegations became public, just as “it started happening” as she said.

Carol LaMere was doing Michael’s hair in his Hideout apartment when Jordan called. The boy was crying and apologizing for his lies. The teary Jordan said that he was forced to say it and that “he didn’t know why they were doing this”. 

“Both of them were very, very upset”, said LaMere.

~

Well, if the above gang of five does not meet your standards for fully-fledged and credible accusers, I can’t help you because this is all we have.

Michael Jackson’s vilifiers are of course filling the web with stories about other children, who often go under the umbrella name of “Michael Jackson boys” irrespective of their gender. Since these children never said a bad word about MJ, they are thrown into the category of “silent victims”, and every lie ever told about them – mostly by the notorious pro-pedophilia author named Victor Gutierrez – is meticulously collected there in an effort to prove they were “also abused” though they deny they were.

These far-fetched and innuendo filled stories are needed to support the false media pattern that we discussed earlier and to create the impression that the pool of possible accusers is much bigger than it is. The publications pretend to be objective but abide in all sort of speculations and typically present totally innocent things as something sinister.

All of them imply that those who haven’t accused MJ yet are liars or are in denial, are intimidated, are bought off, etc. However when you look at what these lowlifes do to these Michael Jackson’s child friends you see the abominable practice of vicious intimidation on their part, as the example of Brett Barnes shows it.

But looking at the bright side of things, Brett Barnes has now equipped us with a way to how to handle the above trash.

If the favorite media pattern “If one says he was abused, so others were too” is used in its reverse version “If it didn’t happen to one, it couldn’t happen to others either”, the overall picture drastically changes in my opinion.

Previously we would be upset if more and more people fell into the category of suspected victims, because it would be damaging to them and damaging to the name of Michael Jackson.

But if we employ the opposite logic, the more such people are found by the malicious collectors the better it is. Because the simple multitude of them will turn into an advantage and will be beneficial not only for these people but for vindicating Michael Jackson himself.

This is because the bigger the number of those who refuse to bend to the media pressure and “admit” that they were abused, the bigger is the weight of their testimonies versus the stories of false accusers, and the sheer massiveness of their evidence will tip the scales to the other side and will show where the genuine truth  is.

In other words if Safechuck & Robson face a strong opposition not only from Brett Barnes and Macaulay Culkin, but from hundreds or even thousands of people who will tell of their real experience with Michael Jackson, the credibility of the two rogues’ stories will shrink further and further until it reaches a stage when they will look like a total anomaly and the liars they really are.

And if this happens, it is these two characters who will find themselves in isolation and who will be the exceptions to the rule – because the rule itself has changed and is different now!

And the new rule is a kind of an opposite to MeToo and is something like MeNeither:

 “Since I wasn’t abused, there is a very strong chance that you weren’t either”.

~

The only problem here is that the honest and the upright are so intimidated by the media that they are afraid to speak up not to stir up trouble. Most of them know that a word in support of Michael Jackson is fraught with grave complications like a torrent of ridicule and hate in their direction.

Moreover, the media has managed to distort public perception so much that most of these people are under the impression that they are alone in their views about Jackson, and that their innocent interaction with him was just some singular experience, which makes their memory of Jackson look like it is in defiance of the general pattern.

This is why when these people speak about their innocent experience with Michael Jackson they visibly hesitate, carefully consider each of their words and sometimes even doubt their own selves.

They know perfectly well that nothing happened to them when they were around Michael, but under the media glare they look somewhat shy as they regard themselves as a sort of an irregularity– and who wants to feel irregular in the company of those who are not?

Many of them come from distant places and different corners of the world, most are disconnected from each other and may be even unaware of each other’s existence. They feel isolated and in their loneliness may feel that it was only due to some lucky chance that they escaped a wrong when they were around Jackson.

Almost all of them are not familiar with the media ways, and when they are asked loaded questions like “What happened to you when you stayed in MJ’s bedroom?” they seem to be even apologizing for the fact that nothing happened to them and that their answer will disappoint the interviewer.

It is obvious that they were expected to say something different and they didn’t live up to the media expectations, so on most occasions they feel obliged to make certain excuses and add the “right” thing.

All too often we hear them saying “It didn’t happen to me” which is then invariably followed by a sort of a disclaimer: “But I cannot speak for all others, of course”. This remark is immediately picked up by the interviewer who usually wraps up the conversation with a sad look on the face and a comment like “none of us was there, so we will never know”.

But isn’t it totally abnormal that those who are confident of their innocent friendship with Michael constantly have to explain themselves and make reservations that they can’t speak for others – however the few accusers who blatantly lie about Jackson do speak for the others without batting an eyelid?!

How very interesting indeed.

Dozens of Michael’s child friends who never experienced anything bad are forced to feel that they are somehow at fault, while a handful of liars are so triumphant that they can throw dirt at all the others, and no one stops them from doing it!

How did we allow this state of affairs to happen when the truthful have to be constantly on the defensive? How come their testimony about Michael Jackson is always regarded as something insignificant and not worth talking about? Why do we allow the media to imply that it is only guys like Robson and Safechuck who matter, while all others are falling out of “the pattern” and are sort of “exceptions to the rule”?

Okay, so Brett Barnes is supposed to be only an exception to the rule.

But so is Macaulay Culkin who is openly ridiculing all these insinuations.

And so is Emmanuel Lewis who told his naysayers not to try and take all the joy out of his innocent time with Jackson.

And also the Cascio brothers who travelled half the world with Michael Jackson, slept in MJ’s hotel rooms and have vehemently defended his innocence forever after. See Frank Cascio’s book “My Friend Michael” for that.

And also Jonathan Spence who is extremely silent in contrast to the others but obviously hates the media and avoids them like the plague.  Corey Feldman is certainly another exception not to be taken seriously by the media – he was once in the hands of Hollywood pedophiles and says that he regained normality only beside Jackson, which is all the more outrageous as everyone knows Hollywood to be the epitome of moral righteousness. The late Barbara Walters explained to us that Corey was simply “damaging the whole industry”, so what is Corey’s voice against someone who received awards for journalistic excellence?

Taj, Taryll and TJ Jackson are exceptions to the media rule too because they are Michael’s relatives, so they are labeled biased and are being tolerated only because it is impossible to avoid them altogether.  For the same reason Levon and Elijah, the grandchildren of Joe Jackson’s brother who were practically raised by Michael Jackson are of little significance too, same as the crowd of all other Michael Jackson’s nephews, cousins and young relatives who spent day in, day out at Neverland together with Michael.

Gotham Chopra, Deepak Chopra’s son who was Michael Jackson’s travelling companion on the Dangerous tour when he was a teenager and who was delighted with the experience, is another of those exceptions. Same as all eight children whom Dr. Wayne Dyer (a psychologist and self-help guru) brought to Neverland and trusted Michael with, as well as the powerful word of Dr. Dyer himself in the defense of Michael Jackson.

“I know for absolute certain that this person could never have done anything that would be harmful to anyone. The most profoundly astonishing person I‘ve ever met in life; beyond anything I’d ever imagined profoundly good. As kind and decent and spiritual a human being as I’ve ever had the pleasure of spending time with; a beautiful human being. A transcendent being who had not only enormous talent, but a heart as big as the sky.”

Then come totally insignificant exceptions like the burn victim Dave Dave, a regular child-visitor to Neverland who considered Michael the father he never had.

And also Ryan White who was sick with AIDS and who received from Michael Jackson gifts like a red Ford Mustang.

And also David Smithee, another terminally ill boy who was presented with the original “Beat it” jacket and died very happy according to his mother as MJ gave him the happiest last month of his life.

Another exception is Richard Matsuura from Japan who went on TV to disprove the media lies about him and MJ (never mind you didn’t hear about him – he is of  “no unimportance” anyway).

And also Omer Bhatti, the boy from Norway whose mother was a nanny of MJ’s children and who is still a friend of the Jackson family – so we are writing his off too.

Same as the son of Michael’s hairstylist Carol LaMere who was beside MJ since he was a baby and whose birthday (together with Carol’s daughter) Michael Jackson celebrated every year at Neverland.

The Agajanian family must be another of those exceptions. They were regular visitors to Neverland and called the smear campaign against Michael a tragedy, and this is probably why you’ve never seen them on TV. Only their 7-year old daughter Amy was once invited to Oprah’s show where she famously declared herself Michael’s best friend and said that she was much closer to Jackson than her brothers.

The 7-year old Amy Agajanian said Michael was her best friend

Anyway, Amy is a girl, same as Kellie Parker, Marie Nicole Cascio, Simone Jackson, Yashi and Stacee Brown, Brandi Jackson (Robson’s girlfriend of many years), Karlee Barnes, Spencer Malnik and others, which makes them another obvious exception to the rule.

As to Al Malnik’s sons Jarod and Nathan, they are exactly the people who are supposed to be the “silent victims” of MJ.  Back in the 2000s Michael regularly stayed in the Malniks’ house in Florida and travelled with the family to their various family spots. The chance that the media will ever talk about these children and MJ is very little, but the pictures made by the kids’ mother Nancy Malnik say it all –  about how happy they all were when they were around Jackson.

In contrast to them, Anton and Franziska Schleiter in whose house in Germany Michael Jackson stayed even more regularly, are very much willing to talk about their great experience with Michael, but they are never invited and the only documentary with their participation was made in Germany and was shown by only one independent (not mainstream) company at that. It seems that these people are not to the media’s liking either.

Or take the case of Jolie Levine, Michael’s former secretary and production coordinator who was said to be MJ’s detractor. She and her son Yoshi endured massive media slander for many years until it was recently found that she was a defender of Michael Jackson all along. Her son Yoshi, now a grown-up, could hardly restrain himself from swearing throughout his recent deposition, especially when he was asked about the two policemen who interviewed him in 1993. This certainly places Yoshi into the category of those outcasts whose experience with Jackson will never be publicized.

Another person who is totally out of the media focus is the extraordinary Gayle Goforth (see here) who worked at Neverland for about 13 years and for half that time was Michael’s personal maid. She never hesitated to bring her sons to Neverland even despite the allegations though her own son had once been molested by a baseball coach. This made her extremely vigilant regarding the safety of every kid, however even she didn’t notice anything wrong about Michael’s behavior with children. Needless to say, this woman never fitted the media pattern and never appeared on TV.

The retired police sergeant LaPerruque who was head of Michael’s security and had access to his room at all times, also said he would be quite comfortable with his kids beside Jackson, and if it hadn’t been for Roger Friedman of Fox news we would have never heard about it. No one else simply wanted to know.

Michael Jackson’s security guard: Singer Is Innocent

You will be surprised, but there were times when even Adrian McManus, one of Michael’s most horrible vilifiers, was also considered one of those exceptions to be never reported by the media.

During her deposition in 1993 she said that she was so sure of Michael Jackson that she would leave her son alone with him. Years later she claimed that she had lied under oath, and since then has become a welcome guest on worldwide TV, of course.

Or look at the late Aaron Carter who was also in the center of media attention, only in the opposite way. His problem was that he said that MJ never did him anything wrong, except a small thing which was inappropriate for a 15-year old. The media connected Aaron’s rash statement with just one night he stayed at Neverland following MJ’s birthday party where he spent all his time with MJ in the full view of others and then slept in a separate theatre building alongside Chris Tucker. My guess is that Aaron drank at the party, or God forbid, smoked pot there, so hence the remark, but after that visit Aaron had to spend years screaming to the press that nothing sexual happened to him at Neverland!

“I’m sorry but where is the definition “inappropriate” does it mention sexual misconduct? [AARON CARTER, May 21, 2019]

I wonder why the media were not interested in Glenda and Sam Stein, their sons Damien & Jason and daughter Megan. Michael Jackson had a close relationship with the family, stayed for hours and hours on the telephone with Glenda (and the girl), visited their house and even had his own room there.  Their son Damien, the boy who initially wrote a letter to Michael Jackson when he was 9, was interviewed by Martin Bashir when the latter was working with Victor Gutierrez on a sequel to his first documentary about MJ , but despite all Bashir’s effort Damien didn’t say anything bad about Jackson (here, ignore the narrator).

Damien was only sorry that their friendship with Michael stopped so abruptly. No wonder it did – the father of the family recorded their conversations with Michael Jackson and sold the tapes to some gossip website in 2005. These tapes, however, somewhat backfired on the media – they show the so incredibly innocent side of Michael Jackson that even the press refrained from talking about the Steins. Obviously this family didn’t live up to the media standards either.

Then there is also the Cohen family, Jimmy and Donny Osmond and many others. The  enumeration of those whose voices are seldom heard can go on forever, but even this short list is proof enough of the media monstrous bias. All these people are considered totally unimportant and it is only Robson & Safechuck who should be listened to by all means.

The anomaly of Robson & Safechuck

But isn’t time we reversed this topsy-turvy situation and put everything in its right place?

It is hundreds of those people who speak in Jackson’s defense that actually represent the rule, while these two guys are a total anomaly to it!

However it is them who go on TV in prime time, give interviews, enjoy the media limelight, and are being incessantly talked about in the press.

In contrast to them, hundreds of those who could testify to Michael’s innocence and refute the two rogues’ claims have never been given a chance. Apparently, these people are virtually non-existent to the media, and their testimony is considered worthless and redundant since Robson & Safechuck is all they need, so all those others should be thrown aside and knocked off the chessboard.

And this is why it is so important to put them back there.

~

In my opinion, the way how to go about it is to give these people their confidence back. To give them the feeling that they are not alone, that there are a great many of them and that the precious memories they have about Michael Jackson are very much in demand and should be shared with the public by all means possible.

And though they may think themselves to be the lone voices crying out in the wilderness, if each of them tells his story, they will make a powerful force and their voice will sound like a thunder that will drown out everything else.

And what is being asked of them is not anything special. It is the truth and nothing but the truth. No need to whitewash, invent or embellish anything.  Just everything they saw the way it really was, and relayed by them without beating about the bush.

By that I mean that form of the truth which is sure of itself and is told firmly, with no shyness, without any embarrassment and usual excuses to the media and which is free from any doubt and reservations. The truth that sounds as a declaration of confidence in Michael’s innocence and a sort of a manifesto on their part.

This kind of truth has no room for half-excuses like “It didn’t happen to me, but I cannot speak for the others”. No one is asking them to speak for the others – let them speak for themselves only, and their lack of knowledge about other people’s experience with Jackson will be fully compensated for by their own true account about him and their confidence in what they are saying.

And despite the media pressure these people should be confident of what they say because it is their memory about Michael Jackson and no one else’s. And no one is allowed to dispute these memories, meddle and play games with them. No matter what dirt may be told by some others, their personal memory about Michael is their safe vault which is absolutely no place for any influence and pressure from the outside.

And outside pressure they will experience a lot. “Leaving Neverland” fantasy may be followed by LN2, LN3 and whatnot. This fantasy series will be populated with false witnesses, fictional accusers and probably even AI deepfakes. And also with lots of drama, emotional scenes, horrors amidst beautiful landscapes and other Hollywood special effects – all of which will be aimed not only at public at large but also at Michael Jackson’s child friends as well as his associates and witnesses of his behavior with children.

MJ’s friends should be prepared that each and every of those products will be tested on them too, with requests to comment on this and that, and questions whether their perception of Michael changed “after the new facts emerged” and what their reaction is now that they know “the whole truth”.

But there is no need for the friends of Michael Jackson to analyze other people’s lies.

These lies will certainly come in truckloads and in their all fifty shades of gray, especially after qualified psychologists and propaganda monsters work on them, so we can almost guarantee that the stories told in sequels to LN (if any) will be even more sophisticated than the original version. And this is why any analysis or search for similarities between what’s on the screen and the personal memories of Jackson’s former child friends will be a bad idea as this can only fog their minds and confuse.

So don’t allow that to happen. If I were to give advice to Michael Jackson’s friends I would advise them to cherish what they know, stand by what they remember and never doubt their memory and their own selves. And to be insistent on what they say. And to be brave, upright and confident of themselves. And to never waver and always stand by their good recollections of Michael no matter what.

Their memories are their own precious gem even though they may regard them as something insignificant. The truth may look to them too plain and dull, same as the phrase “nothing happened to me” actually sounds, but even despite its simplicity it is still a million times more valuable than other people’s brightly packed lies.

~

The reason why I focus on the need to stick to things just the way they really were is because we’ve seen what the mainstream and social media did to Corey Feldman, for example.

Corey Feldman defends Michael Jackson after watching ‘Leaving Neverland’. [the LATimes]

• “This whole thing is one-sided with no chance of a defense from a dead man, & no evidence other than the word of 2 men who as adults defended him in court.”

But after a storm of media-shaming he was not longer sure that his own experience mattered, especially in comparison with the “horrendous crimes” described by the accusers. So he felt the need to correct himself by adding the usual excuses and reservations:

• This led to a barrage of criticism on social media and, a few days later, a clarification from Feldman, who went on CNN to say, “I cannot in good conscience defend anyone who’s being accused of such horrendous crimes. But at the same time, I’m also not here to judge him, because, again, he didn’t do those things to me and that was not my experience.”

Corey started analyzing every instance of his experience with MJ and at some point even wondered if he was being groomed too (by MJ’s gifts), only in his case the grooming process wasn’t finished because “he wasn’t his pick”?

• “It’s the standard grooming process that they describe. Everything was similar up until the sexual part. He bought me gifts, a Watchman TV, a gold watch from Disneyland. So was he grooming me and I just never ended up being his pick? That’s the fucking thing. We’ll never know.”

We will never know??? But this is exactly the reaction the malicious propaganda counts on.

And we shouldn’t think that we would be immune to its poison if we were in Corey Feldman’s place. We would probably doubt things in the same way if we allowed ourselves to reconsider our memories about MJ, compared them with the dirt pushed on us from every direction and if we asked ourselves questions like “what if?”

But when these youngsters were living their lives then, there were absolutely no “ifs” for them, everything was perfectly clear, and there is absolutely no need to question that experience now.

The devious propaganda method employed against MJ does not aim to turn his child friends into his worst haters – it is there to “only” seed confusion in their minds and blur their vision, so that they begin doubting the clarity of their memories, their own selves and their good judgment after all.

The antidote to that poison is to simply not get dragged into the suggested narrative, to remember things just as they were and to not allow oneself to be side-tracked by superficial “similarities” like gifts and the like. An innocent gift for one person is a grooming tool for another, same as the scissors you use for cutting roses are a means of murder for a criminal – so one and the same story will look different depending on who is telling it, their moral values and the goals they want to achieve.

To Corey’s credit his own memories of MJ and honesty with himself prevailed over the media pressure and helped him to get back on the right track. In his tweets he speaks of thousands of kids who hung around Michael and who don’t agree, and says that they also deserve their voices heard.

“Ok, I watched it. All I know is what I experienced, and yes, every experience was the same … right up to the sex part! That is where it becomes la-la land, instead of Neverland for me.

“Never once swore in my presence, never touched me inappropriately, and never ever suggested we should be lovers in any way! I feel like if people could hear our convos they would hear the innocence in them. No hint of perversion. I have a tape, I’m thinking about releasing, which could give people a real look at what a 30-year old man/child and a 13-year old boy would discuss, so everyone could hear the innocence of our relationship. Again I wasn’t there when those boys were, but I was there around the same time as Jimmy and I saw many kids around (girls included) who I am still friends with to this day, and none of us were ever approached by him in a sexual way at all! So as much as those 2 men deserve to have their voices heard, so do the thousands of kids who hung around him, that don’t agree! Most pedos are serial offenders. They don’t have self control.”

Only imagine if all those thousands were given a chance to have their say and declare one after another: “It didn’t happen to me” and “To me neither”.

Trash like Robson & Safechuck will be simply swept by the flood!

Sean Lennon, Emmanuel Lewis and Kellie Parker in “Moonwalker”

Sean Lennon, the son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono who played in Michael Jackson’s film “the Moonwalker”, also seems to have had his share of doubt when he heard of the two rogues’ accusations. As all other children around Michael Jackson, he himself never experienced or noticed anything, but you can still feel a note of disquiet in the lyrics of the song written soon after the allegations surfaced.

The Rolling Stone relished the undertones in the song’s lyrics, though the same words may also be interpreted as nostalgia for the carуfree times when they didn’t yet know what drama was awaiting them in the future:

“Childhoods end / And Bubbles burst,” Lennon sings on the track’s chorus. “We didn’t understand / Dancing with Peter Pan / What would be the result when we / Turned into young adults.”

I personally didn’t like Sean Lennon’s song and regard it as a cheap and ugly trick to draw attention to his album. Anyway, three years later Sean made a clarification of what he had in mind when he wrote it. It turned out that “nothing illegal” had ever happened to him, everything was great and much fun at Neverland, but his answer contained the excuses and reservations which are almost a standard for anyone who speaks of Michael’s innocence:

“Nothing ever happened with me in an illegal way, but the whole place just felt like I was in some Peter Pan fantasy land. I think that was a super strange time, but not in a dark way,” he said. “In an odd way, in a unique way.”

Lennon only recalls fond memories.  “He was the coolest dude I’d ever met for sure,” he says. “I mean people, you know, they have a lot of opinions about him and like anything else, my opinions can only be based on my experience. But he was super fun to hang out with. I mean he was like a big kid, you know?
“So yeah, the time that I got to spend with him was — it was like Disneyland all day long. He’d set up water balloon fights and pie fights in basketball courts. It was like super high-level fun and it was orchestrated fun and insanity.
“I mean whatever happened with him and anyone else, I have no opinion of because I wasn’t there, you know?

“My opinions can only be based on my experience” is correct, but remarks like “I wasn’t there” sound totally maddening to me.

What the hell does it matter that none of us were there when something happened didn’t happen to a person who is telling a fairy tale now? Those who believe it weren’t there either but they still chose to believe it, didn’t they?

The idea of “never knowing the truth because we weren’t there” is not quite correct in and of itself, because we weren’t there when a murder took place, however the truth can still be established by other means.

And in a case like Robson&Safechuck’s allegations the phrase certainly turns into an implicit suggestion of a person’s guilt because it is heavily loaded with doubt and is therefore skewed to one side only.

Unfortunately few people notice the slant as they mindlessly parrot the sly media narrative without thinking what stands behind it and just repeat the words of some TV personalities as if they were gospel truth. This is what Michael Jackson actually called the state of being conditioned.

Which takes us back to the need to free ourselves from all that conditioning and equip ourselves with some novel approaches like the one suggested by Brett Barnes, when he practically declared that since nothing happened to him in his relationship with Michael, it couldn’t have happened to others either.

A little research discovered that the pioneer of that novel approach was not Brett Barnes after all, but Macaulay Culkin – which is no surprise as he is not only a staunch Michael Jackson’s defender but is also known for disrupting the old clichés and setting new trends.

This is what Macaulay stated when he was still very young and was grilled by Barbara Walters in one of the interviews:

“My opinion is, if he didn’t do anything to me, I don’t think he would have done anything to anyone else”.

Barbara Walter reacted to it with some incredulity and a grim face which somehow suggests to me that the media won’t like it very much if we peddle the same idea.

At that time we didn’t notice the truth and great potential of that statement. But the idea of it must have be hovering in the air because many years later Brett Barnes rediscovered it again, completely on his own and on the other side of the world too. He said:

“It never happened to me, so it couldn’t have happened to anyone else.”

I hope that this time we will get the message and won’t miss the chance.

So who will be the next?

Updated

Fifteen years after Michael Jackson’s demise some new details have suddenly surfaced which make us look at his death in a somewhat different light.

The new twist to the story is unexpectedly connected with the billionaire rapper Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, whose name is now associated not so much with the numerous music awards but with the avalanche of accusations of almost every sin under the sun – abusive behavior, violent assaults, sex trafficking, wild sex parties including minors, plying his victims with drugs, threats to blacklist his victims in the industry if they didn’t comply, recording his high-profile guests Epstein-style with hidden cameras in each of his rooms, illegal possession of firearms and shooting people, and whatnot.

Diddy’s alleged illegal activity has spanned the period of 30 years – from at least 1994 (and even earlier) to nowadays, and this makes you really wonder why no one paid attention despite regular complaints here and there.

Oh, we forgot that all this time the mainstream media and law enforcement were terribly busy with the persecution of Michael Jackson while Epstein, Weinstein, Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs and the like were free to do whatever they wanted.

As I always said the smoke and mirrors around Michael Jackson intended to cover up for the real criminals and cynically diverted public attention in the direction of an innocent man – and the whole orchestra was the main idea of it all from the very start of Michael Jackson’s harassment.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs is photographed here with Justin Bieber for whom he was a mentor since the boy was 13

Up to a certain moment the allegations against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs could also be regarded as a fabrication, but this year a hotel surveillance tape surfaced which corroborated the accusations by Diddy’s ex girlfriend, Cassie Ventura who filed a lawsuit in November 2023 and accused her ex partner of sexual assault and physical abuse.

The hotel surveillance video dated 2016 showed Diddy, clothed only a bath towel, chasing Cassie to the elevator landing where he grabbed her by the head and threw to the floor, repeatedly kicked her with his foot and then dragged her along the corridor.

Diddy promptly bought the tape from the hotel for $50,000 but seven years later the video was nevertheless disclosed. On the other hand the disclosure could do no legal harm to Diddy due to the statute of limitations for assaults, but at least it fully corroborated Cassie Ventura’s words.

The events reached their peak in March this year when Sean Diddy Combs’s two mansions were raided by the Federal Homeland security forces to investigate the allegations of sex trafficking, sexual assault, and distribution of illegal narcotics and firearms. Three months have already passed since then but no one is saying a word about the investigation and the media has since been characteristically hush-hush.

But how is all of that connected with Michael Jackson’s death?

To answer the question we need to address the February 2024 lawsuit filed by producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones, who worked on Diddy’s latest album (already nominated for a Grammy) and lived and travelled with him for more than a year, between September 2022 and November 2023.

Producer Roger ‘Lil Rod’ Jones filed a lawsuit against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs in February 2024

His lawsuit is 73 pages long and besides describing his own sexual harassment on the part of Sean Combs and his guests, the producer claims that he witnessed numerous illegal activities in Combs’s houses and recording studio. And since he was also a kind of Combs’s videographer he says that he also “secured HUNDREDS of hours of footage and audio recordings of Mr. Combs, his staff, and his guests engaging in serious illegal activity.”

Among the famous athletes, politicians, actors and musicians who regularly attended Diddy’s wild parties, Jones drops the names of Jennifer Lopez (Diddy’s ex girlfriend who at some moment allegedly helped him with a gun), actor Cuba Gooding Jr. (the one who sexually harassed him), and the former Motown Records CEO Ethiopia Habtemariam and Sir Lucian Grainge, Chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group (whom the lawsuit named as co-defendants).

To look at a bigger picture here is a short note on the Universal Music Group mentioned in the lawsuit:

Universal Music Group is the biggest music label in the world as it covers 35,1% of the music industry (Sony is second with its 22, 8% and Warner is third with 21,1%). Billboard magazine named its CEO Lucian Grainge the most powerful person in the music business.

UMG and its catalog division as well as Interscope-Geffen-A&M as one of its branches, and Lucian Grainge himself are all based in the company’s offices in Santa Monica in Los Angeles county.

So Jones’s lawsuit alleges that Sir Lucian Grainge, the CEO of Universal Music Group was a regular participant in the events hosted by Diddy, and even claims that he and Diddy “spent hours in the bedroom” together.

However in May this year Jones officially dropped Grainge’s name from his complaint and removed him as a defendant. I wonder who else will be dropped there and what will come of this venture at all – even despite the overwhelming evidence against Diddy pouring at him from every direction.

CHALICE RECORDING STUDIOS SHOOTING

To name only one of Sean ‘Diddy’ Comb’s numerous misdeeds let me cite Jones’s description of the shooting at Chalice Recording Studio (CRS) that took place in 2022. The complaint says:

“On or about September 12, 2022, Mr. Combs held a writers and producers camp at Chalice Recording Studio at 845 Highland Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90038.  Present at this camp were Mr. Combs, his son Justin Combs, and Justin’s friend named G. 

Mr. G is a 30-year-old tall African American male.

One evening during this camp, Mr. Combs, J. Combs, and G were in a heated conversation. That conversation was moved out of the studio and into a restroom adjacent to where Mr. Jones was sitting. Mr. Jones was approximately 2 feet away from the bathroom when gunshots rang out. Mr. Jones recalls hearing multiple gunshots.  Mr. Jones feared that he would be shot next [ ] through the door due to how close he was.

After the shooting ended, a crowd gathered around the restroom. When the door finally opened, Mr. Combs and J. Combs exited.  G was lying on the restroom floor in a fetal position, holding his stomach and bleeding out of his leg/hip area.  Mr. Jones asked the crowd to call the ambulance. [He] lifted G and brought him to the ambulance at the studio’s front. At this time, Mr. Combs and Justin disappeared to another part of the studio.

Mr. Combs gave strict instructions to inform the police that he had nothing to do with the shooting. He also forced Mr. Jones to lie to the police by telling them that G was shot standing outside the studio by a drive-by assailant.

Mr. Jones has several corroborating witnesses who spoke with this writer anonymously due to fear of retaliation from Mr. Combs. They have agreed to speak publicly when subpoenaed. Mr. Jones has the clothing he wore that day and believes it may still have the stains and DNA of G’s blood.”

Aftermath of the Shooting in 2022

The official  version of the events implies that the injured man entered the studio bathroom after he had been shot outside the studio (see here for details). But the Chalice Studio claimed that the shooting took place half a block away from them, “was a result of a robbery” and this makes you doubt that the injured man could walk half a block in order to get into the studio bathroom.

We also learn that this was not the first time Diddy used a gun. In 1999 he was in the midst of another scandal when three people were injured in a New York night club.

In his lawsuit Jones claims that Diddy admitted to be responsible for that shooting and even bragged about getting away with shooting people:

“On another occasion, while standing in Mr. Combs’ bedroom, Mr. Jones was forced to watch as Mr. Combs displayed his guns and bragged about getting away with shooting people.

Mr. Combs shared that he was responsible for the shooting in the nightclub in New York City with rapper Shyne.

He shared that Mr. Combs’ girlfriend at the time, Jennifer Lopez, aka, J-Lo carried the gun into the club for him and passed him the gun after he got into an altercation with another individual.”

The media reported:

“Diddy left the scene with Lopez and law enforcement officials discovered a concealed weapon in their vehicle after tracking them down. He was arrested for gun possession and the charges against Lopez were eventually dropped. In 2001, Diddy was acquitted of all charges. Shyne was convicted of assault, and sentenced to 10 years in prison”

Now Shyne claims that “everyone knew all along” that he was the fall guy. Rumor has it that Diddy paid him a million dollars for the cover up.

One of the three victims in the 1999 incident, Natania Reuben also claimed that it was Diddy who shot her in the face at the club that night and wants the case reopened. “I literally watched them pull out the guns. I had a clear point of view. I mean, for God’s sake, I got shot in my nose. I was facing them directly. I watched everything occur and have described it, vehemently to all parties involved,” Reuben said. “I have nine bullet fragments remaining in my face.”

You will say that the above mess doesn’t have anything to do with Michael Jackson, but if you have a little patience the story will get closer to answering the question how the above episodes may be relevant to Michael Jackson’s death.

The thing is that at least the 2022 shooting involving Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs and Michael Jackson’s passing in 2009 revolve around one and the same person who is a common denominator between the two events.

This person was around Michael Jackson at the time of his death and the same person also worked for Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs for the last few years, and the current modus operandi of this man described in Roger Jones’s lawsuit may throw some light on his probable goals, intentions and deeds when he was around Jackson in 2009.

THE LIAISON PERSON WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT

According to Jones’s lawsuit the entertainment industry mogul and billionaire Sean “Diddy” Combs consistently made it clear that he had immense power not only in the music industry but with law enforcement too.

Diddy’s liaison person with the police across the country was his then head of security.  Jones regarded this man as a sort of a clean-up guy who had the power to “make people and problems disappear” according to his lawsuit.

According to Jones’s lawsuit Diddy’s head of security was able to “make people and problems disappear”

Diddy instructed his staff to contact this person in case they were ever pulled over by the police in California and Miami.

These two locations are important because it means that Diddy’s head of security operated not only in California but in Florida too, which makes him look like an officer of federal stature who had enough power to settle problems with law enforcement across the states, in places located on both Eastern and Western coasts of the US.

According to Jones the shooting problem at the Chalice Recording Studio in 2022 had no legal consequences for Diddy as the matter was settled by his head of security through his close connections with LAPD (the Los Angeles police department).

Jones claims that LAPD went inside the studio, witnessed the blood in the restroom and spent hours there, however there were no arrests as they went with the bogus claim that the shooting of Mr. G occurred outside of the studio.

Jones is convinced that the subsequent silence of LAPD is due to the pressure exerted on the investigation by Diddy’s powerful head of security, whose name is Faheem Muhammad.

But back in 2009 the same Faheem Muhammad was also the head of security for Michael Jackson. The man was part of the new team of bodyguards employed by Michael’s then manager Tohme Tohme or AEG Live.

Well, sometimes coincidences do happen and don’t matter much. However the news of Faheem Muhammad’s close connections with law enforcement, the power he enjoyed in various locations across the country, and his very specific skill at “making people and problems disappear” when he was around Diddy, demand that we look at this person a little closer.

FAHEEM MUHAMMAD’S TESTIMONY AT CONRAD MURAY’S TRIAL

During Conrad Murray’s trial in 2011 the testimony of a 21-year old quiet guy named Faheem Muhammad didn’t look that important and most of us went by what the media said about him.

It said that in 2009 Faheem Muhammad worked for Michael Jackson and was head of his security team. On June 25  he was on his way to the bank when Michael Jackson’s personal assistant, Michael Amir Williams called him from his home. Williams had just been told by Conrad Murray that Michael Jackson “had a bad reaction” and urged the head of security to immediately return to the Carolwood house, go upstairs and see what was going on there. Muhammad went back, saw Michael Jackson dead, took Michael’s crying children downstairs to their nanny, witnessed the arrival of paramedics and that was it.

However now that we know more about Faheem Muhammad we need to inspect the remaining scraps of his testimony with a magnifying glass and examine each of his words there.

And the first thing that attracts our attention is that he says that he worked for Michael Jackson “for around 10 months”.

This means that his employment with MJ started sometime in August/September 2008 and must have taken place immediately after he graduated from Sacramento State University – yes, ladies and gentlemen, the quiet 21-year old bodyguard had a Bachelor’s science degree in Business Administration “with a concentration in Real Estate and Marketing”.

In 2008 Faheem Muhammad graduated from Sacramento State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Real Estate and Marketing. A natural business man, after college Faheem […]

Conversely, it is also a big surprise that someone would employ a recent university student and a totally inexperienced person as head of security for the most famous and most targeted pop star on the planet.

And then you will be even more surprised to learn that this university graduate and the future clean-up guy started his work for Michael Jackson as a driver, and only three months before Michael’s death was suddenly promoted to the post of his security chief, apparently skipping the stage of working for him as an ordinary bodyguard.

Now that we know that in his later years Faheem Muhammad was in close connection with the California law enforcement we can suppose that he was working in this field already in 2009 and his task was to closely monitor the person in his care.

And if you come to think about it, the position of a driver would be very convenient for this job as it allowed an almost constant surveillance over Michael Jackson – following all his movements, registering his visits to doctors and checking his demeanor after that, listening to all his calls to outsiders made from the car, and much more.

In other words, it seems that Faheem Muhammad was hired not so much to protect Michael Jackson but to spy on him and keep the AEG Live officials posted about Michael’s each move.

Another question worth asking here is where were Bill Whitfield and Javon Beard at the time? I mean the two bodyguards whom Michael Jackson really trusted and who stayed by his side for two and a half years since his arrival from Ireland in December 2006?

Bill Whitfield and Javon Beard

Well, both of them were in Las Vegas. Later they said that prior to Michael’s death they were communicating with him only by phone (here is their interview).

Our last conversations with Mr. Jackson were just brief calls about everyday, work-related matters. Nothing terribly significant was said, because nobody knew what was going to happen. Javon’s last conversation with Mr. Jackson was several weeks before he passed; Mr. Jackson called to check up on some things he had in storage in Las Vegas and asked how Javon’s family was doing, which he always did.

Bill’s last conversation with Mr. Jackson came a few days before his passing. He seemed to be in good spirits. We were in Vegas, working on plans for security at the London estate, and Mr. Jackson called because he said he wanted us in LA and wanted to make arrangements for us to get there. We didn’t get to LA in time. 

Indeed, around mid 2008 Michael had a new set of bodyguards and complained to his friends that he didn’t know them and even felt that he was held a kind of hostage there.

It’s clear that Michael Jackson didn’t feel safe and comfortable enough under the watch of Faheem Muhammad and his team as several days before his passing Michael started calling his old bodyguards to beg them to come and stay with him in Los Angeles – hence his calls to Bill Whitfield and Javon Beard.

Similarly Michael Jackson began calling his old acquaintances in London –  Mark Lester and Matt Fiddes (more about him later, and in the meantime let me just ask you not to believe everything the media lied about him). Michael’s request to Lester and Fiddes was the same – to come and stay by his side in LA.

Actually the choice of people Michael wanted beside himself in June 2009 suggests that he was afraid for his life and sought their physical protection from some unspecified dangers which he nevertheless sensed in the air.

Bill Whitfield and Javon Beard were the bodyguards he really trusted and Matt Fiddes was also not just an acquaintance of his, but also an expert in martial arts (he owns a network of martial arts schools in the UK).

Michael also asked Fiddes for the telephone number of his father Joe. He said he needed his father as “he is the only person who can sort this mess out”.  Matt Fiddes now recalls:

“He actually called to speak to his father Joe Jackson, and I know that it was quite serious because he wouldn’t really hunt out Joe.

It is quite well known they had a bit of an up and down relationship, but Joe was very good in the trial, a very strong man for Michael and Michael kind of forgave him. And he said “I need to speak to Joe. He is the only person who can sort this mess out”. “I said, what’s going on? And he said, you know I feel like I’m held hostage here. I don’t have a landline, they are asking me to rehearse stuff I’ve been doing for 35 years.”

“He didn’t sound right to me. I said, are you OK? Are you taking something? “He said, don’t worry, the doctor gave me something to help me rehearse today because if I don’t rehearse………” “It is called ephedrine which is not uncommon for dancers to take or performers or bodybuilders. It’s like a level up from caffeine but then the downside to that it’s very hard for them to sleep and the appetite goes, it’s like an appetite suppressant.”

“I gave him Joe’s number. Joe Jackson was in Vegas at the time, Michael was in California. He begged me come out to Los Angeles but I couldn’t just up and leave, I had kids. I regret it now of course.

But I don’t think I would have got there because he had his own company that looked after him – AEG. They protected him so he had his own bodyguards that he didn’t know, there was no direct line for us to call him anymore, we had to wait for him to call us.

And he tried to convince Mark, his best friend to come out but Mark was a single dad of four children, he couldn’t come up I believe too and sadly Michael died on Thursday. So we spoke on Tuesday and he died on Thursday».

As a side not let me remind everyone that no one on earth – AEG officials, Michael’s doctor, Kenny Ortega as the director of the show and certainly no bodyguards had the right to push Michael to rehearse.

Michael’s only obligation was to provide a first-class performance in concert, and as to how he got ready for it was none of anyone’s business. Even the notorious Randy Phillips of AEG had to later admit it when he was asked this question point blank.

The interests of MJ and AEG Live clashed here as Michael tried to save his energy for the show, while the AEG officials made him rehearse again and again – probably in order to obtain the valuable footage of his performances for further sale, or in order to use it as proof of Michael’s excellent health for the insurance company which demanded MJ’s medical records for the past 5 years and wanted to make sure that Jackson was fit to perform the required 50 concerts. Or for other reasons of their own.

The demand to rehearse on a daily basis and Michael’s intimidation by AEG’s Randy Phillips was so severe that he threatened to take Michael’s children away from him and leave him penniless and on “skid row”. No wonder Michael lost his sleep altogether and had to resort to propofol at night.

However let’s go back to the mysterious Faheem Muhammad and his testimony at Conrad Murray’s trial.

In part 1 of his testimony Faheem Muhammad said that he worked as Michael’s chief of security in April, May and June 2009, and before that he was Michael’s driver.

(April was actually the moment when preparations for the show began and Conrad Murray began to attend to Michael’s needs).

Prior to his promotion Faheem met Conrad Murray for the first time and since then both were obviously working in full alliance with each other. Faheem Muhammad observed Murray staying overnight in Michael’s house and could be perfectly aware of the nature of his services to Michael as he saw him bring oxygen tanks into the house and had them stored in the bodyguards’ trailer.

But at the trial he said that “the other bodyguards knew the routine better than himself as they were always there when he would do it”.

In short, Michael Jackson’s head of security was unaware that it was actually his obligation to be in the know of what the doctor was carrying into the house and what he was doing to his patient – after all Michael Jackson was the person supposed to be protected by his chief of security.

In Part 2 of his testimony Faheem Muhammad added some critical details to the whole story.

He said that after Michael Jackson’s rehearsal at the Staples Center on June 24th (“it was excellent, it was high-energy, he looked pretty good”) at about 1 am he drove Michael Jackson and his personal assistant Michael Amir Williams back to the house, after which they placed the gifts from Michael’s fans at the foot of the stairs, said each other good night and went home.

The next day, June 25th he arrived at Carolwood house just before the noon (at 11:45 am). It seems that no one verified the time of his arrival as there was no mention of an entry log at the gate or the like, so we have only his word for it.

After the routine checking on the guard at the gate and some basic questions to the security in the trailer Faheem Muhammad said that he left the property and went to the bank.

While on his drive there he received a call from Michael Amir Williams (at 12:16). Williams, who was still at home, told him that Michael Jackson “had a bad reaction” and urged him to rush to the house and go upstairs to see what’s going on.

As Faheem Muhammad was driving back he sent a voicemail to another bodyguard (Derek Cleveland) asking him to rush upstairs while he himself was still on the way. The voicemail was not answered.

It took Faheem Muhammad just 6 minutes to get back and at about 12:22 he was already on the property.

But at the entrance to the house he suddenly began doubting whether he was indeed allowed to go upstairs (he said it was outside his range of duties), so he dialed Michael Amir Williams again to double check whether he really wanted  him to enter. The call was made at 12:23 and after getting Amir’s approval he finally went upstairs. The paramedics arrived at 12:26,  just 3 minutes after that.

To tell you the truth a whole lot in Muhammad’s story doesn’t sound to me credible enough. Firstly, it is totally unnatural to see the Head of security being reluctant to enter the house of a person who is supposed to be under his protection.

And I highly doubt that he really required someone else’s approval in order to check up on this boss’s condition, especially in a situation when he had just been asked by Michael’s personal assistant to do so. And especially when Faheem Muhammad himself sent a voicemail to another bodyguard instructing him to enter the house and rush upstairs without delay.

Alberto Alvarez

In contrast to him Alberto Alvarez, the bodyguard who was on duty in the security trailer that day, didn’t wait for anyone’s permission but rushed inside as soon as he saw through the front entrance glass door the frantic Murray looking down over the railing and Michael’s daughter Paris and her nanny standing downstairs. Alvarez didn’t have a single doubt that MJ was in need of help and was actually the first to arrive at the scene.

So Faheem Muhammad seems to be either that specific kind of a security guy who didn’t have Michael’s welfare at heart and did only what his real bosses told him to do, OR he had some other reasons for being so lax in his behavior.

In this connection another factor seems a little “off” in Muhammad’s testimony at the trial.

The thing is that all throughout his testimony Muhammad looked somewhat detached and even indifferent when he described the events of that fateful day except for one moment when he suddenly became tense and even displayed vivid signs of confusion.

And it is all the more surprising considering that the question asked was the least likely to provoke any emotion at all – he was asked to describe his actions upon his arrival at the property and he said that they were no different from the usual routine.

Please compare the dispassionate way he spoke of Michael Jackson’s really excellent performance with the suppressed emotion on his face when he said that he “just asked the basic questions about the activities going on and just left after that”. Is his facial expression and his overall posture consistent with what he is saying here?

“[The performance] was excellent, it was high-energy, he looked pretty good”

“What did you do when you got there?” – “Same routine. I checked with the guards in the security trailer, just asked the basic questions about the activities going on and at that time I left”

Let me repeat that throughout the whole testimony this was the only moment when Faheem Muhammad seemed to be a little off his guard – in all other instances he showed no emotion at all and looked quite relaxed, even when he described seeing MJ dead, Prince standing there shocked and the little Paris crying on the floor.

The above suggests that there is more to the story that meets the eye. And if we look into the worst-case scenario and suppose (just suppose) some foul play here, we will need to re-examine the period when Faheem Muhammad was on the property that day.

THE TIMING

If Faheem Muhammad really arrived at MJ’s house not earlier than 11:45 as he says he did, he must have stayed there until 12:10, after which he left and was on the road for another 12 minutes, returning to the house at 12:22.

The above means that he had at least 25 minutes at his disposal while he was on the property and though this period was relatively short it still allowed plenty of time to do whatever he wanted to do to Michael Jackson.

Let me repeat that we are speaking only of a possibility of a crime and don’t assert that this is indeed what happened in Michael’s house on June 25th, 2009.

At first sight the idea of foul play on the part of this innocent-looking 21-year old may seem a little wild. However given our knowledge of Faheem Muhammad’s future as a clean-up man for a devil like Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs and knowing of his links with law enforcement around the country, it wouldn’t be too big a stretch to suppose that this man was hired for doing some undercover work regarding Jackson, and when the heat reached a certain stage due to some circumstances still unknown to us, he was instructed to enter Michael Jackson’s room and meddle with his IV unit there.

In fact, the only thing it would take to arrest MJ’s breathing then would be to turn the roller on his IV tubing and make the propofol drip faster. The excessive propofol would reach a certain threshold, at which point it would slow down the patient’s breathing and eventually stop it, and several minutes later the heart would also stop for lack of oxygen in the system.

This supposition is actually fully in line with the possible scenario of the events provided by the appellate court that looked into Conrad Murray’s appeal and denied it.

