WHAT’S WRONG WITH VINCENT AMEN, a one-time associate of Michael Jackson?

Vincent Amen, a one-time associate of Michael Jackson, has recently surfaced with some very strange tweets.

His primary target was Joe Tacopina, the former attorney of Donald Trump who is now accused by the New York DA Bragg of paying some money to a porn star. Vincent Amen tweeted that since the Government has problems beating Joe Tacopina, he will do the job for them:

You see… Tacopina May Beat NY District Attorney Bragg for TRUMP. The Government has problems beating Joe Tacopina. But.. I beat Him, Tacopina. Ci Vediamo! Ma che Scemo o Ma che Schemo! An espresso toast! Un Doppio..

Translated from Italian:

“We will see each other! What a Fool or What a Scheme! An espresso toast! A double

The above looks like some incoherent drivel, but what is clear from it is that Vicent Amen is determined to do away with Joe Tacopina. He continues in an even more pompous fashion:

This is the link to the article on Joe Tacopina’s website. Let me say something: God, The Universe brings you to a crossroads sometimes. One chooses Good or Evil. Guess what I choose, Good, Children. Tacopina chose Evil. It’s locked in @DiDimond

So on his noble mission to sink Joe Tacopina Amen claims that he” chose Good” while Tacopina “chose Evil”, and then he refers us …to the Twitter profile of Diane Dimond whose whole career was built on demonizing Michael Jackson. Does all of it mean that Vincent Amen is ready to throw Michael Jackson under the bus in order to sink Joe Tacopina?

It does, because all of sudden Amen claims that Tacopina “covered up” for Jackson:

Listed on Notable Case, is that he represented “Jackson Associates”. That would be me and Frank Cascio. I’m the one who paid Joe Tacopina, hired him. It’s unfortunate how it turned out with Tacopina deciding the cover up for Michael.@DiDimond

This lie from Vincent Amen is something new on the horizon – when Michael Jackson was alive he never said anything even remotely close to the above. But the more he tweets now the worse it grows:

Trump Lawyer Joe Tacopina Previously Called Stormy Daniels HushMoney Scheme Illegal Tacopina was the 1st attorney I hired for the Michael Jackson Trial. He possesses Michael Jackson’s Child Pornography Magazine. I Changed Attorneys @DiDimond

The story gets “sick-er”. After Tacopina saw the child pornography magazine with “Little Naked Boys”, Tacopina goes on TV calling Michael Jackson Innocent, Michael would never would do that. I watching Tacopina sway Public Opinion. Then it gets “sick-er”, the story @DiDimond

Now that is completely outrageous. Vincent Amen claims that Joe Tacopina allegedly possesses a “child pornography magazine with Little Naked Boys”, which initially belonged to Michael Jackson, and despite that Tacopina still called Michael innocent, and this is when and why the outraged Vincent Amen changed attorneys?

But the whole thing is a pack of lies from beginning to end!

The lies are indeed outrageous, but also somewhat desperate and pathetically stupid, I would say, which will work only for those who are unable to put two and two together, don’t go beyond the headlines and have no idea who Vincent Amen is.

It is even interesting what made Vincent Amen fall so low, and this required in-depth research as a result of which I am making this post now. Here is just a fraction of what I’ve found.

WHO IS VINCENT AMEN?

Vincent Amen on Twitter

Few people know who Vincent Amen is, and from his tweets they may get an impression that he was someone important in Michael Jackson’s life.

The journalist Roger Friedman, for example, thinks that Amen worked for Michael Jackson “since 1993”.

This is wrong as Vincent Amen had not even met Michael Jackson until 1996 when he was 16.

Vincent Amen got acquainted with MJ through Frank Cascio and it was Frank Cascio he associated with since 1993.

Cascio and Amen are the same age, both were born in 1980 and lived in New Jersey, both are of Italian origin and have been school friends since the 8^th grade. In 1996 Vincent Amen used to hang out with Frank at the Cascios’ house in New Jersey and on one of the occasions when Michael Jackson stayed there Amen met Jackson for the first time.

He was 16 then, but he went to Neverland and began working for Michael Jackson only in 2003 when he was 23.

Amen speaks about it himself:

“My name is Vincent Amen and I worked for Michael in 2003 – together with Frank Cascio, his personal assistant back then. I got to know Michael as a very cordial and friendly person who never missed a chance to let us know how much he appreciated our hard work.

Me and Frank were childhood friends and since Frank was also good friends with Michael, I first met him back in the 90s when he would visit Frank’s house where Frank and I would be hanging out together. When I first met Michael, I said “Nice to meet you Mr. Jackson”, and he quickly said “Call me Michael, no need to address me by my last name.” Michael wanted us to be casual around him, he was very nice and open to meet Frank’s friends, like me, even though he was a superstar and I had to be a teenager of 16 years at the time.”

In fact there is no record that he had ever been to the Neverland ranch until the moment he was hired by Michael Jackson in 2003 to work on a video special for Fox. His job was to select some clips from Michael Jackson’s home videos and show them to a Fox producer for further compilation.

Besides that Michael Jackson asked him and Frank Cascio, who for professional reasons went as Frank Tyson at the time, to entertain the Arvizo family while they stayed at Neverland and waited for the media storm from Bashir’s  documentary film about Jackson to die out (Bashir himself didn’t call it a documentary and said to District Attorney Tom Sneddon that it was a “cultural-affairs program”).

What’s also important is that Vincent Amen’s tenure with Michael Jackson lasted for one month only.

We know it from the transcript of Amen’s taped conversation at the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s Office on December 30, 2004.

Item 230

Vincent Amen Interview

Partial transcript

12-30-04

Present: Vincent Amen, John Jay Fahy, Jeff Klapakis, Steve Robel, Gordon Auchincloss

Robel: …Once we get started ….we’re gonna listen and let you take us from the beginning you know, when you first were employed by Michael, how that happened and just take us through you know, your month of being employed by Michael.

