Memories of Santa Maria
Four years ago in the winter and spring of 2005 – 28 February through 4 June – I sat behind Michael Jackson in a courtroom in Santa Maria, California. I’m pretty certain I was the only person present – other than his lawyers and his family members – who had ever even met the defendant or any of the other Jacksons. How well I remember the first day Tito walked into the courtroom to support his brother. Everyone in the press area turned and looked at me with raised eyebrows. I mouthed the word ‘Tito’ and they all then quickly jotted his name in their notes. They didn’t know who he was! It was pretty much the same with all of the family members, who came in different configurations every day to support the most famous of the Jacksons.
At the beginning of the trial, Michael Jackson – then forty-six – seemed to be in very good shape. He would walk briskly into court and, as we in the press watched, limber up by stretching his body as if he was getting ready for a performance or an athletic event. It was interesting to watch his dancer’s body flex and relax, and I remember thinking that he looked as fit as he did in his memorable videos for ‘Thriller’, ‘Billie Jean’, and ‘Beat It’. When he would turn and smile at his attorneys or even the spectators, his charisma was strong and so evident to me. The magic was still there. He was still Michael Jackson, I thought. People were mesmerised by him, and somehow awed just to be in his presence. And never was that more evident than on 1 March 2005 – the second day of opening statements – when Michael’s lawyer, Tom Mesereau, played the controversial Martin Bashir documentary for jurors, the very one that had gotten Michael into such trouble. As Michael’s music played and photos of his amazing career flashed on the screen, heads began bobbing in the courtroom. People began to smile at one another. For a moment, it was as if we weren’t even in a courtroom. We were transported to some other place – certainly a
better
place – while Michael’s familiar voice and music filled the room. I thought to myself,
This is going to be one very odd molestation trial
.
Then the testimony began.
Day after day as the prosecution stated its case and paraded one witness after another who spoke of inappropriate behavior between Michael and young boys, the pop star gradually seemed to fold inside of himself.
On the eighth day of testimony, 9 March 2005, Michael’s alleged victim, fifteen-year-old Gavin Anton Arvizo, testified. Wearing a blue button-down shirt, he seemed nervous, mumbling at times. He recounted the times Michael gave him alcohol and said that Michael had also masturbated him on two occasions. It was disturbing, to say the least. Michael stared straight ahead as if a wax mannequin, displaying absolutely no emotion whatsoever.
The day after Gavin started his testimony, Michael was an hour late getting to court. After the judge issued a bench warrant for him and threatened to throw him in jail, he finally showed up in pajamas. He’d had a serious back problem, it was explained, and needed medical treatment. There was no time for him to change. It was obvious that things were not going well for him. In fact, that bizarre day was pretty much the beginning of the end for Michael. The real story as I saw it – besides the unsettling testimony – wasn’t the fact that he showed up in pajamas as much as it was that Michael seemed to be dying in front of our very eyes. He was clearly in terrible pain, both physical and emotional. Anyone who cared about him would have been heartsick by the sight. It was horrible to watch as he slowly deteriorated to the point where he could barely walk into the courtroom.
The prosecution’s case had it that twenty telephone calls between Michael and Gavin – which started when Jackson called him in the hospital during the youngster’s cancer treatment – were followed by the first invitation to the Neverland Ranch. That first night, according to Gavin, Michael suggested that he and his brother Starr sleep in Michael’s room. He told them to ask their parents, they did, and it was agreed that they would sleep in Jackson’s bedroom rather than in a guest cottage. That night they supposedly watched Internet porn together. ‘I thought he was the coolest guy in the world, my best friend ever,’ Gavin said, ‘know what I mean? I really liked him?’
But then, out of the blue, Michael changed his phone number and abandoned the boys. That sounded like Michael to me. He could be very capricious. He may have felt that Gavin was just a fan and that he’d given as much as he was going to give to him. Still, from Gavin’s expression and demeanour on the witness stand, it was as if the boy felt betrayed, or maybe even jilted. In fact, Gavin would testify about the time he was at Neverland and had been told that Michael was not present. But then Gavin ran into him there. ‘It feels like my heart broke right there,’ he recalled, choked with emotion.
One day, according to the testimony, there was an unexpected telephone call asking Gavin and Starr to take part in the filming of Martin Bashir’s documentary,
Living with Michael Jackson
. Then, after the documentary aired and caused a big sensation because of Michael’s misguided comments, Gavin and his family were asked to take part in a rebuttal video intended to be used for damage control. Gavin, his two siblings – Starr and Davellin – and mother, Janet, then met Michael in Florida, as he testified, and that’s when Michael supposedly gave him wine in a Diet Coke can and called it Jesus Juice.