The appellate court summed up that scenario as follows:

• Under this scenario, appellant would start the infusion, by drip at about 9:00 a.m., and it would run until about 12:00 noon. Shafer explained that during the infusion, there would be an accumulation of Propofol  in the body.  Initially, the level of Propofol would rise quickly to a concentration that was high enough that the amount of drug that the liver was metabolizing would be about the same as the amount running into the patient. Thereafter the Propofol would begin to fill up in the organs. Between 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m., he estimated that Mr. Jackson’s breathing would have slowed and from 11:00 to 11:45 a.m., Mr. Jackson’s breathing would have slowed to the point of apnea. Around 11:30 or 11:45 a.m., the flow of oxygen into Mr. Jackson’s lungs would stop and about 10 to 15 minutes later, Mr. Jackson’s heart would stop [11:40 -12:00]. Mr. Jackson would have died with the infusion running. As a result, the level of Propofol in the blood would be high, because there would be no opportunity for the rapid metabolism of Propofol.

The paramedics conclusions were even more pessimistic than that – from the signs they observed on Michael’s body they presumed that he died earlier, in the period from 11:20 to 12:00. The appellate court ruling said about it:

• Paramedics believed that appellant’s statement that Mr. Jackson had recently experienced cardiac arrest was inconsistent with their observations of Mr. Jackson’s appearance and condition. They never saw any sign of life in Mr. Jackson and estimated the time of the arrest was anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour before they had arrived [at 12:26]. 

Whatever the case it is a striking coincidence that Michael Jackson stopped breathing around 11:30 -11:45 a.m. which is exactly the period when Faheem Muhammad was on the property that day.

Let me repeat that he stayed there at least until 12:10 pm, and this timing is actually provided by Faheem Muhammad himself.

We don’t know whether it was just a coincidence or real foul play on the part of this “head of security”, but it would be a gross oversight not to register the fact and note this coincidence as totally indisputable.

ANOTHER QUESTION

Now, if we suppose – just suppose – that Faheem Muhammad adjusted the propofol roller so that it began dripping much faster, the next question is whether it was possible for him to enter Michael’s bedroom unnoticed.

The answer to that question is an absolute yes. Right at that time Conrad Murray left his patient for the restroom adjoining the bedroom and was absent from Michael’s bed for more than 40 minutes.

All this time he spoke on the phone almost non-stop.  Besides making a personal call to his girlfriend, the friend of his daughter and a call to another doctor, he also talked to his assistant and his clinic about a patient abandoned by him after he was hired by AEG to look after Jackson.

The patient (Robert Russell) was recuperating after the heart surgery done by Murray and threatened him with a lawsuit, so Murray’s conversation on how to settle the problem lasted for a full half hour (11:18 – 11:49 am) and was followed by him sending a soothing voicemail to the patient at 11:49-11:51 am.

Prior to that, at 11:17 am Murray also sent a message to an agent for the Lloyds insurance company in London and informed him that his conversation with Michael Jackson that night was no success – Michael flatly refused to submit his medical records to them as he was sure that the insurance policy had already been obtained.

This was really the case, however the policy covered only the first 10 concerts and when the number of shows increased to 50 the insurance demanded a new medical examination and Michael’s earlier medical records, otherwise their policy for $17,5 million would be rescinded.

To explain the situation Conrad Murray sent the following message to the insurance:

Date: Thu, 25 June 2009 11:17

Dear Bob

I’m in receipt of your email. I spoke with Mr. Jackson and requested his authorization for release of his medical records in order to assist you to procure a cancellation insurance policy for his show, however, authorization was denied. I therefore suggest that someone from AEG should consult kindly with Mr. Jackson as to it’s relevance for he is of the opinion that such a policy is already secured in the US.

As far as the statements of his health published by the press let me say they’re all fallacious to the best of my knowledge.

Sincerely Conrad Murray

Sent from my iPhone

 And Murray’s last call came at 11:51 am. The call was personal and made to a girl named Sade Anding. Their conversation stopped at about 12:01 pm when she realized that Murray wasn’t responding and that his telephone must have been somewhere in his pocket. She repeatedly said “hello” and waited for 3 or 4 minutes after that, overhearing some mumbling voices which she didn’t recognize.

The mumbling voice could belong to Conrad Murray himself who by all accounts was in a state of panic after finding Michael Jackson dead, so it could be his own exclamations, cursing, praying and mumbling to himself while he was clumsily trying to bring Michael back to life by giving him a CPR on the soft surface of his bed.

I truly doubt that there was someone else in the room at that moment. Firstly, by then all the dirty job had already been done and Michael was dead for at least 20 minutes, and secondly, it wasn’t in Murray’s interests to cover up for someone else who was not supposed to be there at that moment.

To sum up, we see that Conrad Murray was busy communicating with various people from around 11:17 am when he sent a message to the insurance company to about 12:01 pm when he discontinued his conversation with a girlfriend.

And this 45-minutes period provided plenty of time for anyone to enter the bedroom unnoticed by Murray and meddle with the IV equipment there allowing the propofol to freely stream into MJ’s veins and bring about a quick arrest of his breathing.

As to why the intruder didn’t stumble into Conrad Murray on his way, the layout of the second floor in the Carolwood house makes it clear that the bathroom to which Murray departed was actually opposite the entrance to the bedroom, so speaking purely theoretically the clean-up guy could enter the room on its one end while Murray was on its opposite end and behind the doors too.

Below you will find the layout of the second floor of the Carolwood mansion and some photos, showing how short the route from the entrance to the bedroom was. Anyone with a key to the front door could easily make it and the longest the whole operation would take would be no more than a couple of minutes.

Carolwood house, 2nd floor. The route to Michael Jackson’s bedroom

Inside entryway. The staircase is on the left

The top of the stairs and the bedroom

The bathroom at the far end of the bedroom

The above supposition is pure theory of course, however its timing is proof enough that the “clean-up” operation was physically possible, and by a chance occurrence or not, it fully coincided with the time frame when Faheem Muhammad was on the property that day.

And when viewed from this angle his prompt departure “for the bank” immediately thereafter, as well as his reluctance to go back into the house acquire a certain meaning of their own.

“A FED?”

Judging by Faheem Muhammad’s connections with the police across the country and given his uncanny ability to settle problems and “make people and problems disappear” as producer Jones stated in his lawsuit, some commentators on Diddy’s story think that Faheem Muhammad may be actually a “Fed” (federal agent) working for the government.

And their logic suggests that since Diddy could get away with anything he did and for 30 years too, the billionaire rapper is also “a Fed” or at the very least is their informant.

In fact, Diddy’s opponent Kanye West always said that he was, revealing that celebrities make deals with law enforcement that would allow them to stay out of jail if they blackmailed others around them. Others suppose that Diddy was on a mission to collect dirt on various personalities which could be used for their further blackmail and other manipulation, and that “the federal agencies shielded him, resulting in his ongoing bout of freedom despite such heavy accusations riding on his back”.

These suppositions have some ground to stand on as they very well explain the reason why each of the rooms in Diddy’s mansion was tapped and equipped with hidden cameras – similar to the activities carried out by Jeffrey Epstein within his own sex trafficking ring.

Producer Roger Jones makes it clear that Diddy openly instructed him to record his various guests as his “videographer”. In February this year Jones stated that he had hundreds of hours of the respective footage, however just a month later the federal Homeland security forces raided Diddy’s two mansions, and the footage that was formerly in Jones’s possession can very well be in the hands of law enforcement now.

Since then virtually nothing has been heard about it, and we can only hope that this evidence doesn’t disappear similar to the evidence that disappeared in Jeffrey Epstein’s case. Up till now no one knows where Epstein’s footage is and who were the real clients of his sex trafficking scheme involving underage girls.

Frankly, it won’t surprise me very much if a similar fate befalls the dirt collected by Diddy on his high-profile visitors too.

However our goal is not to disclose the sins of these despicable people but focus on the role played (or not played) by Faheem Muhammad in the sudden and untimely death of the 50-year old Michael Jackson.

And now that we know that this clean-up guy was able to exert some pressure on law enforcement across the country and could operate at least in two states – California and Florida, we have every reason to believe that he enjoyed the power a level higher than the local police. And if he is really a “Fed”, this might explain the sudden twist in his early career when the fresh university graduate specializing in business administration took the job of a driver for Michael Jackson and in April 2009 was suddenly promoted to the post of his head of security while having no qualification for the job whatsoever.

Why a possible “Fed” would be employed to keep a watch over Michael Jackson in the last 10 months of his life is another question which still requires to be looked into.

But the presence of a certain “clean-up” man on the property exactly at the moment when Michael Jackson stopped breathing, in combination with the circumstances which made his meddling with MJ’s health theoretically possible and the seeming confusion of this man over a simple question about his actions that day – all of it leaves us with a disquieting feeling that some foul play may have indeed taken place there.

SUPPLEMENT

Below is information about Faheem Muhammad’s current activity taken from the official site of his OASIS Investment Group. Some of the details (or lack of them) may catch your attention and add a few more insights to the above story.

Faheem Muhammad

Co-Founder | CIO

Since Co-Founding OASIS Faheem has served as the companies CIO leading all new real estate acquisitions, capital investment and management.

  In 2008 Faheem Muhammad graduated from Sacramento State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Real Estate and Marketing. A natural business man, after college Faheem founded Elite Transportation and Security Services, LLC. Faheem grew his security company into a multi­-million dollar business. He continues to oversee the company which currently has several exclusive security contracts with “A-Lists Clients” such as for Mr. Sean Combs.

In 2019 Faheem co-founded OASIS with Michael Amir, his business partner for many years. Under Faheem’s business leadership, they turned a $40,000 investment into a $10,000,000 Real Estate Portfolio. Under Faheem’s business leadership, OASIS has been able to strategically acquire, renovate, and stabilize their assets, allowing OASIS to consistently grow year over year while maintaining profitability.

When Brett Barnes, a child friend of Michael Jackson, gave his first interview (in 2022) and was asked “How do you think Michael Jackson should be remembered?” he expressed one of the simplest but most insightful thoughts I ever heard about MJ.

Brett sighed as if it was an impossible task to answer the question, but then pointed to Michael Jackson’s feature which really made him very much different from many others – those in the entertainment business for sure, but also millions of regular folk like all of us are.

Brett certainly spoke about Michael’s talent and hard work, his perfectionism and breathtaking shows but he also stressed that Michael Jackson was not just the greatest entertainer in the world – his most striking feature was that all his endeavors were not for him but for others.

This was the essential feature that went with Michael throughout his life.

Brett remembers that Michael’s every effort, his every move and intention was not for him, but for everyone else. And not only for his fans, whom he massively appreciated, but for all others – young and old, women and men, just everybody.

Why so?

Just because he wanted to put a little magic into the lives of other people.

See what Brett said:

Charles Thomson:   There’s one final question that the MJ cast asks to all special episode guests. And that question is how do you think Michael Jackson should be remembered?

Brett Barnes:  Yeah. Wow. (sighs) That’s a really good question because he, well again, in my opinion, he was the greatest entertainer, definitely within my lifetime… The natural ability, but the hard work as well, that he put into everything. And every aspect of it, like his whole thing about his music, his shows, every, every artistic endeavor that poured out from him was not for him.

And it was essentially the same thing going throughout his life. It was not for him. Nothing ever was for him.

It was for everybody else, like to take a family from the outer suburbs of Melbourne Australia around the world and show them experiences that no one in their lifetime experiences.

Not for his…. it was all for us to experience and to, to be so selfless about that. He was not just the greatest entertainer in the world. And he didn’t just put on these extravagant shows. And he wasn’t just a perfectionist. He wasn’t just that.  He did that for everybody else, for everyone. And it’s not just his fans that he did it for, which he was massively appreciated for.

But it’s just for everybody – young, old, man, woman, everybody. To just put a little bit of magic in their lives. So he was a great humanitarian.

He was a funny, funny, funny person, hilarious, it was so good to hear him laugh. We would make him laugh real hard.  He was … he really was my brother and yeah, I have nothing but praises for the man.

Brett had every reason to speak that way about Michael. He was friends with MJ since age 10 and until Michael’s final day. Brett never saw a sign of any wrongdoing towards himself (or anyone else known to him), they never grew distant and they remained close friends till the very end.

There was even a time when Brett’s family went on and off on a tour with Michael, which all in all amounted to a whole year – the fact that was spun by the media beyond recognition. They interpreted the story their own way and labeled Brett “the boy who slept with MJ for 365 days”.

But staying in Michael’s room and even occasional sleeping in his bed was not an issue for the family – sometimes they all did, sometimes only Brett did and sometimes all of them slept in their own lodgings. All of it depended on the circumstances, on Michael’s hectic schedule, on where the night would catch them and certainly on Michael’s magnetism.

The majority fails to realize that Michael Jackson was such an irresistible magnet for all people that everyone, just everyone wanted to stay by his side 24/7.

Brett Barnes said about it:

“He was such a magnet for all people – like everyone just wanted to be around him all the time because that’s just the type of person he was. Just everybody wanted to be around him 24/7. So it just would have evolved from that.

….it’s that magnetic effect that I was talking about before, how everyone wanted to be around him 24/7. It’s just something that he gives off, that you can’t be anything but happy after being around him.

I’ve never seen the problem with the sleeping arrangements because it was just sleeping arrangements. It was just to sleep. There was nothing more than that. And so why so much focus on it?  I don’t see why, if you’re going with the understanding that nothing ever happened, why can’t it be understood that it was just nothing but sleep.

It’s never been the focus of my memories because it’s been such an insignificant part of it. Like who cares about sleeping? Do you remember all the times that you were sleeping? Do you remember your sleepy situations all those times? No, because it’s not the focus of what you would think of, what the memories you would want to keep.

It was so insignificant, so insignificant! The friendship was so much, so much more than that, than sleeping arrangements!

I was never locked away, there was never anything. I spent time with Jordy, spent time (only a little bit of time) with Wade. There’ve been his cousins who have been around, other friends have been around, there’s always been people around. …Uh, my sister was there.

And it it’s not that it “stopped”. And to “share” a bed is a little bit weird to say as well. It’s not that.  Just as I said, it’s not something that I concentrate on because it was just sleep. You just go to sleep and that’s it.  It just wouldn’t happen, so that it is something that is no clear memory for me as to where it “stopped”. If I’m tired and I need to sleep, I’m sleeping, and if there’s a bed there I’m sleeping in it.

And it really actually didn’t “stop”. From 19 to 23 I didn’t go over there that much, between those time frames.

 It just didn’t happen. 

So the sleeping arrangements during those travels were an issue only for the wicked tongues, while what was really significant for Brett and what he finds amazing even to this day, is that Michael took their family of four from the outer suburbs of Melbourne in Australia and showed them the world, giving them the experience they wouldn’t have had in a lifetime.

And he did it absolutely selflessly.

Brett says that Michael didn’t need it for himself. This was done solely for them, to let a regular family like theirs see the wonders of Disneyland, Las Vegas and Michael’s Neverland, and travel around the world too, visiting its greatest museums and enjoying the marvels of the Planet.

Probably unaware of other MJ’s humanitarian efforts, it is for this reason that Brett calls Michael a great humanitarian, and I agree – true humanity of a person expresses itself by the selfless giving oneself away to others without asking anything in return.

This was indeed Michael Jackson’s amazing feature, rarely found among ordinary people, not to mention celebrities (will Taylor Swift do anything like that in order to bring some magic into other people’s lives?)

Skeptics will repeat the usual mantra that out of the four of them MJ “was interested only in the boy”, however boys are found in abundance just round the corner and needn’t be borrowed from Australia.  And secondly, Brett made it absolutely clear that on no occasion Michael gave him even a hint of any impropriety.

Brett Barnes:

“There was never anything that I saw that would give me cause to worry”.

And this was done not only for the Barnes but for many other families as well. However, “no good deed ever goes unpunished” as the saying goes, so few could take Michael’s generosity and kindness for what they really were – his selflessness and desire to bring joy and magic into other people’s lives.

Some harbored suspicions that if a celebrity showered them with presents and other signs of attention, it meant that he wanted something in return (remember Evan Chandler’s meaningful wink to Carrie Fisher about his “very handsome” son being friends with MJ).

Others apparently imagined that since Michael kept their company there must be something special to him about their personas, and felt that they were entitled to his attention, care and lifelong support.

This is probably how a myth about Michael’s “special” friends came into being – those leeches could indeed take it into their heads that they or their sons were special to MJ, mistaking his kindness and love for all children for an offer to get a special (and lucrative) place of honor beside his throne.

To be fair to most of Michael’s child and adult friends, out of the hundreds and even thousands of people who came into Michael’s orbit only several proved themselves the scumbags they really are – the Chandlers, the Arvizos, and the Robsons& Safechucks co-conspirators of course.

However, few as they are, the media shamelessly declares them as the usual “pattern” of Michael Jackson’s relationship with children, while all those who never saw a sign of any wrongdoing on his part are brushed aside as liars or someone “in denial”.

This way the smear, ridicule and harassment ruined not only Michael Jackson’s life but continues to hurt numerous other people who were by his side, because they have to be constantly on the defensive and have to clear themselves non-stop of the egregious insinuations in the face of the cheering crowd.

The myth promoted by the two liars and the servile media is that they were “abused” (no evidence, they just say so) even despite the many years of their testifying to the opposite, so “if it happened to them, it happened to others too”.

This way they take it upon themselves to make bold conclusions about others basing them on their shaky claims though their own stories still remain unproven. This type of reasoning is a sort of a sand castle rising from a mirage in the desert which permeates the air with its spectacular but imagined illusions.

But if we go back to reality we will have to conclude exactly the opposite – if it didn’t happen to hundreds of Michael Jackson’s friends, there is every reason to believe that it couldn’t happen to these two guys either, and they are simply lying.

This conclusion is actually so obvious that both Brett Barnes and Macaulay Culkin spontaneously came to it, independently of each other and being many years and distances apart. This is what they said:

Brett Barnes in 2022:

It’s the exact opposite. It’s the same thing but from a different perspective on my side of things.  It never happened to me, so it couldn’t have happened to anyone else.  That’s my viewpoint, yes. I could never see him doing anything bad to another human being, let alone a child.

Macaulay Culkin in 2006:

My opinion is, if he didn’t do anything to me, I don’t think he would have done anything to anyone else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX1pfHiUMNQ

But despite the absurdity of it all, the authors of “Leaving Neverland” shamelessly dragged the name and photos of Brett Barnes into their horror movie and didn’t withdraw their insinuations about him even after his official complaint. The HBO producers flagrantly ignored it and didn’t even apologize for their inappropriate and illegitimate use of Brett’s name and likeness there.

I wonder why, following the latest fashion for protecting anyone whose vulnerable feelings may be accidentally hurt, this flagrant violation of privacy isn’t regarded as “hate speech” and “breaking the community standards”? Even though this malicious slander is doing real harm to its victims and turns their lives into a nightmare?

Where are all those moderators of social platforms and so-called fact-checkers who fuss about, say, the tender feelings of a female boxer with XY chromosomes, but totally neglect the right of people like Brett to be protected from public intimidation by a false movie shown around the world with the greatest of fanfares?

HYPOCRISY is the right word for what’s taking place here.

And also the DOUBLE STANDARDS of those who declare themselves to be the huge champions of ethical behavior but don’t practice it themselves.

And this takes us to the final excerpt from Brett Barnes’s interview where he got quite emotional when describing the pain he and his family have to go through as a result of these relentless lies and the resulting bullying.

BRETT BARNES’S INTERVIEW, part 3:

Charles Thomson: One of the consequences of “Leaving Neverland” and the insinuations that it made is that you are subjected on basically a daily basis to quite intense and abusive trolling, often by a net of small and very devoted group of trolls who just respond under a new name every now and then.

The allegation which is leveled at you publicly on social media every day pretty much, or certainly every week, and nearly every day is that you must have been abused and you are lying about that. And that’s deplorable because you are undermining people like Wade and James. So would you agree that if you had been ….

Brett Barnes: (cuts in) Absolutely. Let me just say, if something had happened to me but I’m keeping quiet about it in order to protect some dead person, and also at the detriment of other people’s health and well-being, and let it go on and happen to someone else as well, what type of monster would I be? What type of monster would I be?

CT:  That was my next question. So you would agree that if something had happened to you and you were lying about it and thus undermining genuine victims, that would, that would be deplorable behavior.

BB:  Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely!

CT:   And is that what you’re doing?

BB:  Of course not.

CT: I’m going to quote again, briefly from this letter that your lawyer, Allen Grodsky wrote to HBO, because it’s worth mentioning that whilst nobody who worked on “Leaving Neverland” bothered to give you any sort of right of reply, they did put for a couple of seconds at the very end of the show some text that said that you deny any inappropriate behavior.  So the quote from your letter, from the lawyer’s letter is:

“The film for seconds displays a Chyron saying that Mr. Barnes denies that Mr. Jackson did anything inappropriate. No Chyron is going to cure such a despicable allegation. The film leaves viewers with the false impression that Mr. Barnes was in fact molested by Mr. Jackson. And that Mr. Barnes is simply in denial.”

Are you in denial?

BB:  Absolutely not.

CT:   When this letter was sent to HBO, did you ever get a reply?

BB: (sighs) We did, but it was just saying that no, we’re not going to do it. We don’t see why we should, there’s no reason for us, we don’t believe that we should have to take it out. That’s essentially what the reply was.

CT: So you were saying, essentially, because you’d been given no right of reply, you didn’t want your image in it and you didn’t want the allegations about you?

BB:  My personal viewpoint on it is that these people were throwing me into this, they were using my name, they were using my likeness. And as I said before, they were showing in these pictures  – there was a bunch of pictures there – and they blurred out every single everybody else except they left mine there. My name and likeness shouldn’t, did not need to be [used].

It would not have detracted from the movie, it wouldn’t have changed anything that was happening from the movie. It didn’t add anything to the movie that would be anything special. It only added as a way to help further sell the story that they’re selling. But for them to take it out, it wouldn’t have diminished that fact. It wouldn’t have been a detriment to the movie if they had removed my likeness.  

So I don’t understand why someone wouldn’t say, “You know what? Maybe we’ve gone a little bit too far”. We don’t need to have the story said about a boy being “replaced”. There was no need to have my face or my name being mentioned in it, it would not have detracted at all.

They’re forgetting that these are real people. These are real people that are being talked about. This isn’t just some movie that you’re watching. These are real people that you’re talking about and throwing into this with no response.

CT:   Well, not only are you real people, but according to their own TV show, you are a victim. That’s essentially what they’re saying. So that raises a whole new set of ethical questions about the idea of naming you and showing your image and stuff.  So it’s almost like they want to have their cake and eat it. They want to present you as a victim, but treat you as if you are some sort of criminal

BB: That’s exactly how I feel.

CT: And by the way, it’s worth mentioning again, that the consequence of this is that you have for the last three years been subjected on pretty much a daily basis to extremely abusive and defamatory trolling on the internet, people accusing you of being a pedophile enabler, of being a pedophile apologist, of being a pedophile sympathizer, of being a pedophile abettor. That’s published on the internet.

BB:  Mm-hmm.

ST:  Something else that you were very critical about in addition to the show itself was the way the media just picked up the show and ran with it. And didn’t really question or research or investigate it in any way. You tweeted on January the 30th, 2019:

“Not only do we have to deal with these lies, but we’ve also got to deal with people perpetuating these lies. The fact that they fail to do the small amount of research it takes to prove these are lies, by choice or not, makes it even worse.”

What has been your experience of that? You spoke earlier about the media showing up on your doorstep but what has been your experience beyond that of the media since “Leaving Neverland” was released?

BB:  What do you mean by that? Is it the media, is it my involvement with the media or is it what I’ve noticed the media’s been saying?

CT: What I mean is beyond them actually physically showing up on your doorstep, there is another sphere of media coverage, which is people that just write about you without showing up on your doorstep. You know, there were many, many, many thousands of articles written about “Leaving Neverland”.

BB:   Just rehashing from other articles.

CT: Yes. So how frequently would you say somebody writes an article about Michael Jackson that mentions you and actually gives you a right of reply?

BB:  None. No one ever has.

CT:  How often would you say somebody writes an article about Michael Jackson that mentions you and is inaccurate?

BB:  Almost all of them, I would say. I could comfortably say all of them.

CT: And how does that make you feel?

BB:  It angers me. Again, it’s real people. The consumers fail to realize is that we are real people that are affected by this.  Imagine if it was you, imagine if it was your brother, imagine if it was your father. Imagine if it was your cousin. Imagine if it was your friend going through all this.  These I have. I’ve got a sister. I’ve got parents, I’ve got friends, I’ve got cousins. It’s happening. What I’m saying – put yourself in every one of these people’s shoes. See what we have to deal with.

I’m a real person. This is my association with him. I guess there might be a failure on my part to shy away from the public eye and public scrutiny, that I don’t get to have my viewpoint, my perspective on things said. So that these are the only chances that you see of me, but it still shouldn’t be on me to have to correct these things. It should be on the person making these accusations to do their due diligence, to have something to back it up.

Like I said, the fans have been amazing to put together everything to counteract the movie, but also in anything that comes up in general, the amount of detail and investigation that they do is [amazing]. And they put the information on a silver platter – here, here, just please have a look at this.  This is all you need. Just have a look at this. Just have one look at an opposing view rather than seeing a movie and all the buzz around the movie.  And that’s what you’re taking as Gospel, without any due diligence.

That’s why I have a problem and that’s something I want to ask you, Charles, being a member of the journalistic field, like what has happened? Is it something that’s drastically changed? Where have we come into the age that you no longer have to have investigative journalists to do the research?

All you need to do is just one person needs to write an article about something that doesn’t even have to be true. And then everyone gets to cite that article and then spread it like gospel. Where is their [diligence]? Why are journalists so lazy nowadays that they aren’t doing any due diligence? Is it because they have to get articles out as quick as possible because the money needs to keep coming in? What has happened that this is life now?

CT:  Well, I think it is a broad theme that the media has actually lost a lot of resources. So the internet has essentially destroyed the business model for the media because people just get stuff for free on the internet instead of paying for it. And so journalists essentially are forced to do a lot more work than they would’ve been forced to do 30 years ago. It leaves them with almost no time to actually diligently research anything, because if they do their jobs properly, then they get told off for not producing enough stories.

But that being said, it has been the case ever, since at least the 1980s that the media industry has just catastrophically failed to do its job properly where Michael Jackson is concerned anyway.

BB:  And the problem with that is you are labeled as being a tinfoil-hat-wearing person to think that you believe in a conspiracy. When to me, at least, it’s blatantly obvious that it isn’t a conspiracy theory – that is actively happening.

 I’m not a nut job thinking that the world is just out to get this person – because they actively are. It is the fact that there’s a torrent of the negative information, like a tsunami of information, saying all the same thing. It’s just different headlines, different publications, but it’s all saying the exact same thing.

The consumers just have to go with that because it’s so much of a large voice repeating the same theme.

CT:  Well, the interesting thing about the Michael Jackson phenomenon, I think is that the media is not really in step with the consumers.

BB:  That’s the feeling I get too.

CT:  Yeah, it is almost like they’re working overtime to try and push this negative on the consumer, but the consumers are just not buying it. I remember I’ve told this story on the MJ cast before, watching the Twitter for “Leaving Neverland”. I didn’t watch “Leaving Neverland” as it went out. I watched it later, but I was watching the hashtag on Twitter when it was broadcast in the UK and was astounded by the volume of people who were posting messages about how they didn’t believe it.

And I’m not just talking about people with Michael Jackson as their Twitter picture. You know, I’m talking about general members of the public. One of them was Denise Fergus who is the mother of James Bulger, one of the most prominent child abuse campaigners in the UK. And she was tweeting about how it was a bunch of bull or she, you know, said words to that effect. I don’t think she said a bunch of bull. I think she said something like “I can’t believe people are buying this” or something like that.

As a side note on my part here is what Denise Fergus, a prominent campaigner against child abuse (who by the way, met Michael Jackson) wrote about the Leaving Neverland farce:

 “Just watched Michael Jackson Leaving Neverland. Can honestly say don’t believe a single word. Just look at the reactions of their faces, tells a different story to what they are accusing him of, so hope people don’t believe this crap.”

Charles Thomson: So actually it is almost like it is more agenda driven than consumer driven.

Brett Barnes:  Yeah.

CT:  Because there does seem to be a chasm between the media’s attitude on this issue and the public’s attitude.

BB:  Yeah. Yeah.

CT:  I mean, I could speculate all day as to what the driver is, but…

BB:  It feels like, it feels like that it’s an active machine specifically targeted against him.

CT:  I mean, you had an incident even just a couple of weeks ago, I think with TMZ, where they wrote a story and they published a picture of you and wrongly labeled it as Jordan Chandler or something, is that right?

BB:  Yep. That’s right.

CT:  And you had to message them over and over and over again to get it fixed.

BB:  I’m actually surprised they did it.

CT:  Yeah.

BB:  That’s another, well, that’s another thing to point out as well. That’s the type of journalistic integrity. So they’re just putting up a photo without even doing the due diligence to find out who is in this photo when it’s easily able to be found who is in this photo. So I can’t understand… There’s no accountability. These people are still making the mistakes, but yet they’re still free to go on. I know that in my work, if I was to make these types of mistakes, I wouldn’t be in the job long. But these aspects are forgotten about or looked over – just because of the sheer volume of articles that have to be put out?  Is this going back to the fact that journalists do need to just push out article after article after article?

CT:  Well, that certainly is a phenomenon in the media industry today. Certainly reporters, particularly on the digital desks at national newspapers are expected to churn out about 10 stories a day or something, which means they have about 40 minutes to work on a story. And if you are managing to fact check everything and contact everybody who needs a right of reply in 40 minutes, then you’re like, you know, you’re Superman basically. That it’s just not possible to do the job properly in the time that you’re given with the workload that you’re given now at national newspapers.

But I would add again the caveat that where Michael Jackson is concerned, they have never done the job properly.

BB:  Yes, I agree.

CT:  So, you know, it’s almost like … part of it is the defamation issue. So Michael is dead and they just go, oh, well he’s dead, so who cares? He can’t sue us, we can’t get in trouble. But there’s also just an antipathy, which I think is residual. So you have to remember that when Michael rose to superstardom the world was a very different place. And racism was very over still. I mean, we were only 20 years after segregation had ended and a lot of the people that were populating those newsrooms would’ve been there since before segregation had ended. And there were a lot of, a lot of attitudes in those newsrooms. There was a lot of racism, a lot of, um, homophobia because Michael did receive a lot of homophobic abuse, because he wore eyeliner or, you know, had his hair long or whatever.

BB:   Mm-hmm.

CT:  And I think that it’s a cultural thing. I had similar thing where I used to work for a newspaper, which had an extremely antagonistic relationship with a police force. And it all emanated from something that had happened about 20 years earlier. And there was nobody who worked in the press office of that police force, who had actually worked there at the time that this incident had happened. But it became a cultural thing where every time somebody joined that press office, they were told, “Don’t do any favors for that newspaper, obstruct them at every opportunity because we hate them”.

So it is almost like that there was a hatred of Michael Jackson that began from something which was very ugly. And it’s almost like it’s being perpetuated now by people that don’t really know where it even started. That’s my impression.

Anyway, I don’t want this to turn into me (Brett laughs) just, you know, postulating on the state of the media.

BB:  It’s insightful though. It’s insightful.

CT:  (laughs too) Well, I suppose I should ask you at this point, given what we’re talking about, I mean, we have necessarily spent a lot of this interview talking about persistent allegations that have been made about the nature of your relationship with Michael and it’s unfortunate that those allegations are made with sufficient frequency and force that it’s necessary to put so many things to you to see whether you would like to address them. But does the fact that there is this sort of air of negativity,  that these allegations hover in the air, does it actually taint in any way your memories of Michael?

BB:  No, not at all. I don’t let these stories change my viewpoint at all.

As I said, I can only comment on my experiences and so I project that onto the experiences of other people. So I can’t see it happening at any point across the board. I can’t look at my experiences in any negative light. Because I can’t believe that any, any negative thing happened in any, any aspect of my experience or anybody else’s experiences that were put in the same shoes, I guess, as I was.

CT:  And just going to ask you a couple more questions, then we’ll wrap up.

BB:  Yeah. Cool.

CT:  Given all that you’ve been accused of and are constantly accused of, I’m just going to turn back to your tweet from 2013.

“I wish people would realize in your last moments on this earth, all the money in the world will be of no comfort. My clear conscience will”.

Just for the record, you’ve not been paid for this interview? (laughs)

BB:  No.

CT:  Uh, can you confirm that?

BB:  Absolutely.

CT:  And as you reflect on all the answers you’ve given, is your conscience clear?

BB:  Absolutely. There’s nothing that I have lied about in this conversation. Everything that I’ve spoken about has been the truth. So my conscience is absolutely clear.

And having this chat with you, Charles, I’ve been really conflicted about doing it because on the one hand it’s something that I feel needs to be said – to help see a bigger picture of the man, of who he was, to see another inside of it, just not what you’ve seen or heard, especially the negative side of things.

But also on the other hand, he really was my best friend and I feel that he felt the same way about me. Not necessarily above everyone else, but the fact is that I was really, really close friends with him, so we had that trust. And so for me another reason why I haven’t spoken about it is because of that trust. On some aspect or on some level of it I feel like even having this chat with you is that I am betraying that trust a little bit.  So I’ve been real conflicted in giving this interview.

And like I said, as well, I believe that this platform is one that I can in turn trust. In no way, shape or form do I believe that you would highlight the positivity like if there was something that was bad, there is no doubt in my mind that you wouldn’t sweep it under the rug or do anything to do that.

So it’s a truthful platform, it’s one that’s not going to twist my words, that’s not going to put any spin on the conversation. Because there is no spin to be spun, I guess. So having this conversation with you, being truthful about it is definitely a very long-winded way of me saying my conscience is still clear enough.

CT:  I appreciate everything you just said there and that’s very kind of you, so thank you. And you know we’re pleased, were amazed, firstly shocked, but very pleased that you agreed to talk to us.

BB:  You got, you got on a really good day.

(the full interview is here)

AN ACTIVE MACHINE TARGETED AGAINST JACKSON

Well, Charles Thomson’s explanation why the media has been so vile towards MJ may be true to a certain extent, but it is still a far cry from the whole picture. It is Brett Barnes who is absolutely spot on when he says that it feels like an active machine at work there which is specifically targeted against Michael Jackson.

Brett Barnes hit the nail on the head here.

And it doesn’t only “feel like it”, but it is actually a proven fact now, which becomes more and more obvious with every new day.

The whole thing is indeed an active machine specifically targeted against Jackson. Initially targeted only against Jackson but eventually used against several other personalities too. Michael Jackson was just a sort of a testing ground for it.

And the beauty of it is that it is the machine itself which proved it to be not a theory but fact.

Firstly, the machine showed everyone that it is indeed a machine. It is not so open as in totalitarian states (of all people here I personally know what it’s like and can easily recognize the signs), but it is still a very powerful and well-run machine.

This machine is capable of crushing the bones of its victim and turning the overwhelming majority of people against an individual who is not to someone’s liking, who opposes the suggested way of thinking and the rules of behavior set for the “masses” by the masters of the show.

Anyone who doesn’t fit the required pattern and refuses to go along is regarded as an obstacle and at the very least should be turned into a laughing stock. And if this individual is a person of authority who still refuses to accept the rules of the game and even persists in his non-conformity, the future awaiting him is slander and harassment, character assassination, financial ruin and a fall into obscurity.

And it doesn’t always necessitate the physical elimination of the individual (though it is not ruled out either). The primary goal is to deny this person the ability to influence people’s minds and suggest another path for their evolution, which is different from the one that is chosen by them for the “masses”.

Chosen by whom?

By a think tank of people who are no longer content with their opulence and power, and who now want to play it really big and bend the world to fit a lifestyle of their choosing, their way of thinking and their preferences.

The big idea is that it is not them who should put up with the views and morals accepted by the society and worked out as a result of the 2 thousand years of civilization, but it is the civilization which should bend to their whims and put up with their personal vision of the future which is to guarantee the process operators the maximal amount of ease, comfort, profit and pleasure.

What a challenge indeed, and what a thrill for these masterminds behind this show!

On the outside the show must look extremely attractive as all of it is done “in the best public interests”, of course. The path to a new future should look like it is paved with noble goals, with freedom and equality for all people as well as protection and care for everything under the sun, and this way it is feeding on people’s goodwill and best intentions.

But what kind of a future do the show operators actually have in mind? We can’t know the end goal of the game but we can more or less foresee it by the core values they are fighting and the first fruits they have reaped.

I’m not going to specify but those who knew of Michael Jackson’s frame of mind will realize that it was totally incompatible with the current outline of this future. And vice versa, the current trends are totally incompatible with Michael Jackson’s rather old-fashioned views. Again, I won’t specify, but Michael’s deep faith in the Higher power and constant references to God, as well as his scream against abortions and the right of a father to have a child will be more than enough here.

Facing such a big influencer who was capable of leading the masses the unwanted way was scandalous for the new champions of progress, so no wonder they did their utmost to suppress the unexpected competitor by operating their bone-crashing machine in its full-blown mode.

When and how the machine started off against Jackson may be a subject for discussion but by early 1990s the establishment was already rolling over him like a bulldozer. It started with the media viciously labeling MJ “weird”, “bizarre” and “a freak” and this was said over innocent things like Michael having a monkey pet and some animals on his farm, or a photo of him in an oxygen chamber presented by him to the burn center where he had been previously treated for a burn.

Well, hyperbaric chambers are actually among the Hollywood skincare staples (see here), but the fuss had to be artificially created at least about something, so hence all the hype over virtually nothing.

It looks like at that stage the machine was testing its ability to force people to form opinions about Michael Jackson which they wouldn’t have come to on their own –  if they had not been guided and just left to themselves. Like making people think that an oxygen chamber for Michael Jackson is an abnormality, while it is perfectly OK if it is placed in a beauty parlor, a center for athletes’ recovery or even someone’s home.

A hyperbaric chamber for home use

This type of thinking is actually what Orwell’s “doublethink” is all about, when two opposing views are equally accepted and don’t seem to contradict each other. Like “it is generally okay to do this and that but Michael Jackson is a different matter”.

Or take Michael Jackson’s plastic surgery as another example. For Hollywood plastic surgery is actually a given. It is considered there perfectly normal and even desirable, however in MJ’s case it was an outrage, especially when it was exaggerated to the-unheard-of number of operations (they claimed that it was over 100).

In reality there were only three of them (or even two to be more precise), which were made of his free will as the first was for the broken nose and the rest was just the skin and cartilage reconstructive surgery due to the complications from his lupus. So the stories propagated by the media had nothing to do with reality, however the circus they created around this subject was unforgettable.

The ridicule and harassment were a coordinated effort, simultaneously orchestrated all around the world, and it proved to be very successful. As a result everyone mindlessly repeated the “freak” word without even realizing why they were saying it. People repeated it just because everyone said it,  so it wasn’t even their own opinion. It sprang from their simple desire to conform with the general trend, coupled with a total lack of interest whether the claims were true or not.

Learning the truth is such a headache, so why bother at all if you are provided with a ready-made answer known to everybody?

Michael’s vitiligo and changing looks were certainly a gift from heaven hell for the masters of the show. No single day passed without someone in the media sneering at Michael for “turning from a black man into a white woman”. These days such a mockery would amount to a double criminal felony but Michael Jackson had to endure it on a daily basis – just because the public was trained to think that it was good manners to deride him as part of their small talk at a dinner table.

Why do I use the word “trained”?

Because even if an utterly absurd or horrid idea/lie is copy pasted and repeated 10,000 times, it is the same as training the famous Pavlov’s dogs who began to give a saliva response to a certain sound and after a number of repetitions this sound became firmly associated by the dogs with food.

In natural circumstances the saliva responds to food itself, but in conditioned behavior and after all that training the saliva is triggered off merely by the sound embodying food.

So the sound means food, freak means Michael Jackson, bizarre means Michael Jackson, boys means Michael Jackson, a pedophile means ….. And the more often it is repeated the firmer the association between the two is.

The good news here is that if the signal/response pair is not peddled long enough it will be eventually lost, in the same way your dog forgets the command if you don’t practice it for some time. This is why the brainwashing machine has to regularly refresh its old dirt about Michael, and rehash those stories again and again in order to keep up the desired effect.

And you were wondering why they cannot leave Michael Jackson alone? They simply cannot! If they do, the smoke and mirrors around Jackson may dissolve and who knows how long it will take them to brainwash the public and bend it to their will again?

This is called conditioning. As a result of it the people who are the subject of the experiment start behaving like those dogs because they are developing a reflex – an instantaneous response to a certain stimulus which is exactly the reaction required of them by those who are set to vilify Jackson and get people alienated from him.

Actually, the effect of such conditioning is what all propaganda and brainwashing are based on. Most of it is just a stimulus and response

True facts don’t matter in this system as after the numerous repetitions the public response is already preconditioned and is almost involuntary. People were just trained that way in order to give the needed response, and it will require a good deal of individual effort and a huge desire to learn the truth to be able to counteract the system.

You don’t want to know the truth and are happy with catching the flashy headlines only? Then welcome to the crowd which lives its life within a certain signaling system where the response of each and everyone is preconditioned by the carefully selected and approved portion of information in order to form the required viewpoint on any subject.

In totalitarian states the approved information is the result of censorship, while those among the democratic establishments are playing with words like moderation and following the community standards. But the idea of both is essentially the same – everyone’s views should conform to a required standard, which is determined by a certain group of people who naturally “wish you only good”. And anyone who doesn’t comply, or God forbid, expresses a different opinion is regarded as a hell beast of different sorts, and according to the latest trend may be cancelled and turned into an outcast.

Judging by the fact that Michael Jackson sometimes mentioned conditioning in his conversations with friends, he was pondering on how people begin to lose their natural feelings and views under the outside pressure, and this is why he was so insistent on people’s individual work with their conscience (“look at yourself in the mirror”) and asked everyone not to form perfunctory opinions based on the media propaganda and seek the truth instead.

But then all hell broke loose with the Chandler allegations and this is when the anti-Jackson machine went into a full-blown mode.  The last bastions of decency fell under the torrent of lies and speculation. The facts were twisted, lies were freely told, frivolous lawsuits were filed (their number was around 1000 according to Thomas Mesereau), witnesses were bribed to tell their false stories, the rules were broken and the laws changed – with the sole goal to fit the allegations of this or that particular accuser, and much, much more of it.

And this time it wasn’t just a stroke of luck for the operators of the show. The child abuse scandal was absolutely manmade – the idea itself was apparently conceived in the heart of Hollywood which is a kind of a locomotive represented by progressive forces like David Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg and many others.

All it needed to do was to find a willing partner for the project and the necessary character presented himself in the shape of a Hollywood dentist named Evan Chandler who was found apparently via Jeffrey Katzenberg’s wife Marilyn who turned out to be a friend of Evan Chandler. They regularly met for lunch, discussed their families and we can be absolutely certain that Evan shared with her the big news about his son’s close association with Michael Jackson.

After that all the rest of it was just a matter of technicality.

You wonder how we got to know about Evan Chandler’s friendship with Jeffrey Katzenberg’s wife?

Well, the story is somewhat off-topic for the present narration but I will still tell it here as you never know whether there will be another chance.

THE CHANDLER – KATZENBERG FRIENDSHIP

The thing is that the news of Evan Chandler being friends with Katzenberg’s wife was accidently revealed by Victor Gutierrez.

As we all know, Gutierrez (a “sleazebag” even according to Ray Chandler) wrote a book of dirt about Michael Jackson and there is one section in his opus which contains the down-sized copies of three pages from a diary written by Evan Chandler (not Jordan!) The names of Katzenberg and his wife were initially mentioned on one of those pages.

However the names were later redacted and are no longer found in the final version of the book,  most probably because no one wanted to disclose that Jeffrey Katzenberg is gay (which became clear from the context).

So the names of Katzenberg and his wife were blackened out, and no one knew what Hollywood guy was mentioned by Michael Jackson in that notable scene when he was on a visit to Evan Chandler’s house. At the time Michael was in very much pain from the recent operation on his head, and the dentist gave him an IM (intramuscular) shot of painkiller Toradol in his buttocks, after which the “stoned” Michael began spilling the beans about Hollywood.

And we wouldn’t have known the Hollywood secrets either if Gutierrez hadn’t gone on Chilean TV in 1996 to promote his book and if he hadn’t held the unredacted version of that story in his hands right at the moment when the TV camera was going over his papers. So the text of that very page was caught on camera, and though it is a little blurred  it is still readable – and this is how we know what the original text was about and what names it contained.

The Chilean video was sent to me by the inquisitive Michael Jackson’s fans (my very big thanks to them). Here it is:

And below are

1) the down-sized pages from Evan Chandler’s so-called diary the way they are published in Gutierrez’s book and

2) the original version of the page shot by a TV camera when it caught Victor Gutierrez literally red-handed with it.

Please note that here we see a story created by Evan Chandler in order to explain why he was extorting Michael Jackson for money for half a year under the pretext of his son’s abuse, so some of his ideas and interpretations need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Headline by Victor Gutierrez:  “Jackson being under the influence of strong pills told Evan of famous Hollywood figures, including married couples.”

Evan Chandler:

“Prior to administering the Toradol I took a verbal medical history and then gave Michael an IM injection of Toradol 30 mg. After about 45 minutes he told me he didn’t feel anything. I gave him the rest of the prefilled syringe – another 30 mg. I told him to lie down and try lo relax and give the drug a little more time to work. I left the room and returned about 1 hour later and found Michael in a stupor. I asked him how he felt and he answered in a stoned voice, ‘I feel much better, thank you.’ I checked his pulse and observed his respirations . He seemed to be okay so I wasn’t worried but I was perplexed about how he got so high. I asked him if he had taken any other drugs and he said no.

I read the Toradol package insert which listed certain adverse reactions under ‘Nervous System”: drowsiness. dizziness, convulsions, vertigo, tremors, abnormal dreams, hallucinations, euphoria, paresthesia, depression, insomnia, nervousness, excessive thirst, dry mouth, abnormal thinking, inability to concentrate, hyperkinesia, stupor. I had used Toradol before and had never witnessed any of these reactions. The insert listed the incidence of  of these reactions at around 1%. To me he just looked and sounded like he was “stoned”.