Amen: Okay.

 

So Vincent Amen was employed by Michael Jackson only for a month, and only in 2003, and I am specifically stressing this point not to let Amen lie about Jackson any further – like him appointing himself, say, “a witness of MJ’s inappropriate behavior” sometime in the 1990s, for example.

During that month in February-March 2003 Cascio and Amen took care of the Arvizos’ every need – drove Janet and children to shops, spas, movies, to restaurants and medical facilities, and even to her lawyer William Dickerman (twice), and throughout that time the Arvizos never complained about anything.

However it didn’t prevent the Santa Barbara DA Tom Sneddon from calling Amen and Cascio the “co-conspirators” in the alleged abduction and imprisonment of the Arvizo family and threatening to bring charges against them.

Frank Cascio described the experience in his book “My Friend Michael”:

Just before Christmas, on December 18, 2003, Michael was officially charged with seven counts of child molestation and two counts of administering an intoxicating agent, that is, the Arvizos were claiming that he got Gavin drunk in order to molest him. According to the legal documents, these crimes had occurred in February and March 2003, when we were all at Neverland following the Bashir fiasco.

Not long after the official charges were filed, Vinnie and I started getting calls from the district attorney’s office saying they wanted to speak to us because we’d been staying at Neverland during the time in question.

«Frank», Vinnie said. «Look, I don’t know our position, but I think it’s time we got an attorney.»

After meeting with a few superlawyers, Vinnie and I walked into Joe Tacopina’s office in Manhattan..

 Joe spoke to the district attorney’s office. They indicated that they were going to a grand jury which meant they believed they had enough evidence to warrant a trial. Their story was that Michael and I had formed a conspiracy in which I helped him gain access to Gavin, then covered up various nefarious activities and tampered with witnesses.

Over several meetings, Vinnie and I gave Joe a detailed history of our interactions with the Arvizos. Joe thought that we had considerable evidence showing that there had been no conspiracy, but this was a high-profile case with, as he put it, «a rabid prosecutor with a clear agenda.» He worried that Vinnie and I would be dragged into it because the idea of there having been a conspiracy made the case sound even more sinister.

Later in January 2004, when Michael was arraigned, Vinnie and I were named as unindicted co-conspirators. As Joe explained the co-conspirator charge, it meant that we weren’t being charged with any crimes and that the prosecutors had no evidence against us. We were safe ”for now” but if Michael was convicted, they would probably charge us.

The fact that I hadn’t been charged at the arraignment meant that I wasn’t about to be subpoenaed or arrested, but Joe still didn’t want me to be in touch with Michael. Against his advice, I flew to L.A. with my father and Eddie to visit Michael for a couple of days at the ranch.

When we walked into the main house, my father greeted Michael by reassuring him that we were all there for him and the kids ran up to us and hugged us. Once the kids were out of earshot, we talked about the upcoming trial ”we had to” but then we tried to have some fun.

… we didn’t want to talk about the looming allegations, and we couldn’t come up with any other subject to discuss. I wanted to say, «I told you so,» but I didn’t. And Michael wanted to ask, «How did this happen?» but he didn’t. Instead, we were mostly quiet, and every so often I would say, «Can you believe this fucking family?»

«I can’t believe this shit,» Michael would respond. We would look at each other and shake our heads. It felt like a bad dream.

 After that trip, both my lawyer, Joe Tacopina, and Michael’s lawyer, Tom Mesereau, firmly instructed me not to have any further contact with Michael. If I was called to testify, and the DA asked, «When was the last time you spoke to Michael?» they wanted me to be able to say that we hadn’t spoken since the charges were filed.

 I had confidence that our attorneys would reveal the truth, but our trial in the court of public opinion was a separate matter. A journalist named Roger Friedman was covering the trial for a Fox News entertainment blog called FOX411. I had never spoken to the press about Michael before, but this Roger Friedman was writing daily stories and his information was wrong. Now, frustrated with what I saw in his columns, I decided that if they were going to write about me, they might as well have accurate information. I wanted to get the truth out.

 Vinnie and I met Roger at a coffee shop on Seventy-sixth and Broadway. Vinnie put a big metal briefcase on the table and unsnapped it. He opened it wide, and Roger leaned forward for a closer look. Inside were piles of receipts. We explained to him that these were receipts from everything we had spent money on when we were taking care of the Arvizos during their stay at Neverland. There were receipts for hotels, movie theaters, restaurants, and spas. The press had been accusing us of kidnapping her, but, as was instantly clear to Roger, these were not the expenditures of kidnappers and their hapless victim. We had kept her comfortable and entertained while waiting for the media surrounding the Bashir video to die down.

Roger Friedman remembered it too:

“When those guys — Frank Cascio and Vinnie Amen– came to me in 2004 with a huge metal briefcase filled with records of what had gone on, the first thing I remember saying to them was, “Are you sure the Arvizos didn’t kidnap you?”

Frank Cascio says that before MJ’s April indictment Tom Sneddon spoke to Joe Tacopina and warned him that Frank was on a sinking ship and would “go down with the ship”.  Sneddon offered him their “lifeboat” – the immunity, in case Frank came to the DA’s office and testified against Michael Jackson.

This was actually an official invitation to lie about Jackson and Frank didn’t even consider it, but there can’t be any doubt that the same “lifeboat” was also offered to Vincent Amen and the latter accepted it. To give Amen his due he didn’t lie about Michael Jackson then.

Vincent explained his decision by saying that he would prove to the District Attorney that he and Frank had nothing to hide and the truth he would tell the prosecutors would help to escape jail time in case of a false charge. Knowing Tom Sneddon’s ways the danger of their indictment was indeed real, though Joe Tacopina was sure that even if they were indicted they would be acquitted as the DA had zero evidence against them.

Frank Cascio continues:

That spring, before the indictment, Joe spoke to Tom Sneddon, the district attorney of Santa Barbara County.

