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Accuser's Family Set Jacko Up
Saturday, March 05, 2005
By Roger Friedman
What I've tried to tell you all along about this Michael Jackson prosecution came to light yesterday in court: the D.A. has a bad case. Not just a weak case, but a bad one. No matter what you think Michael Jackson did or didn't do in the past, this family has set him up.
Granted, I have no idea if he did or didn't molest the now 15-year-old boy at the center of the case. But I do know that the boy's mother and her now-husband invented the story of the family’s kidnapping.
Yesterday the 18-year-old sister of the boy broke down on the stand and admitted to defense attorney Thomas Mesereau that she'd lied already in her testimony.
"So you'd lie about certain things and tell the truth about certain things, depending on what you are asked, right?" Mesereau asked the woman. "Yeah," she replied.
That's the beginning of the end for the prosecution.
Add that to what I already told you this week about how the mother sold her story to a British tabloid for $4,000, before she and her kids went to Miami and then on to Neverland with Jackson. All of this, of course, was after the airing of the Martin Bashir special on Feb. 6, 2003.
And in that same interview, comedy club owner Jamie Masada claimed that the boy -- then 13 -- was smart enough to report if anything inappropriate happened between him and Jackson.
A big part of the sister’s testimony this week concerned a video that was shot overnight on Feb. 19-20. The family claimed that they were forced to make the video by Jackson's associates, who they said wrote a script for them extolling Jackson's virtues. But there are a few problems with this story that the prosecution will have to deal with next week.
First: If the video was so important, why was it never used? A "rebuttal video" did air on FOX TV, but it didn't include this testimonial at all. Until the jury saw the tape yesterday, no one in Jackson's inner circle had seen it.
The prosecutors and anyone who’s read the grand jury testimony in this case know the reason for the video’s lack of play. The videographer kept the tape after it was completed because he said Jackson owed him money. He simply refused to turn it over. His price was $400,000, but no one in Jackson's camp, I am told, thought it was important enough to meet his demands.
This is something the D.A.'s office has managed to omit from its prosecution. Until they raided the cameraman's house, the tape had remained dormant. An insider in the case says, "If this so-called scripted video was so vital to maintaining Michael's image -- which is what the D.A. says -- the team could have paid the $400,000 and used it. But they didn't."
As for the much-ballyhooed script: there wasn't one, and that will come out on Monday. The sister has already said that Jackson's German manager "wrote a script" for the family to perform.
Again, my insider laughed: "Dieter Wiesner barely speaks English, forget about writing it. Christian Robinson, the cameraman, wrote out some questions to ask the family. Their answers were their own."
Robinson typed out the questions so hastily that they're even numbered wrong on the page. The 15 questions for the boy included: Do you travel with Michael? What's it like? What do you like about your friendship with Michael Jackson? And: What do you think is special about your friendship with Michael Jackson?
Fifteen more questions for the mother included: Do you believe in God? How close are you and [the accuser]? So if there was something not right with [the accuser], you feel he would talk to you about it?
According to my sources, the mother's boyfriend, an Army major, was present when the filming began. "But he got so bored, he left," the source said. "He didn't even stay to take the family home."
The major didn't mind that the family would be chauffeured by a Jackson staffer. Apparently he hadn't gotten the memo that they were being held against their will.
The family, my source points out, also signed model releases written by the mother for herself and her kids. "Her own words!" my source reiterated. "The whole thing is crazy."
Fox News
Saturday, March 05, 2005
By Roger Friedman
What I've tried to tell you all along about this Michael Jackson prosecution came to light yesterday in court: the D.A. has a bad case. Not just a weak case, but a bad one. No matter what you think Michael Jackson did or didn't do in the past, this family has set him up.
Granted, I have no idea if he did or didn't molest the now 15-year-old boy at the center of the case. But I do know that the boy's mother and her now-husband invented the story of the family’s kidnapping.
Yesterday the 18-year-old sister of the boy broke down on the stand and admitted to defense attorney Thomas Mesereau that she'd lied already in her testimony.
"So you'd lie about certain things and tell the truth about certain things, depending on what you are asked, right?" Mesereau asked the woman. "Yeah," she replied.
That's the beginning of the end for the prosecution.
Add that to what I already told you this week about how the mother sold her story to a British tabloid for $4,000, before she and her kids went to Miami and then on to Neverland with Jackson. All of this, of course, was after the airing of the Martin Bashir special on Feb. 6, 2003.
And in that same interview, comedy club owner Jamie Masada claimed that the boy -- then 13 -- was smart enough to report if anything inappropriate happened between him and Jackson.
A big part of the sister’s testimony this week concerned a video that was shot overnight on Feb. 19-20. The family claimed that they were forced to make the video by Jackson's associates, who they said wrote a script for them extolling Jackson's virtues. But there are a few problems with this story that the prosecution will have to deal with next week.
First: If the video was so important, why was it never used? A "rebuttal video" did air on FOX TV, but it didn't include this testimonial at all. Until the jury saw the tape yesterday, no one in Jackson's inner circle had seen it.
The prosecutors and anyone who’s read the grand jury testimony in this case know the reason for the video’s lack of play. The videographer kept the tape after it was completed because he said Jackson owed him money. He simply refused to turn it over. His price was $400,000, but no one in Jackson's camp, I am told, thought it was important enough to meet his demands.
This is something the D.A.'s office has managed to omit from its prosecution. Until they raided the cameraman's house, the tape had remained dormant. An insider in the case says, "If this so-called scripted video was so vital to maintaining Michael's image -- which is what the D.A. says -- the team could have paid the $400,000 and used it. But they didn't."
As for the much-ballyhooed script: there wasn't one, and that will come out on Monday. The sister has already said that Jackson's German manager "wrote a script" for the family to perform.
Again, my insider laughed: "Dieter Wiesner barely speaks English, forget about writing it. Christian Robinson, the cameraman, wrote out some questions to ask the family. Their answers were their own."
Robinson typed out the questions so hastily that they're even numbered wrong on the page. The 15 questions for the boy included: Do you travel with Michael? What's it like? What do you like about your friendship with Michael Jackson? And: What do you think is special about your friendship with Michael Jackson?
Fifteen more questions for the mother included: Do you believe in God? How close are you and [the accuser]? So if there was something not right with [the accuser], you feel he would talk to you about it?
According to my sources, the mother's boyfriend, an Army major, was present when the filming began. "But he got so bored, he left," the source said. "He didn't even stay to take the family home."
The major didn't mind that the family would be chauffeured by a Jackson staffer. Apparently he hadn't gotten the memo that they were being held against their will.
The family, my source points out, also signed model releases written by the mother for herself and her kids. "Her own words!" my source reiterated. "The whole thing is crazy."
Fox News