He had a yellow overnight bag which he always carried with him and I thought he may have kept sedatives or narcotics in it but I didn’t look inside.  I stayed with him for a while just to be sure he was okay. He talked about how much he loved Jordie in such a way that it made me uncomfortable. I told him I knew that several of his advisers were gay – Arnie Klein, David Geffen, Sandy Gallin and I asked him if he was gay. He chuckled and said no.

Then he added, ‘You left out Jeffrey Katzenberg.” I was shocked because I knew Marilyn Katzenberg, Jeffrey’s wife. Marilyn and I had lunch a couple of times a year and talked exclusively about our families. I asked if he was kidding and he smiled without saying anything more about Jeffrey. When I asked him about Arnie he laughed and said, “Don’t worry, he likes little fat men like his present boyfriend who works one of the rides at Disneyland”. He seemed to view them all from a distance – like they worked for him but they weren’t his friends. There was no sign of disdain but he gave the distinct impression that he was above them all.

Well …. Now another lacuna in the story of Chandler’s allegations has been filled and as could be easily expected it revealed the same old company that was named by Michael Jackson as the main force which destroyed his career (and ultimately his life).

Previously we thought that it was only David Geffen, who was rumored to be on top of the list of Michael Jackson’s enemies and who was directly named by Michael as a person who sunk his career. But now it is the Katzenbergs too who come out in this story as going hand in hand with Michael’s first accuser Evan Chandler!

No wonder Evan Chandler said that he was not alone in his plans to destroy Michael: “There are other people involved”.

But what could these people have against Jackson?

The only thing they could be unhappy with was his non-compliance with their rules and his resistance to acquire their way of thinking and system of values.  And his unwillingness to conform same as his desire to go his own individual way.  And also the power he had over the minds and hearts of millions of people with his phenomenal music, lyrics of his songs and his irresistible charisma. And also his different outlook on many aspects of people’s lives and the suggestion of the alternative life goals people could aspire to.

All of it was quite enough for targeting Michael Jackson with their agenda-driven bone-crashing machine.

Incidentally, now they are up to their old tricks again. They’ve suddenly started calling “weird” and “bizarre” other people who possess influence and power, and who – same as Jackson – are also not to their liking. These people are very different from each other, and you may like or dislike some of their thoughts, but one thing is clear – each of them is an individuality in his own right and all of them are non-conformists who refuse to play by someone else’s rules.

Initially the “weirdest” of them was only Donald Trump, but then came the turn of Elon Musk and recently the two of them were joined by the “bizarre” Robert Kennedy Jr. (son of Senator Robert Kennedy and nephew of President John Kennedy both of whom were assassinated).

“…another bizarre story involving presidential candidate RFK Junior recently resurfaced. This one is involving a whale…”

The reason for the attacks is that Robert Kennedy Jr. left his own party with a bang and endorsed Trump instead – the move that was also accompanied by his address to the nation which is a really great speech disclosing the crooked inner mechanics of his former party of which he said that it “departed dramatically from the core values that I grew up with”.

Robert Kennedy Jr: “They don’t fear lies, they fear the truth and that’s what they censor”

It is impossible to relate here the things he was brave enough to reveal, but if you want to know how the agenda-driven machine is functioning, what methods it employs and what it is capable of doing, as well as the actors and agencies it consists of, this is what you need to read.  Or watch  here.

Now I can’t help thinking that if Michael Jackson were still alive he could have made great company for these people. What a new driving force they could be and what a foursome of non-conformists they could make…

Related:

• Michael Jackson’s Friend Brett Barnes Talks To Charles Thomson. TRANSCRIPT OF THE INTERVIEW part 1
• MICHAEL JACKSON’S FRIEND BRETT BARNES. Some notes on his interview with Charles Thomson
• Michael Jackson’s Friend Brett Barnes Talks To Charles Thomson. TRANSCRIPT OF THE INTERVIEW, part 2

So much news has taken place for the past month that it is no longer possible to remain silent and be a simple observer.

The billionaire rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs has been arrested on charges of sex abuse crimes committed by him for the past 30+ years. Besides the federal criminal case he is also facing 120 lawsuits from men and women, at least 25 of whom were minors at the time of the alleged abuse. One of the claimants says that he was abused at the age of nine.

When speaking for their 120 clients the attorneys looked shocked and incredulous  –  within the period of just 10 days they received 3200 calls with regard to Diddy’s misconduct. Many complain that they were given laced drinks and when they passed out the perpetrators performed sexual acts on them while other people watched.  The attorneys promise that the powerful people who facilitated Diddy’s crimes and were the avid attendees of his wild sex parties “will be exposed”. Well… blessed are they who have believed.

Diddy and Co. are said to have committed crimes from 1991 until this year, but all of it has certainly gone unnoticed by the media and law enforcement though all hell was taking place under their very noses.

How could they not notice, you wonder? The answer is – easily.

All this time these poor overworked people had their hands full with Michael Jackson and their daily vivisection of his body and soul.  It has become an age-long tradition for the media and establishment to distract people this way, by diverting their attention from real crime scenes to the innocent Jackson instead.

To quote the late Donna Summer Michael Jackson was “a sitting duck” for them – a vulnerable and convenient target for turning him into a fall guy and for law enforcement and media to show how ‘vigilant’ they are.

With every new revelation like the one about Diddy the public confidence in Michael Jackson’s innocence will only grow – at least  due to the glaring contrast in the way he and the real perpetrators were treated.

And this is why it is so sad to see a setback like the news we heard about the alleged new allegations against MJ suddenly breaking on September 20th.

The story was told by the reputable Financial Times and disreputable Stacy Brown, a longtime Michael Jackson’s detractor. Both of them said that five people allegedly intended to make new allegations against Michael and were extorting the MJ Estate for $213 mln.

Michael Jackson’s fans were quick to identify these five people as the Cascios – the Italian-American family who were very close friends of Michael Jackson and were basically a safe haven for him throughout the biggest part of his life.

The readers also quickly spotted the source that fed the extortion news to the media, and this person turned out to be no other than John Branca, one of the two Executors of Michael Jackson’s Estate.

From its very start the news was somewhat strange – it was reported only by the above two media sources, was not taken up by anyone else and has since somewhat died out. It produced the impression of an intentional preemptive move on the part of the MJ Estate, a kind of a warning sent from an open public platform to the family in question, people in general and any new claimants should they decide to make their living off the thriving Estate.

This way the public was informed in advance that someone was twisting the Estate’s wrists again, so if the news hit the media really hard it wouldn’t take anyone by surprise (dubious strategy in my opinion).

And the family received a warning of a possible lawsuit and even a criminal investigation in case they stepped on a path of extorting the Estate the way Robson and Safechuck did (questionable too as this could be easily done in a private conversation).

And any new liars were told in no uncertain terms that they cannot expect any settlements from the Estate (this can probably be effective).

However even if the message itself is more or less clear to us, the details of the story still make you wonder.

Firstly, I personally will never believe that the Cascios are able to make any allegations against Michael Jackson.

Not after the great book written by Frank Cascio about his friend Michael.

Not after the family’s dear love for him and their 25-year long friendship which lasted until Michael’s final day and which survived the hardest of their times together.

Not after their steadfast support for Michael Jackson which was never a merely formal tribute to him but a true testimony to his innocence coming from the very bottom of their hearts.

In short, never will the integrity and morals of this family let them slander Michael Jackson for real.

NEVER.

Oprah Winfrey:  “So I have to ask you Frank and Marie Nicole, were there ever any improprieties?”  “NEVER.  NEVER”

Oprah Winfrey: “With you and Michael Jackson?”
Eddie Cascio: “NEVER. Michael couldn’t… he couldn’t harm a fly”

Besides, the sum of $213mln which is allegedly wanted by the Cascios or, to be precise by one unnamed person in the family, is still a far cry from the sums demanded by Robson and Safechuck. According to the new chapters of Diane Dimond’s book “Be Careful Who You Love” written after the 2019 Leaving Neverland film, the money sought by Robson and Safechuck is $2 billion.

Yes, you got it right, Diane Dimond says that it is $2 billion. And this sounds perfectly true to me as it is not an old rumor that circulated after Robson first made his allegations eleven years ago (back then it was $1,2 billion), but is fairly recent news.

Moreover, it comes from MJ’s haters who fume over their spokesperson Roxanne and Diane Dimond talking so openly about the sum which they certainly consider to be ‘false’. Here is a screenshot from their discussion):

– “Roxanne is saying in the comment to the video Wade and James are suing for 2 billion dollars. How is she not knowing this is false?”                                                                                                                            – “To be fair, last night I listened to the new chapters of Diane Dimond’s Be Careful Who You Love, written post-LN, and was surprised to hear she too said they were suing for $2B, which we now know isn’t true”.

But I am more than ready to believe Diane Dimond’s figure.

With the various projects bringing the MJ Estate hundreds of millions each, the goal of Robson and Safechuck, and those who support them but stay behind the scene, has always been the whole sum amassed by the Estate.

When Robson made his allegations for the first time, the MJ Estate was said to be worth $1,2 billion, so $1,2 billion was demanded by Robson according to some independent media outlets that recklessly reported it at the time. MJ’s fans thought it to be a mistake but it was not.

Now the MJ Estate is worth more than $2 billion, so the stakes have gone up too and reached $2 billion which is perfectly in line with the above-mentioned goal.

This is because the intention of the masterminds of the show has always been the full bankruptcy of MJ’s Estate and leaving Michael’s children on skid row. To serve this purpose and for so big a jackpot the two scumbags will tell any lie required of them until they drown themselves in the nonsense they are thus producing.

Compared with the $2 billion demand, the sum of $213mln allegedly wanted by the family of five is not only a lot more modest, but is also an odd number (why 213 and not 200 or 250, for example?). This suggests that some meticulous calculations have been made, like for example, the estimate of some damages, loss of profit, fines and compensations, etc., all of which may have resulted from a certain business deal between the two parties that has gone awry for some reason.

This and many other factors make me disbelieve the story the way it is told. The sums mentioned in those publications may be formally correct, but the interpretations they are given are far from the truth.

The only thing I am absolutely sure of is that the conflict is not about any “extortion” or “threat to make allegations about MJ” even more so.

All this talk is a bluff, even a double bluff.

Why a double one?

Because both sides seem to be engaged in a game – one side threatens the other that it will do this and that, and the other side answers back by threatening to do something similar in return, while none of them actually mean what they are saying.

And the subject of mutual disagreement has nothing to do with the allegations either. It is a purely business conflict which most probably springs from a dispute and legal controversy that originated very long ago and which was started and abetted by neither of the parties.

And neither of them ever wanted this conflict and tried to avoid it by all means possible.

And both of them were dragged into it by a third party, which is none other than Michael Jackson’s fans.

This is why those of the MJ fandom who were shaming, discrediting and harassing the Cascio family for 14 years now due to three Eddy Cascio’s songs on the ‘Michael’ posthumous album regarded by them as fake, are invited to stop reading at this point and go about their business instead.

Similarly, those who have fallen for the story from the Financial Times and Stacy Brown and now demean the Cascios as “scummy pieces of trash” or alternately praise them for coming out as “victims who finally tell the truth” are also discouraged from reading this post any further.

The iron-cast convictions of these people and their hanging on every word of their opinion leaders are like a wall of concrete that will resist any facts and arguments which aren’t to their liking and do not fit their religion.

Hence this post is for the open-minded only. It will present a totally different version of the events emerging from the smoke and mirrors created around the Estate, the Cascios and those three tracks on the ‘Michael’ album by their fierce doubters, by the quest for fame and glory for some and the jealousy and ill feeling for others, and the cynicism of those who don’t mind building their careers on ruining other people lives and reputations.

All these actors delivered a huge blow to Michael Jackson himself and brought the events to an impasse for all others, as well as for those who could have rendered invaluable services to Michael and truth in general if the above-mentioned personas had not interfered in the process.

STACY BROWN’S VERSION

As you already know the story about a certain ‘shakedown’ on the part of five alleged accusers appeared simultaneously in the Financial Times and the Washington Informer. Both will be provided here in full for the purpose of archiving and storing everything in one place.

The one in the Informer was written by Stacy Brown, the eternal Michael’s detractor who now shows himself flexible enough to be neutral and even complimentary to the MJ Estate and Michael Jackson himself.

EXCLUSIVE: Michael Jackson’s Thriving Estate Targeted in $213 Million ‘Shakedown’ Effort​

Representatives on Latest Attempt: ‘Enough is Enough’

by Stacy M. Brown September 20, 2024

Michael Jackson’s legacy continues to dominate the entertainment industry, with his various projects collectively surpassing $2 billion in global ticket sales. The King of Pop’s influence remains unmatched, from groundbreaking concert films to sold-out Broadway shows, making his the most successful celebrity estate ever. However, the greater its success the more it has faced attempts from those seeking to shake down the estate for money.

The most recent case resulted in the Michael Jackson estate having to go so far as to contact law enforcement officials while filing an arbitration claim in response to threats from a few longtime friends and former associates of the pop icon. The Informer has learned that they are now demanding $213 million from the estate threatening to release false, damaging information about Jackson if their demands are not met, even though for decades they have stated Jackson did nothing to them.

Co-executor of the estate John Branca has described their actions as a blatant attempt to exploit Jackson’s legacy for financial gain at no risk of defamation because those laws don’t protect the deceased. These threats come amid the estate’s enormous financial success, having generated $3 billion for beneficiaries.

For 25 years these associates have steadfastly maintained Jackson’s innocence. In his book, one member of the group defended Jackson, writing: “Michael had never acted in any way even approximating inappropriate toward us. Michael was being attacked by liars. There was nothing ambiguous about the whole thing. These people were after Michael’s money. But he was innocent.”

He reiterated this stance in numerous media appearances, including interviews with Oprah Winfrey and Wendy Williams.

“I’m gonna tell you what sleepovers were like,” he told Williams. “Everybody in a room, me, and others, we would just sit up talking, us on the floor, talking until four o’clock in the morning; let’s go raid the kitchen.”

In a group sit-down with Oprah, another member insisted, “Michael couldn’t harm a fly. He’s such a kind and gentle soul. Michael was a target.”

Despite their public support for Jackson, the individual is engaging in the very behavior he once condemned.

In 2019, following HBO’s release of the controversial documentary “Leaving Neverland,” the Jackson estate was under significant pressure due to the media frenzy that spawned calls to “cancel” the superstar.

Representatives sought the group’s support given they, for years, vouched for Jackson’s character, and that’s when they turned.

As fiduciaries, the executors’ mission is to generate income for Jackson’s beneficiaries. So, they had two goals: preserve the upcoming projects, while shielding his loved ones from further pain of having to endure another round of salacious, unproven allegations. The estate reached a private settlement with the group including $3 million for each of the five individuals. Both sides mutually agreed to keep the agreement under wraps to where even its existence couldn’t be divulged.

“In 2019, there was ‘Leaving Neverland,’ which was a complete surprise hit job,” Branca said in an exclusive interview with the Black Press of America’s “Let It Be Known.” “We didn’t know it was coming and weren’t asked for comment. And the media didn’t want to hear Michael’s story. MGM was threatening to cancel the Cirque show. We wouldn’t have been able to mount a Broadway show. There were a lot of things that would have gone south. We have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize the income of the estate, and our counsel insisted we sign the agreement. So, we did it with a mutual nondisclosure. And they didn’t want it disclosed either because Michael’s fans would have gone after these people.”

The estate’s mutual nondisclosure agreement with the associates was vital in keeping the matter private and allowing the estate to move forward with projects that that would ensure that future generations could share in Michael’s musical and creative legacy and that could prove lucrative for Michael’s three children, the King of Pop’s heirs.

“We and they signed this nondisclosure agreement, and the nondisclosure said you can’t even tell people there’s an agreement,” Branca explained. “It was awkward because we were making a movie with Antoine Fuqua and Graham King. And we couldn’t tell anybody about it, including the filmmakers.”

The recent demand for $213 million and the threat of making salacious claims have pushed the estate to take legal action.

Branca commented, “The associate’s lawyer even said to us, if you don’t meet our demands, we’re going to have to share these allegations with a wider group of people. It was a shakedown. Enough is enough.”

The estate has reported the extortion attempt to authorities and is filing an arbitration proceeding against the associates for civil extortion. Branca noted the challenge of protecting Jackson’s legacy after his death, as libel laws that protect the living do not extend to those who have died.

When asked, Branca addressed the racial element in the treatment of Jackson, pointing out the media’s bias.

I definitely believe there’s a racist element in the media coverage of Michael Jackson since the 1980s. I was there. Michael got so big many were jealous, especially when he bought the Beatles catalog. I remember James Baldwin having that famous quote: ‘Michael will forever pay the price for his success.’”

Jackson himself was acutely aware of the racial undertones in how he was perceived.

Branca recalled Jackson saying, “‘Sinatra’s the chairman of the board. Elvis is the king. Springsteen is the boss. But what do they call me? They call me the Gloved One.’

And he says, ‘You know that’s racist. They’re trying to keep me down. … I don’t think they would do this to Bruce Springsteen, John Lennon or Elvis, for that matter.’”

The co-executor has played a pivotal role in Jackson’s legacy, including his involvement in the 1985 acquisition of the vaunted ATV catalog that included the Beatles and music from other artists.
“The music catalog was something that carried him through good times and bad,” Branca noted. “Michael was somewhat of a visionary because some of his advisers were saying it was too expensive [David Geffen – VMJ]. And Michael said, ‘Branca, get that catalog.’”

That move proved to be one of the most strategic decisions in Jackson’s career, solidifying his financial future and expanding his influence in the music industry.

The partnership between Branca and Jackson extended beyond financial dealings. They shared a mutual appreciation for creativity and entertainment.

“He and I attended a Cirque du Soleil show together in Santa Monica. And he said, ‘Branca, we gotta go backstage and meet everybody,’” Branca remembered.

This shared vision later led to successful collaborations, including the Cirque shows centered around Jackson’s music.

Despite vast challenges and unproven allegations, the executors have transformed Jackson’s estate into a financial powerhouse. Following Jackson’s death in 2009, the estate was nearly half a billion dollars in debt. Through strategic deals and projects, they turned it into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise. This included a blockbuster $600 million sale of 50% of Jackson’s music catalog to Sony wherein the estate maintained control and the success of projects like “Michael Jackson’s This Is It,” the highest-grossing concert film in history.

Upcoming endeavors, such as the Antoine Fuqua biopic “MICHAEL,” starring Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson, aim to solidify Jackson’s enduring influence in popular culture.

The estate has also diligently ensured the well-being of Jackson’s family. Branca confirmed that Jackson’s mother, Katherine, is well cared for. Earlier reports suggested that Katherine has received more than $60 million from the estate since her son’s tragic death in 2009.

“She’s got two beautiful homes, full-time security and a private chef,” Branca said. “Mrs. Jackson, as she should be, is well taken care of.”

Branca reflected on the estate’s role in maintaining Jackson’s vision: “We’re not Michael. We would never pretend to be. But we know what he loves. A lot of it is trying to execute Michael’s vision.”

Despite the hurdles, he remains steadfast in his commitment to protecting and preserving Jackson’s legacy.

“We will continue to manage the estate with the integrity and dedication that Michael deserved,” Branca affirmed. “Attempts like this to tarnish his memory for financial gain will not succeed.”
https://www.washingtoninformer.com/michael-jackson-estate-lawsuit/

Stacy Brown’s quotations from Frank Cascio’s book and the interview with Oprah reveal the family in question to be the Cascios indeed but do not necessarily point to Frank Cascio.

For all we know the man who is supposed to be making claims now can easily be Eddie Cascio, Frank’s younger brother who actually has every reason in the world to claim money from the Estate (more about it later).

Three days after the publication, on September 23 Stacy Brown placed a video of himself on the “Black Press USA’s National News Network”, where he provided some details and expressed his disbelief that the story is true.

In his opinion the accusers may be anyone but not this family. He says it with an incredulous expression on his face and repeats it again and again:

• “Branca said that he had a conversation with Prince, the oldest [son] and Prince said “No more settlements. No more settlements”. So they are taking the gloves off. Hey, prove it. Even if something may have happened decades ago, what about the statute of limitations here? Listen, my heart goes out to any victim, any victim… But this particular family that’s coming forward now or at least attempted to come forward now… I know who they are. I’m shocked. I’m not here to defend Michael, but I am shocked, when I learned who the family was. It can’t be them. It can’t be them. And I don’t want to say who it is because I believe we’ve painted the picture. Folks can basically Google some of the stuff and they’ll know who it is. The fans certainly know who it is.”

Stacy Brown: “IT CAN’T BE THEM. IT CAN’T BE THEM”

The above is an impressive statement, especially since it comes from a person who always denounced Michael Jackson. So even Stacy Brown feels that something is wrong here – so wrong that he disbelieves the story reported by himself

Brown also clarifies that the family demanded millions only ‘in the last few weeks’ and this makes the time of the controversy fully coincide with the period when the court finally approved the sale to Sony of half of Michael Jackson’s catalog for $600mln.

The court decision came on August 22 while the stories about the Cascios were published on September 20, so the two events are inseparably connected with each other for reasons that will have to be explored further.

What’s also important is that Stacy Brown describes the possible “allegations” by the family in so vague terms that everybody can interpret them the way they like. This is what he says:

• “For 213 Million they came back for them now in the last few weeks, they have come back and said ‘Hey, we want 213 million, otherwise we’re gonna go to people, people apparently means media, with some very unflattering and damaging stories. One of the individuals did a book about his life with Michael Jackson years ago and it painted a very flattering picture of the King of Pop. Yet he’s now apparently – he and his family are now looking for 213 million dollars to remain silent.”

So the most we get from the above is that the family is in possession of some “unflattering and damaging stories” but the wording itself does not necessarily mean the abuse. The stories may refer to Michael’s drug dependency, for example, some awkward episodes in his life which they were witnesses to and the like.

Moreover, the threat “not to remain silent” is Stacy Brown’s supposition only and it may be not about Michael Jackson at all. For example, it may refer to the rift between the Cascios and the Estate over those damned three tracks, and may imply that the family is so tired of living on a volcano for the last 14 years that they want to reveal the whole truth about that sore subject which changed the life of the Cascio family forever.

Stacy Brown’s interview continues:

• “It turns out that back in 2019 (we talk about Leaving Netherland when that was hitting) the Jackson estate was apparently negotiating some huge deals including the MJ musical, also the Michael movie and we’re talking almost a billion dollars in negotiation. Well, they figured they would turn to this family for some positive publicity when it came to Leaving Netherland. This family decided that you got to pay us and you got to pay us $15 million. And shockingly, an Estate source said to me that 15 million – well, that’s no money, so we just gave it to him”

You can think whatever you like about this statement but it doesn’t say a word about the allegations again.

It is only the suggestive context that makes us look at that sum as a way to quash some terrible revelations. However if we shake off that preconception, the same story can be about a certain payment that was long due to the family but was refused by the Estate – until the moment they were in sudden need of the Cascios’ help and the matter became so pressing and inconvenient to them that they agreed to pay.

Or we may go for the explanation that was given by John Branca himself which sounds to me convincing enough.

A LIFE STORY AGREEMENT

In an interview with the Financial Times Branca said that paying the money in 2020 was the Estate’s business decision to purchase the Cascios’ life rights and make a consultation agreement.

I had to look what a life rights agreement means and this is what I learned:

A life rights agreement is also called “a life story agreement that grants a person or company the right to purchase and develop someone else’s life story into some type of media”.

So by signing a life story agreement with the Estate the Cascios entrusted them to tell the story of their friendship with Michael Jackson and develop it into any kind of media (book, film, musical, whatever).

This means that when the Estate approached the Cascios after the ‘Leaving Neverland’ aired, the family sold their life story rights to the Estate to let them turn it into a rebuttal film or documentary of their own. In fact, such a documentary could be a very pertinent thing to do in order to debunk the lies of the LN fantasy film and would have been a great project had it been realized.

The life rights agreement allows the purchaser to have direct access to their characters and get their firsthand account of the events, as well as the right to film some locations, approach third parties and obtain the necessary significant documents.

For each person portrayed there should be a separate life rights agreement.

The life rights also give the purchasers a certain amount of freedom in telling other people’s life story because it protects them from a lawsuit in case they do some damage to the characters portrayed. So if the Estate made some mistake or showed the Cascio family in an unfavorable light, the Estate could not be sued for defamation as they are already protected by that life story agreement.

On the other hand the sellers of their life rights do not lose the opportunity to talk to the media, as the agreement does not in any way coerce them into silence – no one else can turn their life story into a film as it is the exclusive right of the purchaser only, but otherwise it does not limit the right of these people to free speech.

In short, the deal done in 2020 was nothing ominous. In my opinion, it was a great idea to buy the Cascios’ life story to make a truthful documentary about Michael Jackson’s friendship with the Cascios and rebuff the LN phantasmagoria this way.

If you come to think of it, anyone can buy the life rights from anyone at all, however not everyone will agree to sell because once the agreement is signed, all kind of lies may be told about these people and the family will have no chance to sue the other side for defamation.

And if the above story is true, the fact that the Cascios sold their life rights to the Estate means that the family trusted them and expected the Estate to turn the story of their friendship with Michael Jackson into a truthful, positive and worthwhile account in whatever media form the Estate chose to do it.

However the project was not realized, and the reasons for that could be creative, financial, whatever. But what’s important here is that even with the life story agreement in the Estate’s pocket the Cascios could still speak to the press about anything they thought necessary to talk about.

This is what John Branca tried to explain to the Financial Times, however this paper is definitely not among the people who believed the explanation.

THE FINANCIAL TIMES VERSION

The FT journalist presented the Estate’s decision as if it was only “styled” as a purchase of the family’s life rights and a consulting agreement, and even implied that it was John Branca himself who told them that it was done that way.

That is how we gather from the Financial Times story that Branca shared his deepest secrets with the paper so that they could tell the whole world about the following:

1) some people made allegations about some “inappropriate behavior”

2) the Estate immediately signed a settlement agreement to silence them

3) they “styled” it as a life rights agreement  for no one to suspect that it was a settlement

4) but in order to prove that it was a hush-up settlement Branca explains in much detail that there is a special clause there “that neither party can disclose its existence to any third party”.

So Branca is seeking public sympathy now, complains that these people do not follow the terms of the agreement and this is why he turned to arbitration to make them keep silent.

Well, if this was meant to be only a bluff on the part of the Estate, it is a bluff that went terribly wrong.

Because if we are to believe that this is indeed what Branca said, there is no longer need for the Cascios to speak up at all as the whole story was told by Branca himself.

And even if the arbitration court bars the Cascios from telling things they allegedly “promised to keep secret”, it won’t convince anyone of Michael Jackson’s innocence but will do exactly the opposite.

And no Branca’s talk about the “extortion” will make up for his alleged statement that their business deal was actually a secret settlement which was only styled as a purchase of their life rights.

So I’m inclined to believe that this publication may be a sort of, say, improvisation on the part of the Financial Times, and whatever Branca’s intentions were he didn’t expect the allegedly reputable paper to interpret his words in so free a manner.

Otherwise I cannot explain the mess we see here:

Michael Jackson estate says accuser is trying to extract $213mn

The King of Pop’s legacy has generated $3bn since his death but remains overshadowed by child sex abuse claims

Anna Nicolaou in Los Angeles

SEPTEMBER 20 2024

Michael Jackson’s estate has initiated legal proceedings against a former associate of the late pop icon, who threatened to raise fresh allegations of inappropriate conduct before the release of a film the executors hope will quell the child sex abuse claims that shadowed his later years.

The man and four others told the estate in about 2019, a decade after the singer’s death, that they might go public with allegations that he had acted inappropriately with some of them when they were children.

In 2020, the estate quietly struck a previously unreported settlement worth nearly $20mn (later correction: $16.5mn) under which the man and the other accusers agreed instead to defend Jackson’s reputation.

Now, the people managing Jackson’s music and image rights are accusing the man of fabricating his earlier claims while seeking to extract $213mn more in a new settlement with the estate, according to an arbitration claim. They have reported the matter to the US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles.

Jackson’s estate is asking an arbitrator to award damages, order the accuser to abide by the terms of the 2020 deal and issue an injunction barring him from releasing details he previously agreed to keep secret.

“The agreement contained a clause that stated neither party can disclose its existence to any third party,” said John Branca, a longtime Jackson aide who co-manages the estate.

The episode illustrates how Jackson’s interactions with children, which led to a criminal prosecution and at least one out-of-court settlement, continue to hang over his estate years after his death in 2009 from an overdose of sedatives and anaesthetic. The Jackson estate maintains the singer never engaged in inappropriate conduct with children.

The estate, which was initially $500mn in debt, has since amassed more than $3bn — a figure revealed by its executors in an interview with the Financial Times for the first time. The change of fortunes has come through the sale of his music catalogue, a Broadway musical and Cirque du Soleil shows. The beneficiaries are Jackson’s three children, his mother and charities.

In an interview, Branca, said: “The time has come to stand up, take a stand, tell Michael’s story.” The man allegedly making the claims against the Jackson estate did not respond to repeated requests for comment. He is not being named by the FT.

Jackson is one of the most successful but controversial figures in pop music history, springing to fame as a child with a soaring voice on the pop, soul and funk songs performed by his family band, The Jackson 5. He went on to record Thriller, which remains the best-selling album of all time more than 40 years after its release. But he was also accused on multiple occasions of inappropriate conduct with children, beginning in the 1990s and continuing until his prosecution in 2005. Though the accusers’ accounts were at times contradictory and Jackson was acquitted in the court case, the allegations took a toll.

When he died, Jackson’s will gave Branca and music executive John McClain the responsibility of managing his estate. Branca has spent the past decade and a half working to restore the singer’s troubled finances and his complicated legacy. The strategy suffered a setback after HBO’s 2019 documentary, Leaving Neverland, which featured the graphic accounts of two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who alleged Jackson abused them as children.

Shortly after, the five unnamed accusers — who were not featured in the Neverland documentary — made their allegations. According to Jackson’s estate, the man had previously denied Jackson ever engaged in inappropriate conduct. The estate agreed to settle those claims under what it has described as a “business decision”. The settlement deal, signed in January 2020, was styled as a purchase of their life rights and a consulting agreement, with each of the five accusers to receive $3.3mn over six years. Since then, it is claimed, each of the accusers received $2.8mn.

But in January, before the final $500,000 payment was made to each of them, the man notified the estate that he no longer planned to abide by the agreement, and that he was seeking $213mn in new payments.

The claim is that the man’s lawyers demanded a “substantive response” to their overture for more payments, and warned they would “be forced to expand the circle of knowledge” if the ultimatum was not met.

The demands came at the time the estate was finalising terms (later correction: nine months after the estate finalised terms) for the $600mn sale of a 50 per cent stake in Jackson’s music catalogue to Sony, valuing the total package at $1.2bn. The accuser’s lawyer asked the estate if it had disclosed his claim to Sony, raising the spectre of risk for the new owners of Jackson’s music.

Jackson’s estate has turned around its fortunes through lucrative ventures, including the Cirque du Soleil show ‘Michael Jackson ONE’ When Jackson died, his estate was saddled with debt after years of unsuccessful business practices and profligate spending. Progress has been uneven in digging out of the hole; the Broadway show has grossed $216mn, according to Broadway World. But in the aftermath of Leaving Neverland, according to Branca, national commercials with Nike and two banks that each paid $1mn to $2mn a year evaporated and attendance at MGM’s Cirque show dropped for an extended period.

The estate laid low for a few years but is now taking a more assertive approach as it seeks to defend Jackson’s name. The biopic is being directed by Antoine Fuqua, with actor Miles Teller playing Branca. “We survived Leaving Neverland but I’m not sure we could have with those additional allegations,” Branca said.

His lawyers, he said, told him: “You have no choice. If these people come forward and make these allegations, then Michael is over, his legacy is over, the business is done.”

This article has been updated after the Jackson estate provided additional details of the timing of the payment demand and the Sony deal.

https://www.ft.com/content/d86248a0-8d8f-4269-bc14-b4e330ada268

The ending sounds dramatic enough but I doubt that Branca would wrap up the conversation on so pessimistic a note. At least to Stacy Brown he said exactly the opposite: “Attempts like this to tarnish his memory for financial gain will not succeed.”

Mind  you, small details like the above betray the Financial Times’s own agenda and twisted view on everything Michael Jackson.

I mean the tiny and hardly noticeable stretches of the truth in almost each of their sentences. For example, things like “he was accused on multiple occasions of inappropriate conduct with children, beginning in the 1990s and continuing until his prosecution in 2005”.

The above is wrong because there were no multiple occasions and nothing was continuing until his prosecution in 2005. The years following the Chandlers in 1993 were totally free from any allegations, and even then everyone’s desperate attempts to find an accuser were crowned only with the Arvizos’ infamous fraudulent case.

And now it is not “five accusers” but just a family of five.  And it is not “some of them” who complain of the alleged inappropriate behavior but only one (if any at all) and this transpires to you only after you finally realize that the whole story revolves around one person.

And the 2020 agreement with this family was not worth “nearly $20mln” but 16,5mln according to the FT’s own correction or even 15mln according to Stacy Brown.

And the figure of $3,3mn to be paid to each of them over six years (up to 2025?) equals 19,8mln and not 16,5mln which is mentioned in the FT update.

And the sentence about the man who “notified the estate that he no longer planned to abide by the agreement, and that he was seeking $213mn in new payments in January” is in total disagreement with the very next sentence which says that this happened nine months later.

See here in case you previously failed to notice it:

But in January, before the final $500,000 payment was made to each of them, the man notified the estate that he no longer planned to abide by the agreement, and that he was seeking $213mn in new payments.

The demands came nine months after the estate finalized terms for the $600mn sale of a 50 per cent stake in Jackson’s music catalogue to Sony, valuing the total package at $1.2bn.

Nine months after they finalized the terms of the sale? But when was that?

We learn that the terms were finalized on or about February 9, 2024.

Sony Reaches Blockbuster Deal for Michael Jackson’s Catalog

Feb. 9, 2024

Sony has agreed to acquire half of Michael Jackson’s catalog from the star’s estate, in what is likely the richest transaction ever for a single musician’s work, according to two people briefed on the agreement.

The deal, which has been gossiped about in the music industry for months, is said to involve Sony purchasing a 50 percent stake in Jackson’s recorded music and songwriting catalogs.

The deal is said to value Jackson’s assets at $1.2 billion or more, according to the two people, who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about it.

The transaction is said to leave the estate a significant degree of control over the catalog. That contrasts with many other blockbuster catalog deals in recent years, like those with Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Paul Simon. When asked about the news of the deal, John Branca, who was Jackson’s entertainment lawyer in life and has been the co-executor of Jackson’s estate, said: “As we have always maintained, we would never give up management or control of Michael Jackson’s assets.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/arts/music/michael-jackson-catalog-sale-sony.html

Some will shrug their shoulders – who cares if the demands were made in January 2024 or nine months later?

Well, let us see what this difference in time may tell us about the story.

THE REAL STORY BEHIND THE DISCREPANCY 

For starters, the correct date shows that the Estate did not have any time for filing their so-called complaint with the Arbitration court. Nine months from February 9th is actually November 9th and the news was broken much earlier than that, on September 20th.  This makes the timing too pressed downright impossible and suggests that the whole thing is actually a bluff.

But most importantly, both dates mentioned in the Financial Times point to the real reason for all this mess around the Cascios.

The thing is that January-February and then August-September were the peak periods when the terms of the sale of half of MJ’s catalog to Sony were first discussed and agreed between the parties (Jan-Feb) and then finally signed (end of Aug-early Sept).

The nine months in between were the period when the sale was put on hold because of Katherine Jackson’s objection to the deal – she sued the Estate and even wanted them to pay the fees of her lawyers who were suing them on her behalf (the event was covered by the press mostly because Michael’s younger son Bigi didn’t support his grandmother in this venture).

On August 22, 2024 the court ruled in favor of the Estate, so the deal went ahead and must have been signed closer to the end of August. And this is when the problem with the Cascios arose.

In fact, the Cascio problem arose already in January 2024 as the Financial Times stated it, and some demands for money may have been made already then. But afterwards the problem was set aside because it wasn’t yet clear whether the sale would be approved in court and this explains the nine months’ pause in the Cascios’ actions. But when the deal came into effect (end of August or early September) the dispute with the Cascios flared up again.

So the timing makes the situation clear as the clear blue sky, and the only point which remains to be seen is the subject of the dispute between the Cascios and MJ’s Estate.

However even that is not that much of a puzzle.

It won’t be too big a stretch of imagination to suppose that the demands for money are connected with the involvement or non-involvement of Eddie Cascio’s songs in that transaction.

Apparently, in January 2024 when the sale of MJ’s catalog was being negotiated between Sony and the Estate this one member of the Cascio family, whose 12 songs were recorded in 2007 allegedly in cooperation with Michael Jackson and James Porte (Cascio’s brother-in-law), raised the problem of the songs’ status and future.

We don’t know about the whole package of 12 tracks but at least three of them (‘Monster’, ‘Breaking News’ and ‘Keep you head up’) are legally considered to be part of the MJ catalog, though their authenticity has been a matter of a huge controversy created by Michael Jackson’s fans and kept on and on since the album release.

In fact, calling  it huge would be an understatement – the dispute over those tracks is gargantuan in its scope. And the ferocity of the fight against Eddie Cascio as the main suspect of the fraud is nothing but savage and relentless. Anyone who dares say a word in support of that family is declared an insane enabler in their horrid crimes of damaging Michael Jackson’s true legacy.

The fight went on since December 2010, when the ‘Michael’ album was released at least until August 2022 when the Estate finally agreed to take off the three disputed tracks from all streaming platforms around the world, and stop selling them as part of the album (now it is 7 tracks instead of 10) and not use them the same way all other MJ’s songs are commercially used thus bringing royalties to the Estate and the co-authors of Michael’s songs included in the catalog.

In other words, following the Estate’s decision in August 2022 Eddie Cascio’s tracks virtually ceased to exist, however legally they are still part of the MJ catalog as the Estate never agreed to consider them fake and had to remove them from sales only because they were sued and had to give up those tracks after the enduring 8-year-long litigation.

CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT

The lawsuit was filed in 2014 against John Branca as one of the Executors of the MJ Estate, Eddie Cascio, James Porte and their music company Angelikson, and also Sony and MJJ Productions.

The person who sued was a MJ fan, a Russian citizen and a recent immigrant in the USA, who filed a class action lawsuit – a complaint on the part of all buyers who purchased the ‘Michael’ album in the state of California and who were allegedly defrauded by Eddie Cascio and the Estate.

The complaint conceded that the Estate (and Sony) could be unaware that they were selling “fake” songs, so all it demanded of them was to take three disputed tracks off the album and return the money to the offended customers. Plus pay the cost of suit of course, fees and expenses of the lawyers, and “other and further relief the Court deems just and proper”.

However a harsher punishment was awaiting Eddie Cascio, James Porte and their company. They were sued for fraud and were to pay the “restitution of all money wrongfully obtained” by selling customers the three fake tracks, plus damages (unspecified), punitive damages (usually four times as high as the usual damages), the cost of suit, fees and expenses of the lawyers, and “other and further relief the Court deems just and proper”.

On behalf of the customers all defendants were sued for the alleged misleading information on the album’s cover. Eddie Cascio, Porte and their company were additionally sued for fraud.

The costs to be paid by Eddie Cascio and James Porte

The heroic MJ fan managed to overcome the Estate appeals and within the 8 years of litigation took the matter all the way up to the top – to the Supreme Court of California (this is how important the matter is!).

As of 2022 the court didn’t rule on the case, but their official opinion, announced ahead of the ruling, made it absolutely clear that though the authenticity of the tracks was not even discussed, the commercial text printed on the album cover obliged the Estate to examine the tracks inside out and since their effort was apparently not vigorous enough, the high court would not allow to defraud consumers in so gross a manner.

The case was to go back to a trial court again to determine whether the tracks were authentic (or not), and if they weren’t Eddie Cascio and Porte were to answer for their crimes to the full extent of the law.

This is when the Estate settled the dispute with the MJ fan on terms undisclosed to the public and agreed to take off the Cascio tracks from every venue where they had been before.

When making an official statement the Estate and Sony specifically noted that their decision to abandon the tracks had “nothing to do with their disputed authenticity” and it was simply high time they moved “beyond the distraction surrounding them”.

We don’t know what profit Eddie Cascio was gaining from the album sales and circulation of his songs on different world platforms, but we know that within three years after its 2010 release the ‘Michael’ album sold 2,5mln copies worldwide (incl. 600,000 in the US) and with every coming year the sum must have been growing.

However in 2022 these and other royalties stopped, not to mention the other 9 songs in the Cascio’s package which remained in suspense.

Given the above we can imagine that a certain man from the Cascio family had a couple of things to discuss with the Estate – first in January 2024 and then in September. We can also imagine that the discussion had to do with the loss of earnings and other financial, reputational and moral damage sustained by this person, his company and family too.

The named sum of $213 mln is of course too big a compensation for the loss of profit over three tracks, but considering all the harassment and a merciless 14-year long war at the Cascios’ doorstep, I really don’t know…

On the other hand it is also unfair to hold the Estate responsible for the above problems. Both the Cascios and MJ’s Estate became hostages to the situation and given that Branca has always been on Eddie’s side it is also unjust to make him face the music for the bundle of problems created by others.

And in all this chaos at least one thing is clear to me – the matter has nothing to do with the allegations.

As to the agreement with the Cascios after the Estate approached them for positive publicity in 2019, this was signed in the 6th year of the litigation, and at that time it was yet unknown whether the Cascios would have to recompense the buyers for those three tracks, and pay the damages, punitive damages, fees of the Plaintiff’s lawyers, cost of lawsuit, and “other relief” and fines that could be imposed on them by court.

This is why we cannot rule out that the Estate paid $15 ($16,5) mln in connection with that monumental lawsuit, in order to cover the family’s losses, already sustained and anticipated in the future, and that the agreement could indeed be only styled as a purchase of the family life story rights.

As to the positive publicity sought by the Estate, most probably it wasn’t even an issue – at least for the Cascio family, as every word they say now is considered to be fake anyway due to the tireless effort of MJ fans.

To be fair to fans, the most informed of them don’t support the idea of a fraud for which the Cascios should be torn into pieces, but the voice of these people is barely heard amidst the roar of their opponents.

So by now the Cascios are almost universally regarded as the shameless liars who faked those three songs and are therefore capable of other unimaginable sins – all for the sake of money, of course.

As a result the voice of this family has been effectively stifled and whatever they say now will either have no effect or will be disbelieved, sneered and derided, and this is probably why they prefer to be silent. They’ve always been very private people but since they were captured by this hurricane of hate and have been trampled on for the past fourteen years they probably don’t want any publicity for themselves and just wish they were left alone.

Well, this is exactly what Michael Jackson’s detractors expected the MJ fans to do and very much wanted of them – to eliminate one person after another from the pool of those who are capable of telling the innocent truth about Michael.

Until none of them is left.

This way no one will speak up for Jackson at the forthcoming trial and Robson and Safechuck will be given full rein there.

Because there will be simply no one left to contest their tales.

~

A word for some MJ fans.

After reading thousands of pages on the MJJCommunity forum, the media reports for the past 14 years, the various court documents regarding the fan’s lawsuit, Dr. Papcun’s analysis of the disputed songs and the opinion of the UK hacker who obtained several original versions of one of the songs from the Sony servers, and after getting familiar with the Gospel according to Damien Shields, some videos and the recent MJCast podcast, I am more than convinced that at least three Cascio tracks are real.

Oprah Winfrey: “These people are saying that this isn’t Michael’s voice”

Oprah: “What can you tell us about that?”                                    Eddie Cascio: “I can tell you that it is Michael’s voice”.

Please reserve any questions on the above for a separate post.

Thank God that before listening to ”Faking Michael” series which claims to expose the Cascio tracks as “the biggest fraud in the music industry” I first read the same story from the same Damien Shields and could compare his much more biased previous version with its current variation, which is still a brainwasher but is at least cleaned of its most outrageous lies.

Thankfully, I was also familiar with the relevant media reports, videos and musical pieces as well as the court documents regarding Vera Serova’s lawsuit against Sony, MJJ Productions and John Branca of MJ’s Estate who were allegedly hoodwinked by the horrible Cascios. The lawsuit lasted for 8 years, survived two teams of Serova’s attorneys and a number of back-and-forth appeals before finally reaching the Supreme Court of California, after which it was settled on undisclosed terms. The Cascio songs were removed from the disc and all streaming platforms, but the Estate and Sony still remain firm in their position that the songs are real.

In so mysterious a story it was necessary to dig really deep and not only read and listen to everything under the sun but also learn the basics of the sound-engineering process without which it would be impossible to understand the duplicity of statements of some participants in this drama and the incredible scale of their hypocrisy.

I also went through hundreds and hundreds of pages on the MJJCommunity forum – which was actually a thriller of a job as it displayed the drama in its 14-year long development and provided some invaluable and sometimes crucial details.

Besides, it also showed a huge divide between the extremely vocal anti-Cascio group and the silent majority of fans who rarely talk but consider the tracks authentic or are sane enough to realize that given the circumstances the songs had to be processed – Michael Jackson is no longer there and is unable to re-record something or provide the missing parts, so we have to make do with what we have.

By now the fiery dispute over those tracks has somewhat died out – both sides look listless and act like they can’t care less. I wouldn’t bother either, if it were not for the sudden emergence of Damien Shields’s “Faking Michael” series and the amazing coincidence that the podcast appeared just a week after the Cascios’ alleged demand for $213 mln from MJ’s Estate – the problem most probably stemming from breaking the contract for the release of 12 songs submitted to the Estate and Sony by Cascio, Porte and their Angelikson company.

In case you don’t know, “Angel” in “Angelikson” stands for Eddie Cascio (this is how Michael Jackson used to call the younger brother of Frank Cascio) and “kson” is actually part of Jackson’s name.

