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1. Leaks from Larry Feldman’s office

All of us are so shocked by the disgraceful behavior of the so-called MJ’s “defense” attorney Carl Douglas at the Frozen in Time seminar that on a background like that Larry Feldman produces the impression of almost a benefactor to Michael Jackson.

This impression is completely wrong. The reason for it is that Larry Feldman is a top professional who is able to manipulate people’s minds in so masterful a way that you simply don’t notice it.

Carl Douglas is just an abject figure of a helpless and dishonest lawyer who effectively showed to us that with legal assistants like that Michael had absolutely no chance to win the fight in the Jordan Chandler 1993 case against a legal shark like Larry Feldman even despite Michael’s complete innocence.

However it was LARRY FELDMAN who was the real creator of the Chandlers’ success and it is therefore important to uncover the maneuvers he made in order to win a case which the prosecution (Gil Garcetti and Tom Sneddon) could not bring even to the point of filing charges against MJ.

It is also important to understand the real story behind Larry Feldman’s polished speech in which he manages to present a totally false picture of the events while almost never telling a flat lie.

Larry Feldman is the man who expertly tells lies by speaking half-truths only. When all those bits and pieces are brought together it is their fusion which makes the story false though its separate fragments may be true.

His lies are of a very subtle nature and are far from the outrageously false ‘love letters’ by Diane Dimond which no one has ever seen, or crazy ‘blood baths’ from Maureen Orth which are completely out of MJ’s character – no, lies in Larry Feldman’s case arise just from a simple omission of facts, which is the manner no one can really find fault with  – what if the man is just forgetful?

That is why the only right way to listen to Larry Feldman is to read between the lines of what he is saying and tell the rest of the story ourselves.

With so much of what could have been said but was omitted by Larry Feldman restoring the truth to its original version and size is quite a laborious task. I’ve tried to do it by introducing into the picture the facts we have already learned by now, however the end result is a kind of a review which is so long that it had to be separated into several parts. I couldn’t help it – the truth is much more detailed and colorful than Larry Feldman wants it to be.

Larry Feldman’s full speech at the Frozen in Time seminar has been broken into short statements each of which is supplemented by big pieces of information from various sources including the Santa Barbara News Archive and the LA Times which meticulously and not too objectively (for Michael) reported the 1993 and 2005 cases. Their full collection was generously presented to this blog by our reader Olga (thank you, dear!).

These quotations are absolutely indispensable for restoration of the real truth as otherwise the full story could look like a mere speculation on my part. At times however I couldn’t resist making my own comment on the very specific method of ‘telling the truth’ employed by Larry Feldman.

The first story is that of the LEAKS from various parties

LARRY FELDMAN:

Good evening, I had the privilege to represent two young boys, both who claimed they were molested by Michael Jackson.  They had some similarities that, even though they were ten years apart, that’s worth pointing out, and some differences about those cases that I think are worth pointing out.  Bearing in mind, they were both civil.

In one, the first case, I actually litigated that case and went through the same stuff that Judge Melville talked about, and fought about the same issues, and I’ll get into that when it’s time to talk about that. And in one case, we didn’t really litigate it because the criminal case went first.  But both boys had this in common: they were thirteen years of age, they were pre-pubescent young men.  Both of these boys came from broken homes.  Both of these boys lived with their mothers at the time that the alleged molestations took placeBoth of these boys came from homes that their mothers allowed them to spend an inordinate amount of time with Michael Jackson, alone.

I hope you are getting Larry’s main goal. The point about ‘common features’ is not a simple illustration of the fact that the cases were similar (and as such should have been handled in the same way). The actual idea is to subtly suggest that there was a ‘pattern of behavior’ on Michael’s part which is typical of those despicable people whom we won’t even name here.

Larry’s message about fatherless boys living with their mothers is a sample of the truth told in halves only. Jordan Chandler’s father Evan claimed in full earnest that he was a good father to the boy and they had been a closely-knit family until Michael Jackson split them up (this was Evan Chandler’s major complaint in the taped conversation with David Schwartz, the stepfather, if you remember).

And in Gavin Arvizo’s case the mother’s absence at the ill boy’s side is even more clear and dramatic according to an eye-witness of the events, Azja Pryor who was very close to the family at the time:

AZJA: I was present when these children were at Neverland. I spoke to these children several times a day when this was supposedly happening.

INTERVIEWER: You were present at Neverland?

AZJA: Yes I was and these children were very happy to be there.

INTERVIEWER: Tell me about your experiences with this family

AZJA: Well, when I first met the family, the accuser bragged about how Michael was his best friend and all the things that they would do and the friendship that they had, and it seemed like something that really brought a lot of joy to his life. In the entire time while he was sick and undergoing chemotherapy, I actually never even met the mom. The mom never seemed to come around until after he was better. And you know, once he was better and we started to do other things, then the mom was around all the time and I never saw his father anymore.

INTERVIEWER: So the mom was not there in the beginning, and the dad was not there in the end?

AZJA: I never met the mom for a year.

Now if this is what ‘similarities’ were like Larry Feldman should have probably mentioned the differences too – for example, that Jordan Chandler had a no-nonsense, strict but loving mother who wouldn’t let her son make a single move without her control or approval – while Gavin Arvizo’s mother is a messy, emotional and uncontrollable mental case.

Gavin’s association with Michael sprang from the ‘dying wish’ of the boy who was universally considered to be terminally ill. The boy had undergone an operation,  was bald and so weak from chemotherapy that Michael had to move him around Neverland in a wheelchair. The reason why Michael lavished him with attention was an attempt (a highly successful one) to bring a ray of hope into his life – which easily explains the fact emphasized by Larry Feldman that the family allowed  their son ‘to spend an inordinate time with Michael Jackson’.

The LA TIMES quoted Michael who was later very much sorry that he had allowed Gavin into his home:

“Years ago, I allowed a family to visit and spend time Neverland. Neverland is my home. I allowed this family into my home because they told me their son was ill with cancer and needed my help.” http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jan/31/local/me-statement31

LARRY FELDMAN:

Both of these mothers allowed their boys to sleepover at Michael Jackson’s house, in the bedroom, in the bed, that Michael Jackson slept in.

It is tiresome to have to repeat that Gavin Arvizo never slept with Michael in one bed, but it is a necessary thing to say again and again. The truth was stated by Gavin and his mother in no uncertain terms in their several interviews conducted on February 14-27, 2003 by the police and the L.A. Department of Children & Family Services who repeated in their November Memo the same year that no such thing ever happened between Michael and Gavin:

The DCFS Memorandum of November 26, 2003 says:

“The investigation by the Sensitive Case Unit concluded the allegations of neglect and sexual abuse to be unfounded both by the LAPD-Wilshire Division and the Department. The children’s mother stated that she believed the media had taken everything out of context. Mother stated that child was in stage 4 cancer and had received a year of chemotherapy in addition to having his spleen and one kidney removed. Mother stated that the entertainer was like a father to the children and a part of her family. ..

As per the sexual abuse allegations, the mother stated that her children are never left alone with the entertainer. She further stated that he son has slept in the same room as the entertainer but they did not share a bed. The entertainer would sleep on the floor.

The child (…) was interviewed by the CSW as to the allegations and he denied any form of sexual abuse. He denied that he ever slept in the same bed as the entertainer. The child (…) also denied sexual abuse. Both children expressed a fondness for the entertainer and stated they enjoyed visiting his home…

The oldest sibling (…) age 16, was also interviewed by the CSW. She stated that she had accompanied her brothers on sleepovers at the entertainer’s home and had never seen anything sexually inappropriate between her brothers and the entertainer”.

(see the Smoking Gun story: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/early-probe-cleared-michael-jackson

and our Lynette’s post complete with the document https://vindicatemj.wordpress.com/2010/11/07/dont-let-ron-zonen-and-larry-feldman-lie-to-you/)

The same was repeated by Michael Jackson to the the CBS “60 minutes”:

“I didn’t sleep in bed with the child. Even if I did it’s OK. I slept on the floor. I give the bed to the child.”