«Listen,» Sneddon said, «Frank’s on a sinking ship. He can take our lifeboat or go down with the ship.» He offered me immunity if I came into the DA’s office to testify against Michael.

I know people who watch shows like Law & Order are used to thinking that the DAs are the good guys, but this time they were on the wrong side of the case. Even if I were to be completely honest, they would look for ways to use whatever I said against Michael.

Joe explained to me that this was a common prosecutorial ploy. He had met with these people, and was certain they had no evidence against me. They were bluffing. Still it was Joe’s duty to remind me that I stood to be charged with a serious felony, and that in such a situation plenty of people would run straight to the DA. It was a no-brainer for me. I told him I stood by Michael and wanted to stay the course.

…I was lying in bed, with Valerie beside me, when the phone rang. It was Joe Tacopina. He said that Vinnie had gotten his own lawyer. I couldn’t believe it. Joe told me not to worry about it, but I was hurt. Why would Vinnie do this? Weren’t we in it together? Part of why I wanted to stick with Vinnie was that I felt horrible about and responsible for his situation. I had known him since I was thirteen years old. I brought him into Michael’s world, and now he was in this unthinkable situation because of it.

I called Vinnie, who tried to calm me down.

«Frank, you have nothing to worry about. We’re still working together. Legally, it’s just better if we have different attorneys. »

I didn’t like the idea, but it was what he preferred, so I went along with it. But then Vinnie decided to talk to the DA. He had done some reading on other cases in which people had been falsely accused, and he and his lawyer decided it made sense to tell his side of the story. There was so little evidence to support the conspiracy charge that Vinnie thought he could show the DA that they didn’t have a case without implicating anyone else.

He explained that he had not held Janet Arvizo hostage, that when he drove her around to various appointments, she had ample opportunity to ask for help or «escape.» He thought this was a good legal move on his part and that it showed the public that we had nothing to hide. Understandably he was tired of being stuck in legal limbo, of being trashed and slandered by media sharks.

As much as I accepted his logic, talking to the DA was like talking to the devil in my eyes. They were building a case against Michael and against Vinnie and me. They were already going to trial. The truth was irrelevant to them now; what mattered to them was building their case and winning.

I couldn’t believe he had done this. I felt betrayed. I thought we would go through this together, but for the rest of the trial, and afterward, I wouldn’t speak to Vinnie. Eventually I understood that Vinnie didn’t have the same history with Michael, or the same loyalty to him. Whereas I was willing to sacrifice anything for Michael, Vinnie wanted to make sure he didn’t see any jail time and if talking to the DA ensured that, then he would talk to the DA. I was so pissed at Vinnie that I didn’t speak to him for years. …

Now let us fit the above into the timeline of the events. More details were provided by our David Edwards in this post, so here I will select only some milestones which led Vincent Amen to an eventual deal with the Santa Barbara District Attorney Tom Sneddon.

• Bashir’s slanderous “cultural-affairs program” about MJ was shown on February 3rd in the UK and on February 6^th, 2003 in the US.
• Since the moment it aired the Arvizos were relentlessly sought after by the media and found shelter at Michael’s Neverland to avoid the media’s frenzy. According to Sneddon their stay at Neverland began on February 7th, 2003.
• On February 8th, 2003, the 60 Minutes journalist Ed Bradley arrived at Neverland to shoot an interview with Jackson about the Bashir film and found the Arvizo family at the same table with him having meals. They offered nothing but praise for Jackson.
• On February 20th the Arvizos were interviewed by the DCFS social workers and again spoke of MJ in glowing terms. Incidentally, in late March 2003, Janet ran into one of those DCFS social workers while shopping and didn’t say a word of complaint to her again.
• On the same day of February 20th the Arvizos shot the rebuttal video. Janet Arvizo and her children vehemently defended Michael by making statements such as: “Daddy Michael rescued us. Took us into his fold, became the surrogate father.” “God’s grace as God works through people, so does the devil. But God elected to work in Michael to breathe life into Gavin and to my two other children, and to me a much necessary love in a very traumatic time in our life.”

The Arvizo rebuttal video (screenshot)

• On February 21st and 25th Janet Arvizo met with her attorney William Dickerman regarding the furniture put in some storage, and again didn’t mention the family being “abducted” and kept at Neverland against their will.
• Despite all that and lots of other factual evidence Sneddon claimed that the Arvizos were “imprisoned” at Neverland from February 7^th to March 10^th, later changed into March 11^th and then to March 12^th 2003. This and other shifts in the timeline had to be made by the District Attorney because it turned out that Michael stayed at Neverland on occasions only and was not present when the alleged “molestation” of Gavin Arvizo allegedly began. Initially they claimed that it happened much earlier but as a result of the adjustments the prosecution scenario ended up with a version that MJ decided to “molest” Gavin right before the boy’s departure from Neverland.

The final tale was so absurd that Matt Taibbi of the Rolling Stone magazine called it circular, fantastic and downright mad. See page 6 of his book “Smells Like Dead Elephants”:

It was only after the filming of this so-called rebuttal video … and after the authorities had begun an investigation into Jackson’s relationship with the boy, that Jackson allegedly molested the child, in early March.

The prosecution’s case therefore boils down to this: in a panic over negative publicity, Jackson conspires to kidnap a boy and force him to deny acts of molestation that in fact never happened, and then he gets over his panic just long enough to actually molest the child at the very moment when the whole world is watching.

Thomas Mesereau was also amazed by the absurdity of Sneddon’s claims:

“The sexual abuse is supposed to have taken place when Mr. Jackson was under intense scrutiny because of the documentary by the news media, law enforcement and child welfare authorities, Mr. Mesereau noted.

“In the middle of all this is when they say the child molestation occurs,” he said. “Can you imagine a more absurd time for it to happen?” 