Eddie the Angel said that the songs were recorded in 2007, when Michael Jackson and his children stayed with the Cascio family for about 3 months and they worked together in their home studio in the basement of their house in New Jersey. Michael was said to be singing from a shower cabin for better sound, a raised platform was installed nearby for him to dance there and as far as I remember Michael also slept somewhere around as his bed was also in that basement.

The 12 songs brought by Eddie Cascio and James Porte in 2009 were rumored to be sold to Sony and Estate for $5 mln, but only three songs were selected for the first album while the rest were put side until another time – however due to the scandal were never taken up again.

This leaves us with only Breaking News, Monster and Keep Your Head Up from the Cascio collection which later became part of the first posthumous Michael album released on December 14, 2010.

These three tracks were mixed and reworked by sound engineer Stuart Brawley and finished by producers Teddy Riley (Breaking News, Monster) and Jacen Joshua (Keep Your Head Up). The other tracks on the new album came from varied sources – some were old and fully finished, but were discarded by Michael Jackson for his earlier albums and possibly required some “modernization”; others were leaked long ago and were nothing new, or were the duets that contained only patches of Michael’s vocals. For example, the Hold My Hand duet with Akon had only 30% of Michael’s voice and was also leaked when MJ was still alive despite taking every possible precaution.

So the new Cascio songs seemed to be the most prized possession of all as they were the latest and most awaited by the public. The fact that added a huge amount of credibility to the songs was that they came from the Cascios  – the people of high esteem who were like a second family to Michael and a safe haven for him and his children throughout his life. Add to it that Frank Dileo, Michael’s manager also endorsed them as he heard some of those recording sessions when he spoke with Michael Jackson over the phone.

The 12 tracks were made in cooperation with Eddie’s partner James Porte, a professional sound engineer and producer who had been invited to work with the 17-year old Eddie Cascio by Michael Jackson himself. Michael Jackson cooperated with Eddie and James at least since 2001 when both of them were writing songs for the Invincible album.  Many Michael’s collaborators perfectly knew about that cooperation, and this too left little room for doubt about the Cascio songs’ authenticity.

But several months before the album release on December 14, 2010 the three songs from Cascio and Porte met with a fierce opposition on the part of the Jackson family.

Taryll Jackson

The first to express his fury was Taryll Jackson, the middle son of Tito Jackson. Episode 3 of “Faking Michael” podcast describes the way Taryll Jackson entered the scene.

“Upon starting on the project Teddy Riley and Lawanda invited the King of Pop’s nephew Taryll Jackson to join them in the studio. Lawanda was not only managing Teddy at the time, but also Taryll.”

Wait, the story has not even begun but we already stumble upon a person we’ve never heard of.

Who is Lawanda Lane? According to his interview with Billboard Damien Shields couldn’t reach this woman for 11 years and when she finally called him “at 2 in the morning Australian time”, he dropped everything and spoke to her “for four and a half hours.” Judging by the dates the conversation must have taken place sometime in 2021, and according to Shields it turned out to be “one of the cornerstone interviews for his research”.

Well, if that is the case, then it is an absolute must to find out who this super-important woman is.

On Instagram Lawanda (LaWanda) Lane goes by the name of @lalaelizalane and is described as a “mom and auntie” who works in fashion. Nowhere does she say that she was a manager of Teddy Riley, however we can assume that in her younger years she could indeed be a kind of a secretary or assistant to him.

lalaelizalane – Lawanda Lane. A mom, auntie, fashion, I work with amazing people, travels, music, movies. Lover of God, a conduit.

Nowadays her page on “Handbook”, which is supposed to be the “exclusive celebrity database” describes Lawanda Lane as a “social media influencer”.

“Handbook” describes Lawanda Lane as a “social media influencer”

The photo of the same Lawanda Lane is also found on the Internet on a site which opened only recently, on Nov.20, 2024  (just 10 days ago) under a strange title “Misunderstood statements”.

What adds to the mystery is that Lawanda’s photo is exactly the same as on her Handbook and Instagram pages but over here she is depicted with no head to her body.

See for yourself: https://enquete.paulodefrontin.rj.gov.br/inappropriatepublic4/lawanda-lane.html

As to the page content the “Misunderstood” site describes Lawanda Lane as an accomplished artist and “winner of the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2023”  – however the list of winners on the respective site does not contain any such name. So is it a joke, a parody or what?

According to “Misunderstood Statements” Lawanda Lane is also an “artist and winner of prestigious grants”

What isn’t a joke though is that Lawanda Lane works as a caregiver for Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s twin daughters. The thing is that for many years Lawanda Lane had been a close friend of Kim Porter, Diddy’s wife, and after her death she took care of their twin daughters (now 17).  While their father Diddy is in custody now the girls and Lawanda moved to Los Angeles where the girls attend high school and fashion shows.

Diddy’s twin daughters are under the care of family friend as he awaits trial

Lawanda Lane was also a friend of Tito Jackson and dedicated a post to him when he recently died.

“I remember when we did this shoot. Miss my friend. This is a great pic his son took” [Lawanda Lane @lalaelizalane, 2024-9-24]

LaWanda Lane is known for TJ Jackson: Last Night (2020)

“Last Night” was released on July 2, 2020. https://youtu.be/haFVqmfDSK0

TJ is the singer, Taj Jackson is the video director and Lawanda’s name is found among the “additional crew” in the capacity of an assistant production coordinator for the project.

So judging by IMBs this seems to be her only accomplishment in the music industry  – with no mention of Teddy Riley or anyone else there.

In fact, the only other place where we meet Lawanda and the Jacksons again is the Cascio saga related to us by the “Faking Michael” podcast. So let’s go back to where we left off and see how Taryll Jackson found himself in Teddy Riley’s recording studio at all.

“Upon starting on the project Teddy Riley and Lawanda invited the King of Pop’s nephew Taryll Jackson to join them in the studio. Lawanda was not only managing Teddy at the time, but also Taryll.

And Teddy and Taryll had been discussing the idea of working together as a production duo and so the new Michael Jackson album presented the perfect opportunity for that idea to become a reality.”

Taryll recalls:

«I met with Teddy and we started talking about music and about MJ and songs and all kinds of stuff and we just connected, so we were going to become like a production team  and we were going to start doing a bunch of  production stuff together. And at the time he was approached by the Estate to start working on this project – a Michael Jackson project of all these songs, and he said, “You know if I do this we’re going to do this together and it’s what Michael would want”. “And you know I was off for it.”

Well, of course he was off for it (who wouldn’t?), so the next step in their collaboration was to document the newly formed alliance by having a photo of them working together in the studio.

Lawanda invited Jackson’s longtime photographer Harrison Funk  to document the process.

Funk recalls:  I came in because Teddy’s manager called me and said Teddy wanted me to come down and shoot. Okay, fine. And I knew Teddy, so that wasn’t a big surprise and I documented every nuance of the  recording as I would have done for Michael. I  was in there, you know, with all the background  people. And the vibe in the studio was awesome, it was a lot of fun, and I think that Teddy’s heart was really in the project.

Regrettably, no idea of a photo session came to the Cascios and Michael Jackson who were busy doing a job and not capturing themselves for history.  This was a huge oversight on their part because now the anti-Cascio activists demand photos of them working together with Michael. Even the words of Michael’s bodyguards who heard the music recorded in that basement are not enough proof for these people – “they must have been working on Thriller 25 tracks”(which they really did), “so the Cascio songs have nothing to do with it”.

The only evidence that can probably suit the naysayers is a video of Michael actually singing the Cascio songs. And surprisingly, during the This is it rehearsal Michael did indeed sing a piece of the Cascio’s “Water” (which wasn’t selected for the album) but even that was discarded as no proof in a long and rambling explanation provided in episode 9 of “FM” podcast.

The explanation didn’t explain anything except that the song “Water” was indeed written by Cascio and Porte and that Michael Jackson was indeed humming it during the This is it rehearsal.

According to “FM” podcast the vibe in the studio was good, but only until the 12 Cascio songs were delivered there. After that Taryll began “to feel a lot of negative energy in the room” which was so bad that the computers began to occasionally shut down on their own. The Cascio songs were undoubtedly to blame for it because

“Michael’s voice was pure, powerful and uplifting and had always made Taryll feel good, but the Casio tracks were having the opposite effect. Listening to those vocals was making him feel sick. To Taryll they just sounded bad”.

Teddy Riley was asked to choose one of the 12 songs to start working on, but in contrast to Taryll he apparently liked them so much that he wanted to work on eight of them.

In fact you can even see the enthusiasm in Teddy Riley’s eyes when he was talking about those songs. His eyes are positively sparkling with excitement here:

Teddy Riley: “Believe me, this is really Michael’s voice, yeah, whoever says whatever…”

However McClain didn’t allow Teddy to work on more than one song at a time. The “FM” podcast says:

“Full of enthusiasm for the project, Teddy responded telling them that that he wanted to work on eight different Casio tracks” but the Estate co-executive John McClain insisted that Teddy could have only one song.

They would listen to “what he’d done and decide whether Teddy was the right producer for the job or not.”

McClain himself was working on one of the Cascio tracks called All I Need in cooperation with the renowned Burt Bacharach, however eventually that song was excluded from the album and never reappeared again – which is a complete shame, in my opinion. The song would have been fantastic had it been finished and made it into the album. Here is one of its versions:

The Rolling Stone said about that track:

“All I Need” is a gentle, piano-driven ballad similar to “Much Too Soon”.  The track features a mellow horn solo and choir-like backing vocals, and was recorded with producer Eddie Cascio. The embellishments were added by legendary songwriter Burt Bacharach; they certainly sound like his work.

At some point Teddy Riley began working on three Cascio tracks and Lawanda complained that McClain was pressuring Riley too hard. According to her Teddy felt very uncomfortable as McClain basically demanded that he should “do what he is told” and Teddy felt like he had McClain’s “foot on his neck”. McClain wanted Teddy to “work fast” and in general “was being horrible to him”, according to Lawanda.

This makes me suspect that the Cascio songs had nothing to do with the negative energy in that studio after all.

The dynamic between the two Estate executives McClain and Branca wasn’t the best either – McClain wanted to have three Cascio songs on the album while Branca wanted five. McClain also insisted that it was he who was “doing the music” and tried to exclude Branca from the process. But the most friction seemed to center not on the songs proper, but on the schedule and on how soon the tracks would be ready for release.

Marvin’s studio where Terry Riley was working belonged to McClain, and when Teddy eventually asked to be moved to another studio McClain allegedly went crazy, kicked him out and threatened to replace him with a different producer. The co-executor John Branca and Sony people made him calm down, and the foursome (Teddy, Taryll, Lawanda and photographer Harrison Funk) happily moved to another studio called Encore.

But over here another chapter of the soap opera began.

A NEW CHAPTER

If Teddy Riley hoped to be more comfortable in the new studio, his hopes were doomed to failure from the start because this time the studio was invaded by various members of the Jackson family.

When Teddy was provided with one more Cascio track called Keep Your Head Up (which is my favorite) Lawanda said that “it sounded horrible” and over the next few days she called several Jacksons to listen to the Cascio tracks. Everyone said that “something was wrong with his vibrato.” Randy Jackson was invited too and also thought that the vibrato wasn’t Michael’s, proclaiming that he would bet his life on the fact that the songs were fake.

The other complaints were that the tracks lacked Michael’s signature finger snaps and no foot stomping (hardly possible on the porcelain floor of the shower cabin in my opinion).

As to Taryll, TJ and Taj Jackson they did not only reject the vocals but also the lyrics. Previously Jermaine found it strange that in “Breaking News” Michael sang his own name (…everyone wants a piece of Michael Jackson…) and upon hearing Michael sing this line Taj Jackson nearly had “a heart attack”

• “[Our] uncle would never mention himself in a song. It’s just not who he is, it’s the opposite of him. It’s a very conceited line. It doesn’t even represent what he would be singing about.”

For Taryll Jackson the whole Cascio collection “screamed phony”, so to prove his point he played to the congregation the song by Jason Malachi (Mamacita) released in 2007 , at which time it was accidentally mistaken by the public and Michael’s fans for the real Michael Jackson song.

Malachi himself was stunned by the reaction and before finally admitting his authorship kept everyone in the dark for some time as to who was the singer – he was apparently amused by the mistake and even took pride in being taken for Michael Jackson.

TMZ was routinely offensive towards MJ: “New Jacko Tracko -Done by a White Guy!” [Sept. 21, 2007]

However this so-called Malachi’s song was actually not his – it was first sung by a rising star Chris Trousdale in 2005.

You can see Chris Trousdale performing “Let Me Let Go” in New York City on March 15, 2006:

As to Chris Trousdale’s song it indeed originated from an earlier “Monster” which was written – you won’t believe it – by the same Eddie Cascio and James Porte, only sometime around 2001.

The first “Monster” was written for the Invincible album, was even partially recorded by Michael Jackson and had a very good bridge according to producer Michael Prince who was present at the recording sessions.

The first version of “Monster” was allegedly different, wasn’t finished and was later abandoned by Michael Jackson. However, same as other Michael’s songs, it was obviously leaked, reworked in its lyrics and melody and given to Chris Trousdale. But Chris Trousdale died young and eventually the song somehow landed with Jason Malachi.

So this was the round-about-way in which Malachi’s “Let Me Let Go” became sonically close to the two versions of “Monster” both of which were composed by Cascio and Porte, only at different times.

The Jacksons didn’t know of the song’s origin but were amazed by all these similarities, and their verdict was ready with no more proof needed – “the Cascio songs are fake and are sung by Jason Malachi.”

According to the “FM” podcast, everybody insisted that Teddy should stop working on the Casio tracks immediately.

Teddy agreed, assuring them that he would do whatever the Jackson family wanted. However when Taryll arrived at the studio the next day Teddy was yet again working on the Casio tracks. Taryll was furious asking Teddy why he would waste his time on fake songs.

Caught between the two fires, Teddy answered that “he was only continuing to work on the Casio tracks in the hopes that he would eventually be given a real Michael Jackson song.”

However when the Estate and Sony arranged two official listening sessions to determine whether the Cascio songs were real or not, Teddy Riley allegedly “flipped sides” and announced that the songs were sung by Michael Jackson.

Lawanda and Taryll see the money motive behind Teddy’s so-called betrayal.  According to them Taryll Jackson told the truth (the way he understood it) and paid a high price for it – he didn’t receive a cent for his non-vocal recital in “Hollywood Tonight” and missed some career opportunities at that.

And Teddy Riley who allegedly flipped sides was lavishly paid for his services. Lawanda Lane says that she was the person entrusted to negotiate Teddy’s payment, so now she readily shares with the “FM” podcast the sums received by Teddy Riley for his work.

The sums included:

• “The $75,000 and 10% publishing Teddy received for his work on Hollywood tonight
• He was also paid $50,000 per Casio track for his remixes of Breaking News, Monster and Burn Tonight though the latter was not even included on the album.
• He also received $25,000 for the work he did on the Casio track Keep Your Head Up despite the fact that he abandoned production on it “because of the vocals”.

“So in the end Teddy alone was paid $250,000 for his work on the Michael album”.

As to our good Lawanda, to “everyone’s shock” this honorable woman resigned – even though she “worked so hard”. The explanation given by her is the following:

“I was like – I can’t do this and I resigned, and everybody was in shock because I worked so hard. And I didn’t want to be a part of foolishness. He grabbed me by the arm and pushed me back. He had betrayed me, my uncle, my family. Teddy flipped the script and was like “yep that’s him” and just went against  everything that he said he stood for. Teddy lied. He just told me one thing and did another. Now, I could have just stayed. I had integrity and I said to myself – you either stand up for something or you fall for anything.”

What an upstanding position indeed, and what a rare exception to the corrupt and depraved world of music industry, especially now that we know how dark and Diddy-like this world really is!

GHOST SINGERS, MIMICS AND THE LIKE

In no time at all the controversy over the Cascio songs spilled out into the open. Without thinking twice Taryll Jackson went on Twitter to declare that the songs were fake and sung by a soundalike and not his uncle. All fingers pointed at the policeman named Jason Malachi, though his only guilt was that his natural voice sounded like Michael’s (except for the faster vibrato, of course).

On the other hand there were several professional singers and mimics who could sing much better than Malachi and imitate Michael Jackson’s voice down to its every detail. One of them is an Italian-born Ricky Galliano who made a tribute single to Michael Jackson and released an electronic mix of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” on October 1, 2009 – soon after Michael’s death and a year before the Michael album went into production.

I’ve listened to Ricky Galliano’s rendition of Billie Jean in “Rocco Deep Mix” and find it a complete marvel. No wonder it was quite a success.

Here it is.

Rocco & Danny Marquez – Billie Jean (Rocco Deep Mix).

Produced by Rocco & Danny Marquez *Vocals by Ricky Galliano

Released on: 2009-10-01

With so many talents around us, some of whom can perfectly imitate Michael Jackson’s voice and who were already known to the public in autumn 2009, it is unclear why any would-be-conspirators who allegedly wanted to fake Michael Jackson’s songs didn’t approach Galliano instead of Malachi, especially since the latter was singing with the unwanted vibrato.

Anyone who listened to Galliano will say that he is the guy for the job – and no one would have noticed the difference had it been him.

Believe it or not but on November 22, 2010 – in the midst of all that buzz over the Cascio songs – Ricky Galliano spoke to the Sun and claimed that sometime in October (the year was not specified) he was paid cash for 21 tracks to be sung in Michael Jackson’s style and to do so he was summoned to a secret studio in a Swiss city of Lausanne. The go-between was believed to be someone from Bahrain.

Galliano was allegedly paid up-front €2 000 per track and was asked to make his voice sound as much like Michael’s as possible. The owner of the studio where Ricky recorded the tracks was Mohammed Ben Salah who said that he believed the songs were for a Michael Jackson tribute disc.

Ricky Galliano claims that he was paid to mimic MJ in October [2009]

Italian-born Ricky told The Sun newspaper:

“They were most insistent that I make my voice sound as much like Michael’s as possible – to mimic him exactly.”

He explained how he recorded the songs after being approached by a man, whom he thinks was from Bahrain, to record the studio sessions, and paid €2 000 per track.

The owner of the studio where Ricky cut the tracks, Mohammed Ben Salah, said he believed they were for a Michael Jackson tribute disc. https://www.news24.com/life/michael-jackson-impersonator-on-michael-20101123

Well, the source is the Sun of course, but the “Billie Jean” mix was indeed recorded in Switzerland; Ricky Galliano himself resides in Switzerland, Geneva, the real name of DJ and producer Rocco is Sémakdji Mourad and the electronic mix made by his team was indeed used for a MJ tribute.

What happened to the other 20 songs allegedly recorded by Ricky Galliano I have no idea, but it is clear that the Cascios and Porte have nothing to do with it – their recordings had a vibrato which everyone associated with Jason Malachi and Jason Malachi alone.

On the other hand the remaining 20 songs could not be wasted away either, and in case some other tracks on the album were not finished or were lacking parts, the producers responsible for those songs could indeed (only in theory, of course) use some snippets of Galliano’s voice to fill in the gaps.

And let us not get horribly shocked or faint at this theoretical supposition of mine – only the naïve are unaware that things like that are universally practiced in the pop music industry. The lead vocals are routinely sliced into pieces, reshuffled, copy-pasted and combined with someone else’s voices, the strong but unknown background vocalist may be taken forward while the weak voice of a celebrity will go back, and all this can be done not only in a studio but “live on stage” too, not to mention the deceased singers, whose records may indeed require a good deal of legit restoration to give the song a more or less finished sound.

Cory Rooney, for example, who looks like a purist who will reject any cheat in making music considering his outrage over the Cascio “fakes”, is known to have produced Jennifer Lopez’s songs where some unknown singers …well …. sort of  “lent their voices to her”.

In each of his episodes Damien Shields reverently calls Cory Rooney a former Vice-President of Sony Music Entertainment (which is true), however the nuance lost on his listeners is that Cory was nominated for this post in 1998 by Tommy Mottola after Mariah Carey left him (in 1997) and Mottola was set to take revenge on her by sending into stardom his new favorite – Jennifer Lopez.

Lopez however, is a splendid dancer but no vocalist, and being aware of her vocal deficiencies, the newly appointed Cory Rooney had to manipulate Lopez’s voice to a degree when her vocals were actually replaced by the vocals of some unknown singers.

The music industry insiders are perfectly aware of it, and know that in some cases J.Lo sings no more than 5% of her songs, while the real lead singers are credited as back vocalists or not credited at all.

And after the 20 years of this practice, now that Diddy’s protection of Jennifer Lopez has somewhat diminished, the news of these manipulations is finally beginning to surface.

How Jennifer Lopez succeeded in music without being a good singer

Carlos Megía

JUL 22, 2023

…In addition to her boyfriend at the time, rapper Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs — also known as Puff Daddy — the all-powerful Tommy Mottola was the intellectual and financial mastermind behind J.Lo’s leap into the spotlight.

Mottola’s amorous misadventures sparked the first major controversy surrounding Lopez’s first album; several sources claimed that the jilted mogul had stolen melodies and samples of future songs from his ex-wife, who had left the label after their separation, and given them to Lopez.

The executives’ obsession with giving Lopez the best available songs even led them to take potential hits away from other artists, especially African-American musicians who were just starting out in the industry. Chante Moore claimed that Diddy demanded that producer Rodney Jerkins snatch a demo called “If I Gave Love” from her and turn it into the smash hit “If You Had My Love”.

In addition, Lopez’s vocal skills were always questioned.  Stereogum asserted that listening to her could be described as an experiment in hiding a star’s vocal deficiencies.

Singers who have gone on to illustrious careers have also admitted that they lent their voices to some of J.Lo’s hits. For instance, despite not being credited as a vocalist, Christina Milian sings the entire chorus on the song “Play” (Milian also wrote the song’s lyrics).

The same occurred with singer Ashanti on Lopez’s singles “I’m Real” and “Ain’t it Funny”; the former’s voice was featured in the final versions despite the fact that Lopez was the only recognized singer.

It also happened with Natasha Ramos in “Jenny from The Block”.

https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-07-22/a-star-is-born-or-made-how-jennifer-lopez-succeeded-in-music-without-being-a-good-singer.html

When answering the question how J.Lo managed to get away with ghost singers and avoid a “Milli Vanilli”-type scandal for so long, those in the know explain the technical side of it by using Lopez’s signature song “Jenny from the Block” as an example.

• “Natasha Ramos was hired to do a demo of it and background vocals. The demo was for Jennifer Lopez to learn and record it herself. But J.Lo can’t sing, so instead, the executives and producers basically stole Natasha’s voice by keeping it front and center in the song and put Jennifer Lopez in the background. They paid J.Lo millions and Natasha peanuts despite using her vocals as lead and passing them off as Jennifer Lopez. J.Lo mainly just did the verses which is not even the singing part. Same thing happened with Ashanti on J.Lo’s songs.”

Wiki says that the executive producer for Lopez’s signature song was Cory Rooney, along with Troy Olivier, Samuel Barnes, and Jean-Claude Oliver.

And Cory worked not only on that song,  but on at least five Jennifer’s albums where each and every song was produced under his guidance and each could be very well engineered in a manner described above.

And now this person is moralizing us on the alleged use of an impersonator in the Cascio songs? Indeed, he who is to blame most shouts the loudest!

THE PLOT THICKENS

Facing the mess around the three Cascio songs the Estate and Sony took the matter seriously. They re-approached everyone who was connected with mixing the songs, had them listen to their acapella versions and separately asked each of the experts for their opinion. Part of them stood their ground and said that the songs were authentic while others couldn’t say it one way or the other and were sitting on the fence.

The Estate and Sony also had the tracks examined by two separate musicologists (their names are not disclosed) who made a wave form analysis of the songs and confirmed that they were authentic.

Besides that the Estate’s co-executor John Branca and attorney Howard Weitzman made separate calls to Jason Malachi himself. Malachi denied any involvement and said that he wouldn’t risk his job by creating forgeries – singing was Jason’s hobby while his regular job was with the police (he has been in law enforcement for 15 years and is now a deputy sheriff at the Montgomery Sheriff’s office).

After the two listening sessions, consulting two prominent figures who used to work with Michael Jackson and the two wave-form analyses the Sony concluded:

“[We] have complete confidence in the results of our extensive research, as well as the accounts of those who were in the studio with Michael, that the vocals on the new album are his own”.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-11709630

Here is the report of attorney Howard Weitzman who was entrusted with the investigation (more about it in another post).

But instead of subsiding the uproar over those tracks was going only stronger, and it was decided to broadcast the song “Breaking News” on November 8, 2010 – a month before the release of the whole album in order to test the waters and get some feedback from the public and MJ’s fans.

However the waters were already hopelessly poisoned, especially since the Jacksons and others went on tweeting that the songs were fake.

Taryll Jackson, November 8, 2010

• “I am shocked that things have gotten this far. This is ridiculous. I was at the studio when these questionable files were delivered. I heard these “so-called” Michael Jackson songs raw and without the distraction of the well produced music by Teddy Riley. How they constructed these songs is very sneaky and sly. many people who have worked on this project either have strong doubts and questions, while others KNOW the truth, yet decided to turn and look the other way with their hands out for $$$. I will NEVER look the other way. Right is Right, Truth is Truth, Facts are Facts, and it will all come out!!! I tried so hard to prevent this craziness, but they wouldn’t listen. I KNOW my Uncle’s voice and something’s seriously wrong when you have immediate FAMILY saying it’s not him. Don’t you have to wonder why? I have strong, undeniable points. They can’t give me answers, yet continue to move forward with lies and deception. Sounding like Michael Jackson and BEING Michael Jackson are two different things.”

TJ Jackson, November 8, 2010

• “There are many MJ vocal impersonators – some better than others – but there is only ONE Michael Jackson. Deceptively merging shady vocals with MJ samples will never fool me. Why they would ignore the obvious, look the other way, and rush a suspicious track (‘Breaking News’) that was NEVER on my Uncle’s radar is beyond me. I’m disgusted, disappointed and saddened.”

Cory Rooney, November 2010

• “I have read the statement [in defense of the Cascio tracks] from the MJ Estate, and I have to say that it’s just more bullshit! I was in that room, and the majority of the people mentioned did not agree that it was MJ! Some felt it sounded like him, but all agreed that there was nothing there that was consistent with any MJ habits like finger snaps, headphone bleeding, foot stomping or just simple things like his voice asking for another take. Both Dr. Freeze and Teddy Riley sat with Taryll Jackson and myself and stated that they felt what we felt.”

Cory Rooney, November 8, 2010

• “YouTube ‘Jason Malachi.'”

TMZ obtained a snippet of Paris Jackson’s video chat with a friend which was recorded in November that year where Paris also said that it wasn’t her father’s voice.  However her comment only complicated things further because as proof of her words she played the song Hold My Hand – a duet with Akon which no one had yet disputed before her.

They FAKED My Dad’s Voice on ‘Michael’ Album

Michael Jackson’s daughter Paris made a bombshell announcement to friends … telling them the MJ album released in the wake of the singer’s death did NOT contain MJ’s actual voice … it was an imposter. … the announcement was made during an online video chat with several friends in 2010 … just before the “Michael” album was released.

“During the video chat, Paris played one of the songs from the album, “Hold My Hand” … and one of her friends asks why the singer doesn’t sound like MJ.

Paris replied, “It’s NOT him … the whole album isn’t even him!! Go online … go on YouTube and look up Jason Malachi. That’s him!!” She continues, “I should know if it’s him or not because he would sing to me all the time.”

MJ’s fans were surprised by the new twist to the story and complained that

• “lot of people corrected her saying that it wasn’t a Cascio song, it was an old song and it was Michael. But Paris rejected them all with saying “he sang to me every night, I know his voice (better)”

Ivy of the MJJCommunity seemed to express the general opinion that they couldn’t rely on a kid who was simply picking it up from the adults around her:

• This isn’t new at least for us. Paris on her formspring and her twitter – now verified – said similar things. She said it’s not Michael, she said it’s for money, she said the exact same quote of “he sang to me everyday I know his voice” and she even clearly and specifically said that “Hollywood Tonight” isn’t Michael – multiple times. …like Hollywood tonight, her mention of “Hold my Hand” and “whole album” shows that she’s not real knowledgeable about the issue. In short it will just show that Paris agrees with the opinion of the songs being fake, however it’s not based on facts or first hand knowledge.

On November 9, 2010 Jackie Jackson also joined in and claimed that he and McClain had insisted “for many weeks” to have certain tracks removed from the album, but no one listened:

• My friend John McClain (co-executor of the Michael Jackson estate) and I have insisted for many weeks to have certain tracks removed from Michael’s new album. Unfortunately, our concerns were not taken seriously.”

But a week later (on November 17, 2010) Randy Jackson said exactly the opposite and claimed that McClain was so supportive of the Cascio songs that he “insisted that no family members were allowed at his studio where the project was being completed” and that McClain, same as John Branca, didn’t see “eye to eye” with the Jacksons. “What are they trying to hide?” he fumed.

Published: 18 Nov 2010

Randy Rages: ‘MJ Songs Are Fake’

Screaming foul play…Randy Jackson

MICHAEL JACKSON’s brother RANDY went on a Twitter rampage last night and made the astonishing claim that some of the songs on the tragic icon’s new album are bogus.

Despite experts insisting Jacko’s voice features on every track, Randy is adamant that simply isn’t the case — and he’s fuming at the Sony chiefs behind the release of Michael.

He says he was “sick” when label bosses signed a £165million deal with executors of the MJ estate to release 10 albums, claiming he became “suspicious” of the project when bosses banned the Jackson from visiting the studio while the tracks were completed.

The singer tweeted: “Me and my nephew were the first to say that it wasn’t his voice on some of the tracks. The family and the executors of the estate, Branca and (John) McClain, are not on the same page. We don’t see eye to eye.

“I became suspicious about the album, when I heard hen [ten?] armed guards were involved since my brother’s passing… John McClain insisted that no family members were allowed at his studio where the project was being completed.

“My first thought was, ‘What are they trying to hide?’

Teddy Riley (producer) was brought in just to mix and insisted on switching studios at which (point) he called me to come down and hear my brother’s music.

“I heard the music and I immediately said it wasn’t his voice. Some of the songs are him, and some aren’t. I would bet my life on that.”

His online rant also fuelled conspiracy theories into the King Of Pop’s June 2009 demise.

He added: “What’s worse (than) harsh is that my brother isn’t here, and all these people are more concerned about making money off his death.

“They could care less about why and how he died, or maybe they already know.”

The new album — due out on December 14 — has already attracted controversy.

Pop titans AKON and WILL.I.AM are at war after the BLACK EYED PEAS man blasted the posthumous collection as “disrespectful”. Akon — whose Jacko duet Hold My Hand is the first single release — hit back, claiming the 10-track disc serves as a fine tribute to the Thriller legend.

Let me make a side note here. All this incessant talk about “people making money off his death and no one caring about his legacy” sounds to me as a huge load of hypocrisy and idle talk.

Back in 2010 the Estate’s biggest concern was paying off Michael’s debts and restoring his fortune for the sake of his children in the first place. So all those who speak of the “greediness” of “powers that be” and them making millions “off Michael’s death”, had better shut up as it is actually them who don’t care about Michael’s legacy and don’t give a damn about his children.

As an alternative I would suggest that these critics take it upon themselves to pay off Michael’s debts and take care of Michael’s children this way.  Who will be the first to volunteer, please?

Will.i.am and Akon are in dispute over the Michael album

Some will disagree and say that Will.i.am, for example, also protested against Michael’s posthumous album.

But Will.i.am was not privy to Michael’s financial situation and reasoned only from the point of view of MJ’s perfectionism.

Besides, being an insider in this business, Will.i.am was also aware that a posthumous album would be inevitably partially artificial unless it contained the fully finished songs that were polished during Michael’s lifetime and approved by MJ himself. And that it’s no use pretending that a posthumous album can be as excellent in quality as the one done during his lifetime.

But no one pretended that the songs on the Michael album were fully finished and impeccable.

NO SECRET AT ALL

In fact, the creators of the Michael album went to great pains to explain that the songs were incomplete and were only “the foundations” and “creative blueprints”, and certainly not Michael’s fully finished work.

The booklet that goes with the Michael album even says it in plain words that the album was (only) conceived and inspired by the King of Pop.

And before the album was released the major media journalists were gathered for the first listen and were provided with a press release that also made it clear that the songs were incomplete.

The BBC reported:

First listen: Michael Jackson’s new album

2 December 2010

The press release given to journalists at the album playback is honest in describing the source material for the album as “creative blueprints” and “foundations”.

In other words the songs were incomplete.

A team of producers including Teddy Riley, Eddie Cascio and Theron ‘Neff-U’ Feemster helped turn them into fully formed tracks. The result, somewhat predictably, is not a cohesive body of work.  What this album doesn’t do is give fans an indication of what Jackson wanted to do with the new material he was writing, or leave clues as to his state of mind in his last few years. ‘Michael’ is released in the UK December 13th.

The Independent said the same:

Elisa Bray hears the record Michael Jackson never got to complete

Thursday 02 December 2010

Just when it seemed Michael Jackson had finally been left to rest in peace, out comes his first studio album in nine years. Yesterday it was played to a handful of journalists for the first time.

The project took shape when the producers and collaborators – including Akon, 50 Cent and Lenny Kravitz – took 10 unfinished songs by Jackson and completed them.

The late star’s vocals are more prominent in some songs than others, but [ ] a couple of the tracks are so over-produced that, with all the backing vocals, you can barely hear Jackson’s voice.

Only one of the tracks on the album was fully completed by Jackson (back in the Thriller era), the album’s closer, “Much Too Soon”. It could explain why some of the songs seem to simply fade away, without any proper endings, rather like the man himself.

So when half of MJ’s fandom claimed that the Estate and Sony committed a fraud and the album misled the purchasers as to its content, it becomes clear that none of them took the trouble to read the booklet for the album and all of them simply followed the whistling crowd in a zombie-like fashion.

Fortunately I have the original version of the album and can provide the screenshots.

Firstly, the information on the “Thank you’s” page says that the album was “conceived and inspired by the King of Pop Michael Jackson.”

It was only conceived and inspired by Michael Jackson….

The page containing the credits enumerates the songs and says which of them were written by Michael Jackson and which were not (Akon’s was not). “Written by Michael Jackson” means that he either composed music for it, or wrote the lyrics, or both.

The page with short credits says which songs were written by Jackson

Another page provides detailed credits for each song – who produced what, who were the vocalists, who did the sound-engineering job, etc.

And over here we are amazed to find that Michael Jackson is credited with lead vocals in only two songs – “Another Day” with Lanny Kravitz and “Behind the Mask” (circled in red).

This page contains detailed credits for all those involved in the album

The songs which credit Michael’s with background vocals are marked yellow and include “Another Day”, “Behind the Mask” and two Cascio songs – “Keep Your Head Up” and “Monster”.

Some songs mention additional background vocals by other vocalists (marked gray) and Michael Jackson’s name is not to be found there there at all (“Hollywood Tonight” and “Best of Joy”).

And finally, nobody’s vocals are mentioned (probably for copyright reasons) in Akon’s “Hold by hand”, “(I like) The Way You Love Me, “Much Too Soon” and the Cascio “Breaking News.”

In addition to the above the back side of the booklet says that these vocal tracks were “performed” by Michael Jackson and that the tracks were “recently completed using music from the original vocal tracks and music created by the credited producers.”

The back side of the album booklet

In other words, the album is practically screaming to its purchasers that though the songs are performed by Michael Jackson (they indeed are), his performance there is coming in varied degrees – sometimes it’s the lead vocals, sometimes it’s the background vocals, and some songs could probably be lacking some parts and this didn’t allow the album producers to even put Michael’s name there.

The text also openly reveals that the songs were “completed” (obviously by others) “using music from the original vocal tracks” and also the “music created by the credited producers”.

In short the producers of the album are exceptionally honest with its listeners and tell the whole truth as it is – most of the songs were incomplete and had to be reworked, processed and finished by other people who did the job to the best of their abilities. And this concerns not only the Cascio tracks but all others too.

So the only thing that was required of Michael Jackson’s fans was to take the trouble to read the information accompanying the album – which they apparently failed to do because hardcore fans like Damien Shields stifled all other voices and drowned them in the sea of those who screamed “foul play” from every corner, focusing their rage only on the Cascio songs for some reason.

The booklet for the album is also proof enough that the class lawsuit filed by Vera Serova on behalf of  the “defrauded” purchasers does not have a leg to stand on – there was simply no subject matter for the lawsuit. No purchasers would have been fooled had they read the booklet and if they had, none of them would have expected the same quality of Michael Jackson’s songs as the one they were used to in his earlier albums.

Apparently, the lawsuit was a high-powered scam concocted out of thin air and most probably assisted by those who are sometimes called “the powers that be”. The first and foremost idea of these people was to bring down the Cascio family and ruin their reputation –  in order to make their voices no longer valid in case they were summoned to the court of law to tell the innocent truth about Michael Jackson.

And if this scam managed to bring down the MJ Estate too, it could be regarded as an added bonus to the  job so exceptionally “well done” by all these activists.

~

Okay, but what about the infamous vibrato which every doubter of Cascio songs thinks to be “the most compelling evidence of all”?

Well, let us look into that too.

People may have the impression that the long-lasting dispute over the authenticity of Cascio songs is a purely musical matter and doesn’t have anything to do with vindicating Michael Jackson and cleaning his good name from false allegations.

Indeed, where is MJ’s posthumous album and where are the allegations against Michael? Most will shrug their shoulders and say that they have nothing in common.

But the truth indeed runs marathons, and 14 years after the marathon started (in 2010) the truth is finally revealing to us that there is a direct link between the two.

Initially the mess over the “fake” Cascio songs looked like an over-exaggerated fans’ concern that the three songs were sung by a soundalike. Then the dispute turned into a war of certain activists against those who didn’t believe their “fake songs” theory. The confrontation led to banning those who disagreed and closure of one of the MJ forums (Maximum Jackson) due to a split in the forum’s leadership.

By the time more serious events emerged the MJ fan community had already been in disarray.  The first serious event was Conrad Murray’s trial and conviction (2011), which was then followed by a trial of the AEG Live (2012) – the company responsible for arranging Michael Jackson’s concerts in London.

Both trials looked into the final days of Michael Jackson, filled with anxiety and frustration over the 50 shows forced on him despite his will, and the impossible day in/day out schedule which he couldn’t have managed even when he was young …. however the anti-Cascio activists couldn’t care less. The focus of their attention was on the three Cascio songs which they were still highly suspicious of.

Randy Phillips of AEG demanded that Michael Jackson sang and danced at every rehearsal but admitted at trial that it was no part of their agreement and generally rehearsals are no obligation for celebrities – they usually join the crew at the last moment. Michael Jackson himself repeatedly said to the insistent Kenny Ortega that Kenny should “first build a house and then he would come and paint the front door”, but no one listened to him then and people like Damien Shields, the author of “Faking Michael” series, never listen at all.

How do I know?

Michael didn’t sleep because of all the anxiety and injustice to him, and Randy Phillips added more to it by threatening to take MJ’s children away from him if he didn’t rehearse, and at some point even admitted that he had slapped Michael for not being ready for a public event.  Everyone was in shock at those revelations, except Damien Shields. So  right in the middle of the trial he triumphantly announced that he had managed to interview Randy Phillips (apparently about  issues of his own) and I remember my own interaction with Shields asking him why he chose to speak to Phillips after the latter admitted that he had slapped Michael Jackson.

Shields’s offhand response revealed that he either didn’t follow the trial or was indifferent to how Phillips ill-treated Jackson. The answer was something like “so what of it?” (I don’t remember the exact wording) but it did make me shudder and wonder whether he ever cared about Michael at all. Now I’m told that his reply has been edited to make it look more appealing to readers.

The year 2013 brought even more problems – Robson made false allegations against Michael Jackson which certainly overshadowed the noise around the Cascio songs. So the attention to those tracks had to be kept up somewhat artificially and Damien Shields regularly commented in his blog on every new detail in this respect, often twisting facts or reporting fake sensations in order to rekindle the interest in the matter.

And 2014 was even worse – in May that year Robson’s tales were joined by Safechuck’s lies, which almost buried the subject of those songs, however it was at that very moment that the “fake songs” activists chose to remind everyone of the Cascios and their tracks.

They filed a class action lawsuit against Eddie Cascio, James Porte and their Angelikson company for the alleged fraud of the customers, demanding refunds and damages for the three songs on the album, incl. punitive damages, the coverage of attorneys’ fees, expenses and the cost of lawsuit, etc.

And as if the Estate hadn’t their hands full with Robson & Safechuck already, the anti-Cascio activists put on them another load by also filing a class action lawsuit against John Branca of the Estate,  MJJ Productions and Sony who were allegedly complicit in the Cascio “crimes” as they offered to customers a MJ album which hadn’t been properly verified before the release, so all Californians covered by that lawsuit were in for the refunds, damages and the like.

The complaints were made on the basis of a report by forensic specialist Dr. George Papcun who used to work for the CIA (!) and on his opinion about two Cascio songs – “Monster” and “Breaking News” (the third song “Keep Your Head Up” was mentioned only in passing).

The conclusion of the report was as indefinite as it could possibly be – in “Monster” the dialect was found to be somewhat different than in other songs, while in “Breaking News” the dialect was OK, only the name “Jackson” was slightly different from the way it was pronounced by MJ in spoken speech. Also in “Breaking News” the vibrato was faster than the vibrato “in a sample of Jackson recordings” and his “tremolo was smoother and better controlled than the tremolo of the singer in Breaking News”.

In other words, the overall conclusion was totally inconclusive – essentially it concerned only “Breaking News” and abided in uncertain statements like “more likely”, “less certain” and “appears to be”. The glaring omission was the absence of an overall conclusion about “Monster”.

As to “Keep Your Head Up” this song seemed not to be an issue  at all.

Now it’s even interesting to observe how the forensic audiologist’s cautious opinion about 1 song eventually turned into a definitive statement about 3 Cascio songs.

Dr. Papcun says:

• “For these reasons, I am led to reject the hypothesis that the singer in Breaking News is Michael Jackson. That singer appears to more likely be Jason Malachi, though that conclusion is less certain.”

The legal papers present the same as if it is about all three songs:

• “Dr. Papcun concluded that it was very likely that MJ did not sing the lead vocals on the Cascio tracks. Counsel subsequently had Dr. Papcun’s expert report peer-reviewed by another well-credentialed independent audio expert who concluded that Dr. Papcun’s methodologies and conclusions were reasonable”.

And the “FM” podcast, which finally reveals the name of the second expert, announces that it is the probative conclusion of both experts on all three Cascio songs:

• Papcun came to the conclusion that the voice on the Casio tracks does not belong to Michael Jackson. Dr. Papcun’s report was peer-reviewed by another expert named Dr. Durand Begault, a veteran forensic audiologist who works for NASA (!) and Dr Begault opined that Papcun’s conclusion was probative,  which means that in Begault’s expert opinion  it has indeed demonstrated that the Casio tracks  were not sung by Michael Jackson.”

However all this rhetoric boils down to the fact that the first expert made a cautious conclusion about one song (okay, one and a half) and the second expert says that the first conclusion was “reasonable” but not “probative” (i.e. not proving anything).

Actually, bold generalizations like the above run like a red thread through the “FM” podcast and their whole anti-Cascio story, each time starting with some nit-picking and finally turning into a massive “fraud” which deserves to be investigated by no other than the FBI in the opinion of Damien Shields.

So much for the “objectivity” of their investigation.

WARRIERS OF LIGHT VS. FORCES OF EVIL

In the last episode of his “Faking Michael” podcast Damien Shields says that on the basis of so much “compelling” evidence, he wanted to file a lawsuit, but after discussing it with another diehard MJ fan he ceded this opportunity to a lady – Vera Serova (my compatriot and a recent immigrant from Russia).

As far as I know she came to the US on a work visa sometime in 2011 and possibly wasn’t even a US citizen at the moment of complaint (the lawsuit referred to her as “an individual residing within the state of California”).

The timing of Serova’s class action lawsuit couldn’t be chosen better even by the worst MJ haters – it came a year after Robson’s lawsuit and was filed in June 2014, a month after Safechuck’s allegations in May the same year.

As you already know, despite Mr. Papcun’s cautious conclusion regarding  only one song on the album, the lawsuit boldly stated that Michael Jackson wasn’t the lead singer on all three Cascio songs, that Cascio and Porte defrauded the purchasers and that Sony and Estate were “engaged in deceptive business practices” as a result of which “Plaintiff and other subclass members suffered damage and lost money in that they paid for goods that were not as represented.”

To double check myself , I looked up the back side of the “Michael” album again and found that it doesn’t say that Michael is the lead singer on all (or any) of its songs. All it says is that he “performs” on 9 previously unreleased vocal tracks, and the whole text sounds to me even as a kind of a disclaimer.

• “This album contains 9 previously unreleased vocal tracks performed by Michael Jackson. These tracks were recently completed using music from the original vocal tracks and music created by the credited producers”.

The back side of the album

The litigation process lasted for 8 (eight) years, involved the Californian Court of Appeals (twice) as well as the Supreme Court of California – not to mention high-profile lawyers and various consumer protection agencies who took the side of the poor customers robbed of their money.

In August 2022 it ended in a settlement on undisclosed terms, removal of the Cascio songs from the CDs and all streaming platforms, and a huge amount of publicity and new career opportunities for the lawsuit initiators.

Damien Shields, for example, who previously had a minor job in a marketing firm and was selling tickets to concerts in Australia where he himself was imitating Michael’s dance routines (general admission $34.90, pensioners $29.90), has now proclaimed himself  “an investigative journalist” who readily gives interviews and is working on books on the basis of what he investigates.

click to enlarge

MJ Tribute shows: TICKETS ON SALE NOW!

On Saturday 17^th April 2010 at the Gold Coast Arts Centre we will be holding a spectacular production: Australia Salutes Michael Jackson – A Tribute to the King of Pop! 

Tickets have been categorized to include adult, pensioner, student and child prices, plus discount package deals for families and groups!