So if the boy, his mother and Michael insisted it never happened does it mean that Larry Feldman was lying when he said, “Both of these mothers allowed their boys to sleepover at Michael Jackson’s house, in the bedroom, in the bed, that Michael Jackson slept in”?

I’ve reread Larry’s statement and had to admit that technically speaking he is right – Gavin did sleep in the bed Michael Jackson slept in at that period of time, and it is only a small omission that they were never in the same bed together which distorted the whole picture.

To me it sounds more like “he slept in the bed where King Henry VIII (once) slept in” and looks an absolutely perfect way to tell a lie in a way that no one can find fault with – the separate words are correct while the overall impression is wrong, which is exactly what Larry Feldman is aiming at. 

The truth of the story with those slumber parties was that Michael learned his lesson in 1993 and took special care to safeguard himself from any possible future accusations – he always had another adult present in his room if any child stayed there. However refusing the boy who was ‘terminally ill’ and damping his spirits by not letting him take the star’s bed was not customary for Michael, so he did allow Gavin to do it. Unfortunately he did …

Michael’s former guard Mike LaPerruque revealed their sleeping security arrangements to Roger Friedman who reported on March 12, 2004 the following  http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,114041,00.html:

“Yesterday I talked to Mike LaPerruque, a retired sergeant in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department who remains on reserve after a 22-year active career.

LaPerruque says he worked for Jackson from August 2001 until June 2003.

– I was with him 24/7,” LaPerruque was able to tell me. “I had a key to his room at all times, and I was never told not to use it.”

– Did you ever walk into Michael Jackson’s bedroom and see him in bed with a child other than one of his own?

“No! Of course not,” said LaPerruque.

He called the mother of Jackson’s 13-year-old accuser “the type of woman who knew how to manipulate people.”

When LaPerruque heard the newsbreak last November 17 about the Neverland raid and Jackson’s latest problems, he says his first thought was, “Poor guy. He can’t catch a break. He had a new album coming out and a lot of stuff happening.”

Under oath he will testify that he’s had experience with child molesters in his 22 years as a cop, and that Jackson does not fit the profile.

He said he has two kids, and he would feel comfortable with either one of them — a boy and a girl — spending time with Jackson.

Also see: http://site2.mjeol.com/mjeol-bullet/former-guard-says-jackson-s-innocent-bullet-111.html

However the sleep-in-one-bed story made up by Larry Feldman does not end there. When the DCFS Memorandum stating the Arvizos’ earlier statements about never sleeping in one bed surfaced in the press, Larry Feldman did his utmost to eradicate this information altogether and on completely legal grounds too.

Two weeks after the leak he wrote a letter of complaint that it had broken the law and ‘violated privacy rights’ and made an official claim on the DCFS claiming damages on behalf of the Arvizos who by then had already changed their story.

Just imagine that the attempt could have been successful, the information hushed up and none of us could have ever learned the truth!  The text of the claim says (Larry Feldman speaks of himself in the 3d person):

“These investigations are confidential and the law prohibits them from disclosing information regarding these investigations to the public.

By a letter dated December 11, 2003, Larry R. Feldman, Claimant’s counsel, protested this improper release of the November 26, 2003 memorandum and requested that the Department conduct an immediate investigation into this illegal and improper disclosure.

Although the Department claimed that it was conducting such an investigation, it has not provided any information to Claimants regarding such a purported investigation, nor has the Department had the human decency to apologize to the Claimants for the Department’s total failure to maintain their privacy as required by law.

The improper release of information regarding Claimants by the Department has violated the privacy rights of Claimants thereby injuring and damaging Claimants in an amount to be established.”

(For the full text see the documents posted by our Lynette: https://vindicatemj.wordpress.com/2010/11/07/dont-let-ron-zonen-and-larry-feldman-lie-to-you/)

I fully agree that law should be respected and would totally share Larry Feldman’s righteous anger with those who break it if it weren’t for one minor thing only – some eleven months prior to that, in February the same year (2003),   his highly esteemed law corporation ALSO leaked a top confidential document which very much ‘violated the privacy rights’ of  EVERYONE mentioned there and none of his own lawyers ever had ‘the human decency to apologize’ for this leak EITHER.

And that case was a much graver infringement – besides heavily injuring the feelings of those indicated in the document it also broke the confidentiality agreement of 1994 one of the guarantors of which was no other but lawyer LARRY FELDMAN…

Is it the signature of a 13-year old boy?

Yesss, I am talking about a certain ‘declaration’, made by a certain “J.” Chandler ten years earlier, in December 1993, typed on the paper of a certain law corporation called “Fogel, Feldman, Ostrov, Ringler” of California, which is signed by someone who is supposed to be Jordan (though the signature looks suspiciously adult to me and doesn’t contain the verification by any of the lawyers).

The absence of any verification should be reason enough for any sensible person to suspect the document to be a fake, however I learned from lawyer Lisa G., that the lenient law of California does allow declarations (not depositions!)  to be signed by a declarant with no verification from the lawyer in whose presence it is made.

The lawyer just takes his company’s paper, types the summary of the declarant’s story, has it signed by him (or somebody else) in the absence of the defendant’s lawyers and here you are  – the declaration is ready.

This of course offers ample opportunity for fraud, and there is no way for us to know whether the document is true except Larry Feldman’s word for it.

However Larry Feldman kept complete silence when his office leaked that document in February 2003  and this leaves us with a nice alternative of EITHER the document being a fake and Larry keeping silent as he is unwilling to have anything to do with it, OR the paper being real and Larry keeping silent as he is breaking law and all human decency rules (by making it known to the public AFTER the confidentiality agreement he is a guarantor to).

Whatever is the case with the authenticity of that paper the declaration was leaked from Larry Feldman’s office and he never shed a tear about it breaking law, ‘violating privacy rights’ and infringing the confidentiality agreement which effectively stated that it was lifting all the charges (except neglect) prior to it.  The agreement specifically stipulates that point: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0616041jacko1.html

The Minor, by and through his Guardian ad Litem, Evan Chandler and June Chandler, and each of them individually and on behalf of each of their agents…hereby irrevocably and unconditionally release, acquit and forever discharge the Jackson Releasees, including Jackson,from any and all charges, complaints… including, without limitation, all claims which were alleged or could have been alleged in the Action and the Claims;

(an identical clause is stipulated for Jackson)

Special mention is made there of the fact that the agreement is no admission of any guilt:

This Confidential Settlement shall not be construed as an admission by Jackson that he has acted wrongfully with respect to the Minor, Evan Chandler or June Chandler, or any other person or at all, or that the Minor, Evan Chandler or June chandler have any rights whatsoever against Jackson. Jackson specifically disdains any liability to, and denies any wrongful acts against, the Minor, Evan Chandler or June Chandler or any other persons.

Giving Larry Feldman the benefit of the doubt I am ready to suppose that the ‘declaration’ was in possession of the police too and it could have been them who leaked the document  – however they had plenty of their own interviews with Jordan and could have leaked theirs if they wanted to…

But even if it was their doing it was Larry Feldman’s direct responsibility and even duty to make a thunderous statement in the press that such a document was a gross infringement of the agreement ‘violating the privacy rights’ and injuring all those to whom the declaration referred to, including Jordan Chandler in the first place.

Didn’t Larry Feldman express grave concern for Jordan’s well-being in his speech at the seminar? Didn’t he justify the desire to avoid a court trial by the need to take care of the boy’s feelings fiirst and foremost? Then why did he leak the declaration ten years after the events – when the boy’s ‘wounds’ (if there were any) were supposed to have already long ‘healed’?

Wasn’t it LARRY FELDMAN’s duty to safeguard Jordan Chandler’s rights under the confidentiality agreement and why did it have to be MICHAEL JACKSON who had to remind him of his duties?