The timeline of the allegations is indeed sheer madness and is actually all you need to know about the Arvizo case, but let us continue with this craziness to see when Vincent Amen and Joe Topicana came into the picture.

• When the Arvizos left Neverland nothing else happened, but by the summer of 2003 the family realized that they had missed a chance to extort Michael Jackson for money, so they made up a crazy story of “molestation” and took it to Larry Feldman, who was Jordan Chandler’s attorney ten years prior to that.
• However, due to the changes in the legislation a civil lawsuit could no longer precede a criminal case as it did in 1993, so to their great disappointment the matter had to be taken to the prosecution first. This is when the DA office renewed their criminal investigation of MJ which was initially opened immediately after Bashir’s film but was closed a couple of months later due to total lack of evidence against MJ.
• Then the Santa Barbara District Attorney Tom Sneddon waited until November 18th, 2003, the exact date of releasing Michael Jackson’s Number Ones album, and sent about 70 policemen to raid the Neverland ranch. Diane Dimond was waiting at the gate ready to report it. The police seized every piece of evidence from the ranch including computers, photos, books, magazines, bed linen, empty bottles, and actually every scrap of paper that could be found on MJ’s property. By the way, Michael Jackson and his children had been away from Neverland for at least 3 weeks by that moment, but the question who drank what and who left their belongings where during his absence was never asked.
• A month after the raid, in December 2003 the press began talking that a conspiracy charge would be brought against Jackson, and this is when Vincent Amen suggested that he and Frank Cascio should retain an attorney just to be on the safe side. This is when attorney Joe Tacopina came in.
• On April 21, 2004 Michael Jackson was indicted by a grand jury on multiple charges, including conspiracy involving child abduction, false imprisonment, and extortion. The case was to go to a criminal court now.
• And a month later, on May 19^th 2004 some sources revealed to Roger Friedman that Vincent Amen was already in secret negotiations with the prosecutors.

So by mid-May at the latest Vincent Amen had already flipped everyone off, changed Joe Tacopina for another attorney (John Fahy) and the new attorney had already approached the District Attorney’s office to make a deal for Amen.

Roger Friedman says that Vincent Amen began panicking “in the last few months” before that moment in May 2004 and this means that the coward began panicking almost immediately after the first rumors in December 2003 over just a theoretical possibility of being indicted on a conspiracy charge.

Both Frank Cascio and Vincent Amen were in a status of “unindicted co-conspirators” and Joe Tacopina explained that they were safe ”for now” but could be indicted if Michael Jackson was convicted (MJ was acquitted on all charges in case someone doesn’t know it).

But May 2004 was still one year off from the date of the acquittal, so on May 19 Roger Friedman reported that Vincent Amen’s was in separate meetings with the prosecutors:

“[Tyson and Amen] seemed to be on the same page for a while. They even shared an attorney. But in the last few months, Amen is said to have panicked because he might have big legal problems facing him thanks to the scandal. He changed attorneys and started making his own plans.

It didn’t help that Jackson’s team did nothing to reach out to Amen, my sources said. This was probably a huge strategic mistake. Nevertheless, sources say that Amen’s visit with prosecutors may have had an unintentional effect. At the meeting, Amen finally was able to explain many of the episodes recounted in grand jury testimony and in this column.

For example, Amen told the district attorneys how the accusing boy’s urine sample was ruined on a drive to the medical lab. The boy’s mother said Amen dumped it out, but Amen claims it fell over in his car. I’m told the prosecutors were persuaded that his stories were truthful. That causes a problem for them, however.

In associated testimony, the conspiracy part has taken a beating thus far. Tyson and Amen were said to have held the family for a week in a hotel in Calabasas, Calif. But this column reported exclusively that the family went on wild shopping sprees, to the movies and to many local restaurants. The mother even had a full body wax and a manicure. None of this is considered standard fare during a kidnapping. The family also made dozens of phone calls to friends and family, never mentioning once that they were in any peril.

The family’s attorney, William Dickerman, dealt the conspiracy part of the trial a fatal blow when he was cross-examined by defense attorney Thomas Mesereau yesterday. He admitted to writing several letters to Michael Jackson’s then-attorney Mark Geragos after the family left Neverland for good on March 11, 2003.

The letters, which concerned the return of the family’s meager possessions from a storage vault, were called a “series” by Dickerman. But the lawyer never mentioned in any of them that the family had been “held hostage” or made to do anything they didn’t want to do. At the same time, Dickerman indicated that during his many meetings with the family, none of them mentioned their “kidnapping” either.

In fact, Dickerman revealed that his first two meetings with the family were on Feb. 21 and 25, 2003. Amen drove the mother to the meeting on the latter date. On the same day, he and Tyson took the family on their seven-day shopping trip in Calabasas.”

In short the kidnapping story was a farce and after Janet Arvizo spoke at the trial of the need to escape from Neverland by a hot air balloon no sane person could believe it. However Vincent Amen was frightened out of his wits and worried about everything – even about the unfortunate urine sample that was spilled when he took Gavin and Janet Arvizo to a hospital in 2003.

The appointment with doctors was scheduled for March 10^th in order to see if Gavin’s kidney was functioning properly, and Janet Arvizo later accused Amen that he had intentionally spilled the bottle in an attempt to prevent the alcohol in the urine from being detected by doctors and thus ruin her allegation that MJ “plied Gavin with alcohol  before molesting him” at Neverland.

Star and Gavin Arvizo

But I see absolutely no problem for Vincent Amen here – Gavin could have provided a fresh sample of urine upon his arrival at the hospital and if there was any alcohol to detect there it could have been detected anyway.

Most probably Gavin didn’t want to produce a fresh sample himself as numerous witnesses testified that the behavior of Gavin and his younger brother at Neverland had been brash and brazen, and they had broken into Jackson’s wine cellar and drunk alcohol on their own volition.

THE DEAL

Now we know that Vincent Amen and his new attorney contacted the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s office already in May 2004.