TICKET INFO: General Admission: $34.90. Pensioners: $29.90. Kids and Students: $24.90. Family tickets: $23.75 each (Total $95 gets you 2x adults and 2x kids). Group booking (10 tix or more): $22.90 each (order by PHONE only …)

click to enlarge

“Australia Salutes Michael Jackson is an organization founded by Damien Shields and Enoch Behzadpour. The organization offers Australian Michael Jackson fans the chance to experience the magic of the King of Pop through our live tribute concerts. These concerts showcase a diverse mixture of Michael’s biggest hit songs and most iconic dance routines in a spectacular state production.”

This site was designed and built by Greg Spinks, the co-founder of Maximum Jackson.

As to plaintiff Vera Serova, the brainy girl used the litigation period to a huge benefit for herself – she entered and finished the Law school at California University, became an attorney, and was taken on board a well-established law firm, apparently after bringing them an impressive resume of a winner in a heroic fight against a powerful corporation.

In other words, the epic battle of the warriors of Light against the forces of Evil was won for almost everyone – except the Cascios and their brother-in-law James Porte, of course. This family not only lost their money and reputation of honorable and upstanding people but also a chance to “work in the music industry ever again” (as the activists threatened they would).

Jason Malachi is another exception, of course. Once a budding singer who is also a deputy-sheriff working in law enforcement for 15 years had to move to another home to avoid stalking, and said that no one could imagine what he and his family had to go through during those years – spite, hate and harassment to name only a few.

The Estate isn’t a winner either because they were not only trashed by MJ’s fans on every corner despite everything they did for rebuilding Michael Jackson’s fortune, but they also lost a massive amount of time and money during the 8-year long litigation forced on them by the fighters against evil embodied to fans by those horrible Cascios.

But the biggest loser in the battle is of course Michael Jackson himself, because when/if  the Robson & Safechuck trial takes place in 2026, the Cascio children, who were brought up practically by Michael’s side and were his best friends until his last day, and who could testify to his complete innocence at the trial,  have been gravely discredited, intimidated, character-assassinated and unspeakably tarred (all in the name of truth of course) and are now considered totally untrustworthy, while the so-called honest people who did it to them are being applauded.

Of course these people are celebrating now – their vilification job has indeed been “well-done”.

However the end result is far from being the truth because their so-called investigation is full of half-lies, one-sided stories, misrepresentations and extreme cherry-picking. It silences the key factors that don’t fit their narrative but blows out of proportion insignificant trifles. It presents opinions as proven facts, and it is only their excessive repetition from one episode to another that makes them stick to your memory as something really solid.

The “Faking Michael” podcast claims that the opposite side has been offered an opportunity to tell their story too, but provides only a couple of statements from Eddie Cascio’s interview to James Bull (Damien Shields’s collaborator) taken as early as 2010 but now effectively hushed up – apparently for fear that if its listeners hear the whole interview they will find answers to their questions, and the carefully built myth around those “fakes” may fall apart with a big bang.

In other words, this so-called investigation is made up of a whole gamut of propaganda elements, and why this propaganda is being given so much attention and why now, needs an answer.

 THE WAR OF FANS

According to the report of the esteemed Dr. George Papcun, the main complaint about the “Breaking News” song is the vibrato which is faster than the vibrato “in a sample of Jackson recordings”. The fast vibrato was noticed by almost everybody and sounded not only faster but also somewhat unnatural and even digital to some listeners.

Later on the three Cascio songs on the album were supplemented by nine more songs allegedly from the same package which were leaked by some “well-wishers” and ridiculed by MJ fans even more.

No one can guarantee that these songs were the ones that were presented to the Estate by Cascio and Porte and that they were leaked to the public in their original condition, though many fans take what they are given at their face value.

Most of those songs also have a fast vibrato but in some of them it is so exaggerated that it doesn’t sound even like Jason Malachi’s voice, not to mention MJ.

So due to my lack of trust in the leaked songs I can express an opinion only about the three official Cascio tracks, and will admit that when I first heard them in 2010 I noticed the fast vibrato too, but attributed it to the fact that the songs were unfinished, had to be processed, and contained the side-effects of the post-production manipulation (called “artifacts” in sound-engineering) — all of which is unpleasant of course, but unfortunately unavoidable considering the circumstances.

To my big surprise many diehard fans on the MJJ Community forum who didn’t fall for the “fake songs” story thought along the same lines and as soon as the first track (“Breaking News”) was released said that the song was over-processed but was nevertheless sung by Michael Jackson.

One of them is a guy from Germany, known to MJ’s fans as Korgnex (real name Alex). He is a long-time collector of Michael Jackson’s demos and unreleased songs, a person who made it his business to acquire only “the real thing”, and this specifics turned him into a sort of an expert on MJ fakes – and it was this person who insisted that “Breaking news” was authentic, was sung by Michael Jackson and Jason Malachi had nothing to do with it.

Here are some quotes from Korgnex:

• Nov 8, 2010  #2,432    

Guys, please wake up.
Well, if you don’t like the song, that’s up to you, but as a contributor to “For The Record” and as an audio expert of Michael Jackson’s singing voice (and owning a collection of unreleased songs as well) I can confirm that “Breaking News” is sung by Michael Jackson, the King of Pop.

• Nov 9, 2010 #86     

There’s no connection between Jason Malachi and “Breaking News”. Jason’s voice on his tracks can easily be distinguished from the King of Pop.

• Nov 9, 2010 #170     

Jason Malachi sounds COMPLETELY different. You’ll realize this sooner or later.
I was amongst the first people who have reported about the sole existence of Jason Malachi some years ago as many fans have been fooled with those fake songs like “Mamacita” etc.
I even made a thread which explained it all as I wanted (and still want) to protect the artistry of Michael Jackson.

I’m hating fakes from the bottom of my heart. At JacksonVillage I’ve created a “Beware of FAKES” thread many years ago. I was always up-to-date with the fake stuff that has been flooding the internet since.

• Nov 10, 2010 #304    

Again: ALL songs are 100% Michael Jackson.
The whole fake allegation is bogus and it splits the fanbase into 2 camps. Don’t let that happen.

However the “fake songs” conspiracists were screaming louder, were omnipresent and attacking everyone who expressed a different opinion. Eventually every subject on MJ fans’ forums turned into a hate thread against the Cascio songs and against “not real” fans who dared to have a different opinion.

At one point Korgnex asked the activists’ leader Damien Shields to please stop it. Shields left of his own free will, but a certain “Stella Jackson” (who is actually a man) appeared and the hatred against everyone who disagreed continued at an even bigger scale.

You can see how bad things were from the comments of the same Korgnex and Ivy (the forum moderator and author of the “Daily Michael” blog) just half a year later. What’s interesting is that the war was one-sided only as it was waged only by the anti-Cascio activists against everybody else.

Re. War of the fans

 Apr 9, 2011 #1

KORGNEX:  Hello,

to cut the matter short: There’s currently much hatred towards the Cascio’s, Sony Music, The Michael Jackson Estate, the producers and other participating people.

Fans are conducting some kind of war – against themselves. I had to face that on Twitter, Facebook, on the forums, virtually everywhere, only accusations are being made by those that believe the Cascio songs to be fake and that Jason Malachi shall be the singer towards all fans that have a different opinion.

Due to the fact I’m also best-known on the forums for many years now and I’m known as well for not believing into a conspiracy, I became the target of these attacks, too. Yesterday, for the first time ever I was heavily publicly attacked by a user on this forum (MJJC). Even some reference to the “KGB” was made. I understand nothing at all of this (why mention the KGB???)

The remaining Cascio songs will most likely be leaked soon by people that don’t care about the future and the law, so you can enjoy them.
However they will only be leaked in order to further proclaim their frustration and anger towards Jason Malachi and to limit the forums on one topic only once and for all.

I run out of steam because of this garbage. For me there goes the Michael Jackson forums, the crazy fanatics can stuff it.
Take care,
I’ll be staying here but as of now I’m inactive only.
Alex (Korgnex)

Apr 9, 2011  #15

Ivy:

I wish Korgnex change his mind. I too have been at the receiving end of hate due to this topic both on this forum and on twitter as well. It’s a sad time when people cannot respect difference of opinion and feel like their hate is justified just because you think differently.

The “fake songs” activists were also outraged that that Sony and Estate didn’t disclose the names of the two forensic musicologists who, same as Dr. Papcun, analyzed the Cascio songs but came to the opposite conclusion – that the songs were authentic and sung by Michael Jackson.

This “secrecy” was seen by them as a sure proof of the fraud, however given that the hate and craze around those songs was getting completely out of control, it was obvious that the two experts did indeed require anonymity.

Here is one of the most polite excerpts from that discussion.

Jun 20, 2014   #800

BUMPER SNIPPET:  Well, what’s the easiest and the simplest explanation for not giving the names of the official analysis by the “top forensics”?

ivy : Simple answer – because they would be stalked/followed and harassed. Weren’t and aren’t Cascio’s followed/stalked and harassed? Cursed? How many people sent curses to Frank on twitter? Do you remember the debate we had about comments about Cascio’s mother and how inappropriate it was to bring her into this mess?

And let me tell you that for 4 years a small group has even been cursing, stalking and harassing me – because of my opinion on these songs. Merely opinions, I had nothing to do with these songs. (I have hundreds of screenshots to prove it.)

So it makes all the sense in the world to preserve anonymity of the people – regardless of who they are. Even aside my personal experience, we have seen harassment Frank, Teddy Riley, Executors received. Vogel is still being harassed on twitter for being “pro-estate”.

Due to this description we can imagine what amount of hatred was targeted at ordinary people for simply voicing their opinion about those songs. But I cannot imagine what the Cascios, James Porte, Jason Malachi, Teddy Riley and their families had to endure day in day out for 14 years from 2010 until today – because the “FM” podcast is resurging it all over again now and is preaching its religion to a practically new generation of people and MJ’s fans.

Apparently, the matter of smearing the Cascios is really so pressing and relevant for today that it needs to be taken to a new level of publicity and be solidified into a permanent and unquestionable myth.

Korgnex noticed this mythology-building tendency already a year after the whole thing started and was saddened to see how the fixed ideas of some “crazy fanatics” were turning into well-established so-called “truths”, even despite the fact that they were based on lack of knowledge, lies and pure speculation.

Korgnex:

• Sep 10, 2011 #16,517 

Michael surely didn’t want any “war of the fans”. Unfortunately such fan wars are quite common nowadays.

I could explain how myths such as “$ony killed MJ” or “Ca$cio betrayed MJ” and a lot more of this type have initially developed from and how (conspiracy) theories and rumours have surprisingly turned into well-recognized so-called “truths” (by some fans only though), based on lack of knowledge, pure speculation and the telling lies……but people that really want to seek the truth, have to do it themselves and won’t listen to me anyway.

Ironically those fans that attack other people and tell themselves they would do what MJ would have appreciated, are actually – without realizing it – doing the same things that Michael had to face for most of his life: PREJUDICES.

• Nov 25, 2011 #19,996

SOME of you doubters have no respect for opposing views of other individuals. You’re declaring yourself and other doubters to be the sole authority who knows everything about Michael Jackson and his friend Eddie Cascio and dictate for the rest of the fan community that you know everything about the songs and that there wouldn’t be any chance that you’re totally wrong due to a simple lack of knowledge. You know NOTHING about these tracks.

This is called propaganda. Many fans (including me) do not support propaganda.

The above diagnosis is perfectly correct. Led by the dubious goals of some activists many Michael’s fans are guilty of exactly the same that Michael himself had to face all his life – PREJUDICES and PROPAGANDA, both of which are based on lack of knowledge and someone’s desire to dictate their will to others.

So let’s help people to get some knowledge on the subject and look at what this vibrato is all about, especially since the conspiracists regard it as their “most compelling evidence”.

“THE MOST COMPELLING EVIDENCE”

As you remember the first to announce the Cascio songs “fake” due to the vibrato were the Jacksons who tweeted it around the world without giving it a second thought.

TJ Jackson:

Sounds like Jason Malachi to me too. The vibrato is a dead give away that it’s not my uncle. Fans, I am so sorry you were put through this.”

Prior to that Taryll Jackson and Cory Rooney attended two listening sessions arranged by the Estate and Sony and also raged about the vibrato, as well as some other things. Here is what episode 4 of “FM” says about that discussion:

“Taryll and Rooney pointed out that the singer on the Casio tracks was pronouncing certain words differently to how Michael would  pronounce them, but in the same way that Jason did on his songs. They also pointed to the vibrato as one of the most compelling pieces of evidence that Jason and not Michael was singing the lead vocal.”  

“Taryll started getting really upset at the fact that the conversation even was necessary because of just how crazy the record was sounding. Taryll pointed out that Casio and Porte stood to make millions of dollars if Sony and the Estate believed these songs were real. That in itself Taryll said would be more than enough reason for them to lie.

According to Lawanda Taryll was going ballistic threatening that if the Estate didn’t scrap the Casio tracks he would go to the media and expose the entire thing.

“At that point Teddy [Riley] got mad and left the meeting, and at that point Teddy had flipped and was like he wasn’t going to stand up for Taryll or Mrs Jackson”.

Other faults found with the songs were the absence of Michael’s trademark finger snaps and foot stomps as well as the copy-pasted parts in some of the tracks.

Engineer Michael Prince recalls how obvious the copy and paste edits became when they heard the a cappella vocals without any music behind them. “They played a lot of a cappellas because we said we need to hear the voice naked. And you could hear all the edits, I mean it was just edited to shit, you know”.

But despite all the red flags including  the lack of Jackson’s trademark finger snaps, hand claps and foot stomps, the badly controlled vibrato and the obvious cut and paste edits Prince was still on the fence regarding whether or not the King of Pop was actually singing on the tracks.  

Michael Prince: “They’re playing it for you, and you know, it’s like I’ve never heard him sing these lines before [so] it’s possible it could be Michael. Cory, I’ll be honest with you, it sounds like him in parts, there’s times it sounds like him, but I’m not going to confirm that it’s him. And now I listen to that vibrato and it’s just … it just sounds so fake.”

Michael Prince said that while it sounded like Michael to him he couldn’t say for sure one way or the other. “It’s what I told the Estate. It sounds like Michael. I said I can’t tell you 100% it is and I can’t tell you 100% that it isn’t.”

Lawanda explains that her approach was simple – go to the people who performed and recorded with Michael their entire lives and ask them what they think. “I only trusted his brothers because they know his voice. I really didn’t care about what other people felt. And his brothers didn’t think it was him.”

Regarding the opinions of the engineers Lawanda recalls: “And then you go and get all the engineers that work for him and they all said, we can’t say it is, but everybody agreed that something was wrong with the vibrato.” 

Sound engineer Matt Forger believed that it was Michael but even he wasn’t willing to say it definitively, because “definite” for him meant sitting beside Michael and directly hearing his voice.

Matt Forger: “When I say something definitively, it’s because I sat in the room and I did the work, and heard Michael’s voice in there. I know people can copy Michael very well and I can’t say that it’s impossible to fool people, and I think that’s why it is unsettling. Unfortunately there’s going to be this difference of opinion there. Without Michael being here it’s someone’s word against someone else’s.” 

So in a situation when it’s the word of one against the word of another, the big question is why there was so big a difference of opinion between the hesitant sound engineers and the adamant Taryll Jackson whose ears were telling him that it wasn’t Michael and who went ballistic at a mere thought that the matter needed a discussion?

This is because sound engineers realize that nowadays you can no longer believe your ears as they know how unbelievably a singer’s voice can be changed by a DAW.

Note: DAW is an acronym for Digital Audio Workstation. DAWs cover every part of the music-making process from recording digital audio through creating beats and melodies with virtual instruments to adding effects to make everything sound great and perfecting the final mix of all the tracks.

So when the sound engineers were listening to that vibrato the biggest puzzle for them must have been not the vibrato itself but why it hadn’t been removed before presenting those tracks to the Estate. DAWs were perfectly able to eliminate any such defects in the recordings even before they reached Teddy Riley and other producers.

This is why the vibrato could look to them as being left there almost intentionally, and I bet that the only real puzzle for them was the circumstances in which that vibrato appeared and why it had to be left there at all.

In fact, if someone wanted to make a “perfect” MJ fake by inviting a singer who sounded almost like Michael except for the vibrato, they could have easily removed the defect because in 2010 there were numerous possibilities for doing it.

The DAWS could have slowed the speed of the vibrato or removed it altogether, and this could be done without changing the pitch of the sound and other characteristics of a human voice!

The anti-Cascio activists will claim that at that time there was no known technique to do that but these people either don’t know or are telling you a BIG FAT LIE.

To see what the situation was really like then, we’ll need to make a short dive into the miraculous world of sound engineering.

THE WORLD OF MIRACLES

So what is a vibrato?

Vibrato can be produced not only by a human voice, but by almost all musical instruments to make the sound more expressive. Its effect consists in a regular, pulsating change in pitch which can be described as a ripple in a pond, only in its audible version.

The opposite of vibrato is a straight tone – a note that stays constant in pitch, without any fluctuation. When the straight note starts wavering slightly up and down in pitch at a regular speed it turns into a vibrato.

Here is what experts say about it:

• Vibrato is a regular fluctuation in pitch and intensity. It is important to consider two things when analysing vibrato. One is the extent of the pitch variation, how far off the central note the sound goes. A vibrato that goes far off the central note is a ‘wide’ vibrato and one that doesn’t go far off is a ‘shallow’ vibrato.

The extent of the vibrato may be shallow (A) or deep (B). Shallow vibrato is close to a straight sound and looks like a flattened wave.

• Then there is the speed of the vibrato, whether the pitch fluctuations are fast or slow. A desirable vibrato is controlled, pleasant to hear, and feels very free and natural.

The rate (speed) of the vibrato may be slow or fast. Sometimes the fast vibrato is called tremolo, but it isn’t quite correct.

When the vibrato is too fast it produces a bleating, shaking sound which isn’t very appealing to the ear unless it is a gimmick meant to produce a comic effect. I hear that singer whose name is Post Malone turned a fast vibrato into a “shtick” of his own which is even called “the Post Malone effect” now.

Jason Malachi’s vibrato is closer to that bleating sound but is actually not that bad, otherwise it wouldn’t be so easily mistaken for Michael Jackson’s voice.

The voice coach below will show you the different rates of vibrato, and when she exaggerates it she calls it even “ridiculous”.

The first of her illustrations is a fast vibrato (with a bleating sound), then comes a slower one, then a straight tone (without any vibrato and looking a little boring) and then the vibrato with inconsistent fluctuations (which are hardly noticeable to an average listener).

Pop singers generally don’t use vibrato unless they want to add a little embellishment at the end of a long drawn, sustained note.

For opera singers, conversely, vibrato is a must, and the fun fact here is that it is used by them not only to make the sound fuller and more expressive, but it also helps them to survive the several hours of singing over the orchestra and without a microphone, because the vocal cords relax during the vibrato, and singing becomes easier – if their breathing technique is correct, of course.

Another fun fact is that the “early opera” singers (who sing in Baroque style) are requested not to use the vibrato, because it is generally considered that women’s roles during that period were performed by boys who had clear and non-vibrato voices.

Anyway, this is what a sound engineer sees on his monitor when he hears the vibrato of a professional opera singer (above) and “an early music” opera singer/or pop singer who adds vibrato only to the end of a sustained note (below).

Opera singers always sing with a vibrato (above graph), but pop singers and “early music” opera singers use it rarely and mostly to embellish the end of a long sustained note (below graph)

In case a pop singer wants a vibrato, but is unable to produce it, sound engineers can easily add it to their vocals.

They can also change the depth and rate of the vibrato, or remove it altogether – and do it without changing the pitch of a sound!

Vibrato rate and vibrato extent. The straight line up above is the center of the pitch

And all these miracles are done not only by DAWs themselves, but by supplementary plug-ins which may be added to the existing DAW. By now there is a whole variety of such plug-ins and before we see which of them were available in 2010 let us first look into how this magic works.

Here is the illustration of the process by a sound engineer named Thales.

Thales explains:

Do you want to add vibratos to your vocals in post-production? I’m about to show you how to artificially add natural sounding vibratos in Ableton Live with a simple trick.

Note: Ableton Live was launched in 2001, so this equipment could easily be used by sound engineers in the period we are interested in.

Hey, I’m Thales, pop music producer, and this fake vibrato technique works on every DAW — even without Autotune, Melodyne, Waves tune or any pitch correction software. All you need is a delay and a tremolo effect.

Just so we’re on the same page, a natural vibrato is a slight variation in pitch, going up and down, with a shape that resembles a sine wave, and it happens pretty quickly, at around 6 hertz. And to recreate that in your favorite DAW, we’re going to load a delay plugin, and automate some parameters during the words we want the vibrato to happen.

The technical side will be omitted here, so let us fast forward right to the miracle-making part of it at 3:29. Forget the explanation and focus just on the effect it results in:

Thales: “Pick the words to which you want to add the artificial vibrato, turn automation mode ON, click your new macro and draw curves like this one. I find it to sound more natural when you don’t start the automation at the beginning of the word.

I prefer to draw a fade, like the vibrato is getting stronger as I hold the notes. That’s usually the pattern of a real vibrato.

Notice I keep it discreet to sound more natural, but if you go back to your mapping controls and make those values higher, you can exaggerate this. If you want to get freaky, this is how you do it.

Also, depending on the singer’s technique, the vibrato can be faster or slower than that. Sometimes it’s a much faster rate. If you listen to Post Malone, you know what I’m talking about.  Something around 8 Hertz seems to do the trick for a cool fast vibrato effect.”

Another lovely sound-engineer explains that it is equally easy to remove the vibrato if you don’t want it any more:

This video looks at how to artificially create vibrato and also how to remove vibrato from a vocal track.

Fast forward to 5:56 and here we are:

Removing Vibrato

“Now there may be some times where there’s just too much vibrato on a vocal and this makes the vocal sound weak and wavery which is normally not what we want and so we’re going to have a look now at how we can remove this.

And like with adding vibrato we can use software like Flex pitch or Melodyne or we can use an Auto tuner plug-in. I just quickly wanted to do an example of Flex pitch removing vibrato. It’s pretty much the same way you add vibrato. You use the middle bottom circle but this time you drag it down and as you can see the line gets straighter. Here’s the before and after [Music].

You can hear that there was much less vibrato on the final note and it sounded less wavery than before.”

And at 7:03 we learn how to remove the vibrato with Auto-tune:

An Auto-tuner can be used to reduce vibrato because it eliminates that pitch variation that the vibrato introduces into a vocal but you do have to be very careful as using Auto-tune can really easily make your vocal sound unnatural. But that may be the effect you want.

Here I’ve loaded up the Auto tune plugin and have set the key signature and a fast response time this will make the vocal sound very unnatural but it will show how you can’t really hear the vibrato anymore. So here’s the before and after [Music]

You can hear the vibrato is gone but as I said it has that robotic characteristic to it now that it didn’t have before.

Now that it’s clear that doing away with the vibrato is no problem at all, which of the equipment mentioned here was available in 2010 and probably even 2007 when the Cascio recordings were made?

To find out we are heading for a site called gearspace.com (“The No.1 Website for Pro Audio”) where sound engineers exchange their tricks and expertise on how to reduce vibrato in a vocal which is exactly the subject of our little research here.

The discussion dates back to May 2011 which is not as early as we need, but is not recent either. This is what they say:

• I prefer Melodyne for vibrato reduction. The only thing you can’t do is alter vibrato speed.
• I’ve recorded some singers with excessive vibrato, and I’ve gotten very good results from Melodyne, nearly inaudible. The process I use is very painstaking though…
• To be honest I find Melodyne’s ability to deal with vibrato pretty limited. You can only increase or reduce the existing vibrato. You can’t do anything about speed.
• I agree too that Melodyne isn’t good at removing vibrato. It remains somewhat present. Antares Auto-tune may be better at that. I feel like it’s better for that perfect/steady type of pop sound.
• The Roland V-Vocal tuner that comes with Sonar Pro has a vibrato reduction control that works fairly well.
• I agree regarding V-Vocal. I’ve used V-Vocal to tame or move vibrato and it works surprisingly well. Simply highlight the area you want to affect, scroll up/down to increase/decrease vibrato, left/right to change speed of vibrato. And you can impose vibrato of varying periods where there isn’t any, as well.
• I don’t know if you have access to Digital Performer, but the “Scale Expression” process in the Audio Pitch Correction menu does WONDERS.

The above discussion makes it clear that back in 2011 Melodyne wasn’t very effective at reducing vibrato as it mostly changed the depth of it, but not the speed. It means that a fast vibrato couldn’t be made slower, but what it could do though, was minimizing the depth of the vibrato so that it became virtually inaudible because the tone got almost flat.

In comparison with Melodyne Digital performer was “doing wonders” with every aspect of the vibrato, and it was available already in 2004, however the plug-in ran only on the Macintosh operating system, so there was a certain limitation for its use.

However the best choice was Antares Auto-tune for Roland VS Recorders. Firstly, it did the job of manipulating the vibrato “fairly well”, and secondly, its updated version was available already in 2004.

Antares Auto-Tune VS was registered in 2004

The most inquisitive can get familiar with a manual for Antares Auto-tune, dated 2005 which explains in great detail how to change every possible characteristic of a vibrato, not to mention changing the pitch and adding various effects to the vocals – and attention please – also doing it in real time, during a singer’s performance on stage!

No wonder that Auto-tune is sometimes considered a killer of real music, and live music in particular.

Vibrato Auto-Tune VS

You can program vibrato depth and rate, as well as a delay before full onset of the vibrato. You can also choose the shape of the variation of the vibrato (sine, square or sawtooth).

By combining a fast Retune Speed setting with Auto-Tune VS’s Vibrato settings, you can even remove a performer’s own vibrato and replace it with Auto-Tune VS’s programmed vibrato, all in real time. Also, unusual combinations of Vibrato Waveform, Rate and Depth settings can be used for some interesting special effects.

Here are the variants of vibrato you can choose from:

 SHAPE selects the shape of the vibrato. The choices are:

• NO VIBRATO: Pretty self-explanatory
• SINE WAVE: Changes smoothly from minimum to maximum and back again. The most common choice for a conventional vibrato.
• SQUARE: Jumps to maximum where it spends 50% of the cycle and then jumps to minimum for the remaining 50% of the cycle.
• SAWTOOTH: Gradually rises from minimum to maximum and then drops instantaneously to minimum to start the cycle again.

DEPTH sets the amount that the pitch changes. The range is from 0 (no change) to 100 (maximum change). The default setting is 18.

RATE sets the rate of the vibrato over a range of 0.1 Hz to 10 Hz. The default Rate setting is 5.5 Hz.

To wrap up our little crash-course on sound-engineering here is a short note from Wiki:

Auto-Tune is audio processor software released on September 19, 1997, by the American company Antares Audio Technologies. It was initially intended to disguise or correct off-key inaccuracies, allowing vocal tracks to be perfectly tuned.

The 1998 Cher song “Believe“ popularized the technique of using Auto-Tune to distort vocals. It has since been used by many artists in different genres.

Auto-Tune is available as a plug-in for digital audio workstations used in a studio setting and as a stand-alone unit for live performance processing.  Auto-Tune has become standard equipment in professional recording studios.

In other words the so-called “Cher effect” of distorting vocals has become so popular since 1998 that there wasn’t a single sound-engineer who didn’t use Auto-tune in his studio.

Which means that even if a soundalike had been invited to sing a MJ song, the unwelcome vibrato could have been easily slowed down or removed, and no one would have ever doubted that the singer is Michael Jackson.

And the anti-Cascio activists perfectly know about it too.

Therefore the drama created by them around those songs is purely artificial because instead of explaining other possibilities to the crowd they outright declared the songs “fake” and sung by Jason Malachi, screamed about it on every forum, and for 14 years kept shutting up anybody who voiced a different opinion about those songs.

Why these people were doing it is a subject for another post.

As to Taryll Jackson… Well, he is a singer and not an audio professional, same as other Jacksons, so they could be totally unaware of all that technical wizardry which had to be applied to Michael Jackson’s last songs for the simple reason that he was no longer there. But the huge fault of these people was that they involved everybody in this mess without thinking twice and without even trying to look into other possibilities and origins of the problem.

This is why Teddy Riley who attended those listening sessions was really angry with Taryll and Cory Rooney and asked everyone in his tweets to “read between the lines”:

• Cory is a liar and when he came to my session he was the only one on Taryll’s side. The people who were in that room didn’t want to argue and go back and forth with Taryll who spoke the whole session. What I said in that meeting was it don’t make me no difference whether these songs get use or not. It’s the estate’s decision. We let Taryll talk cause he was very hostile in the meeting. We let him talk as we nod our heads cause you can’t tell an adamant person anything.

• Cory produce and manage Taryll. Connection there…ask why he don’t said that about Sony? Read btw lines.

• They came together prep to convince everyone and it didn’t work.

• James is backgrounds only!!! None of the leads. It’s all mj very processed and it is mj. Truth!!

• We have fbi is on this with a forensic musicolegist. You will see if it goes that far..

Oh, so Sony or the Estate involved the FBI forensic musicologist(s) in the analysis of the Cascio tracks?  Then it explains why we haven’t been given the names of these people…

~

So here is the bottom line:

“The most compelling evidence” over which a team of certain activists ruined the songs and lives of many people was Michael Jackson’s vibrato that sounded faster than usual.  But that vibrato could be easily removed by the producers of the songs by means of Auto-tune.

If this technique had been used “this most compelling evidence” would have simply vanished with the first breath of wind, while the rest were mere trifles or routine professional tricks done on all singers’ recordings.

And every sound engineer knew about that elephant in the room but preferred to keep silent as it was impossible to argue with an adamant person who didn’t understand their profession.

The only thing they most probably couldn’t figure out was why the Auto-tune technique had not been employed to deal with that vibrato.

So the big question now is WHY the vibrato wasn’t dealt with and WHY it appeared there in the first place.

And to be able to answer these questions we need to dig even deeper.

As for now, the brilliant “Why” by Michael Jackson and his three nephews seems to be precisely the song fit for the moment.

The Cascio songs will have to be postponed until next time because a sort of an emergency arose in connection with an earlier post regarding the circumstances of Michael Jackson’s death.

In that post I mentioned a hypothetical possibility that Faheem Muhammad, the chief of security of Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was also head of security for Michael Jackson in 2009, could put a hand to Michael’s demise.

The suspicion arose after a lawsuit, filed against Diddy by his producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones, called Faheem Muhammad a sort of a clean-up guy who could “make problems and people disappear”.

In case of Michael Jackson his “disappearance” could theoretically be done in the simplest way possible – by entering his bedroom at approximately 11:30 a.m. on June 25 while his doctor was out talking on the phone, and by turning the clamp on an IV stand that was infusing anesthetic Propofol into Michael’s veins, thus speeding up its flow and injecting a giant dose all at once, which brought about Michael’s almost immediate breathing arrest.

A short note for those who don’t know about Propofol – in the right hands this anesthetic is so safe that it may be used non-stop for patients in intensive care units for days at a time. It is also routinely used for minor sedation during painful medical procedures and in bigger doses as general anesthesia in hours-long operations. In fact, after the last drop of Propofol drips into the patient’s blood, the latter almost immediately wakes up, often feeling refreshed as if after a good night’s sleep.

Of course, it is no substitute for real sleep, but Michael Jackson’s insomnia was so grave that during rehearsals in June 2009 it was a means of last resort for him – because without sleep he wasn’t able to rehearse, and rehearsals were a must because Randy Phillips of AEG Live threatened to take Michael’s children away from him if he didn’t.

What Propofol does require though is constant monitoring and high-precision equipment to measure up its level in the blood, because if it flows too quickly it will build up in the body and reach an extreme level of saturation after which the patient’s breathing gets slower and slower, and then stops.

Both key necessities – monitoring and equipment – were missing in the so-called treatment provided to MJ by Dr. Conrad Murray. He used the simplest type of an IV-stand and after giving Michael the initial dose to put him to sleep he manually adjusted the drip at a more or less acceptable level, and then left the room to make and receive telephone calls.

Some of the calls were mandatory as they concerned the Lloyds insurance demanded by AEG for Michael’s concerts, but others were frivolous enough (you can see the full analysis of Murray’s telephone activity that night in this post).

So even a brief overview of the scene at Carolwood house that night shows that Conrad Murray was terribly negligent towards his patient and is guilty as hell even if some third party meddled with the IV stand.

Similarly, no new circumstances will relieve AEG Live of their guilt, because it was their CEO Randy Phillips who created all those dire circumstances in the first place, and subjected Michael Jackson to extreme pressures, inhuman treatment and utter humiliation all of which were the ultimate reason why Michael Jackson could not sleep.

Randy Phillips of AEG and manager Tohme Tohme pushed on Michael 50 concerts though they perfectly realized that their horrid day in\day out schedule of performances was impossible to fulfill, especially since Michael was so emaciated that one of the paramedics estimated his condition as “very very very underweight, like what you see when you see a terminal patient. I could see ribs”.

However besides those two undoubtedly guilty parties, there was definitely a third party in the game which delivered the last blow and this becomes clearer now that more and more news gradually surfaces.

REVISITING THE OLD STORY

I had to revisit the subject of Michael Jackson’s death after reader “grandecadf10fe9“ sent me a number of videotaped testimonies from Conrad Murray’s trial, some of which had not been previously analyzed in this blog. The videos were sent in order to correct and shorten the time that Faheem Muhammad, head of MJ’s security, could spend at Michael’s residence on June 25^th, 2009.

My earlier estimation was that Faheem Muhammad had at his disposal at least 25 min as he arrived at 11:45am and left the residence at 12:10pm after which he went to the bank.

But the reader narrowed it down to 15-20 min because judging by the testimony of MJ’s personal chef, Conrad Murray asked her for help already at 12:05-12:10. And the testimony of Murray’s girlfriend narrowed it down even further, because he stopped talking to her at around 12:00, which was when Murray apparently found Michael Jackson unresponsive.

The adjustment of Faheem Muhammad’s presence at the house to a much shorter period could be correct but only in case we believe that he arrived at the property at 11:45am.

However the same videos sent by the reader also show that when Faheem Muhammad was cross-examined by Defense attorney Chernoff, he said that he arrived at the property “after 11” and left “after 12” in which case he had plenty of time (up to an hour) to enter Michael’s house and do there whatever he wanted to do there.

Faheem Muhammad got to Carolwood house “after 11” and left “after 12” (at 3:55 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHofqRZIR5U&list=PL2AA02B6D073453E3&index=5)

The reader thinks that Faheem Muhammad made a mistake here because he was already tired, however this factor works exactly the opposite way – when a person is vigorous and alert, he keeps his reactions under control, but when his control lessens due to tiredness or confusion, this is exactly the moment when he can blurt out the truth.

Unfortunately, there is no way to determine the real time of Faheem’s arrival. The surveillance tapes, which registered all arrivals that day and even pointed at the front door were monitored by a certain technician and the same Faheem Muhammad.

But the tapes were seized by the police and were later (as we learned it during the trial) “accidentally” destroyed by some officer.

In fact the video of Faheem Muhammad being cross-examined by the Defense has a note that there is a small segment missing there. This is where the Defense asked Faheem if there were surveillance tapes pointed at the front door and he said “yes” but all of them were “requested” by the police.

At 4:54 the author of the video says that one of the key segments is missing  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHofqRZIR5U&list=PL2AA02B6D073453E3&index=5)

Besides the requested (and lost) surveillance tapes of the front door, and the period of Faheem Muhammad’s presence on the property being longer than expected,  the videos of his cross-examination also reveal the strange fact that when he returned to the residence from his interrupted journey to the bank he was dropped at the Carolwood gate by his wife, which means that they were in the car together.

Since what moment I wonder? No one asked this question at the trial, however there are even more questions than one in this connection.

• Was she accompanying Faheem from the start of their journey?
• If she was, what was she doing while Faheem was going about his business in or around MJ’s residence until 12:10pm when they left?
• Or did Faheem pick her up somewhere in the city on the way to the bank?
• Or did he go back home, pick her up there and then drove to the bank?
• If so, then why did he testify that his return route was exactly the same and took exactly the same time (5 to 7 minutes)?
• So does it mean that his wife was accompanying Faheem from the very start after all, as the route back to Carolwood did not change and took exactly the same time?

Faheem Muhammad: “My wife was with me, so she dropped me at the front gate”

You will agree that if Faheem’s wife was also at MJ’s residence it would have been much easier to monitor the “clean-up” operation which we are discussing here – as a hypothetical possibility, of course.

But all these questions are actually a trifle as compared with what will come next. And the next will be mostly in pictures now.

CHEF KAI CHASE and PROSECUTOR DEBORAH BRAZIL

The reader also sent me the testimony of Kai Chase, the personal chef of Michael Jackson, who was examined at Murray’s trial by prosecutor Deborah Brazil.

The video was sent as proof that Kai Chase stated 12:05 -12:10 as the time when Conrad Murray ran down the stairs to the kitchen where she was preparing lunch.  Looking frantic he yelled to her “Go get help! Go get security! Go get Prince!” after which she went to get Prince and returned to work.

We saw this video in 2011 but at that time it didn’t raise any suspicions except that it looked strange that instead of getting security the cook called only the 12-year old boy and after that “returned to work” as if nothing happened.

Besides that everything else looked okay. During Murray’s trial all of us were sure that this time the prosecution was finally doing their job of “serving justice” and doing it “brilliantly”, as I myself thought at the time.

In addition to that the only pictures of Michael Jackson’s residence available then were the photos shown on the screen in the court room and they were so blurred that you could hardly see anything at all, so no one really looked.

However when the house in N. Carolwood Drive went on sale several years later, the real property agents provided us with splendid pictures of the inside and outside of the mansion, with the exception of its floor plans, which was certainly done for the security and privacy of the future owners.

This is how we could finally observe the splendor of the house, but still couldn’t really determine which room was where.

However with all those recent timeline clarifications I was sort of forced to make a comparison of the scenes described by Ms. Brazil and Ms. Chase and the new pictures now available to us.

And in the process my hair stood on end as I found that what they said then is dramatically different from what we see in these pictures now.

Here is the part of Ms. Chase’s testimony where she speaks about Murray.

29.09.2011

At 5:09 of this video Ms. Deborah Brazil of the Prosecution shows Ms. Kai Chase the photo of the kitchen at Carowood house which was her place of work at the time:

Q. Ms. Chase, please take a look at the exhibit people’s 34. Does that photograph depict the kitchen area where you worked at the Carolwood residence?

A. Yes, it does.

Carolwood kitchen area

No one has yet explained to us where that kitchen is situated, so we (and the jury) are still in the dark as to what part of the house we are looking at. But no one asks questions as all attention is on the time when Conrad Murray ran down the stairs to get help.

Ms. Chase says that initially everything was fine on that fateful morning. She came at 8:00 – 8:30, the children had breakfast after which she went to the market. Upon her return at around 10:30 everything was as usual, the music was playing and the children were in the “den” together with their nanny.

But at about 12:05-12:10 the frantic Conrad Murray came down the stairs to the kitchen and shouted to her “Get help, Get security, Get Prince”. She dropped what she was doing and rushed to get Prince who was “in her eyesight” because the house has an “open layout” and she saw him in the opposite room where Prince was playing with the other kids.

[18:06]

A. I dropped what I was doing and I…

Q. And where was Prince at the time that you ran to get him?

A. The children were playing in the den which is – it’s an open house layout – so the children were playing in the den. I saw Prince and I went to go get him.

This ends part 14 of the video, but the real surprise is awaiting us in the next part.

At the very first second of the follow-up video Ms. Brazil asks Ms. Chase to show the route the chef took in order to get Prince.

To illustrate it to the jury she displays the picture of the foyer that opens up from the main entrance and asks Ms. Chase if she ran from the room on the right (“the kitchen area”) to the opposite room on the left (“the den where the children were playing”).  For more clarity she indicates the route with a laser pointer shifting it from the right to the left, and back.

[0:00]

Q. …show us the route that you took from the kitchen to the den area. So you’re indicating on the right side of the photograph would be the kitchen area and on the left side of the photograph would be the den area, where you said that Prince and the children were playing, correct?

A. Yes.

Q. So you went from the kitchen area to the den area to get Prince, correct?

A. Yes. 

Q. And what did you say to Prince when you went into the den area?

A. I said, “Hurry. Dr. Murray needs you. Maybe something is wrong with your father”.

Q. And what did Prince do?

A. Prince and I then ran back into the kitchen I went back to work and [he] approached Dr. Murray.

The circle on the right shows the red light from Ms. Brazil’s laser pointer. The pointer moves from right to left and then back.

And at 0:56 Ms. Brazil displays the picture of the kitchen with its spiral staircase and asks Ms. Chase to mark where Murray was standing.

[0:56]

Q. Does this photograph allow you to show us where Dr. Murray was situated when he shouted to you to get Prince, get security?

A. Right in there. The stairs right there.

Q. For the record the witness is indicating the banister area of the stairway. The witness is indicating the midpoint of the stairs parallel or horizontal with the window area. I can count the banisters. Well, it’s the seventh banister down.

“That location (CM) accurately reflects where he was standing, correct? Yes.”

Ms. Kai Chase “He was standing right there”

Okay. So the prosecution is telling us that Ms. Chase was working somewhere near the main entrance, and on hearing Murray’s yells coming from the stairs, she ran across the foyer from the kitchen area (on the right) to the den (on the left) where Ms. Chase got Prince after which both of them returned to the kitchen where Prince approached Conrad Murray.

And though it could sound strange that the kitchen in that huge stately mansion was right near the front door and had a spiral staircase at that, our trust in Ms. Brazil was so big that it never occurred to us to doubt her word. In fact, we were marveling at her admirable accuracy.

However now that we look at the photos of the house we find that ….. there is absolutely no kitchen area to the right of the main entrance and has never been there at all times!

The most they could have there was a dining room, but they are talking about the kitchen where Kai Chase was preparing lunch for the family, and Ms. Brazil specifically pointed to a staircase there, but the room they are talking about has absolutely no trace of it.

This is how the room on the right looks.

the room on the right

And this is the room to the left. Both rooms seem to be identical.

the room on the left

And this is how both of them look with a foyer in between:

the open layout area

This area indeed has an open layout and in a place like that it would have been no problem for Ms. Chase to see Prince on the opposite side of the foyer and “go get him” as the first person who was in her eyesight.

Ms. Brazil specifically asked Kai Chase about it:

Q. So you made a decision to get Prince, correct?

A. Yes.

Q. And why is it that you made that decision of the requests that the defendant made of you?

A. The decision I made was because Prince was in my eyesight and at that moment Dr. Murray was very frantic and very disturbed. The first thing that I thought of was to immediately get some help and that’s the fastest …first person … fastest thing that I could do.

Q. And in fact he had shouted at you to get Prince, correct? And did you ever go up the stairs or did you remain in the kitchen?

A. I remained.

And below is Ms. Chase’s monologue to the defense attorney in reply to the same question – why call Prince and not the security?

A. …because at the time what I saw was a human being in front of me, and that was the best, the best choice I could make. There was a human being right there, someone that I could approach immediately, and that’s why I went to get Prince. I thought that if I took the time to go out from where I was standing, walk out from the kitchen,  go into where the security booth was – who knows if security were there,  if they had left….  I didn’t want to take that chance, so what I wanted to do is to make sure that this urgent situation was taken care of, and I saw Prince, and that’s what I did.

Q. Did you think that a 12-year-old child was going to be able to assist this doctor with a problem with Michael?

A. I did what I was told. I did what I was told, and I went to get Prince.

Q. And what did Prince do?

A. Prince and I both turned around, ran back into the kitchen and he approached Dr. Murray and I went back to work.

If you are still in doubt and think that at that time the room on the right could be used as a kitchen, just look at the windows in both places described.

These are windows in the room on the right (photo taken in 2002):

windows in the room on the right

And here are the windows in the kitchen which have a decidedly different size and design:

windows in the kitchen

So it’s clear that Kai Chase lied that the room on the right was the “kitchen area” where she was working, and Ms. Brazil did not only fail to explain that something was fundamentally wrong with Chase’s testimony, but kept up the false story and played along with the game.

After so shocking a conclusion Kai Chase’s words lose all credibility to us, especially since the rest of her testimony is no less absurd. So she returned to work as if nothing happened. She doesn’t know if Prince met the doctor and went upstairs. And she didn’t see Conrad Murray either and didn’t tell him that she ignored his request to call the security.

The next thing that happened to her was the sound of housekeepers’ crying coming from the foyer which made her join them and the children standing there. She found them somewhere near the foyer stairs, and this is where they held hands and started praying.

Prosecutor Deborah Brazil makes the most of that emotional scene and after that suddenly returns to the subject of Ms. Chase running back and forth across the foyer, only – surprise-surprise – in its amended version now.

So only seven minutes after voicing the first version, she shows Ms. Chase the same photo of the foyer, only now she points not at the main entrance, but at the further end of the foyer close to the glass French windows at its very back.

And to our utter amazement she repeats the same old story of the chef running from the right to the left, but only in the new area now, which is there “by the windows”, pointing to it with her laser pointer again.

And Ms. Chase confirms this version too.

[7:29]

Q. Ms. Chase, in this photograph the kitchen area is back here by the windows, correct? The doorway through the kitchen area is back here by these windows, is that accurate?

A. [pause] Yeees. Yes, that is.

Q. Do you see where my pointer is? And that would be the area that you walked through to go to the den area to get Prince, correct?

A. Yes.

Version number 2. The laser points now to the foyer’s back

Astonished by so unexpected turn of the events, I looked for a photo of the foyer from its opposite side and luckily found it. Here it is.

back side of the foyer

Over here we see the main entrance to the house at the further end of the foyer, with the rooms on both sides in their open layout.

However the back area we are examining now is completely different – it is a more closed design as it has a door on the left with a similar door on the right (not shown in this photo).

The door on the left doesn’t face the door across the foyer but looks in the direction of the garden. This is why even if the door on the right were fully open, there would still be no way for Prince to be directly “in Ms. Chase’s eyesight”.

This makes version 2 not only contradictory to version 1, but also false.

And of course the door on the left is said to be taking us to the “kitchen area” (again).