The Smoking Gun says about Michael’s statement following the release of the declaration:

“After TSG first published the below document on February 6, 2003, Jackson issued a statement noting that he “has respected the obligation of confidentiality imposed on all the parties to the prior proceedings, yet someone has chosen to violate that confidentiality” and use the boy’s statements to “further sully” the star’s character.

He added that, “it should be remembered that, at the time, the confidentiality obligation was a mutual one, designed as much to protect the teenage boy as the singer himself”.

Jackson concluded, “Whoever is now leaking this material is showing as much disregard for the boy as their determination to attack Michael.”

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/jacko-original-child-abuse-allegations

Isn’t it truly surprising to see Larry Feldman complaining about the leak of what the Arvizos really said to the Department of Children’s and Family services and never saying a word about the leak of a suspicious document from his office though it violated the agreement he himself signed and was a warrantor to?

Shouldn’t he have immediately disclaimed that declaration as soon as it was published? And shouldn’t he have been asked this question at the Frozen in Time lawyers seminar? 

Generally lawyers are supposed to act for their clients only while they are retained by them. And when the legal process is over they are not supposed to go on working against their former opponents. If they do so –  and ten years after the settlement too –  it means they have an agenda.

But what is even more surprising and even astonishing is that the leak was made on exactly the same day when Bashir’s film was aired!

Living with Michael Jackson is a Granada Television documentary, in which British journalist Martin Bashir interviewed Michael Jackson over a span of eight months, from May 2002 to January 2003. It was shown first in the United Kingdom on ITV (as a Tonight special) on 3 February 2003 and in the United States three days later on ABC, introduced by Barbara Walters
Did you notice the DATE given by the Smoking Gun?
You know, the Smoking Gun will soon turn into my favorite source of information – besides once making a blunder over the color of the blotch supposedly seen by Jordan Chandler on Michael’s genitalia (which fully contradicted the later photos and Tom Sneddon’s vague description  – see the story here ) now the Smoking gun tells us that Jordan’s declaration was first published by TSG on February 6, 2003 which is the official day of releasing Bashir’s film in the US!

What the hell does this coincidence mean in the Michael Jackson mystery smear campaign? Does it mean that:

  • it wasn’t only Bashir who was standing behind  the new wave of allegations against Michael Jackson and that there were other big people involved in this really big plan?
  • by releasing J.Chandler’s “declaration” made 10 years earlier on the same day as the film someone wanted to enhance the effect of it?
  • someone was prompting the right words to the possible new accuser though he was not yet there?
  • Larry Feldman not only represented the plaintiff Chandler’s interests when he was retained by him but also took part in the defamation campaign against the former defendant even after the case had been settled?
  • he was ready to risk the reputation of a guarantor of the confidentiality agreement in order to get rid of his former opponent?
  • In short does it mean that Larry Feldman also had an agenda same as prosecutor Tom Sneddon?

All of the above deserves much more attention on our part but we have to go with Larry Feldman’s speech which is still polished, clean and tidy as if none of all this dirt has ever taken place. Larry Feldman goes on with sinister hints at a certain pattern of MJ’s behavior which is masquerading as an innocent talk about ‘similarities’ in Jordan and Gavin cases:

LARRY FELDMAN:

Both of these parents, mothers at least, received things of value from Michael Jackson during the time that they had this relationship with Michael Jackson.

Well, June Chandler did receive some jewelry and ‘a love bracelet’ which Michael gave to her for some reason known to only the two of them, however Janet Arvizo had from him only money for her immediate needs for shopping in town like waxing her legs and the like.

If this way of spending money on Michael’s part is something meaningful to Larry Feldman let me remind him that Michael Jackson gave ‘things of value’ not only to these two women but to the whole world besides them – he presented a Mustang car to Ryan White, the boy ill with AIDS, and paid $100,000 for the operation of a Hungarian child whose liver was replaced,  he gave away to others all the proceeds from his Victory tour and his much bigger proceeds reaching $150 mln. from his Dangerous tour to the Heal the World Foundation which was to spend the money on numerous charity, educational and relief projects. This is not to mention small things like giving away the $1.5 million compensation from Pepsi to the Burn Center for Children, 43 tons of medication, blankets, and winter clothes sent to Sarajevo and donating to charity the 1 million pounds for the exclusive photos of his son Prince, made by the British magazine “OK!”

Actually the list of those who received gifts and money support from Michael Jackson is so long that I will never be able to finish this post about Larry Feldman’s speech, and we do need to get back to the old man again….

(to be continued)

For the full story complete with the comments please go to:

https://vindicatemj.wordpress.com/2010/11/20/reading-between-the-lines-of-larry-feldmans-speech-the-story-of-leaks-part-1/

60 Comments leave one →
  1. Teva permalink
    May 7, 2011 11:40 pm

    This reminds me of the time the fans thought TMZ had turned the corner on reporting fallacies about Michael Jackson. They were mistaken. Roger Friedman may have written some accurate articles about Michael during the trial, but he is still a tabloid writter.

    Like

  2. shelly permalink
    May 7, 2011 11:18 pm

    @vindicate,

    I understand your point very well, but I still believe that the best way to refute a tabloid article is to post a serious article written by a serious journalist. That article clearly said they had no evidence of that.

    Like

  3. May 7, 2011 10:52 pm

    “I posted the article about Jan Goren because it refutes what Friedman said.”

    Shelly, thank you for doing it. Though the other article is so difficult for comprehension (I know it isn’t your fault) and Roger Friedman’s style is so powerful and simple that unfortunately his mistakes (or lies) are retained in one’s memory much better than the story correcting them.

    I hope you do understand my views on this matter – sometimes the point of the discussion is not worthy the effort it takes to nullify the negative effect of the point. That is why I am really asking everyone to weigh the need of providing some stories (especially if they are not very significant) in their “raw form” – is it worth citing them to prove something not too important if then you will have to spend the whole day refuting them?

    I think that in Roger Friedman’s case it is quite enough to say that he is – for example – a gossip journalist who sometimes tells the truth and does it very powerfully but who also makes mistakes and even spreads lies in his zeal to attract attention to his column or gain popularity for himself as a person ‘most knowledgeable’ on Michael Jackson’s affairs.

    I am still thankful to Roger Friedman for the truthful things he said about Michael and still believe that he is definitely different from such scum as Diane Dimond or Maureen Orth who never said a word of truth about the man.

    We should be fair in our assessments.

    Like

  4. shelly permalink
    May 7, 2011 10:31 pm

    @vindicate

    I posted the article about Jan Goren because it refutes what Friedman said.

    Like

  5. May 7, 2011 10:09 pm

    “Roger Friedman’s latest piece on MJ”

    Teva, I am sorry to hear that after being fired from two places Roger Friedman started writing what is expected of him. I am still thankful to him for the good articles he wrote about Jackson as at least he attempted to tell the truth at the time when it was highly inadvisable to do so. Aphrodite Jones also spoke negatively about Jackson and admitted it:

    “… while the trial was going on, Jones herself was a popular talking head on television, especially for the Fox News network. “I was one of the leaders of the pack,” she admitted. “We did as much as we could to make [Jackson] look bad. That’s what people wanted. To be quite honest, that’s what Fox wanted. They didn’t want any exculpatory information.”

    http://www.independent.com/news/2007/nov/15/aphrodite-joness-book-exonerates-pop-star/#c2090

    Did you notice her saying that FoxNews didn’t want any exculpatory information? And Roger Friedman nevertheless wrote those articles I cited earlier – though it was definitely against the official policy of his bosses! And I must say that I am grateful to him for his effort to say the truth, though he did it occasionally only.

    Now they have evidently broken him. Which is a pity – if he continued writing the truth we would need it very much during Murray’s trial. Is this why he was fired by FoxNews under a laughable pretext?

    P.S. Teva, what I have just said to Shelly about publishing negative articles in their “raw form” is a rule here.