But for some reason Tom Sneddon and his people recorded a 3-hour interview with Vincent Amen only half a year later, on December 30, 2004. This is when he was finally offered the so-called “use immunity”, on condition that he told them everything about Jackson.

The frightened Amen told them everything he knew, but the interview didn’t produce anything to bolster the prosecution case against MJ and even “some inconsistencies” contradicting the Arvizos’ story emerged, so the prosecutors decided against calling Vincent Amen as their witness.

This alone is proof enough that Vincent Amen didn’t have any incriminating evidence against Michael Jackson (or Joe Topicana for that matter).

Amen was in so much panic that he was willing to give Sneddon anything he wanted, just to save his skin, however he had nothing bad to say, and at that time he didn’t want to lie about Jackson.

And this means that there was no “child pornography magazine with little naked boys” that allegedly belonged to MJ and is in possession of Joe Tacopina now.

In fact, a thing like that was even technically impossible – Tacopina was retained by Amen and Cascio a month after the police had searched the Neverland ranch and there was nothing for Topicana, or anyone else, to pick up there. Also, Topicana’s line of business was to defend Amen and Cascio in case the prosecution charged them with a conspiracy, so he wasn’t in any way connected with any evidence concerning that fictional “molestation”.

The story about a magazine was simply made up by Vincent Amen and used by him as an explanation why he changed his attorneys. In reality he gave up Tacopina in order to make a deal with Tom Sneddon.

In fact, we needn’t have done any research into this subject as child pornography magazines are not on sale in the US, so even in theory no such magazine could be in Topicana’s possession. And in Michael Jackson’s possession either.

The whole thing is just a malicious invention on Vincent Amen’s part.

You can examine the full list of items seized at Neverland all by yourself  here and you will see that the policeman who reviewed each book, magazine, periodical, photo and every scrap of paper that was in any way connected with children, specifically noted that “none of them would meet legal requirements to be considered child pornography”.

The only periodicals that could probably show nude children and their parents on the beach was a collection of nudist periodicals of 1934/35 and the 1960s, presented to him by his make-up artist Karen Faye.

People wonder why she made that present, and my opinion is that when observing Michael’s skin problems and seeing him exceptionally shy about his looks, Karen Faye wanted Michael to be less inhibited, more relaxed and more confident of his looks.

The nudist movement was a non-sexual philosophy of harmonizing oneself with nature, no matter how you look and of what shape or size you are, young or the sagging old, and it was wildly popular back in the 1960s.

Nudism was not a taboo even in the puritan Soviet Union – both for adults and little children even more so. Nudists didn’t pay attention to each other’s nudity and seeing another person naked on the beach did not sexually arouse anyone.

By the 1990s and 2000s the trend had become more a curiosity than a common activity. A collection of nudist periodicals has turned into a rarity and when you now look at their covers you are amazed to see how innocent those times were, especially in comparison with today’s depravity when nudity has been replaced with pornography.

The nudist magazines mostly showed naked girls on the beach (and not children), so if MJ did see them it does not speak to anything unusual in his behavior.

Actually, nowadays it is hard to find anything comparable to the virgin purity of those periodicals. And it was only the perverse logic of the prosecution that could turn those magazines into something sinister which they actually weren’t:

Searches of Neverland turned up sexually explicit DVDs and magazines, including 1960s-era nudist periodicals with pictures of naked children, Sneddon said. 

Here is  a photo of a “naked child” in a nudist magazine and the general way kids were shown there:

But let us go back to Vincent Amen again.

WHEN THE DEAL IS WITH THE DEVIL

It is clear why the prosecutors didn’t want Amen to testify at the trial – he didn’t say anything bad about Jackson and was therefore of no use to Tom Sneddon. But this is exactly the reason why his testimony was needed by the defense side – it could be helpful to refute the Arvizos’ allegations that they had been “kidnapped”.

So in May 2005, or half a year after the December 2004 Amen’s interview with the prosecutors, the MJ defense attorneys asked the court whether the immunity granted to Amen by Tom Sneddon would apply to his testimony if he testified for them. The defense attorneys asked for the immunity guarantees for Amen in case he was still fearful to testify.

Their motion said:

The prosecution and law enforcement interviewed unindicted alleged co-conspirator Vincent Amen on December 29, 2004. Prior to this interview, District Attorney Sneddon agreed to confer “use immunity” upon Mr. Amen pursuant to Penal Code Section 1324. The agreement was that Mr. Amen be granted “use immunity” in exchange for his truthful statements and testimony concerning his involvement in this investigation.

Mr. Amen submitted to a detailed interview with law enforcement and the prosecutors, in the presence of his attorney. The interview lasted several hours. Much of what Mr. Amen told the government contradicted the statements of the Arvizo family and defeated circumstantial evidence inferences which the prosecution has made. As a whole, Mr. Amen’s statements were exculpatory. The District Attorney did not call Mr. Amen as a witness.

The defense intends to call Mr. Amen as a witness and expects that this Court will honor Mr. Amen’s deal with the government. The Court should clarify that as long as Mr. Amen lives up to his end of the deal and testifies truthfully his testimony is protected by the use immunity already granted by the government.

May 9, 2005

But the prosecution absolutely didn’t intend to honor their deal with Vincent Amen. Gordon Auchincloss’s reply was devastating.  It turned out that their meeting with Vincent Amen had been “informal” and their agreement on immunity was “verbal” only and since they didn’t wish to summon Amen as a witness there were no grounds for granting him any immunity.

Here is the prosecutor’s reply:

On December 30, 2004, Vincent Amen, his attorney John Fahy, District Attorney Thomas W. Sneddon, Jr., Senior District Attorney Gordon Auchincloss and Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Lieutenant Jeff Klapakis had an informal meeting at the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office. The meeting was arranged after Mr. Fahy contacted the District Attorney’s office and expressed his client’s desire to cooperate with law enforcement in an interview. During this meeting, Mr. Fahy expressed the opinion that his client was not culpable for any criminal wrongdoing but was concerned about statements his client might give during testimony at trial that could be used against him in some future prosecution.