So Ms. Brazil of the prosecution actually performed a kind of a somersault just before our eyes, however no one seems to have noticed it.

As to Ms. Chase, she did seem to hesitate a little, so first made a slight pause, but then agreed and sided with version 2.  Anything you say, Ms. Brazil……. No wonder Ms. Kai Chase was grinning throughout most of her testimony which looked totally inadequate considering the circumstances.

SEARCH FOR THE KITCHEN

All this craziness turned the search for the real location of that kitchen into a matter of principle now.

Without knowing where the kitchen was it is impossible to understand what was going in that house, especially after they messed up the picture so much. And why were they so evasive about it?

Initially I thought that the kitchen was on the underground level as the house stands on a slope, and this is why the front side displays only two levels while the back side has three. And the spiral staircase in the middle of the foyer seemed to support that idea, but it had to be rejected for lack of windows on the walls (which are clearly seen on the photos of the kitchen stairs).

The plan of the first floor was impossible to find, so I used the floor plan of the upper level which is available on the internet and projected it to the first floor to get at least some idea where that kitchen could be judging by the photos we have now.

So here is the floor plan of the upper level.

MJ’s bedroom is marked red and is close to the main staircase on the left. The plan also shows that the route from the front door to Michael’s bedroom is actually very short.

And this is where we finally see the second staircase. It is in the right-hand part of the floor plan, is called a “retreat” and it is this spiral staircase that will apparently take us to the kitchen at last.

Then we project the upper floor plan onto the first floor and find the approximate location of that kitchen (marked blue here):

the approximate location of the kitchen (projection)

The same projection is made for the outside of the house in order to see a bigger picture (the kitchen is marked red here).

approximate location of the kitchen in Carolwood house (projection)

And now let’s have a closer look.

On the right there is a sort of a tower (a “retreat”) with a spiral staircase leading from the upper level to the kitchen and also to the back entrance (a wooden door to the right of the tower). This fully coincides with Ms. Chase’s words that her place of work was just “a few steps away from the back door”.

Kai Chase: “The kitchen is a few steps from the door”

The back door is just next to the garage and leads straight into the kitchen and the staircase

A few more steps to the right take us to the garage and cars in the parking area, and a few steps to the left bring to us to a white van which must be a trailer for security.

All of it is so close to each other that it is literally a few steps to the right and to the left.

The white van is a security trailer that was near the back door

In other words, the projection that we see here proves beyond a shadow of doubt that Ms. Chase LIED when she claimed that Prince was the person “closest to her” because it was the security who were the closest.

In order to find Prince she was either to cover a long distance from the kitchen to the main entrance crossing several rooms on the way (Version 1) or she was to go through the room adjoining the kitchen and then open the door into the foyer, cross the foyer and only then see Prince in the opposite room (Version 2).

There is one more room behind the kitchen

So both Version 1 and Version 2 not only contradict each other, but are also FALSE.

And both prove that calling the security was a better and much faster option for Ms. Chase than going about to find Prince, and that her whole story about him “closest to her” was invented from beginning to end.

However these lies were fully supported and encouraged by Prosecutor Deborah Brazil and Deputy District Attorney David Walgren who couldn’t be unaware of those discrepancies.

And none of us noticed it because all of us were in awe with their admirable “accuracy” and professionalism.

If we had only known……

WHY?

But why did they invent these false stories and so boldly promote them at the trial even though the contradictions were in plain sight?

Was it done to whitewash Ms. Chase and explain why she failed to call security and got only Prince? 

Or was it a way to show that all that busy activity at the front and back doors of the foyer would prevent anyone from entering the house unnoticed?

And that it was only Conrad Murray and only him who was inside the house and was therefore the only one to blame for Michael Jackson’s death?

In circumstances like these we can even assume that they could be covering up for someone who could really go upstairs to Michael Jackson’s bedroom and kill him. Because the reality we see here is far from what the picture that was painted to us by the prosecution:

• the chef was too far away in the kitchen to be able to notice anything
•  the children were in one of those spacious rooms with their nanny and had no reason to keep an eye on the front door
• the music was playing  and drowned all other noises
• and with so many rooms in the mansion the housekeepers certainly had other things to do than just hover in the foyer.

Which means that the foyer was clear and empty, and anyone could go in.

Add to it that the surveillance video tapes were monitored by Faheem Muhammad himself and all of them mysteriously disappeared within the vaults of law enforcement, and you will be astonished to see how everything fits in with a hypothetical possibility that a certain clean-up guy could enter the house and do his dirty job there.

But what about the door of the main entrance? Wasn’t it closed?

THE DOOR

When at about 12:13 Conrad Murray realized that the security was not coming, he called Michael Amir Williams (MJ’s personal assistant) but found him in a shower and left a voicemail. Williams called back at 12:15, Murray told him “to get here right away” and “get someone up here” as “Mr. Jackson had a bad reaction.”

Williams called Faheem Muhammad who was on the way to the bank, so the latter turned around and went back. Faheem sent a voicemail to Derek Cleveland, one of the two body guards who were supposed to be on duty at the property but the voicemail was not answered.

In the meantime Michael Amir Williams called Alberto Alvarez who seemed to be the only bodyguard who was present there and urged him to enter the house through the front door and rush upstairs to see what was going on there. He specifically mentioned the front door and not the “service” entrance usually used by security, because the front door was the shortest way to Michael Jackson’s bedroom.

Ms. Chase would also regularly use the service door. Usually she would knock on it and someone would open it for her, but on June 25 when she arrived at the residence at 8:00- 8:30 the housekeeper was not in yet, so the door was opened to her by the children.

Many of us thought that the front door was supposed to be locked at all times, however at the preliminary hearings to Murray’s trial Michael Amir Williams surprised us with the news that during the daytime the front door was usually open and on Michael’s request was locked only for the night. 

Q. The front door, is it normally left wide open, unlocked?

A. During the day it is unlocked. At night Mr. Jackson would lock it.

Q. The security team would allow the front door to Michael Jackson’s residence to be unlocked?

A. Yes, sir, unless Mr. Jackson wanted it locked which he did at night.

Michael Amir Williams: “The front door would be unlocked” (Jan.4, 2011)

But if the usual practice was to have the door unlocked during the day, this means that by 12:17 pm when Alberto Alvarez tried to enter it should have been open.

But it was locked.

Alberto Alvarez

Through the glass door Alvarez peeked inside the foyer and saw Murray standing on the upper floor and leaning over the railing and Paris and her nanny standing downstairs. The door was opened for him by the kids’ nanny – a woman who replaced the former nanny Grace Rwaramba after the latter was fired on AEG’s insistence (the explanation was that they were afraid that she would supply MJ with “drugs”).

Does anyone want to know the name of the new nanny of Michael’s children?

Her name is Rosalind (Roselyn) Muhammad and she may well be a relation to Faheem Muhammad.  Michael Amir Williams revealed it at the preliminary hearings.

Michael Amir Williams: “The nanny was Rosalind Muhammad” (Jan 4, 2011)

In fact, the number of people around Michael Jackson with a Muhammad family name was so strikingly abnormal for what is usually a more or less random cluster of people, that it is hard to believe that they weren’t a close-knit family and friends – which may be very good in case of favorable circumstances and very bad in case of some foul play.

The preliminary hearings reveal that Rosalind Muhammad was a good friend of Michael Amir Williams’s mother and that his brother Louis Williams was also part of the team.

Not all the names of the security team are known to us, but the ones that we know include Faheem Muhammad (head of security), Rosalind Muhammad (nanny), Eric Muhammad (a bodyguard said to be no relation to Faheem), and also Isaac Muhammad and Patrick Muhammad (possibly relatives) as well as Michael Amir Williams (personal assistant) and his brother Louis (bodyguard).

All of them are Nation of Islam, including  Alvarez and Rosalind Muhammad.

And given that on June 25^th Faheem Muhammad was also probably accompanied by his wife and both of them could spend there no less than half an hour or more, the conditions for carrying out a certain (hypothetical) clean-up operation seem to be perfect.

HYPOTHETICAL SCENARIO

In case of such an operation the front door could be open in the daytime according to the usual practice, but the clean-up guy who entered it could lock it up himself – in order to delay the arrival of any form of help. Then he would go upstairs into Michael Jackson’s room, turn the clamp on the tubing with Propofol to give MJ a massive dose and quietly retreat.

And in order to retreat he didn’t even have to go back to the front door. He could go down the staircase which is called “a retreat” for a reason – it takes the person not only to the kitchen but to the back door too, which is only “a couple of steps” away from Ms. Chase’s place of work as she explained to us.

And this is where the two of them could accidentally see each other.

Or to be more precise she could see him, because in case the clean-up guy saw her, she might as well be dead now.

Kai Chase would probably be surprised to see the head of security going down the spiral staircase sometime at 11:30am, but wouldn’t pay attention until half an hour later Conrad Murray rolled down the same stairs looking frantic and asking for help and “go get security” in the first place.

This is when she could put two and two together and realize that if she made those few steps into the parking lot and approached the security trailer, she would most probably face the same head of security whom she had seen just half an hour earlier and the idea of meeting him face to face was probably not much to her liking.  After all she was a witness, and she couldn’t be sure if he had seen her or not.

And totally unwilling to have any complications for herself, she could decide to play dumb and let the sleeping dogs lie. So she went out to look for Prince and once she got him she “returned back to work” – to probably think over the situation she found herself in.

To explain why she didn’t approach the security, which was her best obvious choice as they were stationed just behind the door, she invented a story about Prince being in her “eyesight” and that she chose him because he was a “faster” variant.

But the location of that kitchen shows that the variant she chose was a much longer one.  

And though this version had nothing to do with reality it was nevertheless fully supported by the Prosecution.

The above seems to be the only hypothetical scenario that would explain Ms. Chase’s strange behavior and provide a solid reason why she refrained from calling security. She was simply afraid and decided to stay away from it all.

And this would be the best and kindest explanation for her lies, as all other options are only worse. Much worse.

How much of the real situation is known to the Prosecution is beyond us, but the fact that they played along with Kai Chase’s lies is one of the most upsetting parts of the story.

Add to it that the surveillance tapes were also mysteriously destroyed by their own people and the sad puzzle seems to be coming together after all.

I will elaborate no further as you can draw conclusions on your own.

~

SUPPLEMENT

In April 2023 the media reported that a certain man gifted his 13-year old son with 40 acres of land for his birthday.  The land is situated right next to the border wall with Mexico.

Faheem Muhammad, 35, of Los Angeles said the land, which is in Boulevard, California, on the U.S.-Mexico border, was a rite of passage for his teenage son, Faheem Ra’id Muhammad.

“After slavery, of course, we were supposed to get 40 acres and a mule,” Muhammad said, referring to Union General William T. Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15, which was issued near the end of the Civil War in January 1865, and intended for newly freed slaves, but never came to fruition. “We’re not crying about the fact that somebody didn’t give us what they promised. If this is something that we desire to have, we go and make it happen.”

Faheem Muhammad made a gift of 40 acres of land to his 13-year old son

Muhammad, the former head of security for music icon Michael Jackson, is the co-founder and chief information officer of the OASIS investment group, a real estate development company that focuses on transforming and uplifting low-income and underserved communities, according to Muhammad.

He said the 40 acres he gave his son was part of 198 acres of land he bought in 2021.

Even world-renowned rapper, producer, record executive and entrepreneur Sean “Diddy” Combs gave the teenager and his father a nod with an Instagram story post acknowledging the 40-acre birthday gift.

World-renowned record executive Sean “Diddy” Combs re-posted Faheem Muhammad’s post about his gift to his son.

Muhammad’s security company, Elite Transportation and Security Services, is contracted with Combs, according to Muhammad.

“We just see an opportunity to enjoy nature in its finest sense. You got fresh water, clear skies at night. You can see all the stars, the moon. The sunrises are beautiful,” Muhammad said.

One of the comments on the video says:

I spoke to former 24 year veteran of the customs in Border Protection who was stationed right there and JJ Carol told me today, “No one lives in Boulevard except longtime border residents and people wanting to be criminals”.

He said, quote “Would you ever buy your son land on our border – crime, violence, rapes, murders, drug cartels, human smuggling, cartels all day, all night on your property?”

No. Not unless you like those things. Unless that’s part of your business plan”.

“You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” 

(Abraham Lincoln)

This quote can be referred not only to the major events in the US but also to the present post throwing a new light on the circumstances of Michael Jackson’s death. It will postpone the matter of Cascio songs again, but has to be made to note some new details emerging from the discussion of Kai Chase’s testimony at Murray trial.

In the previous post a stunning discovery was made that Ms. Kai Chase, personal chef of Michael Jackson, and the LA Deputy District Attorney Deborah Brazil who was examining her at Murray’s trial, jointly presented to the jury a false story about the whereabouts of the chef (and MJ’s children) the moment Dr. Conrad Murray ran down the stairs at about 12:05-12:10pm on June 25, 2009 and shouted “Get help! Get security! Get Prince!”

To present their false story both the prosecutor and witness intentionally misplaced the kitchen area and the so-called den where the children were playing and put them near the main entrance to the house (according to version No. 1) to only relocate them a few minutes later to the back of the foyer near the glass doors opening into the garden (version No. 2). Both versions had nothing to do with reality as we found out in the previous post.

You may say that it is no big deal where the kitchen and den were, however every lie has a reason for it, and it is actually the reason why the Deputy District Attorney (!) and the witness were lying which made me wonder.

The situation looked odd and inexplicable, and raised a number of questions.

• What was the point of defrauding the jury about the whereabouts of the kitchen?
• Why was its location shifted from one place to another just within one testimony even though both versions openly contradicted each other?
• Why was the kitchen so important that it had to be hidden from public view?
• Why didn’t they show not only the location of the kitchen but also the den, and the security trailer which was just a few feet behind the kitchen door?
• And where was the den?

At long last the search for the kitchen was rewarded by finding it in the rear of the house – next to the garage and the parking lot. The kitchen windows looked into the garden and it had a service door that was just a few feet away from the security trailer.

But the whereabouts of the den were still a mystery.

Luckily, at the Jackson v AEG Live trial which came two years after Murray’s trial (in autumn 2013), Katherine Jackson’s attorney Ms. Chang asked the chef so detailed questions that the location of the den finally transpired.

Mind you that Ms. Chang didn’t know the location either and had only a small diagram and a tiny picture of the kitchen and this is where she started off.

Ms. Chang: And this is – is this a layout of the kitchen area?

Kai Chase: Yes.

Q. Okay. And if you could orient us, is that – the little table that we see in this diagram, this little round table, is that the little round table we see right here on the right-hand side?

A. Yes, it is.

Q. Is that where your interview took place?

A. Yes.

Q. Okay. Based on this picture, and maybe it’s – using the diagram, can you tell us where the den is, using your laser light?

A. The den would be right going that way.

Q. Okay. So let’s blow up that tiny picture in the right corner again. So from the orientation of where someone took this picture from, the den would be behind the picture taker, right?

A. Right, going this way, yes.

Q. All right. And, again, it was an open floor plan?

A. Open floor plan.

Q. Okay. And did Prince go to Dr. Murray?

A. Yes, he did.

Q. What happened after that?

A. He went to Dr. Murray, and at that point, I went right back to work.

In contrast to Ms. Chang we now have splendid pictures of the kitchen, made by the real estate agents who sold the Carolwood house in 2018, so following her clue that the den “would be behind the picture taker” we can assume that the den is behind our backs if we look at the kitchen from this angle:

And indeed one of the videos shows a room behind the kitchen with no door between the two, so this area has indeed an open floor plan, just the way Ms. Chase described it.

So if we project the upper floor plan (the only one we have from Murray trial) onto the first floor, the den must be in a place marked yellow in this picture:

Now that the mammoth work of finding the kitchen and the den is over, it is time to ask a question – was it worth the effort and how does that help us?

First and foremost, Kai Chase’s overall description of the area becomes technically correct now as it has all the hallmarks she mentioned – the area indeed has an open layout, the den is really a few feet away from the kitchen and Prince was really in her eyesight.

And this restores our belief in her credibility. 

Why and how Ms. Chase’s technically correct description was misplaced into a different area is another question and here the focus of our attention is shifted from Kai Chase to the Prosecution. This is because it was the LA Deputy District Attorney Deborah Brazil who led everyone to believe that this section was elsewhere and confused the jury by placing it first near the front door and then into the back of the foyer.

But why would a prosecutor do anything like that? Actually tell a lie in the court of law if we call a spade a spade?

It’s obvious that Ms. Brazil knew the real location of the kitchen and den because at the preliminary hearings Kai Chase showed it on one of the exhibits, and there was absolutely no talk about the “rooms on the right and on the left” near the entry way or about the glass doors at the back. So the mess Ms. Brazil created later cannot be attributed to her mere lack of knowledge.

To prove that Ms. Brazil was shown the true location of the kitchen and den we have rough notes of the preliminary hearings by a contributor to the Trials & Tribulations blog and this is how we know what Kai Chase told Ms. Brazil.

People’s Exhibit. Kitchen area Carolwood residence.

Ms. Brazil: Using the laser pointer, please indicate where you were located when Dr. Murray instructed you to call Prince and call security.

Ms. Chase is indicating the corner of the island closest to the counter.

Describe to us what we see in People’s sixteen [exhibit 16].

This is the kitchen, stairway.

Where does that stairway go? What does it lead to?

I don’t know. I’ve never been on the second floor. I’ve never been up those stairs.

Witness indicates where Dr. Murray came down the stairs, and stopped near the 3rd or 4th banister area.

Ms. Chase, you indicated that as soon as Dr. Murray came down the stairs he instructed you to get Prince and security, you went into the den area where the children were?

Correct.

Exhibit to show direction she went when she went to go get Prince.

Did Dr. Murray come all the way down the stairs?

He remained at the top portion (of the stairs).

Describe Dr. Murray’s demeanor, when he asked you to get Prince.

He seemed in a panic.

Is that the same stairway that Dr. Murray first came down?

No that’s a different stairway.

From the time you see Dr. Murray and when paramedics arrived, how long was that?
I went back to work. From where I was in the kitchen, I couldn’t see, so I don’t know.

Your location in the kitchen gives you a very limited view of the house?
Yes.

The above produces a clear impression that Kai Chase depicted to Ms. Brazil the true picture, because her account started with her standing at the kitchen counter, then going past the stairs and proceeding in the direction of MJ’s son Prince, and all of it clearly happened within the frames of one and the same area.

Kai Chase was also shown a picture of the stairs in the foyer and she specifically noted that the staircase in the kitchen was a different one, and that she had a very limited view of the house. From her place of work she couldn’t see who entered the front door, and this confirms to us once again that she wasn’t anywhere near the entrance.

The above means that already at the preliminary hearings Ms. Brazil became aware of the true location of the kitchen and den, and certainly knew that they weren’t near the entrance to the house.

Ms. Brazil also saw that the distance from the kitchen to the den and to the security trailer outside the service door on the opposite side was virtually the same, so she did realize that Kai Chase was telling half-truth only and had to have a really valid reason for ignoring Murray’s instructions and not calling security, at least after she got Prince.

But instead of getting to the bottom of things in investigating a death case, Ms. Brazil settled for the chef’s answer that “Prince was in her eyesight”, so she got him and “went back to work”.

The Defense attorney tried to get more from Kai Chase but all was in vain. The chef did know that time was of the essence, she did see that Murray was in a panic, she did realize that he needed urgent help (and that bodyguards would be a much better help than a 12-year old boy), but for some reason she had nothing to say but “Prince was in my eyesight” and that’s it.

Here is another excerpt from the T&T rough notes:

What did he [Conrad Murray] look like?
His eyes were large. He’s screaming. Panic.

Time is of the essence. Did you get that sense?
Yes.

He wanted to find the kids?
He asked me to get security, and Prince, yes. I dropped what I was doing and ran down to reach Prince.

How long did that take?
Approximately 2 seconds. I then went back to the kitchen and proceeded to my work.

Why did you not contact security?
Prince was in my eyesight.

Why did you not go to do that?
Dr. Murray was in a panic, Prince was in my eyesight. I didn’t know what was taking place, I just knew something was very urgent.

So you decided not to call them?
Because again, Prince was in my eyesight and that was the best choice. He asked me to get Prince. I brought him to the stairs and I went back to work.

Do you recall seeing any other individual on the same day?
Sister Rose.

Did you see her this day?
She was in the den with the children.

Did you see Faheem Mohamed that morning?
Yes.

Where did you see him?
In the outside in the courtyard.

Any other place?
(no answer, or the answer wasn’t put down)

What about Mr. Alvarez?
I saw him in the court [yard] and also in the [house].

Mr. Michael Amir, do you recall whether you saw him that day?
I did not.

Any unbiased person will see that Kai Chase is not telling the whole truth. And she herself apparently realized how ridiculous her explanation was – otherwise she wouldn’t be initially saying in her interviews with the press that Conrad Murray asked her to get only Prince (see Linda Deutsch’s report for that).

Everyone is invited to give their own interpretation of her strange behavior while I will make mine and repeat what I’ve already said – it seems that Kai Chase was in fear of something or somebody, and the person she was afraid of was most probably among the security people she was so terribly reluctant to approach.

She says that the only security guards she saw that day were Faheem Muhammad and Alberto Alvarez, because MJ’s personal assistant Michael Amir Williams arrived much later when the paramedics were already in the house. Consequently she was afraid of one of these two.

According to a hypothetical scenario suggested previously, Faheem Muhammad (the person we suspect here of a “clean-up” job, like the jobs he allegedly did for Sean Diddy Combs) could enter the front door which was usually open in the daytime and upon entering it lock it up from the inside.

Since there was no one in the foyer, he could go up the main stairs unnoticed and approach MJ’s bed as Murray was in the bathroom talking on the phone. Then he could turn the regulator on a tubing with Propofol to make it stream faster into Michael’s veins in order to quickly arrest his breathing, and then go down the spiral stairs leading into the kitchen, and then into the parking lot.  And then leave for the bank as he explained later.

And if this is what really happened, there was no way for Kai Chase not to see him.

Initially, seeing the head of security go down the stairs might not look that strange to her, but when the panicky Murray ran down the same stairs 15 to 30 minutes later, it could raise her suspicions as regards the man she had seen earlier.  At that moment she didn’t yet know that he had already left, so it was the horror of her suspicion that made her freeze at the mere thought that if she went outside to call security she would meet this person face to face.

At the preliminary hearings Kai Chase was very close to revealing the truth. At one point the defense asked her a question about who else besides the children had access to the upper floor, but instead of giving a direct answer she made a strange remark: “If someone went down the stairs I would see that person”.

Here it is from the T&T rough notes:

Q. Who had access to the upstairs? His children?

A. The area where I worked was the kitchen area. So if there was anyone other than his children, they would come down into the kitchen, and that’s what I would see.

Think whatever you like but to me this answer sounds like a direct hint at what she witnessed that day.

PROSECUTOR DEBORAH BRAZIL

If the LAPD and District Attorney office who conducted the homicide investigation really wanted to know the truth they would have followed the above lead, but the LAPD detectives were rather indifferent to the matter and the LA Deputy District Attorney went even further than that – Ms. Brazil apparently offered to Kai Chase a false version that could better explain to the jury her total unwillingness to call security, even in defiance of Murray’s pleas.

The false version suggested that the chef was allegedly cooking lunch in the “kitchen area” somewhere near the front door, and on seeing the frantic Conrad Murray on some stairs she allegedly crossed the foyer from the room on the right of the foyer to the room on its left, and then both she and Prince ran back to the “kitchen area”.

By “some” stairs I mean the main staircase that is leading from the foyer to the upper floor as this is the way I myself understood it when following the Murray trial on Court TV back in 2011.

Carolwood house. The stairs to the upper floor (view from the front door)

Kai Chase was probably glad to jump at the chance offered to her by the prosecution. This variant was much more advantageous to her because in this case the route from the front door to the security trailer would be much longer (it required going outside and turning the corner of the house), and her reason for not calling security would look much more credible to the jury.

So she was probably happy that the prosecution was “on her side” and was ready to “help”.

But the prosecutors were actually playing a game of their own. What I didn’t notice the first time and realized only after seeing a better quality video of Murray’s trial recorded by Court TV, was that things were even more complex than I initially thought.

The thing is that Prosecutor Brazil only led the chef to tell a lie by suggesting discussion of the entryway and then asked her to show by a laser pointer the route she had allegedly taken that morning. And Kai Chase obligingly did what was asked of her.

Prosecutor: “Can you use the pointer that you have up there to show us the route that you took from the kitchen to the den?”

Prosecutor: “on the left side of the photograph would be the den area where you said that Prince and the children were playing. Correct?” Kai Chase: “Correct”

However when seven minutes later Ms. Brazil took the laser pointer herself,  she suddenly pointed to the opposite side of the foyer which was much closer to where the real kitchen was, and this is when Kai Chase was clearly taken aback.

We don’t see the expression on her face because the room was darkened and the camera was showing the screen only, but the pause she made and the hesitant answer she finally gave clearly spoke to her confusion at that moment.

Apparently she couldn’t believe that the prosecutor would let her down so openly and throw her under the bus by making her contradict the earlier version and consequently perjure and impeach herself.

The prosecutor points to the windows: ” The kitchen area is back here by the windows. Correct? The door, the doorway through the kitchen area is back here by these windows. Is that accurate?” Kai Chase: “Yeees. Yes, that is.” Prosecutor: “Do you see where my pointer is pointing?”

Prosecutor: “And that would be the area that you walked through to go to the den area to get Prince. Correct?” Kai Chase: ‘Yes”.

Technically Ms. Brazil’s examination of the witness was impeccable – after all, it wasn’t the prosecutor who was telling a lie, and though she did stretch the truth a bit by pointing to the back of the foyer as “the kitchen area” …  well, there was a door on the right of the foyer which indeed led to the den and the kitchen, so it could be just a minor mistake on the prosecutor’s part, couldn’t it?

So the way it was presented by Ms. Brazil the fraud looked like none of her doing – it was only Kai Chase who told a lie here, and she is the only one to blame for it too.

Indeed, Prosecutor Deborah Brazil showed herself a master of telling a lie without actually telling it, and forcing the witness to impeach herself even despite her will. And if the game weren’t so ugly I would even marvel at the finesse of Ms. Brazil’s art…

WHY?

But why all these games? The reason why Kai Chase went along with the false story is clear enough to us, but why did Prosecutor Deborah Brazil support and probably even initiate the fraud? And isn’t it a crime for the prosecution to lie in so gross though stealthy a manner?

To Kai Chase the trick could be presented as a way to support her testimony and alleviate her situation at a cross-examination by the defense (of course unless they noticed the fraud which they didn’t, alas).

But as to Ms. Brazil’s motives I am not so sure. What advantages did the misplacement of the kitchen and den give to her and prosecution in general?

To see some let’s go over a few things again.

1) Placing that section into a total different area of the house effectively cut out any possibility of Kai Chase seeing somebody going down the stairs from the upper floor into the kitchen. This means that the prosecution didn’t want this option to be discussed or even considered during the court trial.

2) As a result of placing the kitchen and den near the entrance to the house the impression was that there was a lot of activity going on in that area – the chef was allegedly on the right of the foyer, the children and nanny were allegedly on the left of it, and with so many people near the front door there was absolutely no chance for anyone to enter the house unnoticed. So again, the central idea is that no one else but Murray could be in the house that morning.

3) And the sudden placement of the kitchen and den into the back of the foyer served exactly the same purpose, only this time all activity was supposed to be there, thus ruling out the possibility of anyone entering the house from its back side too. So believe it or not but the central idea coming across here is the same again – to prove that only Murray and Murray alone could be beside Michael Jackson that morning.

Isn’t it interesting that whichever way you look,  it boils down to one and the same thing – the prosecution painted a picture that fully eliminated the possibility of somebody else entering the front door in the time period when Michael Jackson died, though in reality there was every chance that it could indeed happen.

Well, it really begins to look like the prosecutors were covering up for somebody else there…

THE REAL PICTURE

In case you forgot, let me remind you why there was every chance for a third party to enter the house in the crucial period from approx. 11.15am to 11:50am that morning.

Carolwood house. The front entrance

The chef was in the rear part of the house, the children and nanny were in the room adjoining it, and the only two housekeepers (Jimmy and Blanca, a married couple) were most probably upstairs cleaning the children’s bedrooms and bathrooms which were opposite MJ’s private quarters on the upper floor.

There was no one else in the house.

Carolwood house. The foyer

The foyer opening up from the entrance was empty, all noises were drowned by music playing (according to Kai Chase) and the front door was unlocked as was usual for the daytime according to Michael Amir Williams’s testimony at preliminary hearings (interesting that this point was never raised at the trial – they only spoke of Alberto Alvarez finding the door locked when he heard of the emergency).

There were only two security guards in the driveway – at least Kai Chase saw only two of them that day. Those were Faheem Muhammad, head of security and Alberto Alvarez, a security guard.

Carolwood house. The driveway, garage and service door leading to the kitchen and the side staircase to the upper floor. The security trailer was on the left (in the place taken by a car is in this photo)

Faheem Muhammad was on the property for an unknown period of time as at first he testified that he arrived at 11:45am but then changed it to “a little after 11”. He stayed until 12:10pm after which he left for the bank. His wife was accompanying him there.

The only other security guard near the house was Alberto Alvarez who arrived at approximately 10:30am and was in the security trailer when he received a call from Michael Amir Williams urging him to rush upstairs to help Conrad Murray. The security trailer (security shack) had a monitor connected with the surveillance cameras mounted all around the residence.

These cameras monitored many places on the property, with the exception of the front door. This means that if somebody entered the front door while Alvarez was in the trailer looking at the monitor, there was no way for him to see that person on the screen. And if he was outside the trailer, for example, he couldn’t see him personally either, as the front door was round the corner of the house.

There were six surveillance cameras on the property, out of which five were in working condition.  One of them was outside the gate mounted on a keypad, the second camera was on the house and was facing the gate, two more cameras looked at the house from its back and the fifth working camera was near the parking lot.  All of them were said to be motion activated.

At least two of those cameras were in the areas that mattered most.

The camera facing the gate could be crucial for finding out the exact time when Faheem Muhammad arrived at Carolwood on June 25^th, how long he stayed at the residence that morning and whether he was alone or with his wife there.

Detective Scott Smith of the LAPD showed the camera facing the gate on the screen at  Murray trial:

Det. Smith: “That (camera) would be facing the gate”

The second critically important camera was near the garage and recorded everything that took place in the parking area, near the security trailer and the door that led into the kitchen and the spiral staircase.

This camera was vital for the investigation as it could catch the suspected clean-up guy leaving the house by the service door there. It couldn’t show who entered the house, but it could very well show who left it by that side door and then went directly to the parking lot – if we continue with our hypothetical scenario, of course.

According to Det. Smith this is where the driveway area camera was:

Det. Smith: “That (camera) would shine down onto the driveway area”

Those two cameras would have eliminated all doubts and dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s, had their footage been recovered,  however there wasn’t a single chance of finding the surveillance footage recorded by them.

SURVEILLANCE VIDEOS

The reader who actually made me revisit this matter in the first place wondered why I thought that the surveillance tapes were erased by the police.

This was my memory of what happened 14 years ago, but I could not remember the source of that information. But now I have found it, and it perfectly explains the reason why prosecutors David Walgren and Deborah Brazil looked so disinterested and even relaxed during the discussion of this crucial matter at the trial.

The surveillance cameras are often the key to solving the most complicated criminal cases. In the investigation of Michael Jackson’s death the surveillance footage could have confirmed (or eliminated) the possibility of a third party being involved in his demise by showing the suspect leave the scene of the crime.

This would have been enough for opening an investigation against this person and suspect him of giving Michael an excessive dose of Propofol which would quickly arrest his breathing and then stop his heart.

However, already at the preliminary hearings the LA Deputy District Attorney David Walgren was somewhat mysterious about the surveillance videos and said that “LAPD downloaded what they downloaded”, that they were just “minutes”, and “This is all that exists and all that will ever exist”.

It turned out that of the many hours of footage provided by those 5 surveillance cameras the LAPD downloaded only two fragments showing Michael Jackson’s and Conrad Murray’s arrival around 1.00 am on June 25 and all in all it made just 11 minutes.

Here is an excerpt from the preliminary hearings on March 9, 2011:

Click to enlarge

Mr. Flanagan (defense attorney): It could be important. We don’t know. We haven’t seen it.

The Court: Well, you want it, and it is not in your possession, Mr. Walgren?

Mr. Walgren: And it is not in our possession. I have told them that for the last year that they have everything that exists. I’m looking into it further, not because I think it is going to necessarily result in anything but just so I could give more concrete answers. My understanding is LAPD downloaded what they downloaded. That has been provided to the defense.  That is everything that exists and is all that will ever exist, but I am having them look into it further.

The Court: The security system apparently was monitoring the residence on a 24-hour basis.

Mr. Walgren: The exterior.

The Court: The exterior. How many minutes of hours worth of video has been downloaded? Do we know?

Mr. Walgren: Again, I don’t know exactly but it is minutes. It is minutes. I don’t want to say anything that is inaccurate. I expect to have information tomorrow.

The Court: I’ve been curious, and I still remain curious about where in the universe the other video happens to be located, if it is. Maybe it is not. Maybe it was never recreated somewhere.

A week later, on March 16, 2011 David Walgren reported that all surveillance tapes except those few minutes “were erased” or rather, “erased themselves”, or “were recorded over”.

Click to enlarge

The Court: Okay. And what about the issue of a video surveillance and the slide issue from the coroner’s office? Is there some update on that?

Mr. Walgren: Video surveillance, as I indicated last week and has been confirmed, Your Honor, the L.A.P.D. downloaded about 13, 14, 15 minutes of it. That’s what exists. Defense counsel has had that for quite some time. Any other video would have been –  would have erased itself and been recorded over. So that all video surveillance that exists is in possession of the Defendants.

I will point out, too, that the – and this will be part of the new discovery because L.A.P.D. did follow up on that issue. The video cameras apparently were set up on the exterior only. They were meant to monitor basically the perimeter of the property and were exterior only. And the coverage depended on motion activation as to how much coverage was taking place. But again, that will be committed to a report provided to Defense.

The Court: Those are actually two subject areas in which I had some interest. One, the location of the cameras and, second of all, whether they were motion activated. And you are saying outside and motion activated.

Mr. Walgren: Yes. I believe, again, I want to get the report to the Defense. But I believe the coverage, the amount of frames per second depended on motion activation.

Mr. Chernoff of the Defense said that it wasn’t even 13-15 minutes, but only  two 4 min and 7 min fragments (making 11 minutes all in all).

Click to enlarge

The Court: Mr. Flanagan, you have been addressing this issue or Mr. Chernoff.

Mr. Chernoff: I probably know more than Mr. Flanagan. We have 4 minutes and 7 minutes that were provided to us quite some time ago by the prosecution. If it was motion activated, there is an awful lot of it where no motion is taking place. My understanding was that there were three cameras. The camera that we have shows, it shows what’s going on literally in front of the gate. I am taking the prosecution at their, at face value. They told me last week that from their understanding, everything has been erased except for those 4 and 7 minutes. And they also told me and Mr. Walgren said he was going to get another report to explain all of that, and we are just waiting for that report.

Now the question is – why did the LAPD detectives download only 11 minutes of the surveillance footage, why was the rest of it erased and how could it happen that way?

A BIG EFFORT

This is what the LAPD detectives have to say on the subject.

Detective Scott Smith who worked for LAPD for 24 years first showed the location of the 5 surveillance cameras and said that during their investigation he recovered “14 minutes” of footage showing the arrival of Conrad Murray’s BMW shortly before 1am, Michael Jackson’s Escalade type of vehicle and two more vehicles following him.

Prosecutor Walgren asked him if “no cameras showed any door entrances or anything of that nature” and the detective agreed, though with a slight reservation that “it was primarily” so.

Walgren: “So no camera showed any door entrances or anything of that nature?” Det. Smith: “No, it was primarily an exterior shots that these cameras were set up to take.” Walgren: “Thank you. I have nothing further”. (at 1:56:00 
https://www.courttv.com/title/39-ca-v-murray-det-scott-smith-pt3/)

Well, “primarily” is correct, but the camera looking at the parking lot could perfectly record the service door near the kitchen, however neither the prosecutor nor the detective went into it.

But Prosecutor Walgren’s question is interesting in and of itself because by saying that “no cameras showed any door entrances” he revealed that he did consider the possibility that somebody else could enter those doors or “anything of that nature” as he said.

Defense attorney Chernoff also wondered if any cameras looked at the doors, so he was thinking along the same lines. Det. Smith replied that there were no cameras pointed towards the front door, but mentioned that one of the cameras was located in the driveway area.

Det. Smith: “There was some (camera) pointed towards the front gate. Chernoff: “And there were pointed towards the doors?” Det. Smith: “There were no cameras pointed towards the front door. There was one located in the driveway area I guess” (at 1:26:43 of the Court TV video).

That answer was surely lost on all viewers as no one was shown the detailed picture of that driveway, but now we understand that Det. Smith referred to a service door in that area without answering the question directly.

Isn’t it interesting to see how all these law enforcement people dance around the door subject without actually saying why they are dancing around it?

At ~ 1:27:40 of the same video Chernoff wondered who made the determination which footage was to be downloaded and Det. Smith said that “it was a collective effort” and Det. Martinez would know the answer.

Chernoff: When SID came out to download those surveillance videos who directed that operation? Who made the determination and what to download? Det.Smith: Well, I think it was made collectively between us, but Detective Martinez was with the individual from SID electronics who’d done the actual download. Chernoff: They were there with Faheem Muhammad? Det. Smith: I don’t know, I wasn’t there. Chernoff: Detective Martinez would know that?    Det. Smith: Yes, I would assume so.

At ~ 1:34:20 Det. Smith said that on the evening of June 25th the detectives gathered all the evidence they needed from Carolwood house and left, not sealing the place and leaving it open. This was done on the orders of the coroner.

There were no logs of visitors kept and no questions asked. Det. Smith never wondered whether any of the security guards went back to the house. He said that “given the circumstances” he was not surprised that the house was not sealed and was not under the police control.

Chernoff: Did you ever go back to the scene (after June 25th) and talk to security about a list of people they might have gone through the house? [Objection. Overruled].

Det. Smith: No, I did not.

Q. Do you know whether they kept a log of visitors?

A. No, I don’t.

Q. Did you ask any of the security guards, former security guards, whether they went back to the house? Did you ever ask them?

A. No, I did not.

Q. The decision to leave the house open throughout that period of time, you are saying, that was the coroner’s decision?

A. Yes. 

Q. Did you ever suggest the coroner, maybe this is a kind of an investigation we ought to seal the residence?

A. I asked upon leaving if it was gonna be sealed and I was told, no.

Q. Did that surprise you at all?

A. Given the circumstances, no, it didn’t.

[Judge: You let me know if it is convenient to take a little bit of a break.  Recess taken]

By the “circumstances” Det. Smith apparently meant that Michael Jackson was supposed to be a “drug addict” though he was absolutely not – there were no narcotics in his system and propofol is not a narcotic (it is not even addictive).

This is apparently why law enforcement didn’t bother to look any further and actually made a sloppy and perfunctory investigation of Michael’s death.

 Chernoff: Do you know whether they kept a log of visitors? Det. Smith: No, I don’t. Chernoff: Did you ask any of the security guards, former security guards, whether they went back to the house? Did you ever ask them? Det. Smith: No, I did not. Chernoff: The decision to leave the house open throughout that period of time, you are saying, was the coroner’s decision? Det. Smith: Yes. I asked upon leaving if it was gonna to be sealed and I was told, no. Chernoff: “Did that surprise you at all?” Det. Smith: “Given the circumstances, no, it didn’t” ( https://www.courttv.com/title/39-ca-v-murray-det-scott-smith-pt3/)

There is a lot to say on the above, but let us single out only Chernoff’s question if any former security guards returned to the house later and if any logs were kept of who visited the house after June 25.

The question definitely points to the defense team’s suspicions that some of the security could return to the house later and erase, record over or remove the evidence that could incriminate them in some way.

Now, you certainly wonder who took the decision to download only 11 minutes out of the whole surveillance footage? 

It was a nice guy from the LAPD named Orlando Martinez.

Det. Orlando Martinez said that he arrived at Carolwood at about 7:30 pm on June 25th. It was his decision to download only two small parts of the surveillance footage. He was aware that more footage could have been downloaded “had they wanted it” but didn’t explain his decision. And that was all he said about those videos.

Chernoff: And it was your decision to only download footage related to Mr. Jackson’s arrival on June 25th, 2009

Det. Martinez: And Dr. Murray’s.

Chernoff: And as you sit here today, you are aware that more footage could have been downloaded off the digital video recorder, had you guys wanted, correct?

Det. Martinez: Yes.

Chernoff: And it was your decision to only download footage related to Mr. Jackson’s arrival on June 25th, 2009
Det. Martinez: And Dr. Murray’s.
Chernoff: And as you sit here today, you are aware that more footage could have been downloaded off the digital video recorder, had you guys wanted, correct?
Det. Martinez: Yes.          (https://www.courttv.com/title/61-ca-v-murray-det-dan-myers-det-orlando-martinez/)

Then came Alexander Supall, the LAPD surveillance specialist who finally shed some light on the surveillance footage mystery.

On the evening of June 25^th his SID department (Scientific Investigation Division) received a call asking him to go to 100 N.Carolwood Drive to help retrieve the surveillance footage there.

Alexander Supall downloaded the videos with Det. Martinez and Faheem Muhammad (https://www.courttv.com/title/60-ca-v-murray-alexander-supall/)

He arrived at the house at about 7:30 pm, checked with the command post, waited for a permission to enter the gate and met with Detective Martinez who was already there.

There was also a security guard present whose name he doesn’t remember. He described him as a tall African-American man (Faheem Muhammad) and said he found him in the security shack where the monitor was. Their problem was that they couldn’t play back the recordings.

Mr. Supall tracked the video line to where the actual digital video recorder was. It led to the basement two stories down, to a place somewhere behind the movie theatre. They hooked up the monitor to the digital video recorder there and this is when they could play back the footage. They went back to the time when Michael Jackson got home and started to play from that moment.

Could they have downloaded more? The answer was “Yes, they could, but it was a minute-per-minute recording,  so downloading 24 hours “would literally take 24 hours”. “We could have done it, but it would have been a big effort”, Supall said.

As to going back and retrieving more footage the next or any other day, no one asked him to do that.

Supall: “The security staff weren’t able to play it back. The monitor was actually up in the guard shack. So when he got the monitor we came back down and hooked the monitor up to the digital video. That’s when I was with Detective Martinez. There was a security guard from the house.

Chernoff: And was the security guard Faheem Muhammad?

A: I don’t know his name. He was a tall, African American male. He was in the security shack when I got there.

Surveillance specialist Alexander Supall: “The security staff weren’t able to play it back”

Q: After June 25th, were you ever asked by anybody to go back and download additional footage?

A: No.

Alexander Supall of LAPD: “No one asked me to download additional footage”

Q: For example, from June 24th to June 26th would you have been able to then download footage related to that time period?

A: “It’s a minute for minute recording. So to record, you know, 24 hours worth of video would take literally 24 hours, so we could have done it, but it would have been a big effort”

Alexander Supall of LAPD: “It would have been a big effort to download 24 hours worth of video”

So out of approximately two and a half hours at their disposal when they were at Carolwood residence that evening Mr. Supall and Det. Martinez spent only 11 minutes on downloading the footage.

In fact, the police were so disinterested in Michael Jackson’s case that it didn’t even occur to them that they could have left the equipment running during the night to download the surveillance footage automatically,  and come back the next day to retrieve the remaining videos.

Apparently, the law enforcement had much more important business than Michael Jackson’s death, or made a deliberate effort to wrap up the investigation as soon as possible and look no further other than the “drug addiction” myth promoted by the media (and the family, alas).

And it was only after the coroner’s ruling on August 27 that Michael’s death was a homicide, that law enforcement changed the death investigation into a homicide investigation. Only then did they start subpoenaing witnesses and looking for more evidence.

But it was apparently too late to retrieve the surveillance footage.

Note: Generally, home Digital Video Recorders (DVR) are set to retain footage for a duration from 7 to 30 days. Hotels, retailers and other businesses usually store security camera footage for 30 to 90 days.  Casinos keep it for 6 months. All surveillance cameras can retain more in case they are motion activated as it saves their storage space.

When the storage is full, DVRs employ an overwrite mechanism, where the oldest footage is automatically deleted to make room for new recordings. Once older footage is erased, it can never be re-accessed.

By the time Michael Jackson’s death was ruled homicide two months had passed and depending on the settings the footage could be overwritten (or could be still there), but something tells me that the recordings were erased in the very first hours after the police left.

THE FOOTAGE REMOVAL

At Murray trial Faheem Muhammad testified that he, a technician and an officer from the LAPD did the downloading job. He didn’t remember how much footage they had loaded. He also said that late in the evening the security guards left because they were relieved of their duties.

At the preliminary hearings on Jan. 4^th, 2011 Michael Amir Williams described those events as follows:

MAW: After the police left the station, I wanted for family to get there.

Defense attorney: The police were all gone by the time the family arrived?

A: I believe it was at least one person there I asked to stay.

Q. But the house was sealed? Nobody could get in?

A. Yes, sir. Well, the house was opened. The detective told me – I asked him, once the family gets in, are people allowed to go in and just go in the house? And he said, “We are all done here. So you can let them in”

Q. Police made no limitation on what could be done at that house? They said, No, you can’t go up to this room, or you can’t go up to this part?

A. No.

Q. They just said you can go in?

A. Yes.

Q. And that’s what the family did?

A. I’m not sure what they did. But they came, and then I left.

click to enlarge

Mr. Chernoff: You stayed approximately four or five hours there at Carolwood?

MAW: I’m not sure. It was late when I left. It was dark when I left.

Q: Was your security team still operating security at that time?

A.I recall a new security team had come and said that our security team was relieved. And someone by the name of Doctor Tohme had hired this company and our team was relieved. And I told the guys, just follow the instructions. Let his people … relieve, but I waited for certain family to get there before I left and before Faheem Muhammad left. He was with me, before we left and let them come on and take over security.