    I ask each and everybody never to post anything negative without a proper comment. Let me explain it once again – negative information is absolutely possible here, but only on condition the person posting it provides the refutation of it himself. Otherwise it leaves the job of refuting it to us only (which may be really too heavy a burden).

    I know that most of the readers don’t mean any harm by posting things like that but please try to refrain from it as best as you can.

    (Respective Rule #6 has been added to the list of Rules in the blog).

    Like

  6. May 7, 2011 9:49 pm

    “Roger Friedman wrote this and that”

    Shelly, I know that Roger Friedman was not always right – after all he was only a gossip columnist who collected all sort of gossip from various people who were not always telling the truth. I was talking about his BEST articles where he rose to the heights no journalist rose to in the times while Michael was alive. If you come to enumerate the journalists who spoke well of Michael at the time you will count them on the fingers of one hand only.

    This is why I am totally against you citing the worst of Roger Friedman’s – there is absolutely no point in providing links to these articles in their “raw” form, without refuting his words. You might have noticed that I never post negative articles “as such” or cite links to articles detrimental to Michael without proper analysis first. Proving to us that Roger Friedman was no fan of Michael and did make grave mistakes in his reports is not enough reason to post his negative articles here or giving links to them.

    It would have been enough to just say which mistakes he made and where.

    It is my official position as the administrator of this site.

    Like

  7. May 7, 2011 7:35 pm

    @Shelly
    He was wrong about Elizabeth/Mike not being so close in 2001, wrong about what the $600,000 jewellery was supposed to have been given for (allegedly a thank you for her appearing in his private home movies in 2003, but I’m not sure where that figure or info came from), and Elizabeth did speak out, once on November 22nd 2003 and again when he was acquitted in 2005. He’s just wrong. I’m hoping the comments I left about Liz/Mike get approved over there…

    @ Suzy

    Schaffel was so transparent. He also leaked voice mails from Michael, I have them saved, nothing weird or creepy on them or about any payments to Brazilian families that nobody’s ever heard of except for him. The most damning thing is MJ calling him up and telling him to use a breath mint.

    Like

  8. shelly permalink
    May 7, 2011 11:14 am

    I don’t believe MJ molested a child, but let’s say for a second that he did. What would be the reason for Schaffel to not speak to Sneddon in order to save his ass. He was a co conspirator, what would be the reason?

    Like

  9. Suzy permalink
    May 7, 2011 10:58 am

    @ Shelly

    I don’t believe for a minute Schaffel had anything incriminating on Michael (and I don’t believe for a minute Michael ever molested a child).

    When Ralph Chancon was on the stand he admitted that back in the 90s his lawyer wanted to pressure Michael into a settlement by the innuendo and rumours they spread in the media. This is the same old trick by Schaffel. It gets pretty transparent with Friedman’s “advises” to Michael at the end of BOTH of his articles! In fact it sounds like a threat: “you better pay or it will get worse and your reputation will be damaged more than by the trial”! He finishes both of these articles with this!

    So yeah, I retract the positive things I said about Friedman earlier.

    Like

  10. shelly permalink
    May 7, 2011 10:32 am

    What I don’t get is if Schaeffel really had this incriminating evidence why didn’t he try to negotiate his immunity. He could have give the name of that family to Sneddon against the garanty of not being prosecuted after MJ’s conviction.

    Like

  11. Suzy permalink
    May 7, 2011 10:04 am

    It’s interesting that Friedman finishes both of these articles by advising Michael to settle with Schaffel! Of course this is exactly the purpose of these articles, to put pressure on him by innuendo and to make him settle with Schaffel who is more than likely Friedman’s “source” in this case:

    “The Schaffel case continues Thursday in Santa Monica, although I cannot understand why Jackson doesn’t borrow the money and settle out of court. More testimony in this direction, no matter how oblique, cannot be good for him.”

    “There’s more to this story, and it only gets worse. The reason all this is coming out, of course, is because the Schaffel v. Jackson trial continues without a settlement. The reason for this can be only one of two things: Jackson is either getting the worst advice ever from lawyers, who are also billing him at top dollar, or he simply doesn’t have the cash on hand to settle the case.

    My guess is it’s both, and before this trial is over, Michael Jackson’s reputation will be even more thoroughly damaged than it was last year.”

    Like

  12. shelly permalink
    May 7, 2011 9:14 am

    I find that document interesting

    Click to access 011305declyurespmotcompel06.pdf

    It’s on page 9 item 10547

    It’s a known fact that the Santa Barbara grand jury had access to the Larry Feldman reports, but I still find interesting that even with those reports, the jurors never had incriminating evidence.

    Like

  13. shelly permalink
    May 7, 2011 8:53 am

    Everyone forget that she was on the defense witness list, maybe it’s why she said nothing.

    Like

  14. Suzy permalink
    May 7, 2011 8:42 am

    @ rockforeveron

    “Yup, you can obviously see Schaffel as the source of that piece and some other stories, trying to force him to settle the case.”

    Yes, whether we can rely on Friedman depends on whose his source is. During the trial (and recently too) it was the Cascios whose infos were mainly accurate. In these articles his source clearly seems to be Schaffel or someone from Schaffel’s camp and there are a lot of inaccuracies and outright lies there. (For example the claim that there was gay porn found in Michael’s possession during the trial. The only publication found that can be maybe classified as “gay porn” was that book, Sexual Study of Man – nothing else, no magazines, no videos, no DVDs, no internet websites, nothing).

    As the other article from Shelly shows there’s no evidence of a $300.000 payment to South America. And if there would I don’t think Sneddon would not have gone after it. He had search warrants for Michael’s bank accounts as well.
    I don’t think Michael paid any family off there. Personally when I first heard of this claim of the $300.000 by Schaffel I thought it may have something to do with Blanket’s bio or surrogate mother, who I have heard is South American. But now it seems that payment maybe didn’t even happen. Clearly Schaffel is just trying to force Michael into a settlement by spreading innuendon and misinformation in the media – that includes through Friedman.

    Like

  15. Suzy permalink
    May 7, 2011 8:30 am

    Reading these articles I have to retract my praises of Friedman as a journalist from yesterday. He has so many misninformations in these two articles.

    “It was also revealed in court last year, during his child molestation trial, that Jackson had in his possession a great deal of gay pornography, which he claimed fans sent to him.”

    Not true, as we know from court documents and evidence.

    Like

  16. lynande51 permalink
    May 7, 2011 3:17 am

    One thing is certain with any hater or particular members of the media:they believe that collectively Michael Jackson fans are cognitively impaired with 2 second short term memories and non existant long term memory.They continue to call us rabid and yet the vernacular meaning of rabid (mad) in truth would appear to fit them.

    Like

  17. May 7, 2011 2:54 am

    Liz and Mike weren’t close in 2001? Liz never said anything from 2003-2005? Sigh.

    Also, funnily enough, in his own column after the acquittal an MJ was planning on leaving the country Roger said he knew that MJ had “carte blanche” to stay at her play in Gstaad.

    Like

  18. Teva permalink
    May 7, 2011 1:52 am

    Roger Friedman’s latest piece on MJ
    http://www.showbiz411.com/2011/05/05/michael-jackson-9-11-road-trip-with-brando-liz-taylor-never-happened

    Didn’t Happen: Michael Jackson, Brando, Liz Taylor Road Trip

    Sorry, guys. The “road trip” Michael Jackson supposedly took after the World Trade Center tragedies never happened. Various outlets are suddenly reporting that Michael gathered up Liz Taylor and Marlon Brando on September 12, 2001 and escaped from New York on a cross- country adventure.

    THIS DID NOT HAPPEN.

    It’s a great urban myth, and it will probably live on forever now that it’s been published on the internet. But you know, at the time, Michael and Liz Taylor weren’t so close. He’d had to give her a piece of jewelry that cost over $600,000 so she would come to his Madison Square Garden shows. Michael also paid Brando one million dollars cash so he’d come to New York and deliver the most inane speech of all time on a couch in the middle of the stage.