It was verbally agreed among those present that, should Mr. Amen be called as a witness to the stand by the People, the People would petition the court for a grant of use immunity. A recorded interview of Mr. Amen was subsequently conducted and provided to the defense. Due to time constraints this interview was never completed.

Several material inconsistencies emerged during Mr. Amen’s partial interview and it was decided that the People would not call Mr. Amen as a witness. The People do not intend to call Vincent Amen and therefore will not be requesting that the court grant use immunity to this witness.

Dated: May 18, 2005

Signed by Gordon Auchincloss

 

In their objection to the above reply the defense attorneys referred to the transcript of Amen’s interview which didn’t say anything about any conditions set by the prosecutors:

Amen: And again the full story I — nothing can be sued against me?

Robel: Well, what we’ve done is, this is a proffer of — we mentioned it—, a proffer of when you’re aware. Nothing can be used against  you directly, it can be used against you for cross-examination or any fruits coud, they could check ot any fruits or check out any leads. That is …

Auchincloss:  And ths is the agreement, in California we call it “use immunity”, so nothing you say in this interview can be used against you. If we just — something Jay said is — we can go out and obtain fruits from this interview. Ah, but the fruits of that interview cannot be used against you. And if we obtain, find something as a result, direct result that we wouldn’t have found otherwise of this interview, we can’t use that against you. Okay, so it protects you for purposes of what you say here today. Alright.

Amen: Okay.

 

But Tom Sneddon’s cold reply dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s – the deal was valid only in case Vincent Amen was called to testify by the People, but since they decided against using his testimony, any claims for immunity for him as a witness for the Defense were groundless. No word was said that the original agreement stipulated nothing of the kind.

Here is Tom Sneddon’s reply:

Actually, the agreement was that Mr. Amen would be granted “use immunity” if he were called by the People to testify in this matter, and he was assured that his statements to the prosecutors and investigators in the course of the interview would be used against him in any later prosecution of him.

Defendant’s apparent belief – that the informal assurance of immunity given Mr. Amen to encourage him to discuss his role in the events surrounding the Arvizo family’s interaction with Defendnat Jackson obliges the prosecutor to petition this court for a grant of formal immunity to Mr. Amen so that he might testify for the defense at trial – is groundless.

DATED: May 20, 2005

THOMAS W. SNEDDON, JR.

District Attorney

 

In other words, the prosecution promised immunity to Vincent Amen if only he spoke against Jackson and agreed to tell lies about him, but since he told them the innocent truth, the prosecution was no longer interested and even indicated that if Vincent Amen spoke for the defense, he could still be charged as an accomplice in a “conspiracy” plot against the Arvizos.

Though they perfectly knew that the plot was non-existent as Amen’s interview had proven it to them.

Thus the prosecution effectively neutralized Amen as a witness by forcing him to make a choice between the immunity in exchange for lies about Michael Jackson and no immunity and the danger of going to jail for telling the truth about Jackson.

At that time Vincent Amen chose to withdraw from the scene of battle by refraining from telling lies about Jackson, but not testifying for the defense either. However today he decided to reenter the scene, and this time on behalf of the devil.

Why so?

THE REASON FOR VINCENT AMEN’S LIES

If we put aside the highly likely but uninteresting scenario that Vincent Amen is simply doing it for big money or other benefits offered to him by Jackson’s detractors, the only other possibility is that Vincent Amen’s U-turn is connected with the danger of jail time again – only not for himself but for his wife Rina Oh now.  

When Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking activities were investigated it was found that Rina Oh was Jeffrey Epstein’s enabler and facilitator. In 2020 she was recognized as Epstein’s recruiter by several of his numerous victims, so in theory Rina Oh may be even charged with being complicit in his crimes.

Vincent Amen’s wife Rina Oh

In these circumstances Vincent Amen and Rina Oh could easily receive an offer they couldn’t refuse – they are to malign, vilify and slander Michael Jackson, and discredit Joe Tacopina on the way, and in exchange the authorities will close their eyes on Rina Oh’s own crimes against the young victims of Jeffrey Epstein and will grant her immunity.

History seems to be repeating itself – they already did it to Vincent Amen once, so it was no problem for him to go down the familiar road again.

The deal may explain Vincent Amen’s sudden activity against Jackson right at the time when the investigators were looking for Ghislaine Maxwell’s enablers.

First there was a rumor about his teaming up with Diane Dimond sometime in 2019.

The same year he obtained the publishing rights for an alternate juror’s notes made at the Arvizo trial and published them in September 2020 (see a reader’s review of the book) suggesting that people read it and come to their own conclusions about the verdict – though the juror’s notes are very fragmented, disjointed, taken out of context and can provide a screwed view of the trial.

And in the same year 2020 his wife Rina Oh spoke to a journalist and somewhat out of the blue mentioned Michael Jackson in connection with Jeffrey Epstein and his victims, leaving us with a vague feeling that she knew something sinister about Jackson but didn’t disclose it.

She even said that it was her husband Vincent Amen who “inspired” her to speak.

When you pick up these and other loose ends you get the impression that both of them are on a mission to stigmatize MJ further in order to get a deal with the authorities – to buy leniency for themselves as well as the media’s loyalty towards Rina and her doings. Otherwise it would be impossible to imagine why Vincent Amen would encourage her to speak.

Most probably someone’s big idea is to use Rina Oh’s scandal as a prelude to a new scandal about Jackson and present her as a victim of a predator by invoking the name of Michael Jackson and making a direct link between the innocent man and the real sex offender.

However it’s no use pretending that Rina Oh was a mere victim.

Epstein was her patron and “boyfriend” to whom she brought other girls who were her friends and who were unaware of what was awaiting them, and the extent of Epstein’s gratitude to her was so big that he rented her a flat and gave her a scholarship to take classes at the School of Visual Arts.