Q. And how soon after the death of Michael Jackson did this switch of security occur?

A. It was June 25 still, I believe.

Q. Right. But was it in the daytime? Was it at 4:400, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 10:00?

Mr. Walgren: Objection. Relevance. [Sustained)

click to enlarge

So for some reason Prosecutor Walgren didn’t want to go into a totally innocent subject of the time the Nation of Islam security team was suddenly relieved of their duties and was replaced by a totally new team no one heard anything about.

Nor was it allowed to discuss Tohme Tohme and the security personnel that took over the Jackson residence.

Mr. Chernoff: Who is Doctor Tohme?

Mr. Walgren: Objection. Relevance.

The Court: Sustained. It may have been mentioned, but it is still irrelevant.

Mr. Chernoff: Did you know the security personnel that took over at the Jackson residence?

Mr. Walgren: Objection. Relevance.

The Court: Sustained.

click to enlarge

In circumstances like the above the defense couldn’t even ask why the replacement took place at all because everything except Conrad Murray was an official taboo at that trial – due to the earlier restrictions and the judge’s special instructions and admonitions which were strictly complied with.

Rumor had it that the new team was hired by Dr. Tohme, who was not supposed to be MJ’s manager any longer, but Tohme claimed that he still represented Michael, however the instructions to replace the security team were not his.

So who ordered the replacement then, and why was it done in so much hurry?

Below is a piece from Randall Sullivan’s book “Untouchable” to whom Tohme told his story which Sullivan dutifully recorded. Sullivan is often inaccurate on other issues, but over here the story comes directly from Tohme and this is what makes his account even more valuable to us.

At the behest of AEG, Tohme had done his best to make the Carolwood chateau off-limits to everyone outside law enforcement. After Randy Phillips suggested that they needed to lock down both the Carolwood house and the Hayvenhurst compound, Tohme had placed a call to Ron Williams, a former agent with the U.S. Secret Service who now operated Talon Executive Services, an Orange County company that provided security and performed investigations for dozens of major corporations and a good many celebrities.

The Talon chief immediately dispatched teams of operatives to both the Carolwood chateau and the Hayvenhurst compound.  At Tohme’s instigation, Williams also sent a team to Las Vegas to secure the Palomino hacienda where many of Michael’s most valuable possessions remained in storage in the basement.

He and his people were kept outside the gates of the Carolwood property for a full five hours, Williams recalled, while the LAPD photographed the premises, searched the master bedroom, and interviewed Michael Jackson’s security staff.

It was about 10 p.m. when the security staff at the Carolwood chateau were allowed to leave. The police prepared to vacate just minutes later.

Williams and his people were met outside the front gate by Ron Boyd, the Los Angeles Port police chief, who said he was working with the Jacksons as a family friend and would walk the Talon agents onto the property.

About an hour after Williams and his people had stationed themselves along the perimeter of the Carolwood property’s inside wall, La Toya Jackson and her boyfriend Jeffre Phillips showed up and demanded to be admitted to the house.

Tohme had told him that “ no one” was to be allowed onto the property or permitted to remove anything from it, Williams recalled, “ but La Toya and her boyfriend said, ‘We’re family and we should have access to the house.’ And Ron Boyd gave them tacit permission.”

Williams phoned Tohme, who was not pleased. Three hours after La Toya and Phillips were let into the house, Katherine Jackson arrived and went inside after them.

Ron Williams and his agents had remained outside the house, at La Toya’s insistence. It did not become absolutely obvious to Williams and his people that the Jacksons intended to remove whatever valuables were inside the house until the next morning, when Janet Jackson arrived at the front gate, and demanded that the gate be opened to admit the moving van that was following behind her.

It was an awkward moment for Williams. He was in the employ of Tohme and AEG, both of whom had made it clear that they did not want anyone, including the Jackson family, on the property.

[But] he withdrew his agents to the outside of the walls and gave the Jacksons “unfettered access to the house.”   “They camped out for most of a week,” Williams recalled, coming and going “whenever they felt like it.”

Talon agents remained at the walls of the Carolwood property for three weeks, dealing mainly with “fan types and paparazzis” that attempted to climb the walls.

They kept a log of everyone who entered or exited the front gateand never once saw Tohme Tohme. “ The Jackson family let it be known that they didn’t want him around,” Williams recalled.

Tohme’s account certainly revolves around the Jackson family “taking valuables” from the Carolwood house, but let us not get distracted by this side story and focus on who hired the new security team instead.

And the answer is provided by Tohme himself – it was Randy Phillips, the CEO of AEG Live.

Randy Phillips of AEG Live was actually the master and “owner” of everything Michael Jackson at the time.

Despite being repeatedly fired by Michael in March-May 2009,  Tohme was still there in June 2009.  This is because he was in AEG’s employ, had contractual obligations with AEG and was part and parcel of the so-called “contract” between AEG Live and MJ, which was actually a letter of intent addressed to Tohme and starting with a greeting “Dear Dr. Tohme”(see the contract analysis here please).

Faheem Muhammad’s security team was also in AEG’s employ – same as Conrad Murray, the chef Kai Chase, nanny Rosalind Muhammad, show director Kenny Ortega, make-up specialist Karen Faye, choreographer Travis Pane and all others.

All expenses on keeping the huge staff including security, were to be later reloaded on Michael’s shoulders as under the horrible AEG’s “contract” with MJ he was to cover all those expenses from the money earned by him at the London shows. The staff, however, thought that they were being paid by AEG and were working for AEG because Randy Phillips had rubbed it in into everybody’s minds.

But what’s stunning about that security replacement is that the second team which arrived on June 25 was also hired by AEG, or by Tohme at the behest of AEG, to be more precise.

The new security chief Ron Williams even said to Sullivan that he was in the employ of Tohme and AEG, that he was to follow their instructions and this is why he found himself in an “awkward” position when the Jacksons wanted to enter the Carolwood house.

Now what was the point of relieving one security team hired by AEG and replacing it with another team also hired by AEG, and doing it so urgently at that?

I’d love to hear other people’s interpretations of the above, because over here we are stepping on the shaky ground of hypotheses again.

And my supposition is that once their clean-up guy did the job, other clean-up guys were to remove all traces of the job done and do it as soon as possible, preferably within just one hour left to them before the arrival of the Jackson family.

Indeed, what if the Jacksons were clever enough to remove the Digital Video Recorder and its surveillance footage that very night and take it to an independent technician who could retrieve everything that remained there and find out who, besides Murray, was in the house in the morning Michael Jackson died?

Randy Phillips strictly ordered the new security boss not to allow anyone to remove anything from Carolwood house under the pretext that they cared for Michael Jackson’s valuables, but I highly doubt that the AEG CEO was so terribly concerned about MJ’s property – unless it contained the surveillance videos and possibly, also his music which Michael had been recording in the guest house on Carolwood property, turned into a studio.

As to the new security, they could play the role of useful idiots in case Randy Phillips asked them to remove the DVR –  say, on the pretext that once the police were done at Carolwood house AEG intended to thoroughly examine that footage themselves in order to find out whether the previous security team had done their job properly enough.

In fact, the request not to seal the house after the police left the property could easily come from Randy Phillips too, because if it had been sealed, the new team would have had no opportunity to enter the premises and go to the basement.

Only imagine the horror of it if the LAPD detectives suddenly decided to retrieve the remaining surveillance footage the next day after all!

No, Randy Phillips was certainly not the kind of a guy who could give trouble a single chance.    

~

Does all of the above relieve Conrad Murray of his guilt? Absolutely not. He is still terribly guilty of the egregious negligence towards his patient, of substandard care given to MJ, of not calling 911 as soon as he found him breathless and many other things all of which amount to an involuntary manslaughter he was actually convicted of.

But Conrad Murray did not want Michael Jackson dead.

Someone else could really wish him dead – for example, in order to get rid of the problems connected with his failing health, their inability to obtain the $17,5 mln medical insurance covering part of the expenses, the show heading for a disaster as it was far from ready yet, the huge number of concerts that couldn’t be performed in that crazy day in/day out schedule of theirs, the litigation that could have ensued as a result of those problems, the deficiencies of their contract with MJ and much more.

This entity could easily hire a person in the circle closest to Michael Jackson to do a clean-up job by luring him with a gigantic pay. This clean-up man, who under a hypothetical scenario of ours could be Faheem Muhammad, was a driver for Michael Jackson who was promoted to be head of security only two weeks prior to Michael’s death (on June 9).

Sometime during that period Faheem Muhammad started a company of his own, called “Elite Transportation and Security Services, LLC.” which rather quickly turned into a multi-million dollar business. And it was probably in the process of providing security services to celebrities that this guy was hired by Sean Diddy Combs for whom he allegedly did the work of a man “who was able to make problems and people disappear”, according to Lil Rod’s lawsuit.

Sean “Diddy” Combs and Faheem Muhammad

So is Sean “Diddy” Combs in any way connected with Michael Jackson’s death?

No, he isn’t. He simply hired a person who must have acquired by then the reputation of a man capable of doing a clean-up job in case he was lavishly paid for it. It’s just that birds of a feather flock together, but no more than that.

As to the other participants in this story, Randy Phillips, CEO of AEG Live, for example, he first did his utmost to run Michael Jackson into the ground, then said in his emails that “this was a terrible tragedy but life must go on”, but after his testimony at Murray and AEG trials was suddenly fired by the AEG owner despite the earlier promise to renew a contract with him for the next five years or so.

Speaking of Michael Jackson’s death Randy Phillips said “It’s a terrible tragedy, but life must go on” https://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/02/showbiz/michael-jackson-aeg/index.html

The LA Deputy District Attorney David Walgren was appointed a judge at the Superior Court of California in 2012 and is still in this position as of 2025.

The LA Deputy District Attorney Deborah Brazil was given the same job two years later, in 2014 and is to be reassigned as a judge of the Superior Court of California in 2027.

Incidentally, it turned out that Deborah Brazil is no stranger to the entertainment business either. When she was at UCLA “she was given the opportunity to work at NBC and then moved on to 20th Century Fox working in comedy development, collaborating with television writers and taking pitch meetings”.

Honorable Deborah Brazil. Judge, Superior Court of Los Angeles County

But then she considered law as a possible career and decided she wanted to become a prosecutor.

The challenges of her job in prosecution were to “work hard to understand the facts and legal issues”, and then “work towards presenting the evidence to the jury in the most compelling and effective manner possible  – in a manner that allows citizens to have confidence in our court system.”

All of the above makes me extremely confident of the California court system which will certainly show itself at its best at the forthcoming Robson & Safechuck vs. MJ Estate trial which is due to take place in autumn 2026.

I actually shudder at the mere thought of it.

Last time we met here we found out that the LA Deputy District Attorney Ms. Brazil openly misrepresented evidence at Conrad Murray’s trial and led Ms. Kai Chase (MJ’s chef) to tell a false story about her whereabouts on the morning Michael Jackson died. The fact of misrepresentation is indisputable as it is fixed in live recordings from the court room and the only point of argue here may be the reason why the prosecutor forced the witness to lie.

My supposition is that the deliberate distortion of facts was meant to exclude the possibility that someone else, besides Conrad Murray, could be in MJ’s rented Carolwood house in the morning of June 25^th 2009.

There is still no direct evidence that a certain “clean-up fixer” could enter the house, but there is plenty of circumstantial evidence which points to the foul play that morning and its further cover-up, and Ms. Brazil’s behavior is just one of such instances.  Others include the loss of surveillance tapes, the vagueness over the time Faheem Muhammad (security guy) arrived at the house, total disregard for the fact that AEG executives and their companions had a free pass to Michael’s house at any time of the day and that they incessantly lied, lied and lied in each of their testimonies.

The AEG people claimed that they never exerted pressure on Michael and his doctor Conrad Murray, but Michael’s son Prince testified that he saw AEG Live’s CEO Randy Phillips inside the house talking aggressively with Conrad Murray the night or two nights before MJ’s death (the boy called his father to let him know of the unannounced visit and Michael, who was at a rehearsal, asked his son to offer them food and drink).  In fact, Prince recalled two unannounced visits like the above when his father was rehearsing at Staples Center and one of them, according to the boy, was on the eve of Michael Jackson’s death.

The prosecutors turned a blind eye to numerous facts like Michael crying after talking to Randy Phillips on the phone and saying “They are going to kill me”, “They think I am a machine” and “Why can’t I choose?”, repeated to his children, make-up artist Karen Faye and Conrad Murray.

And no one really looked into the miraculous way 10 shows quickly changed into 50 and why they were scheduled at a breakneck pace with only one or two days between the shows.

No one paid attention either to AEG’s threats to “pull the plug” if Michael didn’t do as Randy Phillips wanted him to. Phillips was of the opinion that MJ wasn’t working “hard enough” when preparing for the show though at the trial he admitted that the Artist has no obligation to sing and dance at rehearsals at all.

Randy Phillips: “My problem with him was he didn’t like to work as hard as I want… I thought he needed to work, okay?”

Many details like the above create a disturbing picture that Michael wasn’t his own master in his interaction with AEG, and that it was their extreme pressure on him that brought about his inability to sleep and utter exhaustion which ultimately led to his death – because the need for a powerful sleeping aid was the inevitable consequence of the “tough love” practiced on Michael by his AEG bosses and his co-producer Kenny Ortega whose role in MJ’s demise is also underrated.

In other words, the legal system and media touched on these people’s horrific intimidation of Michael Jackson barely on the surface, not to mention their lack of enthusiasm to dig any further in search for the really deep mechanisms of Michael’s destruction.

TIME TO RECALL

I myself forgot many of those details as more than 12 years have passed since the initial study, but since this old matter was accidentally resumed in the comments to this blog, there was a need to refresh it in my memory, and after recalling how bad the whole thing was, I decided to return to some of the most striking episodes of the physical and psychological horror Michael Jackson went through in the last months of his life.

The resumption of the story is all the more important as a new generation of people certainly heard very little of those events, and will not be able to do their own study for the simple reason that the most damning testimonies of AEG’s executives, which MJ fans bought from the court and posted online in 2013, have since disappeared from the Internet archive – often with a note that they have been excluded from the Wayback Machine.

Below are just a couple of screenshots saying, for example, that the testimonies of Paul Gongaware (AEG executive) and Alif Sankey (choreographer’s assistant) did not just vanish on their own but were excluded by someone from the Internet Archives.

By whom I wonder?

By the guilty party of course that has taken every effort to erase every trace of its misconduct towards Michael Jackson and thwart any chance to get first-hand information should somebody wish to do their own research. In fact, if some of those testimonies had not been embedded in this blog, they would have disappeared too.

Paul Gongaware’s testimony at AEG trial was EXCLUDED from the Wayback Machine

Assistant choreographer Alif Sankey’s testimony was EXCLUDED from Wayback Machine (like many other testimonies at the AEG trial)

THE BIG PICTURE

Revisiting the matter many years later has another big advantage – it helps to see the events in their evolution, so what could seem just random occurrences at that time now shows a certain inner logic that connects seemingly unrelated events with each other and reveals their inherent bond.

When you look at the big picture it becomes clear that AEG went to great lengths to divert public attention from themselves and direct millions of people, especially Michael Jackson’s fans, towards other, often unrelated issues.

You can only guess at how vast their activity was – it spanned from the focus on Conrad Murray only to trashing the Jackson family for suing AEG and threats to reveal “ugly stuff” about Michael which they constantly spread  in the media anyway (about his alleged drug habits).

Anything was good for taking the heat off AEG, and this is probably why the beginning of the AEG trial coincided with Robson’s allegations against Michael which were made just days after the opening statements at the trial and completely overshadowed it, of course.

And it won’t surprise me very much that sowing dissent among MJ’s fans and dividing them into factions to fight over the so-called “fake Cascio songs”, wouldn’t be part of that distraction activity too. You may say that the latter is too far-fetched, but the timing of this matter (and many others) is just too strange to be a coincidence.

During that period one big scandal came after another, each time bypassing AEG as if by some magic and giving no opportunity for anyone to look into what their executives had done to Michael Jackson. And this is despite the fact that they were the closest to him in the last months of his life and their role was actually the first to look into.

Katherine Jackson filed her complaint against AEG on September 15, 2010.

Out of several other claims in her lawsuit only one claim – that AEG negligently hired Dr. Conrad Murray – stayed, while all the others were dropped by the judge.

A little later a much more solid complaint which even involved the AEG-Michael Jackson contract was filed by Joe Jackson but was thrown out by the same judge in February 2012 on the grounds that “the law does not favor multiple suits by individual heirs”. Joe Jackson wasn’t a heir but Judge Yvette Palazuelos nevertheless ruled that AEG Live should not be a defendant in Joe’s lawsuit because the company is already named in a separate lawsuit filed by Katherine Jackson.

During that period MJ fans were mostly busy with something else – they spent their time in frenzied anticipation of the first posthumous album of Michael Jackson’s songs called “Michael”. The  album was finally released by Sony and MJ Estate in December 2010 and sparked the fans’ immediate outrage over the three MJ songs recorded by Eddie Cascio and James Porte in the late period of MJ’s life.

Some fans thought that nobody could expect more from the incomplete tracks produced after Michael’s demise, but in the opinion of activists the songs were faked and this sacrilege was damaging MJ’s legacy.

Amidst the fans’ rage over the Cascio songs came and went Conrad Murray’s trial and his sentencing for involuntary manslaughter (Sep-Nov.2011), followed by the AEG trial (April-Sept. 2013) where Katherine Jackson’s attorneys accused the AEG concert promoter of contributing to Michael Jackson’s death.

Most of the fans were strongly against Katherine and some forum members even openly advised AEG on how to win their case against Michael’s mother. The reason for the resentment was that her lawsuit was allegedly ruining Michael’s reputation as AEG was going to paint Michael as an addict (though anesthetic Propofol is not habit forming and MJ was forced to resort to it exactly because of AEG’s pressure on him), and that the Jacksons would speak of the need for “interventions”, which was indeed totally irrelevant as Propofol doesn’t need interventions and Michael’s addiction to Demerol was long gone but the family didn’t have a clue as they had been out of contact with him for several years.

So instead of fighting AEG, all throughout the trial the fan community was busy fighting Katherine Jackson (and the Casio songs) and the AEG influencers certainly helped them in choosing that direction.

To make things worse the very beginning of the trial, which opened with statements of Katherine’s attorneys on April 29, 2013, was coincidentally followed by Wade Robson’s allegations who filed a creditor’s claim against the Estate on May 1, 2013, just two days after beginning of the trial.

The public learned of it on May 16 when he went on TV to tell a crazy tale that he had been allegedly horribly abused by MJ but didn’t realize that the abuse was sexual until he was 30. The poor guy was so ignorant of the matter that at the age of 23 even vehemently defended Michael at the 2005 trial – by the way claiming there that MJ had never touched him on any part of his body, except probably an occasional touch on his hair.

Not surprisingly, the fantasy tale stole the whole show and AEG stood trial in a much quieter atmosphere than expected.

THE TRIAL

During their testimonies the AEG Live top executives evaded answering questions, didn’t recall writing their own emails, maneuvered between telling half-lies and hiding the truth, contradicted their earlier depositions and were impeached a hundred times – but the public didn’t really notice it. Firstly, because Robson distracted people’s attention from the tedious court sessions and put himself in the public focus instead, and secondly, because the media played down or didn’t report some of the key elements of that trial.

In fact, the media was thoroughly monitored by AEG and their attorneys.

After the trial the AEG lead attorney Mr. Putnam of the O’Melveny team was quite open about it and revealed that they had monitored the media reports to make sure the media outlets “get it right”.

He histrionically complained that they had to “battle with misinformation from the other side” though in reality it was Katherine Jackson who was trashed by almost every media outlet. The example of it was a false story leaked by AEG and taken up by every media outlet that Katherine demanded $40bln from AEG. The real estimation was around $1,3bln and in any case Katherine had nothing to do with it because estimations were made solely by the attorneys. In other words it was Katherine who was constantly “battling with misinformation from the other side” and not AEG.

In general the mainstream media behavior and coverage of the trial satisfied and even pleased AEG Live – with one exception though.

The exception was Alan Duke of the CNN. This journalist was like a breath of fresh air to those who were frustrated by the selective reporting done by other journalists. Alan Duke indeed kept to the highest standards of journalism and covered the court proceedings with supreme accuracy and precision.

Actually, Alan Duke was the only individual who had the courage to report the fact that Randy Phillips slapped Michael Jackson (“Promoter: I slapped ‘despondent’ Michael Jackson”, by Alan Duke, CNN. June 10, 2013 ). Most of the others preferred to take a day off from reporting that day, looked the other way or pretended they didn’t notice it.

But Alan Duke did notice and his behavior wasn’t lost on AEG. They called him a fraudster, labeling his reports as “woefully misinformative” and said that he was even worse than gossipers like TMZ and Radar Online.

Mr. Putnam told a certain author at Law360 that CNN (meaning Alan Duke) was the only one who “didn’t get it right”:

Law360, New York (December 03, 2013)

Throughout the trial, Putnam said the defense team was constantly battling misinformation and sometimes lies from the other side [ ] The O’Melveny team also had to deal with the ongoing trial of public opinion taking place outside the courtroom on the street and in the press and attempt to ensure that AEG was not being unfairly maligned – no easy task when some news outlets were taking unsupported allegations put forth by the plaintiffs as fact, according to Putnam.

While most news outlets put out accurate coverage, Putnam said CNN’s coverage was woefully misinformative, considering even gossip sites like TMZ and Radar Online were getting it right.

“You have to monitor these things to make sure real outlets get it right,” he said. “With the 24/7 news cycle now, people are being tried in two very different arenas.”

If you make a mirror image of the above statement, it will turn out that it was only Alan Duke who “got it right” while the rest of the media were biased in favor of AEG Live, reported only things approved by AEG, evaded the subjects most sensitive to AEG and as a result distorted the picture and didn’t tell the whole truth.

Alan Duke: Randy Phillips asked Paul Gongaware to take out the footage where Michael looked “way too thin and skeletal”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAiJgJ0SfNs

I remember thinking that Alan Duke would get an award of honor for his excellent reports during the trial, but instead was hit by the news that immediately thereafter Alan Duke was fired from CNN, after his 26 years with the company.

So the power of AEG executives turned out to be much bigger than the power of free press and even the most reputable mainstream media veterans.

In fact, even before the trial began we had already heard that AEG Live (now renamed into AEG Presents) “owned” Los Angeles, but we didn’t expect that AEG could “own” the whole of the US media and ostentatiously flaunt it in the face of the shocked public.

The Man Who Owns L.A.

Published in the New Yorker print edition of the January 16, 2012, issue

A.E.G. is so dominant in downtown Los Angeles that some refer to it as “Leiweke country.”

One may wonder why it is not “Anschutz country.” Philip Anschutz, who is seventy-two, owns A.E.G. and has an estimated net worth of seven billion dollars, according to Forbes. He has made his fortune in oil and gas, real estate, railroads, telecommunications, and sports and entertainment. He is one of the largest landowners in the U.S., and his empire of more than a hundred and fifty companies, nearly all privately held, is worldwide.

But Anschutz, who lives in Denver, is intensely private and does little to publicize his ownership of A.E.G. or any of his other business activities.

“We are a five-to-six-billion-dollar company. This man has funded us out of his pocket. He has today almost three billion dollars invested in Los Angeles. And we paid about a hundred million dollars in taxes in the calendar year 2010 to the city, the county, and the state” [says Leiweke].

Anschutz and Leiweke had a specific model in mind. “If twenty million people go through Disneyland, why can’t we build hotels, restaurants, and retail that service the twenty million people? That’s all we did here.”

Some have suggested that A.E.G. buys its influence—since 2000, the company has spent almost $2.7 million in political contributions in California—but its dominance is far greater than that amount of money would suggest.

“It’s that they have pop,” one longtime elected official said, “and everybody wants to feed a fat pig.”

~

Tim Leiweke wove AEG into the fabric of L.A.

March 14, 2013

Tim Leiweke, who departed Thursday as head of entertainment giant Anschutz Entertainment Group, played a pivotal role in Los Angeles government decisions that went well beyond sports and real estate.

https://www.latimes.com/local/la-xpm-2013-mar-14-la-me-leiweke-city-hall-20130315-story.html

Speaking of other oddities at the AEG trial it wouldn’t hurt to mention that Randy Phillips and Paul Gongaware as the key AEG personalities who had the closest contact with Michael Jackson were suddenly dismissed from the lawsuit closer to the end of the 5-months-long trial.

To be more precise, it happened just three weeks before the jury deliberations, on September 9, 2013.

Judge Yvette Palazuelos decided that these two defendants were not responsible for Michael’s death as individuals, leaving the jury to decide on liability of AEG Live as an entity only – though it wasn’t the entity who slapped Michael, yelled at him so hard that “the walls were shaking” and threw him into a cold shower as Randy Phillips did.

And it wasn’t the entity who sent emails like Paul Gongaware saying “We want to remind Murray who is paying him money” and suggested talking to Michael in “terms of gross receipts” only – not to make him realize that he would earn too little from his glorious cooperation with AEG Live.

And who also told his assistant to change the colors of a calendar so that MJ would think he had more days off. “Figure it out so it looks like he’s not working so much,” Gongaware wrote, apparently being aware that the schedule he worked out for MJ was too strenuous for anyone, let alone a 50-year old.

The company was proposing a world tour that would net the cash-strapped star $132 million, according to the memo. “This is not a number that MJ will want to hear. He thinks he is so much bigger than that,” Gongaware warned. Talk in terms of gross receipts, he suggested.

The singer and AEG signed a deal in January 2009. If he reneged, AEG would take control of the debt-ridden singer’s company and use the income from his music catalogs to recoup its money.

There were doubters inside and outside the company. Dan Beckerman, AEG’s chief operating officer, sent Phillips, the chief executive of concert division AEG Live, a YouTube link to Jackson’s shaky 2001 MTV appearance and asked, “Can he pull this off?”

“With time and rehearsal,” Phillips wrote back.

Pressed by another promoter about Jackson’s ability to deliver, Phillips shot back in an email, “He has to or financial disaster awaits.”

“He is locked. He has no choice … he signed a contract,” Gongaware wrote.

Publicly, AEG projected confidence. “The man is very sane, the man is very focused, the man is very healthy,” Leiweke assured a music industry symposium the day before the news conference.

Jackson made it to London, but according to emails Phillips sent to Leiweke, the star was intoxicated and refused to leave his suite. “He is scared to death,” Phillips wrote to Leiweke.

In an interview, AEG’s attorney Putnam suggested Phillips had exaggerated in his emails and said Jackson’s behavior appeared to be a case of “nerves.”

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-xpm-2012-sep-02-la-me-aeg-jackson-20120902-story.html

The trial ended on October 2^nd, 2013 with the jury deciding that AEG’s actions didn’t contribute to Michael Jackson’s death. AEG was found responsible for hiring Conrad Murray but was not considered liable for Michael’s death as despite his quick and dramatic deterioration in front of their eyes in no way could the AEG people see that something was wrong and guess that it was due to the doctor’s poor care for his patient.

The verdict was a shock to most of the public and even to some members of the jury (more about it later).

But wonders didn’t cease there.

THE MYSTERY JUROR

Three days after the ridiculous “not liable” verdict which wholly depended on the jurors’ “no” answer to Question 2 on the jury questionnaire “Was the doctor unfit to fulfill the duties he was hired for?” (which abruptly ended the jury deliberations without letting them discuss the essence of the case) a certain person who sat on the jury and called himself “juror27” came to the biggest MJ fan forum to sweet talk its members and explain the jury’s decision to absolve AEG.

The public polls at that time showed that 71% of those polled thought that AEG was responsible for Michael Jackson’s death, while the biggest MJ fan community was brainwashed so hard in favor of AEG even by its own staff member that only 49% of the fan community sided with Michael’s mother Katherine.

71% of voters on HLN forum considered AEG responsible for Michael Jackson’s death [1265 voters,  September 24, 2013]

51,02% of MJ fans supported AEG [147 voters on the MJJCommunity forum]

His memory of AEG’s arguments was perfect, but when it came to crucial facts unfavorable to AEG, he couldn’t remember any – for example, he had to be told by MJ fans that there was a clause in AEG’s contract with Murray which didn’t allow Michael Jackson to fire his own doctor (it could be done only by AEG).

The juror also lied that no one at AEG called Michael a “freak” insisting that it was said by someone in London (in reality it was AEG’s top lawyer) and among many other things essentially justified Randy Phillips for slapping Michael (he was late and Randy was nervous).

In general, the juror27’s performance was a huge success with rank-and-file fans who hadn’t followed the trial like Michael’s defenders did, especially since he fed to fans the idea of “how much he grew fond of Michael and came to appreciate his genius during the trial”.

This mantra was certainly meant to minimize the effect of the real attitude towards Michael of top AEG executives who spoke derogatively of him both in private and in the open. Randy Phillips, for example, actually openly bragged about slapping Michael in a message to his companions waiting at a London hotel to leave for a press-conference:

• I said:  “you guys are going to follow us behind a 12-passenger bus back there. I just slapped him and screamed at him louder than I did with Arthur Cassell.”

Phillips also brushed aside Karen Faye’s concerns about MJ’s health by the disdainful “Yeah, this is bad. It’s not so good. I had to scrape him off the floor in London at the announcement because he was so drunk” – which was apparently supposed to mean “If he was such a goner what do you want of me?”

But the story was not only a big lie, as Michael wasn’t even minimally drunk according to Gongaware’s testimony, but it contradicted everything Randy Phillips said to the press about Michael’s “great condition” and much enthusiasm to do the shows.

The false assurances about Michael’s great health were made by AEG with the sole purpose of obtaining the cancellation insurance to cover Michael’s illness and even death. It’s noteworthy that the request to add death to the insurance policy (the so-called life insurance) came from AEG after Michael’s two highly successful rehearsals just prior to his death.

In fact, AEG’s interaction with Michael Jackson revolved around the insurance as if it were the crux of the matter.

They started with insurance and ended with it too – the AEG officials began seeking insurance regarding Michael Jackson even before meeting with him in November the prior year. And they also sent Conrad Murray at least 10 emails urging him to gather medical records for the Lloyds insurance policy in the final week of Michael’s life alone.

Even before meeting with Jackson, executives at the highest levels of AEG, including billionaire founder Phil Anschutz, were seeking insurance to protect the company’s bottom line if the shows didn’t come off, according to the emails.

Two months [after the deal] Jackson and AEG got insurance from Lloyd’s of London, according to the policy that is contained in court records. For rehearsals in L.A., it only covered accidents. The policy would expand to include illness and death coverage when Jackson got to London and was evaluated by Lloyd’s doctors there.

Lloyd’s also insisted on five years of medical records.  Within AEG, it was determined that Murray was the best hope to get the records, and in the final week of Jackson’s life, officials sent at least 10 emails reminding him to gather them.

Murray responded to the last of the requests June 25 in Jackson’s darkened bedroom suite, according to emails presented at the doctor’s criminal trial. He wrote that he had talked to Jackson and “Authorization was denied.”

Less than an hour later, Jackson stopped breathing, according to a timeline Murray gave police.

A week later, AEG filed a claim for the entire $17.5-million insurance policy and said publicly that it was out more than $35 million.

But within a very short period, it became clear that Jackson’s demise, however terrible for those who loved him, was a commercial boon for his heirs and for AEG. The celebratory documentary “This Is It,” which AEG co-produced alone grossed more than $260 million worldwide.

“Michael’s death is a terrible tragedy, but life must go on. AEG will make a fortune from merch sales, ticket retention, the touring exhibition and the film/dvd,” Phillips wrote to a concert business colleague in August.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-xpm-2012-sep-02-la-me-aeg-jackson-20120902-story.html

It is obvious that the insurance policy was far more important to AEG than Michael’s health and even the show itself, and this suggests that despite collecting money for 50 shows they probably didn’t think him capable of doing even one.

Of all witnesses at the trial Juror27 was of the worst opinion about Karen Faye who recalled that she had instructions not to listen to Michael and ignore his wishes, remembered him constantly rambling to himself “Why can’t I choose?” and was rebuffed not only by Phillips but also by Ortega who “fluffed off” her concern about Michael’s health.

Juror27’s displeasure with Karen Faye makes it all the more clear that he was an AEG plant who came to the forum to whitewash Michael’s intimidators.

His activity lasted on the forum for four months until January 3, 2014 when Katherine Jackson’s attorneys began to talk about a possible appeal, after which he disappeared.

But if juror27 was an AEG plant at a fan forum, didn’t he work in the same capacity when he was on the jury panel too?

Of course he did, no doubt about it.

To Katherine Jackson’s attorneys this fact also became obvious after the verdict, and they complained to the judge about one of the jurors pressuring the others – which could be reason enough for a retrial of the case.

The Jacksons’ attorneys were supported by 4 jurors of the jury panel who said that they misunderstood what was expected of them when answering Question 2 and they felt “cheated and bewildered” due to their confusion at deliberations.

Initially there were 5 jurors (out of 12) who expressed the same sentiment but one woman thought better of it the next day, obviously being afraid of repercussions.

MURRAY’S TRIAL SAID HE WASN’T FIT FOR THE JOB. And AEG TRIAL SAID HE WAS

The problem was that someone persuaded the jurors to consider Conrad Murray’s fitness for the job only at the moment when he was hired by AEG, and not two months later when Michael’s condition worsened to the point of him being unable to go down the stairs without the dancers’  help and feeling icy cold to the touch in the summer heat.

His body was so emaciated that he looked skeletal and his heartbeat was seen under his T-shirt according to his costume designer Michael Bush who was shocked by the sight.

By that moment it became clear to everyone on the AEG team that the doctor’s care for Michael Jackson was inadequate and doing him no good.

Even Kenny Ortega wondered “Where is his doctor?”  Stage manager John Hougdahl wrote an email to Phillips and Gongaware six days before Michael’s death saying,

• “I have watched him deteriorate in front of my eyes over the last 8 weeks. He was able to do multiple 360 spins back in April. He’d fall on his ass if he tried now.”
• “He is a basket case. The DOUBT is pervasive”

Alif Sankey, the assistant choreographer, also cried to Kenny Ortega that Michael was dying in front of their eyes, and no one was paying attention, and it was this fact coupled with Ortega’s own observations on June 19th that finally forced him to approach the AEG CEO with his concerns.

Ortega emailed Randy Phillips in the early hours of June 20th:

• “My concern is, now that we’ve brought the Doctor into the fold and have played the tough love, now or never card, is that the Artist may be unable to rise to the occasion due to the real emotional stuff,” Ortega wrote. “He appeared quite weak and fatigued this evening. He had a terrible case of the chills, was trembling, rambling and obsessing. Everything in me says he should be psychologically evaluated.”
• “I believe that he really wants this. It would shatter him, break his heart if we pulled the plug. He’s terribly frightened it’s all going to go away. He asked me repeatedly tonight if I was going to leave him. He was practically begging for my confidence. …There still may be a chance he can rise to the occasion if we get him the help he needs.”

So besides everything else Ortega’s email revealed that prior to June 19th they decided to play “tough love” on Jackson, confronted him with a “now or never” ultimatum, made Conrad Murray control Michael (“they brought him into the fold”) and even threatened to “pull the plug” on the show, all of which had a heavy emotional toll on MJ.

Click to access Exhibit-298-KO-716-719.pdf

But Ortega’s concerns met with Randy Phillips’ cold reply that “It is critical that neither you, me or anyone around this show become amateur psychiatrists or physicians.”

The above emails are the tip of an iceberg only, and in normal conditions even a miniscule portion of such evidence would have been enough to hold AEG liable for their neglect, disregard and intimidation of the leading star of their show – but in those circumstances all of it was ignored.

The AEG case was ridiculously narrowed down only to Murray’s competence (though he had already been found incompetent and was serving jail time for it) and to the AEG ability to notice Michael’s poor health when everyone around them said that he was dying. But even those two minimal requirements were not met.

AEG never checked on Murray’s qualifications though they declared him “very successful” and  claimed that  “they checked everyone out”, however in reality they wholly relied on a perfunctory check done by an outsider who literally spent 10 minutes on Googling him.

And they couldn’t care less about Michael’s health because between themselves they had decided long ago that he was a “drug addict” who was “taking something” and couldn’t last long, so while he was still able to stand on his feet their primary goal was to collect as much money as possible through direct ticket sales and the Viagogo secondary market, where tickets were resold at more than $4000 (but were not refundable in case of cancellations), and to get the $17,5 mln insurance, of course.

This is why it was so important for them to make the jurors assess Murray’s qualifications at the time he was hired only and not later when Michael was barely able to drag his feet.

And it was apparently juror27 who persuaded the rest of the jurors to assess Murray’s competence only at that moment, though the judge gave them no such instructions.

Katherine lost because the jury decided when AEG hired Murray, there was no reason to believe he was incompetent. The answer to that question ended the case. Katherine feels the judge should have allowed jurors to go further — even if Murray seemed competent at the beginning, he proved reckless and irresponsible during the months leading up to Jackson’s death, and AEG did nothing to stop it.

The documents formally asking for a new trial include statements from 4 jurors, who say they feel the verdict was wrong.

One juror says, “I feel so cheated …” Another juror felt Katherine should have won, and complained the jury instructions made that impossible.

And still another juror said, “This was a very unfair and upsetting way to end the case. There was no question in my mind that AEG Live was liable.”

https://www.tmz.com/2013/12/13/katherine-jackson-michael-jackson-appeal-wrongful-death-trial-jury/

THE OUTCOME

Based on the opinion of 4 jurors and their misinterpretation of the jury instructions Katherine Jackson’s attorneys appealed to the judge for a retrial, but the appeal was rebuffed. And though the jurors clearly said that they were confused, the judge determined that “there was no evidence of it”.

In January 2014 Superior court Judge Yvette Palazuelos ruled that “jurors were given proper instructions and there were no errors in her trial rulings that would warrant a retrial.”

“Question Two does not restrict jurors to the consideration of Dr Murray’s competence at the time of hiring only,” the judge wrote.

She also determined that there was no evidence that the panel was confused by the verdict form.

“The court finds no jury confusion based on the admissible evidence,” Palazuelos ruled.

AEG Live’s attorney Marvin Putnam praised Monday’s ruling. “We were confident that the court would uphold the jury’s verdict,” he wrote in a statement. “This is also fantastic news for the taxpayers of California, who won’t have their hard-earned money wasted retrying plaintiffs’ baseless claims. Enough is enough.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/14/michael-jacksons-mother-retrial-concert-promoter

Incidentally, the taxpayers had little to spend on that trial as it was a civil case where all costs were to be covered by the losing party.  So if taxpayers’ money was used, it was only on sustaining the court proceedings and the judge, its clerks, etc. functioning as a whole.

After the judge refused to hold a retrial, Katherine Jackson and her lawyers appealed to the Court of Appeal, but on January 30, 2015 lost the appeal too.

Notably, the statements of 4 jurors were disregarded though their disagreement with the verdict meant that the jury was “hung”. The voting margin in civil cases is 75% (9 out of 12 jurors), however in AEG’s case the ratio was 8-4 which meant that it was a truly hung jury and this type of a deadlock required a retrial.

But the California Appellate Court didn’t pay attention to such details. Their decision was nearly instantaneous – it took them just a week to look into the 4 jurors’ statements, the intricacies of the five months long trial, and possibly the many months of pretrial proceedings when certain decisions affecting the verdict were taken by the judge.

With such a big workload for just one working week, when did they have time to write their 39-page ruling, I wonder, unless they had prepared it in advance?

A California appeals court on Friday upheld a jury’s decision that the promoter of Michael Jackson’s ill-fated comeback concerts was not responsible for his death. The 2nd District Court of Appeal issued a 39-page ruling a week after attorneys for Katherine Jackson argued for a new trial. The court found the verdict in favour of concert promoter AEG Live LLC was legal.

The court also upheld rulings by a trial court judge that narrowed the case to a single claim that AEG negligently hired, retained and supervised the doctor later convicted of causing Jackson’s death.

The justices noted that jurors seemed to understand the case and did not appear confused by jury instructions or the verdict form, as Katherine Jackson’s attorneys have contended.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/michael-jackson-s-mother-katherine-jackson-loses-appeal-against-aeg-1.2938260

This is how on January 30, 2015 the California Court of Appeal affirmed a jury’s 2013 judgment in Michael Jackson’s wrongful death suit and awarded AEG costs which amounted to more than $1,2mln and were to be paid by the opposing party.

Katherine Jackson was shocked that AEG Live charged her even for parking “tacked on for court reporters to show up for the trial”. The total sum included more than half a million for the various models and blown-up exhibits from the AEG side, $118,000 more was charged “for unnecessary depositions”, $20,000 for “jury instruction paper” and other similar stuff.

Judge Yvette Palazuelos kindly reduced the costs by $400,000, so Katherine Jackson, or rather MJ Estate, had to pay $800,000. The outcome was hailed by some fans as “serving Katherine right” and was also called a waste of money belonging to Michael’s children.

Apparently, those people knew in advance that the attempt to bring AEG to justice was doomed and it was only the naïve Michael’s mother and us who thought that the outcome could be any different.

The case against AEG and its outcome left the feeling of a big injustice done, of serious matters being sidelined and replaced with insignificant technicalities, and even of the media being a little ashamed of the result.

It also left the impression of a lot of clandestine and furtive activity going behind the scene, of all the right strings pulled in every direction and even some operators’ idea that it wouldn’t hurt to have the case coincide with allegations of abuse from a prospective new candidate for a MJ “victim”.

ALL WAS NOT QUIET ON THE OTHER FRONT

While the AEG trial came and went (April–Oct.2013) and while juror27 continued his damage control at the fan forum until January 2014, and while Katherine’s appeal was on its way to its final stage in January 2015, and while the public was mesmerized by Robson (since May 1, 2013 until present) and then by Safechuck who joined him a year later (on May 9, 2014) –  all throughout that time the threads on the MJ fan forum devoted to Cascio’s songs were only gaining  in number of pages and were well over several thousand already.

The discussion became a little subdued but was still smoldering fire. The initial zeal was of course gone as several years had already passed since the release of the posthumous “Michael” album (in Dec.2010), so the majority of fans no longer cared about those songs and the interest to the subject was mostly upheld by those who initiated the campaign in the first place and then  turned it into a cottage business of their own.

But on June 12, 2014 a certain hard core MJ fan who only recently came from Russia on a working visa to the US and who was still deeply concerned about the authenticity of the three Cascio songs, brought a class lawsuit against Sony, John Branca of the MJ Estate (excluding John McClain), MJJ Productions and Angelikson Productions company of Eddie Cascio and James Porte who were considered the main wrong-doers in recording the so-called “fake” MJ songs.

And the June date of 2014 chosen for filing the lawsuit was remarkable.

(to be continued)

(continued from this post)

ALL WAS NOT QUIET ON THE OTHER FRONT

While the AEG trial came and went (April–Oct.2013) and while Juror27 continued his damage control on the fan forum until January 2014, and while Katherine’s appeal was on its way to its final stage in January 2015, and while the public was mesmerized by Robson (since May 1, 2013 until present) and then by Safechuck who joined him a year later (on May 9, 2014) –  all throughout that time the threads on the MJ fan forum devoted to Cascio’s songs were only gaining in the number of pages and were well over several thousand already.

The discussion became more subdued but was still smoldering fire. The initial zeal was of course gone as several years had already passed since the release of the first posthumous “Michael” album (Dec.14, 2010), so the majority of fans no longer cared about those songs and the interest in the subject was mostly upheld by those who initiated the campaign in the first place and then turned it into a cottage business of their own.

But on June 12, 2014 or three and a half years after the release of the album, Vera Serova – a hard core MJ fan, who only recently came from Russia on a working visa to the US and was still deeply concerned about the authenticity of the three Cascio songs, brought a class lawsuit against Sony, John Branca of the MJ Estate (excluding John McClain), MJJ Productions and Angelikson Productions company of Eddie Cascio and James Porte who were considered the main wrongdoers in recording the so-called “fake” MJ songs.

The June date of 2014 chosen for filing the lawsuit was remarkable.

It was remarkable because the month of June was memorable for MJ’s fans in very many ways.

• Firstly, it was five years since Michael Jackson’s sad death on June 25, 2009.
• Secondly, it was the ninth celebration of his acquittal on all charges on June 13, 2005.
• And thirdly, it came approximately a month after another rogue stabbed Michael Jackson in the back on May 9, 2014 with a lurid story of his own. Safechuck alleged that he “recalled” abuse when he was watching Robson on TV a year earlier, his recollection coinciding exactly with the moment when his family was sued for hundreds of thousands for a fraud. The guy immediately went into therapy of course, and a year later was ready to spill out the incredible amount of fantasies which were collected from every negative source about MJ and then multiplied tenfold.

As a result the “abuse” which allegedly happened at the time when MJ was still very young, turned out to be the worst of everything ever said about Michael by anyone at all. In his zeal Safechuck went as far as describing the events that happened even at a place which had not been even built by the moment described. The rest of his story was no better.

So May-June 2014 was the period when the MJ Estate and MJJ Productions had to deal with Robson’s and Safechuck’s extortion demands who started with $1,2B and then turned it into $2 billion.

The extortionists’ supporters don’t want to believe the sum because their darling Dan Reed claims that “they are not suing for money”.

The Jackson Estate says – “It’s all about the money.” But is that correct? ‘Leaving Neverland’ director Dan Reed sets the record straight stating Wade Robson and James Safechuck are not suing for any money [May 25, 2019]

However Diane Dimond knows better and speaks of $2 billion in a new chapter recently added to her book about Jackson. As you remember this information recently arrived from the Reddit MJ detractors:

• “To be fair, last night I listened to the new chapters of Diane Dimond’s Be Careful Who You Love, written post-LN, and was surprised to hear she too said they were suing for $2B……”.

Besides the unfounded demands of the two crooks, in June 2014 the MJ Estate was also fighting the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) which claimed that Michael could earn hundreds of millions of dollars through endorsements and merchandise deals alone, and wanted another $0,7B ($702 mln) from the Estate in “unpaid taxes and penalties for undervaluing MJ’s image and likeness”.