    So what did happen? Michael and his kids, the nanny, et al immediately decamped to their second home–that of Dominic and Connie Cascio in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. And there they stayed, a family friend confirmed for me, for two weeks. Finally, Michael and party chartered a private plane from White Plains, New York to Burbank.

    What happened to Brando and Taylor? I have no idea. But there was no “On the Road” for them. Brando weighed way too much to travel that distance by car. Taylor had way too many maladies. The Jackson family, I was told in 2001, went home on a private bus.

    Where do people get these stories? And why are they reprinted over and over without any fact checking?

    By the way, this was two years before Michael’s arrest for child molestation and conspiracy. During the entire period from 2003 through Michael’s acquittal in 2005, Taylor never said a word in public to defend Jackson. While Macaulay Culkin, Chris Tucker, and other friends testfied for Michael and went to bat for him, Taylor remained mum.

    Like

  19. May 6, 2011 9:44 pm

    Yup, you can obviously see Schaffel as the source of that piece and some other stories, trying to force him to settle the case.

    Like

  20. shelly permalink
    May 6, 2011 9:37 pm

    And he never spoke about that

    Accountant Disputes Claims Against Jackson
    13th July 2006

    By Linda Deutsch

    A forensic accountant hired by Michael Jackson’s lawyer testified Wednesday that a former associate who is now suing the singer used money from a Japanese record production company for the down payment on his own $1.9 million home rather than for the business expenses he claimed.

    Jan Goren, who showed jurors how he traced millions of dollars through the various bank accounts of F. Marc Schaffel, also said he found no substantiation for a $300,000 payment Schaffel claimed he provided to a mysterious “Mr. X” in South America on Jackson’s behalf.

    The testimony was presented as the trial neared the closing arguments phase. Schaffel’s lawsuit claims Jackson owes him $1.6 million for various endeavors he worked on for the pop star.

    Jackson’s side has sought to show Schaffel enriched himself at the singer’s expense, outweighing any sums that might actually be owed.

    Goren challenged Schaffel’s claim that he received $400,000 from a Japanese company called Music Fighters which was seeking to buy rights to Jackson’s “What More Can I Give,” an ill-fated charity recording intended to raise money for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

    Schaffel had testified that he split the amount with Jackson, each taking $200,000, but maintained that he used his half to pay business expenses.

    Goren said according to his financial detective work that was not true.

    He said the $400,000 was wired by Music Fighters on Feb. 27, 2002, to Neverland Valley Entertainment, a company Schaffel started with Jackson, and the next day it was transferred into Schaffel’s personal account.

    The accountant noted that in a deposition Schaffel said Jackson was given $200,000 in cash and the rest was kept in the Neverland Valley account to pay bills.

    “That did not happen,” said the witness.

    “Is there any support that 200,000 (dollars) went out to Mr. Jackson?” asked Thomas Mundell, Jackson’s attorney.

    “Nothing,” said the witness.

    Goren then used an easel and marker to trace Schaffel’s home purchase, showing the down payment, escrow fees, mortgages and the full price of the home at $1.9 million. He said the source of the down payment was the personal money market account, “and 400,000 that went into that account was Music Fighters money.”

    On the purported delivering of $300,000 to “Mr. X” in South America, Goren testified that Schaffel never claimed the amount until this year and “there is no check, no moneys leaving a bank … no bank statements, no ledgers.”

    “I have nothing that corroborates it from a documentary point of view,” he said.

    He noted that the entry was coded “EFT,” which refers to an electronic fund transfer to another account. But he said the amount was never transferred to or from any account.

    “My conclusion on this is it is not a valid claim,” Goren said.

    On cross-examination, Schaffel’s attorney, Howard King, challenged some of the accountant’s opinions and asked if he considered testimony by other witnesses who said they knew about some of the disputed transactions.

    Goren said he read depositions by Jackson’s business manager, Allan Whitman, but had not questioned him about any of the records.

    “You didn’t ask Mr. Whitman to see any of Michael Jackson’s records or Michael Jackson’s tax returns?” asked King.

    “I did not,” said Goren.

    “Would you have liked to have seen them?” King asked.

    “I would like to see Mr. Schaffel’s tax returns,” Goren said.

    In spite of King’s claim that he was wrong on some figures, Goren consistently asserted that there were no documents to support some of Schaffel’s claimed expenses.

    “Even when there are documents that slightly support it,” he said of one charge, “it fails and it fails miserably.”

    Asked why Whitman and others in Jackson’s financial inner circle would have approved some large payments to Schaffel, Goren said, “I think they trusted Mr. Schaffel.”

    On the issue of the $300,000, King asked if Goren had seen a receipt from a Hungarian bank.

    “No, you can show me,” said Goren.

    But it wasn’t until redirect examination by Mundell that the receipt was displayed in court. It showed a withdrawal of $258,000 from a Hungarian bank three years before Schaffel claims he was dispatched to South America on a mission for Jackson.

    “Of course this does not influence my opinion,” Goren said. “This transaction took place three years before. So what? How does it end up in South America? I don’t see the connection at all.”

    King asked Goren if he ever asked Mundell why no one had asked for the name of the recipient of the purported $300,000 payment. Goren said he had not.

    Source: Associated Press

    Like

  21. shelly permalink
    May 6, 2011 9:35 pm

    He also wrote that

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,202736,00.html

    Like

  22. shelly permalink
    May 6, 2011 9:34 pm

    Sorry I meant that

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,202306,00.html

    Like

  23. shelly permalink
    May 6, 2011 6:26 pm

    What you all said about Friedman is true for the 2005 trial but we shouldn’t forget that he reported the David and Ruby Martinez story.

    Like

  24. May 6, 2011 1:12 pm

    “what he reported about Michael most of the time proved to be accurate in the hindsight”.

    Suzy, that’s true – now that I read Friedman’s articles I am surprised to see how accurate many of them were, especially in comparison with Maureen Orth and the like. And what amazes me is the difference in the attitude towards Roger Friedman and Bashir or Victor Gutierrez, for example.

    Both Bashir and Gutierrez were investigated for slandering and misleading their interviewees (“Martin Bashir was found guilty of misleading the father of a teenage prodigy – see http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2003/apr/25/broadcasting.uknews?INTCMP=SRCH), both were found to be telling blatant lies – but look, both of them are being invited here and there, while Roger Friedman, who is a really good investigative reporter, has been fired twice for the past year!

    And they complain about his unethical reporting while Bashir’s and Gutierrez’s reporting evidently suits their requirements!

    Here is another remarkable article from Roger Friedman:

    Saturday, April 16, 2005
    By Roger Friedman

    Jacko Case: Time To Stop the Madness (Jacko is the only word I don’t like in this article, all the rest of is marvelous, just marvelous)

    It’s now time to stop the madness and declare a mistrial in California vs. Jackson. What happened on Friday in the Santa Maria courthouse should not have happened at all. Whether or not Michael Jackson is guilty of child molestation is no longer the issue.

    The Santa Barbara District Attorney’s office is now potentially guilty of exploiting a disturbed woman’s condition to get a conviction. It’s wrong, and it’s not going to achieve anything but tarnishing the reputations of their well-intentioned staff.

    The testimony on Friday of Janet Arvizo, mother of Michael Jackson’s teenage accuser, was alternately maddening and heart breaking. She came across on the stand during her cross-examination by Thomas Mesereau as a compulsive and pathological liar, a shrewd manipulator and a real operator.

    But she was also quite sad, and unable to control her emotions. At one point she declared in an aside, “I now know that Neverland is a place for booze, pornography, and sex with little boys.” The statement was immediately stricken from the record.

    In fact, Arvizo may have really alienated an already shell-shocked jury. Mesereau played a video made by Jackson’s associates in February 2003 in which Arvizo and her three children sang the pop star’s praises as a father figure. Arvizo’s appearance in the video was in stark contrast to the woman on the stand. In the film she is glamorous, with a winning smile and laugh. She resembles a darker complected version of Meg Ryan.