Epstein’s main accuser Virginia Giuffre wrote in the draft manuscript of her memoir, used at Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial, that Rina Oh even participated in sexual abuse and was especially intent on “bondage, whipping, hitting and cutting her sex partner with little sharp knives” which left Virginia with a 6-inch long scar on her leg.

Rina Oh and Virginia Roberts-Giuffre

Virginia and other Epstein’s victims were outraged that Rina presented herself as another of Epstein’s victims.

“Rina — if you read this I hope you live in shame for the rest of your life,” Virginia wrote. “You don’t intimidate me any longer & the physical & mental scars you left me with should be enough to put your a– in jail,” she added, along with a #LockHerUp hashtag.

She called Oh’s podcast interview “pathetic excuses from a deranged woman who was NO victim & should be sitting in jail next to #GhislaineMaxwell.”

“Rina — woman to woman, now that I am a woman, U disgust me,” Giuffre tweeted, calling her “an oxygen thief” and “a virus on humanity” who “procured & partook in the abuse of minors” with Epstein and his madam, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Isn’t it amazing that those who accuse Michael Jackson invariably turn out to be sex offenders themselves or at least their accomplices? The NAMBLA attendee Victor Gutierrez, the convicted pedophile Rodney Allen, the unscrupulous Diane Dimond for whom Gutierrez was “the best source” and now a sex-offender’s recruiter Rina Oh and Vincent Amen who is covering up for his wife…

And isn’t it all the more amazing that the law enforcement consistently turn a blind eye on these people while focusing on the innocent Michael Jackson instead?

Epstein ‘recruiter’ admits bringing girls to him and shopping with sex slave Virginia Roberts for schoolgirl outfit

Jessica Kwong

Published: Oct 28 2020

Rina Oh, 41, confessed in the podcast Broken: Seeking Justice that she dated Epstein and that he requested she bring him good-looking women including former model Marijke Chartouni.

However, Oh denied allegations from Chartouni and Virginia Roberts—another accuser who mentioned Oh in her memoir—that she perpetrated or directly participated in any sexual abuse they experienced.

In the podcast reported by the Daily Mail on Wednesday, Oh admitted that she participated in numerous activities involving Epstein, the American financier and convicted sex offender who died in August 2019.

Oh opened up about Epstein apparently asking her to take Roberts, then 17, on a shopping trip to find a “little school girl outfit.” When podcast host Tara Palmeri asked Oh if she thought it was strange that Epstein wanted a 17-year-old young woman dressed like a school girl, Oh responded, “I wasn’t asking questions. I just did as I was told.”

The mystery recruiter said, “I’ve brought three people to, to that place,” referring to Epstein’s mansion in New York, and that “when I’m, ready to talk about it, I’m gonna I talk about it.”

But Oh insisted: “My side of the story is I did not abuse anyone, period. People that knew about him wanted to meet him. And I brought those people there, period.”

A draft manuscript of Roberts’ memoir that was among court documents that became public last August stated that Epstein met Oh at an art gallery where he bought some of her pieces. The memoir alleges various sexual encounters, including that Epstein asked Oh to help Roberts massage him.

Oh, at the time about 21 years old, “loved bondage, whipping, hitting and cutting her sex partner with little sharp knives until they subdued (sic) to her punishment in agonizing pain,” Roberts wrote in the memoir. 

In addition, the manuscript states that Epstein was “absurdly taken” with seeing Oh use whips and toys on Roberts, and rented an apartment for Oh. 

Roberts said that Oh “fit into the subservient category” that Epstein liked and that she had a “bubbly persona.”

Oh is married to Vincent Amen, who worked and lived on Michael Jackson’s Neverland ranch, and it is he who inspired her to speak.

https://www.the-sun.com/news/1706966/epstein-recruiter-admits-bringing-girls-shopping-schoolgirl-outfit/

~

…The interview with Oh came about after Marijke Chartouni found her: she has become the unofficial private investigator for Epstein’s victims and has helped to find their recruiters.

Through intensive online research Chartouni tracked Oh down to her home in New Jersey and she agreed to speak.

She said her reason for talking is that her husband is Vincent Amen who worked for Michael Jackson and lived on the Neverland ranch. Amen was named as one of the five alleged unindicted co-conspirators in the unsuccessful 2005 prosecution against Jackson for molesting minors. Amen denied the allegations.

Amen told Oh that getting his story out there saved his reputation and she decided to do the same.

Oh became evasive when pressed about why she didn’t raise the alarm [when she learned of Virginia Roberts’ abuse].

She said: ‘And you’re asking me, well, what was she doing? I was like, well, she was there to serve a purpose. She was brought in to serve a purpose. Like she was groomed to do this……at an early age’.

Oh has asked lawyer Brad Edwards to help her apply for compensation for the Epstein’s victims’ fund, which will be paid for from his $640m estate.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8885837/Mystery-recruiter-Epstein-admits-bringing-girls-pedophile.html

It seems that Amen thinks that his deal with the prosecution “saved his reputation” in 2003,  so now he encourages his wife to follow his steps.

Rina Oh decided to play a victim card and even alleges now that she “had to be victimized to understand what happens to victims”. She says she went to Epstein “for a reason”, same as her husband Vincent was involved with Michael Jackson also “for a reason” (?)

October 30, 2020

 “I wish I didn’t bring anyone there. I wish I didn’t go there. But I went there for a reason.

“My husband was involved with Michael Jackson, for a reason. Between the two of us, we know everything that we need to know,” she said.

“I had to be victimised to understand what happens to victims. Between the two of us, we do talk about it all the time,” she said.

Despite Ms Oh’s denials, Ms Giuffre on Wednesday tweeted that Oh is a “virus on humanity”.

Just look at this Rina Oh’s wild gibberish.