The sexual misconduct between Michael and Gavin was said to have taken place back at Neverland between 20 February and 12 March 2003 (again, after the airing of the Bashir documentary). As the story went, the Jackson camp then supposedly kept the Arvizos under strict surveillance and effectively kidnapped them. (Tom Mesereau had a great line about this in his cross-examination of Gavin’s brother Starr: ‘How many times did your family escape Neverland and then go back so you could escape again?’)
The climax of the Arvizo testimony would come in the video recording of Gavin’s questioning by Santa Barbara police, which was shown to the jury in the last days of the trial. Gavin again described the five times he claimed Michael made him drink alcohol and then abused him. ‘He said boys have to masturbate because if they don’t they go crazy,’ Gavin told the police. ‘He said that he wanted to show me how to masturbate. I said, “no”. He said he would do it for me. He grabbed me in my private area. He put his hand in my pants... he started masturbating me. I told him I didn’t want him to do that... He kept on doing it.’
Something about this story didn’t sit right with me. Maybe it was the conspiracy charge – the allegation that a gaggle of Michael’s cohorts kept the Arvizos at Neverland against their will at Michael’s behest. That seemed ridiculous to me. My feeling was that if the district attorney concocted that charge, and it seemed to me that he had, what else in his case was fiction? If I couldn’t believe the conspiracy charge, could I believe the rest of the charges of giving alcohol to minors and sexual molestation? But more than that, the so-called ‘rebuttal video’ was troubling. In it, Gavin and his family were seen praising Michael Jackson beyond all reason while insisting that he was not capable of doing anything inappropriate with a child, and that anyone who thought so after watching the Bashir documentary was very wrong. And they were adamant about it, too. However, to explain it, the prosecution claimed the whole thing had been scripted and the Arvizos had been forced to say what they said.
Whatever the case, I felt certain that District Attorney Tom Sneddon hated the idea of having to play that video for the jurors. After all, it made his case against Jackson look very suspect. The fact that he was in possession of this video and still went ahead with his prosecution made me question his motives. In fact, it made me think he had it in for Michael Jackson, maybe because he was never able to prosecute him for what he believed happened between him and his first accuser, Jordan Chandler, ten years earlier. In my opinion, once he saw the video of the Arvizos singing Michael’s praises, he should have just said, ‘Case closed. These people are probably liars. And even if I’m not absolutely sure they’re liars, they just
might
be liars and that’s reason enough not to proceed with the ruination of another man’s life.’
The worst day, though, was the one we members of the press privately called ‘Porn Day’. That was the day – and it may have been more than one, I can’t recall perhaps because I’ve tried to block it – the prosecution showed, on an enormous screen, pornographic images of magazines found at Neverland. It was awful. I remember sitting there watching Michael’s mother, Katherine – a devout Jehovah’s Witness – as she was forced to look at the lurid display. I just remember the back of her head being very still, as if frozen in place. (At one point I believeI remember her not appearing at all for one of the sessions.) None of it was gay porn, though. None of it was kiddie porn. So why show it? The prosecution suggested that it was straight porn used by Michael to turn on young heterosexual kids so that he could then have sex with them. It didn’t make sense to me. And why show so many images? One magazine, maybe. Two? Maybe. But stacks of them? I wasn’t even sure they were Michael’s, to tell you the truth. In my mind, it seemed like a manoeuvre to destroy him and his family.
At the end of the day, Randy Jackson looked at me as he left the courtroom and gave me a thumbs-up and a big smile. It seemed odd under the circumstances. But I returned the gesture. That evening I went back to my room and thought about that moment with Randy. It seemed somehow familiar to me. And then I remembered that almost thirty years earlier, Randy had been in an automobile accident and doctors said he would never walk again. At a press conference at the hospital, they rolled the young eighteen-year-old Randy Jackson out in a wheelchair, both legs in a cast. They said he would never walk again. I remember feeling sick about it. What a tragedy. And I remember that Randy looked at me standing among the other members of the press and gave me a thumbs-up and a big smile. Of course, Randy not only walked again, Michael said he danced and went on with his life in remarkable fashion. Say what you will about the Jacksons, hope springs eternal for that family – and maybe with good reason.
I’ll never forget another moment at the trial. It was one of the many days Michael hobbled by me, smiled and nodded his recognition. I smiled back. And as he passed, I remember that he smelled like old, musty clothing. It was as if he was a wax figure in a museum, and one that had been there too long and was in need of care and attention. Later, one of the other reporters came over to me and said, ‘You’re putting your objectivity in jeopardy by smiling at the defendant. People are going to think you’re on his side.’ I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Yeah, well... ’ I muttered as I walked away. I thought it was a little late to be concerned about objectivity, especially after ‘Porn Day’.