    But the woman on the stand now, who had to take questions every few minutes, is about 25 pounds heavier and stripped of her bubbly determination. Two years and two different people. It was startling.

    Then again, neither of these two Janet Arvizos resembles the one on a police interview tape leaked to a TV show last winter. That makes three Janets, and there are probably more to come.

    The Janet Arvizo who testified on Friday was close to the one described to me a year ago, and about whom I’ve been reporting on since then. She was feisty and obnoxious, manipulative and cunning.

    She did not shrink from fights with Mesereau. She often addressed the jury directly instead of answering Mesereau’s questions, and didn’t seem to care how Judge Rodney Melville instructed her. Her hubris was her undoing, and it was magnificent and tragic.

    She had sharp recollections of things that interested her and no memories of dates, times, or places that could undermine her case. She couldn’t recall, for example, how much money her children or ex-husband received in their settlement from JC Penney. She also could not remember how she met a Los Angeles police officer, how they became friends, or if he once gave her a ride in his car.

    She couldn’t remember how many times she’d discussed the current case with her lawyer, Larry Feldman, the same man who secured a $20 million settlement for another Jackson accuser in 1993.

    Building on a theme she started Thursday concerning Jackson’s group as “masters of choreography,” Arvizo nearly stopped court entirely when Mesereau brought up a visit she made to a Los Olivos salon while staying at Neverland.

    First they tussled over whether she received a “body wax” or a “leg wax.” She insisted it was the latter, and also claimed she’d paid for it. That was a mistake. Mesereau, of course, had the receipt for $140, which showed multiple beauty treatments including leg, bikini and lip waxing, and a manicure. “Do you want to see the receipt?” Mesereau offered.

    Arvizo refused, claiming that he’d somehow changed it. It was another example of what she termed the Jackson team’s masterful “choreography.”

    “Who paid for it?” Mesereau demanded. Arvizo refused to answer several times, finally claiming: “I don’t know.” She also said it was all a plot to enhance Jackson’s P.R.

    There was more. It seemed endless, and painful. Mesereau walked her through the “rebuttal video,” an interview with her and her three children that wasn’t finished in time to be included in a Jackson TV special. Even though all four members of the family seem relaxed and spontaneous, Arvizo insisted over and over again it was scripted.

    When this position became ludicrous to maintain, she refused to back down. Instead, she embellished the story. “Dieter [Wiesner] worked with me on it ten times a day so I could memorize the lines. I was acting!” she declared continuously, speaking of Jackson’s former manager.

    Wiesner, she said, wrote every word of it, despite the fact that he’s German, has a poor command of English, and had no contact with Arvizo — by her admission — after about a week.

    There wasn’t a single person in the room who believed her.

    The rebuttal video may also have proven her a liar. On it, she makes reference several times to the Martin Bashir special, “Living with Michael Jackson.”

    In an outtake, she instructs the video director to “make it like in Bashir,” i.e. showing her clasping hands with her son: a very specific image. But Arvizo, her new husband and her kids have insisted in all their testimony thus far that she has never seen the documentary.

    What was most striking, though, about Arvizo’s video performance was her incredible disloyalty to her then boyfriend, now husband, retired US Army Major Jay Jackson.

    Even though Jackson was supporting her and her kids at the time of the rebuttal video, Arvizo pretended he didn’t exist. Over and over in the video she and her children praised Jackson as a father figure who’d completed their family.

    Their compliments could not have been more effusive or sycophantic, and they were all the more creepy considering they had a real father figure at home. Never mind that their biological father was a convicted abuser whom the mother has accused of everything short of sinking the Andrea Doria.

    The worst moment came right before court was recessed for the weekend. It was then that Arvizo, who’d shown us high and low moments of great extremes, finally burst into tears, though not because she thought her son had been molested by Michael Jackson. It was because she conceded that she did not accompany her husband to Army functions.

    “I’m not smart enough to be with those people,” she said, and sobbed. Even Jackson and his mother, Katherine, must have felt for this woman. Abused, destroyed, mentally broken, there is nothing left to her. More cross-examination on Monday seems almost beside the point. She needs help.

    And then there was District Attorney Tom Sneddon, who sat not with the other prosecutors during this brutal performance, but on a bench behind them. In full view of the jury, Sneddon sat with his head often in his hands, looking askance at what he’s wrought. Sneddon has devoted the last twelve years to proving Jackson is a child molester, but he chose the wrong case and the wrong people to close his deal.

    That was clearly conveyed to the jury on Friday. The whole thing is mind-boggling. But for Sneddon to continue the public torture of this battered soul would be worse than trying to finish the case. His one chance for redemption is to call a halt to this nightmare before it gets worse. That will ensure him a better legacy than the one he may have created for himself.

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,153655,00.html

    Like

  25. May 6, 2011 12:49 pm

    We know he was investigated by DCFS and that’s how 1993 started. It’s all in my 1993 article in detail. Read what I wrote under part 3 in the comments

    Like

  26. May 6, 2011 12:28 pm

    “I don’t know when MJ was interviewed by the DCFS. But I remember they investigated the case after the Bashir interview and they closed it by saying they have no reason to believe MJ molested children. And later Sneddon called them “incompetent”. “

    Suzy, what is absolutely fantastic about the current DCFS statement is their revelation that they interviewed Michael for hours in the 1993 case and didn’t find anything incriminating! See for yourself:

    Michael Jackson was investigated by DCFS on and off for at least 10 years. The department undertook a first extensive investigation of allegations made by an underage accuser in 1993.

    “Michael was fully cooperative during all of his interactions with DCFS,” the source said.

    “Michael was interviewed for hours without his lawyer. He held nothing back. He couldn’t understand why these allegations were being made against him.

    DCFS cleared him on any wrongdoing in ALL investigations.”

    http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2011/05/katherine-jackson-michael-jackson-today-show-child-molester-pedophile-los-angeles

    Like

  27. Suzy permalink
    May 6, 2011 12:27 pm

    @ Helena

    I think the negative description of Friedman in the quoted article has more to do with politics than anything. He is emphasized to be a “liberal” (almost as if it’s a negative thing) while the writer of the article is a “proud” Republican (you can see that when you click on her profile). Also calling another person “frog-faced” and mock his looks is anything but professional. So much about who is ethical and who isn’t.

    I don’t know what he reported about Mel Gibson, but what he reported about Michael most of the time proved to be accurate in the hindsight. (And I think his source was mainly Frank Cascio. )

    Like

  28. May 6, 2011 11:11 am

    “And I think most of the time Friedman is truthful too. He might sometimes have an opinion that we disagree with or that we don’t like, but I think mostly he is trying to be as truthful as he can. While others have agendas and are deliberately lying for those agendas or out of sensationalism or to fit into the mainstream”

    Suzy, I absolutely agree. This is why I am amazed that of all journalists it was Roger Friedman (and not Bashir or Maureen Orth, etc.) who was fired – twice within the last year according to this article:

    Los Angeles
    Liberal reporter Roger Friedman loses second job within a year
    March 28th, 2010 11:08 pm PT

    Lisa Carter

    Frog-faced liberal entertainment reporter Roger Friedman has been fired “let go” from The Hollywood Reporter, where he was hired after he was fired from Fox News last year. Roger Friedman is known for unethical reporting that first became known in 2004 when he made up a very negative story about Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ.
    Los Angeles based reporter Nikki Finke broke the story yesterday. Roger Friedman emailed Nikki Finke to say he was “not fired or let go.” He then explained that he was simply released because they decided not to renew his contract. However, THR editor Elizabeth Guider said that they decided to go for a different editorial direction.
    An insider tells this column that THR received several complaints about Roger Friedman’s articles being factually inaccurate. We praise THR for getting rid of this vile hack, but what exactly were they thinking when they hired this guy in the first place?

    http://www.examiner.com/african-american-conservative-in-los-angeles/liberal-reporter-roger-friedman-loses-second-job-within-a-year

    The above article says Friedman was fired for “unethical reporting”, however when I analyze his (best) articles I don’t find anything unethical about them. What surprises me is that an honest reporter is fired twice while pseudo-reporters like Bashir and Victor Gutierrez are very much in demand!