So she went to Epstein for a reason. Meaning what? Meaning that she wanted to be victimized to understand what happens to other victims? What an absurd idea!

And according to her, Vincent Amen was also involved with MJ for a reason. What reason, I wonder? Money, basking in the limelight of Michael’s fame, enjoying himself at Neverland or wanting to make a career at Michael’s expense? Did I forget anything to mention?

And why is this enigmatic talk about what “they know between the two of them” and discuss “all the time”? Give free rein to your wildest fantasies, don’t restrain yourself and think the worst about MJ that you can only imagine!

In 2020 Rina claimed that the two of them keep talking about “it” all the time, but in 2022 she revealed that her sufferings at the hands of Epstein were so horrible that she kept them a secret for 20 years and didn’t speak about them even with her husband.

So what did they talk about all the time then?

“I knew I was a victim after that last incident, but I was in so much shock and trauma that I sort of suppressed what he did for decades,” Oh says. “For two decades I never talked about it. I kept it as a secret, nobody knew. My husband didn’t even know.” 

Now she is shedding crocodile tears over her misfortune and the media is certainly ready to offer her a sympathetic shoulder to cry upon.  Within the last two years the tone of their publications has drastically changed and a whole series of articles to portray Rina as an ordinary victim has appeared.

And this could be easily expected.

Rina Oh thought Jeffrey Epstein was going to be her art patron. Two decades later, she’s coming to terms with being among his victims.

Ashley Collman

Jan 20, 2022

….Maxwell’s recent conviction brought little more closure for Oh, who says she doesn’t think the pain “will ever really go away.”

“I think I’ll always be scarred by what they did to me,” she says.

During the sex-trafficking trial, Oh says she was struck most by the words of one of Maxwell’s accusers, Carolyn, who said her soul had been “broken.”

“It made me break down because I know what that feels like,” Oh says. “I feel that that was their agenda. That’s what they did. They fed off the pain of others.”

https://www.insider.com/rina-oh-jeffrey-epstein-victim-others-accuse-her-enabling-abuse-2022-1

As you know Rina Oh has applied for a compensation from the fund created to support Epstein’s victims and is also suing Virginia Roberts-Giuffre for 10 mln claiming that she had “falsely accused” her.

And Vincent Amen is tweeting one thing after another trying to demean Virginia and kill two, if not three birds with one stone:

• Firstly, he declares Virginia Roberts-Giuffre to be a scammer and money grabber. Rina Oh’s own application for a compensation for her activities and her own multi-million lawsuit against Virginia are certainly not mentioned.

“The Giuffre’s don’t work.. what does that mean.. they sue people for a living…how egregious.. The Giuffre’s can keep suing enriching themselves.. million here.. few million there.. Through hard work.. The Amen Family is worth more money than Giuffre’s and generates more money.”

• Secondly, Amen is still at war with Joe Tacopina.
• And thirdly, he keeps defaming Michael Jackson with some vague but dirty hints and pompously declares that his children know how to correctly fight back from “him with Jackson” and “how to Win in the US”.

“This all can be attributed to Virginia Giuffre’s false accusal in her manuscript she didn’t write, false accusations in the media; Twitter, Print, TV by Giuffre. One good, it shows to the children how you fight back correctly. They know this from me with Jackson. How to Win in US”

Maybe he does know some crooked ways how to win in the US, but despite all his pathetic self-aggrandizing he actually never fought, at least for the truth.

He proved himself a coward who betrayed both Michael Jackson and his friend Frank Cascio, who bargained with the authorities for separate immunity for himself and sheepishly followed their lead even when they didn’t honor their deal with him, and he still allows himself to be manipulated by others in the interests of those who are consistently working against Michael Jackson (and against Joe Tacopina and even Trump).

In fact, he produces the disgusting impression of a sleazebag who is ready to say anything about anyone in order to save his skin, and do it in the name of “justice”, “helping  victims” and “working for the benefit of people”.

By appropriating all those noble goals he is now telling outrageous lies about Michael Jackson – the man he praised and spoke highly of when he still thought that it was profitable for him to be on Michael’s side.

THE CHARITABLE EFFORTS OF MJ

by Vincent Amen, USA

“Michael, I saw first hand  your work and your wish to make this world a better place – and you truly excelled. I saw you charitable efforts and they made and make a difference for so many people. I also saw first hand what Janet Arvizo tried to accomplish and she truly failed in front of the world.”

But now he is singing another tune. You are already familiar with his tweets, but here are some screenshots from his August 2021 interview with the Alpha publishers who published his book with the alternate juror’s notes.

In this interview he says that the book was published for “educational purposes” so he hopes that the juror’s trial notes “will help the legal system”.

He claims there that he is “compassionate to victims” and doesn’t want to criticize the Arvizo boy because there is a possibility that “the child was victimized” after all.

He declares that now he has a political side to him which he hasn’t realized before. And he learned “how to fight”.

He says that he loves to do what his wife does. She is a creator.

He reveals that he “deals with media” and “works with reporters” and it is “another side project that he does”. He does it “on a local level, as well as on an international level”, which means that he uses international media to spread his stories there too.

He elaborates in much detail on how he works on “helping victims and standing up for them” and “revealing information to benefit people”, and he would like to be known as “someone that works to benefit people who have been victimized”.

And all of this was said in August 2021 when it was already perfectly clear that his wife Rina Oh was Epstein’s facilitator who had recruited for him her friends, thus betraying their trust and ruining their lives, and who possibly even participated in their abuse.

This doesn’t stop Vincent Amen from proclaiming her a victim, so he is now working for her benefit, together with reporters from the local and international media, and is standing up for her rights.

And in doing so he does not forget about his mission to vilify, slander and betray his former friend Michael Jackson too.

Virginia Roberts-Guiffre called Rina Oh and Vincent Amen “2 sick peas in a pod”. By saying it she meant something different but in the long run she was right.

These two people deserve each other, and one is no better than the other.