IRS didn’t explain why Michael Jackson had to go on stage if he could make money in a much easier way – through mere advertising.

And it was amidst those absurd money claims that the MJ fan filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of all purchasers of the “Michael” album in California, seeking “an injunction, attorneys’ fees, restitution, punitive damages and costs” for herself and other customers, which could eventually lead to tens of millions in refunds too.

So whichever way you look at it, the fan’s lawsuit about the Cascio songs was adding heavily to the Estate’s financial burden and was extraordinarily out of place, especially at that moment.

The most level-headed of MJ fans didn’t like the idea even if they believed the popular myth that Cascio songs weren’t authentic:

• Not sure if I really like this idea. Don’t get me wrong. I was just as annoyed by the fake songs as well, but I can’t help but feel like this is very hypocritical of a fan to do this. Michael had all sorts of people suing him for money and such in life, and even in death they continue to come after him. For a fan to be one of those people, even if it is for a legit reason, is embarrassing to the fanbase and unfair to Michael.
• Today is not a regular day and June 2014 is not a regular June. The timing is very suspicious and personally I see some very biased against MJ characters being financially involved in this lawsuit behind the scene.
• My concern is who is behind this fan pushing the lawsuit forward. I don’t believe for a moment it’s just an independent fan working without an agenda to harm the estate. JMO.

“My concern is who is behind this fan pushing the lawsuit forward.”

So I am not the only one who thought of the financial involvement of some anti-Michael Jackson characters in the fan’s lawsuit – the suspicion is all too common to ignore it.  We have no direct proof that someone sponsored all that activity and pulled the ropes behind the scene, but the events came in so tight a package that they produced the impression of a concerted effort of some powerful actors who intended not only to stigmatize Jackson, but also ruin his Estate, drain it of everything it had, and leave Michael’s children destitute and his legacy nil.

Now that you look at the big picture you see a well coordinated multifaceted campaign that could be orchestrated only by people with extensive connections in various agencies and fields of activity, and who joined their forces against the Estate and Michael Jackson’s reputation – doing it out of spite, hate, revenge, malice, corporate interests, social or political agenda, you name it.

And I will certainly not believe that a die-hard fan would want to add to all the trouble by filing a lawsuit against the MJ Estate and Cascio at the time when the Estate was at its most vulnerable and the Cascios’ testimony was needed most to rebuff the two extortionists’ tales.

The lawsuit certainly needed a push or encouragement from the outside, which could come in the form of an innocent donation or grant, masquerading as a contribution for the noble cause of “learning the truth”, “getting to the bottom of it” and “finally giving the fans a sense of closure” on the matter.

To give the complainant the (slim) benefit of the doubt, she could be unaware of the nefarious intentions of her sponsors. Hard to believe it but was still possible – minimally though.

WHO STRETCHES THE TRUTH

But before stepping on the road of seeking the truth, the complainant first had to stretch the truth herself.

The problem was that the statute of limitations for fraud was drawing to an end, so in order to meet the required three-year deadline the fan had to pretend that she bought the long-awaited album not immediately after its release as every die-hard fan would, but half a year later. According to the lawsuit the purchase of the album took place “between June 18 and June 21, 2011”, with no receipts and nothing to prove the date.

The above period is total nonsense of course as three days after the official release of the album on December 14, 2010 the same fan was already analyzing the album and praising “Breaking News” as the best track there. The complainant who goes by the name of Morinen on the fan community wrote about it:

• Dec 17, 2010  #6

I really don’t understand all the hate on “Breaking News”. If you think it’s an imposter, that’s one thing, but even people who believe it’s Michael seem to collectively diss the song. Why? In my opinion,  it’s the best track on the album. It has a catchy tune and the lyrics are very poignant.

And in February, 2011 (half a year before she allegedly bought the album) the fan already knew the album inside out, choosing “Breaking News and “Monster” as her favorites again:

• Feb 17, 2011  #17

… If you mean Cascio tracks, “Breaking News” and “Monster” are my favorites on the album, and “KYHU” [Keep Your Head Up] is great too. And the overall idea to release songs that Michael was working on in his last years is nice – I’m grateful for that. It wasn’t the estate who started the scandal, and I don’t think they could foresee it, so I don’t blame them.”

So everything points to the time of her purchase being a lie. And this factor is no minor issue at all – on that basis alone the lawsuit could have been thrown out from its outset as the statute of limitations for filing a lawsuit had already expired. But it wasn’t – because the court system closed its eyes to the obvious absurdity of the timing provided by the fan and chose to believe it.

On a side note let us also keep in mind that if someone lies once and even on a ‘minor’ issue like the above, nothing will stop this person from lying again and about something bigger than that.

A YEAR EARLIER

The preparation for the lawsuit certainly began much earlier than June 2014. To be more precise the fan first called for taking urgent legal action against the Estate and others on June 9, 2013.

This was the month of June again, only one year earlier.  And the moment chosen for voicing the idea was no better if not worse than the time when the lawsuit was actually filed.

Why no better?

Because the idea of a lawsuit coincided with the key testimonies at the AEG trial, not to mention Robson’s recent allegations as a background for the AEG story.

Right at that time, on June 5, 2013 for example, Randy Phillips, AEG’s CEO was dodging questions, wriggling and evading direct answers when examined by Mr. Panish, Katherine Jackson’s attorney about the way he treated Jackson before the March 2009 press-conference in London:

Q. Did you yell at Mr. Jackson? “Yes” or “No”?

A. I raised my voice.

Q. So the answer is no, you did no yell; correct?

A. Matter of interpretation.

Q. Did you scream at Mr. Jackson?

A. I raised my voice.

Q. So you did not scream at Mr. Jackson; correct?

A. At the time, I felt like I may have screamed. I just raised my voice.

Q. Sir, did you or did you not scream at Mr. Jackson at this time? “Yes” or “No” or “I don’t remember’?

A. I can’t answer the question that way.

Mr. Panish (to the judge): Your honor, I think it’s a pretty straightforward question.

 The next day of June 6, 2013 revealed that Randy Phillips not only screamed and yelled at Michael Jackson, but also slapped him.

Phillips claimed that it was an exaggeration and that he slapped Michael “on the butt”, but the original message sent to his business associate suggested that it was a hard smack on the face.

The smack was accompanied by a yell that was so loud that “the walls were shaking” and by throwing Michael into a cold shower. In addition to all that humiliation the description of that episode was emailed by Phillips to his business associate with a contemptuous comment about Michael’s nose:

• “We still have to get his nose on properly…. I just slapped him and screamed at him louder than I did with Arthur Cassell.”

Phillips explained his actions by Michael being “drunk and despondent”, however even his Co-CEO Paul Gongaware said that he saw nothing of the kind.  And Phillips himself had to admit that Michael was not drunk – especially since he initially testified at his deposition that this was not case. The deposition was quoted to him during the trial:

Q. “Was Mr. Jackson drunk?”

A. “No. Not to the best of my knowledge, no.

Q. “Ok. Was he despondent?”

A. “No”

Q. Now, sir, you testified there that Mr. Jackson was not drunk and he was not despondent, correct?

A. There? Yes.

The New York Post tried to minimize the bombshell effect of those revelations and closed their report about that incident by saying that the slap was on the butt, though it obviously wasn’t. This is what they said on June 6, 2013:

… At his deposition six months ago, before he was shown his e-mails, Phillips denied that Jackson was either drunk or despondent on the day of the president conference, and denied yelling at The Gloved One, saying he merely “raised his voice.”

Phillips says he was telling the truth in his deposition, and was not accurate in his email. “I was relaying what Dr. Tohme told me… I wrote it as fast as I could write it.”

Panish said, “You have to yell pretty loud to make the walls shake. Do you have a tendency to exaggerate?”
Phillips said, “No.”

To another business associate, Phillips wrote: “I haven’t pulled it off yet. We still have to get his nose on properly. You have no idea what this is like. He is a self-loathing emotionally paralyzed mess… I just slapped him.”

Phillips admitted, “I slapped him on the butt.”

And the following day of June 7, 2013 revealed that Kenny Ortega warned Randy Phillips of Michael’s poor condition by sending him an email that Michael “had a terrible case of the chills, was trembling, rambling and obsessing” to which Phillips sent a cold reply and told him not to act like an amateur physician or psychiatrist.

Michael Jackson was ‘trembling, rambling’, director said (June 7, 2013)

This and other devastating news about AEG mistreatment of their leading star was made public in the first week of  June 2013 and it shocked and shattered the nerves not only of Michael Jackson’s fans but of the general public as well.

So why a Michael Jackson fan would raise the matter of three Cascio songs right at that moment would be incomprehensible to most people – unless the whole idea of it was to take the heat off AEG Live and deflect the attention of MJ fans to a different matter, other than AEG.

The calm with which the future complainant discussed the lawsuit only two days after the news of Randy Phillips bullying Jackson was amazing. When you read her messages you could imagine that there was no single cloud on the horizon except the burning issue of three Cascio songs:

• Jun 9, 2013

The only way for fans to know what really happened and get closure would be to bring up a lawsuit before it’s too late. So if you really care about Michael’s legacy and have real evidence, it’s time to produce it.

• Jun 9, 2013

I can tell you, they [Estate] will not do anything. They know that it’s being discussed on fan forums, they know that fans care, they have seen the Cascio songs leak and fans’ reaction to them because they watch the fan community pretty closely. They will not voluntarily give you any transparency or proof unless the court obliges them to. The press will also not be interested in some fan address or petition. On the other hand, if someone files a lawsuit, I’m sure they’ll pick it up.

Only in March that year the same fan was of the opposite opinion and left a message that some people who communicated with Michael Jackson in his last days heard him singing acapella two Cascio’s songs – “Keep Your Head Up” and “Breaking News”. The songs sounded a little different and were later “butchered” according to that source:

• Mar 26, 2013

Back in 2010 I talked to someone who was in communication with Michael in his last year, and they said they had heard an acapella of “Keep Your Head Up” from him (I don’t know if it was live or on tape). This person also claimed they had heard “Breaking News”, but it had sounded rather different than what was released. Some of the lyrics had been different. This person said Sony “butchered” the song.

Actually, in “This is it” documentary we also heard Michael singing a fragment from another Cascio song called “Water”.  And recently the news broke that LaToya’s fiancée Jeffré Phillips who grabbed Michael’s belongings after his passing was in possession of two more Cascio songs – “All Right” and “Ready 2 Win” which were retrieved from him only after the MJ Estate sued him.

A fan on Reddit wrote about these two tracks: “We can actually see “All Right” and “Ready 2 Win” in Cascio handwriting alongside other unreleased songs like “Throwing Your Life Away” and “Ghost of Another Lover”. Those were CD’s stolen by LaToya’s husband after Michael’s passing. There was a trial and the Estate got them back this year.”

But after the initial love for the Cascio tracks the future complainant suddenly made a U-turn and in June 2013 claimed that “if Michael’s fans really cared about his legacy” this was the time to “know what really happened” regarding those songs.

Actually, that was the time for the AEG trial and learning what really happened to MJ prior to his death, but while most of us were shaken and deeply saddened by AEG humiliating Michael in his last moments of life, Serova and her collaborator Damien Shields obviously had other priorities.

Shields, for example, was jubilant that he managed to interview AEG’s CEO Randy Phillips, and when I left a comment and asked him why he chose to talk to Phillips after the news that he had slapped Michael Jackson, Shields’s answer revealed that he either didn’t follow the trial or couldn’t care less.

No wonder the above two people teamed up – it required a very specific type of personas to reflect about getting closure on three Cascio songs and hoping for the media to pick up their story at a time when millions of others were watching the AEG trial with baited breath.

This is how the idea to “bring the wrongdoers to justice” was voiced in the midst of the events which were much more worthy of attention. The idea diverted the fans away from AEG, their lies and their horrible mistreatment of a man on whose health and well-being the whole show depended – which was inevitably raising a question whether they wanted those shows at all.

But fans were led to look the other way and follow the anti-Cascio activists instead, and act like those useful idiots who always fight “for the greater good” and are always ready to jump on the bandwagon to support a popular cause.

The added bonus of a lawsuit was a chance to waste the fans’ time and energy on shallow activism instead of looking, for example, into Robson’s fake story and directing their efforts towards disproving it.

This way the lawsuit was killing two birds with one stone – AEG matters faded from the forefront while all the fans’ power was turned against the Cascios and into discrediting the family that was really able to defend Michael Jackson’s good name should Robson’s case reach a trial stage.  

And as if that was not enough, all this mess was also taking place on the eve of the Estate opening their Cirque du Soleil project called “Michael Jackson ONE”. The residence show in Las Vegas started its preview performances at the end of May 2013 and the official premiere was on June 29, 2013.

You will agree that few could imagine that the time packed with so many dramatic events and conflicting emotions could be the time when a fan could think of nothing but the three Cascio songs.

I myself don’t believe it for a second. The lawsuit was a wholly artificial construct and the problem itself was simply made up in order to counter the circumstances which were inconvenient to some people.

GETTING ON A MORAL HIGH HORSE

Believe it or not, but the arguments of activists against the Cascios was that their alleged forgery of songs was worse than the accusations of Michael Jackson of child molestation:

• In my opinion it is the same and even worse. Cascios attacked Michael on professional level. They put a huge stain on his perfect discography. He was such a perfectionist when it comes to his music. That was something that was always pure. And they attacked there.

Fortunately some fans still retained their sanity in the face of so much hypocrisy:

• Alleged fake songs are worse than alleged child molestations? Good grief.
• Accusing MJ of the most heinous crime is a lot worse. You do not live in the real world if you think in the eyes of the general public the Cascio songs cause MJ nearly as much harm as the allegations. Those fans who think this is a more important issue and a bigger threat to MJ’s legacy than the allegations have totally lost perspective of the surrounding world in their little bubble of MJ fandom, IMO. Outside of the fandom this is a non-issue. The allegations aren’t.
• I just hope it won’t distract the Estate’s focus from the lot more important issue of Robson/Safechuck allegations. They need to focus on that more than anything.

The skewed priorities of anti-Cascio activists was visibly manifested by their attitude towards Frank Cascio who had a meeting with French fans of Michael Jackson in 2012.

By then two years had passed since the release of the “Michael” album with three songs recorded by Eddie Cascio and James Porte, and Frank came to France to present his newly-written (and wonderful) book “My Friend Michael”. He was full of enthusiasm to share his warm memories of Michael and, among other things, tell people of MJ’s innocent interaction with children.

But the fans apparently didn’t give a damn about the book and pounced on him with questions about Jason Malachi and why they didn’t have pictures of Michael when he was recording those songs in their house.

Frank Cascio looked incredulous, bewildered and somewhat lost, and said that he had never, ever heard of Malachi “until it happened” and it was not their habit to take pictures of Michael while he was at their house, and that the fans’ questions were misdirected as it wasn’t even he who recorded the songs. But all was in vain and what was supposed to be a presentation of his book turned into a mess and commotion which left Frank almost in tears.

The sight of it is a shameful picture of militant activism mobbing its way by self-rightness and superficiality which only imitate deep thinking and real search for the truth.

Here are some screenshots from the video of that discussion:

Frank Cascio: “I have nothing to do with the Michael album. If I am guilty of anything it’s getting Michael to start working again and putting him in the studio which was at the house and getting him to start working, recording. We brought in the dance floor to the house so he can start dancing and working and singing”

“Whether you like it or not, that’s Michael’s singing on that album. I have never in my entire life, ever heard of Jason Malachi up until this happened. I’ve never heard of this guy”.

“I wish you know I even asked people to try to find him, let him come out and say something. He won’t even say anything. This is not my project, but I do know it’s Michael’s singing on that album”.

“Breaking News” that you heard that was leaked, remember when Breaking News was leaked, I also said, who’s singing the song? That wasn’t the right version. The final version of the CD is very different to the one that was leaked”.

“You guys are Michael’s soldiers. Please, please, read between the lines. It’s a constant pattern when the money and jealousy is involved. Things gets misconstrued”.

“One thing that Michael loved being in the house and being with our family is we didn’t need to have video cameras walking around, documenting every little thing he did. We didn’t have to take pictures every three seconds”.

“Your know, Michael was himself. He’d walk around in his pajamas and fedora and his t-shirt, in a sports coat with pajamas”.

”I’m not going to say any more about this because there’s so many beautiful stories that I want to talk to you about in my book but please, do me a favor – just think about things”.

Frank Cascio: “My family, we were brought up on moral and honor and integrity and I feel like my family’s integrity was being questioned. I, I feel horrible… I have to say like I was really hurt..”

The anti-Cascio activists are of the opinion that this video somehow “exposes” Frank Cascio, but in my opinion it is exposing the activists’ ignorance and bias instead.

All I see here is a man who was thrilled by a chance to tell people about the innocent fun they had with Michael when they were children and his enthusiasm changing into frustration and disappointment at seeing that nobody was actually interested in it.

I hope that those fans are deeply ashamed of themselves now.

THE MONEY MATTERS

But let us get back to the year 2013. By November that year the idea of a lawsuit was already ripe and reached the stage of money talk. The future complainant Serova shared the results of her research about the possible costs of a lawsuit and it turned out to be $400,000 just to take the case through the discovery stage:

• Nov 10, 2013

To everyone who talks about raising money for the lawsuit:
The cost of such a lawsuit would be about $400,000 just to take the case through discovery – I did my due diligence on this. That’s an insane amount of money to raise among the fans – not realistic.

The only way to file a lawsuit is to find a lawyer that would take the case on contingency, but with the current state of affairs when the estate claims to have done forensic tests, it’s also not realistic. The probability of settlement is not high enough for the lawyers to invest. That route has been checked.

Maybe there is a chance to move this forward if we do our own forensic expertise, as Ivy suggests. This is something that needs to be explored.

 So the sum of $400,000 was “insane” for the fan, same as it would be for the majority of people here, and in the circumstances the only way out was to find a contingency lawyer who would get compensation from the settlement sum and whose fee depended on whether he won the case or not.

However a contingency case was to be first backed up by a good forensic report, otherwise no one would agree to handle it.

This is how the fan engaged the services of a leading forensic audiologist Dr. George Papcun who worked for various government agencies including the CIA and the US secret service. His short bio says:

Dr. Papcun has been employed by Los Alamos National Laboratory, The Aerospace Corporation and the University of California Phonetics Laboratory. He has served as an expert witness in the United States, Canada and Australia. He has held security clearances at the Secret, Top Secret and Q levels. Dr. Papcun has completed assignments for United States intelligence agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the Secret Service.

http://georgep29.sg-host.com/about-george/

I presume that hiring the leading forensic audiologist who works for the US intelligence agencies must be no cheap venture either, especially if according to Damien Shields the expert’s work required no standard approach but a totally novel method of examining the tracks.

In his interview on August 25, 2018 Shields said:

Damien Shields: “He had to design a methodology himself, come up with it, it’s the first time this has ever happened. Not only did he spend the months creating the methodology applying it to the Cascio tracks, applying it to real Michael songs and coming up with a conclusion which resulted in rejecting…” (August 25, 2018  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyoXb0zrj_o )

.

Shields says that initially Dr. Papcun was skeptical and didn’t want to waste his time and Serova’s money (!), but later agreed to work out a special methodology to fulfill the client’s assignment.  The work took four months to complete it, which brings us to mid March 2014 when the report could reach the client at the earliest.

The duration of the work also gives us the idea of the possible fee for the job done.

However, by that stage money had apparently ceased to be a problem as the complainant seemed not to care about the risks and costs of the future lawsuit, though in case she lost, she was to pay the legal costs of all the parties she was challenging.

Shields says that with Papcun’s report in her hand Serova spent the next 2 months trying to reason with the Estate hoping that “they might come to their senses” and “do the right thing”. The way he describes it Serova handled the case rather aggressively, as if she was sure of the result. She set the deadlines and ultimatums:

“On the 10th of April 2014 Vera Serova put her case forward in a detailed letter to the Estate co-executor John Branca and attorney Howard Weitzman attaching Papcun’s forensic report and asking them to officially remove the Casio tracks from the Michael album.

Vera also asked the Estate to reply to her letter by the 18th of April or she would take the matter further. On the 17th of April 2014 one day before their deadline Estate attorney Howard Weitzman responded to Vera by  email informing her that the Estate would not  be removing the Casio tracks from the Michael album and so Vera joined forces with a California  law firm who took matters into their own hands”

The legal team hired for the job was Ray E. Gallo and Dominic R. Valerian of Gallo LLP. 

This is how we arrive at June 12, 2014 when the class action lawsuit was actually filed.

The filing was then followed by eight years of litigation with the Plaintiff’s making two appeals to the Court of Appeal, and the case going all the way up to the California State Supreme Court where it was reviewed twice.

In fact, the litigation over those songs was so long that the fan had time (and money) to enter the University of California Law school, graduate from it, change her profession from the IT industry and start a career of a litigation attorney instead.

It is probably time now to note the glaring contrast between the paramount attention attached to those three Cascio songs by the California court system and the superficial way its Appellate Court did away with Katherine Jackson’s appeal of the jury verdict at the AEG trial.

The dramatic difference in the approach really makes you wonder.

Firstly, the fact of a human being’s death cannot be put on a par with a hypothesis that three songs were probably faked (but could very well turn out to be real too). And the difference in legal attention to these two cases as well as a positive decision regarding a mere hypothesis versus a negative decision regarding a human death are simply astonishing and leaving me speechless.

In case you forget, Katherine Jackson’s petition to the Court of Appeals had a solid reason for a rehearing due to a factually hung jury at the AEG trial (8 jurors versus 4 jurors), and that Katherine Jackson had to pay $800,000 for just one appeal.

And Serova’s case was built solely on Dr. Papcun’s report (with all its vague conclusions) and circulated back and forth within the higher echelons of the California court system for eight years, survived the Plaintiff’s two teams of lawyers and two appeals which must have cost truly insane sums of money.

So the above leaves me with only two questions – where did the money for the long legal spending spree come from and what did Dr. Papcun’s report really say?

The first question is difficult to answer, so let me go over to the second question straight away.

DR. PAPCUN’S REPORT

Damien Shields claims that “Dr. Papcun concluded that the singer of the Casio tracks was not Michael  Jackson but that it was likely to be Jason  Malachi”.

However the report is not as definite as Shields makes it out to be, and the wording there does not even cover all the three songs.

In fact, if you put aside all those useless graphs filling the 41-page report of Dr. Papcun which only create the illusion of a strong report, and analyze the text, you will realize that the conclusions there are far from being definitive and are far from convincing. The expert himself was cautious enough to use his theory as a supposition only as the text abides in uncertain statements like “more likely”, “less certain” and “appears to be”.

(To be continued)

(continued from this post)

DR. PAPCUN’S REPORT

Dr. George Papcun

Damien Shields claims that “Dr. Papcun concluded that the singer of the Casio tracks was not Michael Jackson but that it was likely to be Jason Malachi”.

However the report is not as definite as Shields makes it out to be and it does not even cover all three disputed Cascio songs.

In fact, if you put aside all those useless graphs filling the 41-page paper by Dr. Papcun which only create the illusion of a strong report, and analyze the text, you will realize that the conclusions there are far from being definitive and far from convincing. The expert himself was cautious enough to use his theory as a supposition only as the text abides in uncertain statements like “more likely”, “less certain” and “appears to be”.

In case you don’t know here are Dr. Papcun’s conclusions in their entirety:

Conclusions of Dr. Papcun’s report (click to enlarge)

The singer in Monster that is considered to be the same singer who sings Breaking News uses a dialect form not known to occur in any Michael Jackson song over a span of 39 years – his entire recorded history. This observation is especially significant because the form used is an allophonic variation of the type that is a basic feature of someone’s dialect, not normally subject to conscious variation.

The pronunciation of the name “Jackson” in Breaking News (as [sEn]) differs from the pronunciations of “Jackson” as spoken by Michael Jackson in interviews over many years. Again, this is almost certainly not a conscious variation.

Jason Malachi’s former producer Tony Kurtis claims that the singer in Breaking News is Jason Malachi rather than Michael Jackson in part because Malachi’s vibrato is faster than Jackson’s and that Malachi uses vibrato more than Jackson does. Acoustic analysis shows that the vibrato in Breaking News is faster than the vibrato in a sample of Jackson recordings. Moreover, the vibrato in a sample of known Jackson recordings is smoother and more closely adheres to the note being sung.

The vibrato in a sample of Malachi recordings as well as the vibrato in Breaking News is more frequent than the vibrato in known Jackson recordings.

The tremolo in known Jackson recordings is smoother and better controlled than the tremolo of the singer in Breaking News. The harmonicity (harmonics to noise ratio) of a sample of known Jackson recordings is higher than the harmonicity of the singer in Breaking News.

For these reasons, I am led to reject the hypothesis that the singer in Breaking News is Michael Jackson. That singer appears to more likely be Jason Malachi, though that conclusion is less certain.

So out of the three songs analyzed by Dr. Papcun only “Breaking News” is really discussed, “Monster” is mentioned just once with no conclusions made about it, and “Keep Your Head Up” is not even mentioned and seems not to be an issue at all.

And that is all?

THE PARADOX

The vibrato controversy is of course central to the report and you needn’t be an expert to notice that the vibrato is indeed a little faster than in Michael Jackson’s earlier songs. So the only problem here is why it is there – is it Jason Malachi or another person singing, or is it an artifact resulting from overproducing the songs?

But firstly, vibrato is characteristic of many other singers and not only Jason Malachi, so selecting him of all people is an extremely random choice. And what his former producer Tony Kurtis thinks about it is a mere hearsay that doesn’t belong in an investigative report. Actually, Malachi’s new producer Thad Nauden was of the opposite opinion and his view should have been stated there too, at least for the sake of balance. And he said that “Jason wants everyone to know beyond a shadow of a doubt, he did not sing a single note on the album”.

Jason Malachi works in law enforcement and is a Deputy Sheriff in Maryland, so only the crazy could imagine that he would risk his post and career by forging the songs of Michael Jackson. His voice does sound similar to Michael’s but this is definitely not a crime.

And why didn’t these crazy people select him and not Ricky Galliano instead? Or even James Porte himself who can imitate MJ’s voice too? So why Malachi of all people? Just because a certain Damien Shields heard his Mamacita song and thousands of fans fell for his frivolous opinion and fanatical bigotry?

But the above is only one of the awkward questions.

What’s more important is that the unwanted vibrato could be removed by sound engineers by technical means that were available even at that time (see this post for details).  And if somebody really wanted to fake those songs, they could have minimized the vibrato or even brought it to a nil in order to make their forgery perfect.

However it stayed there and no one intended to hide it, so there must be a valid reason for its presence there.

Actually, the fact of a slightly faster vibrato in those songs is the best proof that they are authentic. It sounds as a paradox, but is indeed true.

Look at this 5-dollar bill stained with wine, for example. It is nearly ruined, but is still real money. It could probably be washed and cleaned, but was not because even despite its damaged look it is still genuine and acceptable as it is.

However, the counterfeit bank note below looks shiny, new and practically no different from the original, and you will hardly be able to distinguish it from real money unless you have special equipment for it.

The same goes for those songs.

The thing is that forgeries are not made for anyone to immediately spot them as forgeries. They are made to look identical with the original, especially if the wrongdoers have every technical means at their disposal to remove anything doubtful and make their imitation perfect.

And conversely, if something is slightly “off” like a stain on the above banknote, the most likely situation is that the material is real, though has a defect. The defect could have been “washed out”, but was not.

NUMEROUS VOCALS

One of the reasons for the artifacts in the vibrato could be the natural overlapping of sound waves when several original tracks were layered on top of each other to enhance the vocals but were unable to be synchronized, in which case the sound waves double, triple, etc. creating the impression of a faster vibrato than it actually is.

This is what happens when sound waves overlap

And we have proof from the anti-songs campaigners themselves that numerous lead vocals were layered on top of each other and mixed into each Cascio track.

One of the most ardent anti-Cascio activists known as Birchey (real name James Marks) says that he saw the effect with his own eyes when he, together with a friend, hacked the Sony servers and broke into their email correspondence.

Note: James Marks and James McCormick received six-month sentences for hacking Sony servers, but were let go as the sentence was replaced by an order to complete 100 hours of community service.

What’s interesting is that Birchey didn’t hear the vocals on the Cascio tracks, but actually saw them in their visual form, which was the way they were circulating between the Sony employees in the email correspondence hacked. This is what he said on a fan forum about it:

• Jun 23, 2014   #983

Question: But you’ve heard those vocals runs, I mean you listened to them?

Birchey:  Nope, I can see them but have not heard them

The hacker saw that the Cascio tracks came in a multitude of stereo vocal takes, each having a different waveform as they came from the left and right channels and were then merged into one. The resulting vocal track was a compilation of numerous vocals:

• Jun 23, 2014 #975

…with everything recorded in stereo you can see that MJbgv1, MJbgv2 and MJPipeFXbgvs have different waveforms in the left and right channels throughout the mix, this kinda confirms those tracks are comps of numerous vocals mixed down into tracks = more than one vocal.

With regard to KYHU (“Keep Your Head Up”) Birchey saw at least nine full vocal runs recorded by means of ProTools audio work station. All of them were complete and were “full run-throughs” of the songs:

• Jun 23, 2014 #978

I just have protools screenshots, I can only take what I can see, but there are at least 9 full vocal runs on KYHU, that’s just completed, compiled runs, no looping, full run throughs of the songs, so unless MJ nailed the song 9 times in a row and was happy, there are no outtakes.

When one inquisitive fan (only one!) wanted to know how the waveforms interact with each other Birchey explained that when a vocal is copied and pasted, it produces an identical waveform, but when several vocal takes are mixed together, the waveform becomes complex in structure. So when the waveforms are not identical it means that the track is a compilation of several vocals:

• Jun 23, 2014 #985

Okay basically when noise is generated, you can view its waveform. That sound has its own unique waveform, as would the wave for say one vocal take of the Keep Your head Up Chorus. If that vocal run is then copy and pasted, the resulting waveform would be identical. These are not, which implies it was another vocal.
Now stereo uses 2 channels, for the background vocals, the left and right channels are much different as well, pointing towards layered, panned vocals. Where are for the leads which would be one voice given a stereo Mic was used they are almost identical.

The above referred mostly to the background vocals which were recorded with left and right stereo channels, but the lead vocals were not identical either and there were at least 3 leads, each recorded separately.

• Jun 23, 2014 #990

– Ok, so does that mean that the KYHU verses that we hear on the Michael CD is made up of several different vocal tracks, all meshed into one?

– Well there are 3 leads, just listening to them, you can hear they might be cut together. But the waveforms I have on these mixes are compilations of everything, so if they stitched together MJLd1 I can’t tell. The point being they literally had a full song nailed with at least 9 vocal takes. This could be as high as 90 but I can’t tell.

• Jun 23, 2014 #1,000

I didn’t mean recorded 9 times for say the lead, but there are 9 full vocal tracks covering numerous leads and backing vocals at least on KYHU. Anyway, it’s clear there was an abundance of vocals available, but after Brawley had done his wizardry, things were probably mixed down into only a couple of vocal tracks.

In his deep prejudice against the Cascio tracks Birchey interpreted the “sheer amount of lead vocals and backing vocals” as “the smoking gun” while in reality it is the overwhelming proof that Eddie Cascio has been telling the truth all along.

And what did we learn from Birchey-the-hacker? We learned that

1) there was an abundance of vocals available, at least for “Keep Your Head Up”

2) none of the tracks were “just one take” as the fans claimed

3) numerous vocal tracks were provided by Eddie Casio and James Porte to Sony

4) so when Eddy said that they had erased everything from their computers it was the absolute truth – they did it either for security reasons or under the agreement with Sony, or both

5) the vocals were initially compiled and mixed by Stuart Brawley, a very well-known Canadian musical producer who did the first mixes even before Teddy Riley and others entered the picture.

Stuart Brawley is a Canadian musician. He has produced for Lenka, Michael Jackson, Don Henley, Emmy Rossum, Mindy Gledhill, Joe Brooks, Emm Gryner, Brandy, NSYNC, Barbra Streisand, Cher, Seal, Celine Dion, and many more

Birchey says that all 12 Cascio songs were mixed down in the same way and were presented to Sony as demonstration tracks. He stresses that he saw “tons and tons of raw vocals” for all twelve of them:

• Jun 23, 2014  #996

As far as I am aware those screenshots and resulting demos we have are the first time all 12 tracks have been mixed down like this, which would probably be their first real demo form, being demonstration tracks for Sony.
But there are definitely multitracks, tons and tons of stems and raw vocals. It just seems they didn’t quite filter down to Sony, well at least not Teddy Riley. The Screenshots I have contain in essence those 12 Demos as they were at the end of Brawley’s handy work with them. Vocals all on their own tracks, for KYHU etc, Cascio recording vocals and copy and pasted Adlibs alike. It was basically getting ready for the presentation to Sony.

Besides those “tons and tons of raw vocals” the material also had the Adlibs – things like ‘yeaaah’, ‘ooooh’ and other extra singing bits, confirming Eddie Cascio’s words that they had a whole collection of them and sent them to Sony too.

Birchey had to agree that what he saw with his own eyes debunked the activists’ ridicule that Cascio and Porte allegedly had nothing else but “only one take” and that Stuart Brawley clearly worked with a lot of vocals:

• Jun 23, 2014  #998

Question: Wouldn’t this debunk “everything is deleted, only one take” claim?

Birchey: Yes it does debunk it, as clearly Brawley worked with a lot of vocals, like I mentioned 9 at least, full takes for KYHU. I wish people with more technical knowledge of ProTools could see the screens, I can only bring up red flags to my knowledge, I’m sure there are more. Plus a lot is from memory as I don’t have them available right now.

But what is a “red flag” for Birchey-the-hacker, for others is a full validation of Eddy Cascio’s words. In fact, the hacker wanted to “expose” Cascio but instead confirmed almost every word the latter said about those tracks.

Apparently, he didn’t even realize what a treasure trove of pro-Cascio evidence he had discovered.

THE VIBRATO EFFECT

Now that we know that several vocal doubles were merged into each of those tracks, the matter of vibrato leaves the field of screams, emotions and personal opinion, and enters the field of science, physics and acoustics phenomena. And over here a lot of variables arise.

When vocal doubles are blended together the most obvious effect we expect is that of a chorus, of course, but this is not always the case. Blending vocals into one track can also result in sound waves interfering with each other, in the emergence of beating effect, in some sound waves being amplified and some being cancelled out, and much more.  Actually, the variables are infinite as the acoustic specialists say.

When somebody on the Internet asked a question  why a dozen violins playing the same sustained note sound different than one amplified violin, the experts’ answers struck me as being directly relevant to several vocal takes layered upon each other, especially when vibrato is present:

Why does a dozen violins sound different than one amplified violin?

• It’s the combination of the micro pitch differences of each instrument as well as the vibrato differences being played together.
• There will always be variances in the sound waves they produce, and from one take to the next.
• When audio waveforms interact, the laws of physics are in play, so just like when waves in water meet, they “add together”, so do sound waves.

Interfering water waves on the surface of a lake

This interference largely “cancels out” but if there is a net positive, there will be more volume, and if there is a net negative, there will be less volume.

So in a situation like an orchestra, even though 20 people are playing the same note at the same time, while 20 violins are louder than a single violin, it’s not like what it would seem to be 20x as loud. It usually seems “fuller” and “more lush” rather than just plain louder.

Most sound waves are like big waves with littler waves on top of them – so this interference happens not only with the primary wave, but all the “sub waves” as well (these are what we call overtones).

So what happens is you get “phasing” issues – the basic fundamental tone of a note is there, but the overtones and all the wavelengths are interacting in a lot of different ways. If the players play with vibrato it even adds more phasing and shifting as they play.

In other words, the vibrato effect may be intensified, modified or even cancelled out depending on the phases of the sound waves. When two sound waves are in phase, their combined intensity is amplified (constructive interference). When they are out of phase, the sound waves will cancel each other out and will result in zero amplitude (destructive interference).

The way I understand it, zero amplitude for a sound wave actually means silence.

The interference of two waves. In phase: the two lower waves combine (left panel), resulting in a wave of added amplitude (constructive interference). Out of phase: (here by 180 degrees), the two lower waves combine (right panel), resulting in a wave of zero amplitude (destructive interference). WIKI

What’s also interesting is that the combination of constructive and destructive interference will produce the effect of a beat which was never meant to be there in the first place.

The beating effect as a result of sound waves interference is indeed peculiar:

“When the two tones are close in pitch but not identical, the difference in frequency generates the beating.

As the two tones gradually approach unison, the beating slows down and may become so slow as to be imperceptible. As the two tones get further apart, their beat frequency starts to approach the range of human pitch perception.

The volume varies as in a tremolo as the sounds alternately interfere constructively and destructively”.

And tremolo is actually very similar to vibrato the way a human ear perceives it – both create a pulsating sound, only vibrato is a rapid oscillation in pitch, while tremolo is a rapid oscillation in volume.

Tremolo is also often described as a “vocal technique involving a wide or slow vibrato” and as a variation in a tone amplitude.

In fact, what happens to sound waves when they interact with each other is so unique a sight that it is well worth watching it.

Not only do numerous sound waves mix with each other creating a faster vibrato effect but their amplitude (tremolo) also gets wider – see below:

Or look at this mind-boggling effect as another example of sound waves interference:

All of it is purely physics, of course, so let us just agree on an axiom that when numerous vocal doubles are layered on top of each other, the result may be unpredictable as the vibrato and tremolo of vocals change depending on the phases of their sound waves.

 And no amount of screams that “It isn’t my Uncle singing!” will help here because the effect is not man-made but is created by sound waves themselves.

FORGET ABOUT THE SOUND WAVES – IT’S THE PRONUNCIATION!

Being aware of sound waves interaction and knowing that he was analyzing not original but overproduced tracks, Dr. Papcun focused his attention on the pronunciation of the alleged impersonator of those songs.

However it didn’t make his report any better.

In “Monster” Dr. Papcun analyzed the so-called “glottal stop” not typical of Michael Jackson (this is when the “t” sound is swallowed in “waiting”, for example), and in “Breaking News” he spoke of Jackson being pronounced as “Jacksen” (as in “send”) instead of the neutral sound [ə] pronounced by Michael in various interviews. Both defects were not found in MJ’s earlier songs.

As to “Keep Your Head Up”, the expert didn’t even mention that song.

Now if Dr. Papcun’s methodology had been correct, the above deficiencies would have been found in all three Cascio songs on the album, but they were not.

In “Breaking News” it was one thing (Jacksen), in “Monster” it was another thing (glottal stop) and in “Keep Your Head Up” there were none at all.

So if the method had been valid, the “Jacksen” pronunciation should have been repeated with [e] sound in all cases where neutral [ə] is used at the end of the words. So besides “Jacksen” other words like “monster”, “thriller”, “killer” should have been pronounced in the same way – like [thrille], [monste], [kille] and not like [monstə], [kilə], [thrɪlə] as they actually sounded.

However the [e] sound was used only in one word and only in one song, same as the glottal stop was unique only for “Monster” while in all other cases everything was normal.

To see how wrong the methodology is, imagine a foreigner singing those songs. His foreign accent will manifest itself in all three of them – and not as only one sound in one song, a glottal stop in another song, and his pronunciation suddenly going perfect in the third song.

Similarly, an alleged impersonator won’t be able to sing one song in a certain dialect and the rest of them without the specifics of the same dialect. This would be simply impossible!

In fact, Dr. Papcun himself says that the form used by a singer in Monster is “an allophonic variation of the type that is a basic feature of someone’s dialect” –  so if it is a basic feature of someone’s dialect it cannot go away and should be present in all songs allegedly performed by that person.

But the defects were random and found only occasionally and this nullifies Dr. Papcun’s own argument.

Sound engineers say that such defects can be easily attributed to artifacts which often arise if the sound tracks are manipulated by Auto-tune, Pro-Tools, Melodyne and the like. They even joke that songs can be processed so heavily that the singer won’t sing English any more:

• “You can process a vocal over and over again, change the pitch, tone and warp it in such a way he’d be no longer speaking English”.

In any case, the fact that the pronunciation defects are random, are not consistent from one song to another and aren’t present anywhere else makes Dr. Papcun’s report extremely weak and susceptible to criticism, and turns it into a biased study with a predetermined result where facts are adjusted to fit the conclusions, and not vice versa.

As to Jason Malachi, the expert was cautious enough to tentatively suppose that Malachi could have something to do with only one song (“Breaking News”), but even “that conclusion is less certain”, according to Dr.Papcun.

So this is what they called a “definitive” forensic report which created so much hype among the anti-Cascio activists?  

And this joke of a document was the basis for the 8-year long litigation against Sony and all the others?

But it is only an imitation of a research paper which doesn’t stand up even to a perfunctory fact check!

Even if we recall that the report was then peer-reviewed by another expert, all he said was that it was “reasonable” and not probative as Damien Shields called it.

“… a well-credentialed independent audio experts concluded that Dr. Papcun’s methodologies and conclusions were reasonable” (an excerpt from Plaintiff’s lawsuit)

Reasonable? But aren’t the above objections to his report reasonable too?

And mind you, Dr. Papcun’s opinion conflicted with the opinion of two other experts who examined the tracks earlier. After the fans’ uproar over the Cascio tracks initially heard only by some of the Jacksons, those experts were separately retained by Sony and the MJ Estate for double-checking the tracks authenticity and both determined that the tracks were genuine.

The experts were apparently from the intelligence community too, because in one of his tweets Teddy Riley mentioned that “FBI is on this with a forensic musicologist”.

The message quoting him on a fan forum said that “according to Teddy Riley, the FBI had a hand in the forensic testing”:

The original question asked of Teddy Riley was, “Did you actually WITNESS any authenticators brought in, NOT Sony employee, to test the tracks??” to which he replied “YES, I SURE DID. WE HAVE FBI IS ON THIS WITH A FORENSIC MUSICOLOGIST”

The two experts’ reports were not publicly available, but given the specifics of that agency we can hardly expect them to share their technology and secrets of the trade with the general public.

So unbiased observers will have to agree with either Dr. Papcun’s vague suppositions or the resolute verdict of two FBI forensic musicologists, whose opinion was unexpectedly supported by an anti-Cascio hacker who wanted to prove that the songs were faked but unwittingly proved that they were real.

They will also have to choose between the opinion of Jackson’s producers and engineers Bruce Swedien, Matt Forger, Stuart Brawley, music director Greg Phillinganes and vocal director Dorian Holley who said that it was Michael Jackson’s vocals AND the opinion of several Jacksons, Cory Rooney and people like Michael Prince who sat on the fence and who was apparently more interested in advertising his own “MJ Legacy Tour” show featuring an impersonator than dealing with the problem of those tracks.

On October 15, 2014 Michael Prince wrote about that show:

“Many of us have seen the Immortal Show, and felt that not only would MJ have not allowed it, but it didn’t give the fan any clue as to who Michael was, or what he could do live. No movie or Cirque show can ever deliver his unique energy, and no one will ever be Michael. But, The Legacy will take the fans on a journey that will capture as much of his music, dance and live energy as humanly possible. … with the people involved, who worked with MJ almost every day, I can assure you that it will be closer to what he would love that any fan could ever know.”

MJ impersonator William Hall and Katherine Jackson at one of the shows

The show started in 2014 – the same year the plaintiff alleged that the wrongs done by Sony and others were damaging Michael Jackson’s true legacy – and was indeed created  by Michael’s former collaborators Michael Prince, Brad Buxer and LaVelle Smith Jr.

Another person involved was impersonator William Hall who doesn’t lip synch but sings and dances himself.

As of September 2024 the show was still running, so those fans who relied on Michael Prince and those others to keep MJ’s art and legacy pure and intact are invited to enjoy it:

THE COST OF LIFE vs THE COST OF SONGS

Anyway, with Dr. Papcun’s paper serving as a basis for her lawsuit, on June 12, 2014 plaintiff Vera Serova complained about “the injuries and damages” done to her and others by those horrible, horrible people and claimed that by including the Cascio songs into the album they misled not only her but millions of other buyers.

The perpetrators were to be held accountable to the full extent of the law, so besides the lawsuit against Sony, John Branca of the Estate and Angelkson company the fan also brought a separate class action lawsuit against Cascio and Porte for defrauding everyone, including Sony and MJ Estate.

The plaintiff was kind enough to concede that Sony and the Estate were probably unaware of the alleged Cascio ploy, but they were still to blame because they didn’t check up the authenticity of those songs well enough before including them in the album, so hence her lawsuit against those entities too.

The above statement immediately reminded me of Katherine Jackson’s lawsuit against AEG Live as at this point it really began to look like the mirror image of it.

Katherine’s lawsuit also said that though the AEG executives were probably unaware of Propofol given to Michael Jackson, they were still to blame as they didn’t check out on the doctor well enough and were negligent in hiring him, supervising him and retaining on the job.

However the difference between the two cases is that the complaint against AEG was declined, while the Cascio case was given the utmost attention and taken all the way to the top of the US Court system, where it was thoroughly reviewed twice.

The negligence as the key matter for each case was also different in its size and volume.

In AEG’s case it amounted to a perfunctory 10-minute Google check done on the doctor by an indifferent outsider and no AEG executive paying attention to the signs of Michael Jackson’s coming death, while the Cascio tracks were verified by several music industry authorities and two FBI experts but all the effort was still considered not rigorous enough.

Another difference between the two is that the cost of negligence of AEG executives was the death of a human being, while in Cascio’s case the cost of the offence was a couple of dollars for the songs that were not even proven to be fake. The retail price of the album was $12 but the fan still complained about the damages and said that “if she had known that MJ was not the lead singer she would have paid less for the album”.

And the outcome of the complaints was certainly different too – the case connected with a human death was thrown out just after the first appeal, while the mere suspicion that three songs were possibly not real survived several appeals and received a favorable judgment from the California Supreme Court.

So if we put all of the above into numbers, the life of Michael Jackson can be considered far less significant than a couple of dollars spent on the allegedly wrong songs, even if we multiply them by the several million of the album purchasers.

But this is of course only if we agree with the importance attached to these cases by the California court system.

(to be continued)