    Another of Friedman’s articles http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,143617,00.html:

    Blueprint for the Case Against MJ?
    (Friedman called him Jacko which is replaced here)

    “My sources tell me that Santa Barbara District Attorney Tom Sneddon used his 1993 case against Michael Jackson as a blueprint for the current one.

    In fact, in legal papers summarized on TheSmokingGun.com, it appears that some of the actual wording from the ’93 case worked its way into the latest one.

    Sneddon, my sources say, based most of his first complaint against Jackson last winter on the ’93 case, using it as a comparison and a foundation until he could dig up more current evidence.

    Interestingly, testimony ascribed to the mother of the boy — we’ll call her Janet X — in the new case sounds exactly like similar complaints from the parents in the ’93 case.

    According to The Smoking Gun: “The boy’s mother said that, during 2001, she complained to Jackson about the length of his telephone chats with her son — and that Jackson was upset with her criticism. Asked by investigators about her recollections of those calls, she said that her son mentioned things that struck her as ‘peculiar.’ For instance, Jackson’s favorite color was the same as her son’s favorite color. And ‘whatever [her son] liked, Michael liked as well.'”

    Jackson’s defense attorneys may be able to dredge up almost the exact wording from articles and books about the boy in the 1993 case. They could point out that Janet X and her military boyfriend, now her husband, Jay Jackson (no relation to Michael’s family), could have studied those stories and statements by the parents of the first boy.

    Similar anecdotes, for example, can be found in “All That Glitters,” the self-published book by the first boy’s uncle Ray Chandler. Stories that are themselves re-lived from previous incarnations.

    The Smoking Gun people have done an incredible job of piecing together affidavits, warrants and testimony previously unavailable or redacted in the latest case. But even their writers seem incredulous about some things offered by Jackson’s teen accuser and his brother, who is a year younger.

    For example, the brothers claimed to officials the reason why they couldn’t pinpoint any dates or times was because “there are no clocks or calendars at Neverland. It’s a like a sealed Las Vegas casino.”

    In fact, The Smoking Gun writers point out that there’s a huge outdoor clock right in the middle of the estate. My own sources laughed when I read them this part of the boys’ accusations.

    “There are clocks everywhere, everyone has watches and there are calendars in the offices. There’s a big clock in the kitchen” where the accusing boy and his brother gave their famous TV interviews to Martin Bashir, a source said.

    This entire latest “scoop” drawn from so-far-unseen material is indeed not very revealing. Most of it has been “scooped” a long time ago, either in this column or sometimes in the tabloids.

    What does seem odd is that the grand jury, presented with no opposing evidence from the defense, believed everything it heard without questioning. In one instance, they were told that Jackson showed the boys a laptop computer and immediately went to a pornographic Web site.

    “It was the kids who went to the Web sites. Michael was busy elsewhere. The kids knew exactly where to go,” my source, who was there, said.

    One thing the documents do confirm: Jackson had no contact with the family in 2001. The stated reason was because the boy was having treatments for cancer, which was already in remission.

    But my sources remind us that in 2001, Jackson was busy making and releasing his “Invincible” album, preparing and executing his 30th-anniversary solo shows at Madison Square Garden and his subsequent debacle of a charity single, “What More Can I Give?”

    If the family was so important to Jackson and he was busy cultivating the oldest one as a victim, why weren’t they invited to New York for the concerts and all the surrounding hoopla?

    Indeed, during 2001, the family was busy being entertained by Chris Tucker and Brett Ratner on the set of “Rush Hour 2,” and later in the year, accepting gifts and charity from the Los Angeles Police Department — all of which was first chronicled in this column.

    There are more glaring inconsistencies in the papers examined by The Smoking Gun, and I suppose it will take spin doctors on both sides to explain them to us.

    For example, why didn’t Janet X stop Jackson when she saw him licking the top of her son’s head on an airplane? Why didn’t she berate him or mention it again?

    Or, how is it that the younger boy, who seems to be the eyewitness and mouthpiece for the family, gained the nickname of “Blowhole”?

    The answer, say my sources, who have photographic evidence, is not sexual. It’s because the kid was so fat they compared him to a blowfish”.

    Like

  29. May 6, 2011 10:56 am

    “overall at least Friedman has done his job and researched things thoroughly before reporting them. And yes, he came to the conclusion Michael was innocent because you cannot come to any other conclusion when you do your research honestly.”

    Suzy, I fully agree with you in estimation of Friedman’s efforts. You can’t imagine how many truthful articles I found in Friedman’s archives. Here is one of them about an interview with the Arvizos made before the rebuttal video where they again praised Michael:

    A long forgotten newspaper interview may save Michael Jackson’s bleached hide in his child molestation case.

    “The interview by reporter David Gardner in London’s Daily Mail was conducted with the mother of the boy featured in the Martin Bashir documentary “Living with Michael Jackson.” Gardner also interviewed comedy club owner Jamie Masada, who had brought the boy to Jackson’s attention three years earlier.
    Because the documentary aired in Britain three days sooner that it did in the U.S., Gardner was able to catch the mother before she and her kids were whisked off to meet Jackson in Miami on Chris Tucker’s private jet. The interview was published in London on Feb. 8 and in Sydney on Feb. 9, but never made it to our shores.

    Both the mother and Masada wax enthusiastic about Jackson in the interview. This was before the mother’s claims that she was being manipulated or her comments were scripted by Jackson’s team. In fact, my sources say she received $4,000 for her story from the Daily Mail, which she turned over to her own mother.
    But the statements made by the mother and Masada could come back to haunt them. At the time, people were furious that Jackson was holding hands with the boy on TV and talking about kids sleeping in his bed. Gardner, aware of the outrage, asks Masada about possible child abuse.

    “[The boy] said they had fun and played games. [The boy] is not a naive kid. He would have said if something bad had happened,” he said
    Here, we have very early confirmation of what many consider the boy’s abrasive and aggressive qualities. He is no wallflower, as director Brett Ratner pointed out in this column some months ago. Ratner said that when the boy visited the set of “Rush Hour 2,” he refused to vacate the director’s chair and cursed Ratner out in the process.

    The boy also reportedly shot his mother in the leg with a BB gun and told the Department of Child Services she was guilty of abuse. This, the defense may argue, is not a kid who hangs back for 10 weeks and says nothing.
    The mother of the boy widely portrayed as a scheming, Machiavellian grifter looking for a payday arguably sinks her own ship in the Daily Mail story. She boasted to Gardner about her hopes that Jackson would include her kids in his entourage “when he travels around the world.”

    That comment, when probed by defense attorneys, is certainly a set up for why the Jackson team thought the mother would agree to go to Brazil for a cooling off period. Suddenly, the obtaining of passports doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

    The mother also sang Jackson’s praises in the Gardner piece, unprompted or coached by anyone.
    “Michael has brought something special to our lives,” the mother told Gardner.

    She also underscores her own son’s grand jury testimony that he asked Jackson if he could call him “Daddy,” since his own father was gone.
    “He has pet names for all my children and [my son] even calls him ‘Daddy.’ He is the father they never had. He is a saint to them,” she said.
    At the time, it apparently didn’t bother her that her daughter was exempt from nicknames and that Jackson dubbed her sons “Apple Head” and “Blow Hole.”

    Gardner, a respected British journalist, was first on the scene with the family, thanks to the early UK broadcast. He observed that the mother was doing all she could to encourage the relationship between Jackson and her kids. And no matter what the mother eventually told a grand jury a year later, she didn’t have any objections to the kids staying overnight with Jackson on Feb. 8, 2003.

    “I am not worried about Michael at all. He has been so good to all of us. Sometimes they stay overnight. I am totally comfortable with that,” she said. “They are happy with him and have a lot of fun. I don’t need to be there all the time.”

    The mother said the traveling was something Jackson actually had promised them.
    “This is what he told them all will happen. It’s a dream come true for them. He is their angel,” she said.

    But this column reported that after her child custody hearing for more financial support from her ex-husband was over on March 11, 2003, the mother became enraged that Jackson had not fulfilled perceived promises. My sources say she told Jackson associate Vincent Amen: “Michael promised my kids careers.”

    The defense will argue that the family was eased out of Neverland and Jackson’s life after that weekend and that the mother, embittered about returning to her regular life, concocted the story of child molestation.

    The mother, by the way, told Gardner that at one point she and her children were so poor they lived in a horse stable in Bakersfield, Calif. and slept on hay. But nothing about the stable has ever been mentioned again, even in grand jury testimony. She almost certainly did not tell Gardner that she had been the recipient of monies from several fundraising drives over the previous three years, including one by the Los Angeles Police Department.

    Gabriel Blows Her Horn and Her Credibility
    Ann Gabriel, aka Ann Kite, worked for Michael Jackson for a total of six days: Feb. 9 to Feb. 15, 2003. But yesterday she was called as a prosecution witness in the Jackson trial as an expert. If her open court testimony was at all similar to what she told a grand jury last year, Gabriel made a lot of mistakes.

    In her grand jury testimony, published on the web by The Smoking Gun, In her grand jury testimony, published on the web by The Smoking Gun, Gabriel made two statements that continue to define her self-enlarged role in this story.
    She claimed that Las Vegas attorney David LeGrand told her on Feb. 9, 2003, that the Jackson team had the accuser’s family on tape and that the mother would come off “like a crack whore.”

    Gabriel also claimed that Jackson aide Marc Schaffel told her he was worried the family would sell their story to a British tabloid.
    Each of those statements is problematic. For one thing, no videotape of the family was made until Feb. 20, one day after Gabriel had been fired. On Feb. 9, no video of them existed at all.

    As for telling their story: Too late! Gabriel’s statement that Schaffel was worried could not be correct. Why? On Feb. 9, two days after the family returned to California with Jackson from Miami, the Sunday Mail in London ran an interview with the mother and with the man who introduced her to Jackson, Jamie Masada. The mother, according to my sources, asked for and received $4,000 from the reporter, David Gardner.

    This was on Feb. 9. Three months later, the boy suddenly recalled that between Feb. 20 and March 10, something in appropriate did happen. The boy, knowing the whole world was watching, didn’t mention anything for about 10 weeks. Either Masada is a poor judge of character or the boy fabricated his story”.

    Like

  30. May 6, 2011 10:00 am

    “I found that article on radar online. http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2011/05/katherine-jackson-michael-jackson-today-show-child-molester-pedophile-los-angeles

    Shelly, what a wonderful find! The DCFS is a real authority in this field – they investigate hundreds of cases each year and know who is who! Guys, please back it up with your comments on radaronline and spread the information!

    Like

  31. shelly permalink
    May 5, 2011 8:40 pm

    By Jen Heger
    Radar Legal Editor

    With Katherine Jackson ratcheting up the debate about her son Michael Jackson’s relationship with children by saying he was no child molester, a well-placed government source tells RadarOnline she’s right.

    “The Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services absolutely agrees with Katherine that her son never molested any child in cases the department investigated,” a source told RadarOnline.

    Michael Jackson was investigated by DCFS on and off for at least 10 years. The department undertook a first extensive investigation of allegations made by an underage accuser in 1993.

    “Michael was fully cooperative during all of his interactions with DCFS,” the source said. “Michael was interviewed for hours without his lawyer. He held nothing back. He couldn’t understand why these allegations were being made against him. DCFS cleared him on any wrongdoing in ALL investigations.

    Authorities: There’s Never Been Evidence Michael Jackson Was A Pedophile!Authorities: There’s Never Been Evidence Michael Jackson Was A Pedophile!
    ——————————————————————————–
    Posted on May 05, 2011 @ 03:43PM print it send it
    Splash NewsBy Jen Heger
    Radar Legal Editor

    With Katherine Jackson ratcheting up the debate about her son Michael Jackson’s relationship with children by saying he was no child molester, a well-placed government source tells RadarOnline she’s right.

    “The Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services absolutely agrees with Katherine that her son never molested any child in cases the department investigated,” a source told RadarOnline.

    PHOTOS: The Jackson family at court in Los Angeles

    Michael Jackson was investigated by DCFS on and off for at least 10 years. The department undertook a first extensive investigation of allegations made by an underage accuser in 1993.

    “Michael was fully cooperative during all of his interactions with DCFS,” the source said. “Michael was interviewed for hours without his lawyer. He held nothing back. He couldn’t understand why these allegations were being made against him. DCFS cleared him on any wrongdoing in ALL investigations.

    PHOTOS: La Toya and Katherine Jackson arriving at UCLA Medical Center

    “Did Michael put himself in precarious situations that most normal people wouldn’t? Absolutely . . . The questioning was very, very hard on Michael, he just couldn’t fathom that anyone could accuse him of being a child molester.”

    Another accuser, in 2005, “had absolutely no credibility,” the source said. “There were differing accounts of what happened from the accuser and his family members.”

    PHOTOS: Janet Jackson Through The Years

    Los Angeles’ DCFS also investigated claims of abuse last year involving Michael Jackson’s three children. Michael’s nephew, Jaafar, allegedly used a stun gun on Michael’s son, Blanket. After an extensive investigation, DCFS again took no action in the 2010 stun gun incident.

    “Katherine was questioned by officials from the department, and as always, she was cooperative but saddened,” the source said. “Katherine feels that her family has been targeted by opportunists over the years, and she just hopes that was the last time she ever has to go through that.”

    Like

  32. Suzy permalink
    May 5, 2011 8:40 pm

    @ Shelly

    It’s great to see something like this in mainstream media. I don’t know when MJ was interviewed by the DCFS. But I remember they investigated the case after the Bashir interview and they closed it by saying they have no reason to believe MJ molested children. And later Sneddon called them “incompetent”. I guess he didn’t like their conclusion, LOL.

    Like

  33. shelly permalink
    May 5, 2011 8:20 pm

    I found that article on radar online.

    http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2011/05/katherine-jackson-michael-jackson-today-show-child-molester-pedophile-los-angeles

    When did the DCFS interviewed Michael?

    Like

  34. May 5, 2011 7:58 pm

    “It is also my opinion that someone is still paying the Arvizos for their contribution to bringing down Michael Jackson and it would be my guess that it is Louise Palanker, Ron Zonen, Tom Sneddon and Diane Dimond.Why? Because Janet Arvizo doesn’t do anything without monetary reward and that would be the only thing keeping her quiet.” – Lynette

    Guys, as regards money I wonder if the police paid any money to the Arvizos from a victim’s compensation fund – the same way it was done in an alleged rape case case described in the article I’ve found in the Spanish forum http://mjhideout.com/forum/archive/t-39915.html:

    By JON SARCHE, Associated Press Writer
    DENVER – Kobe Bryant’s defense team says the woman accusing him of rape has received more than $17,000 from a victims’ compensation fund in what it calls a rich incentive to pursue a false claim against the NBA star, according to a court transcript released Thursday.
    The 20-year-old woman would be ineligible for at least $17,000 she has already received if she lied about the alleged rape, defense attorney Pamela Mackey argued in a June 21 hearing. She said the woman would have to reimburse the fund if lies were discovered – even more incentive to go forward with the case.
    “The accuser has profited to an enormous amount, $20,000, I would suspect to most people in this county is a lot of money, most of our jurors, and she has done that on the basis of a false allegation and has persisted in that false allegation,” she said.

    This means that if the Arvizos also received money from the police they will never admit that they lied or otherwise they will have to return the money they might have received from those funds.

    Another article shows that they could have received money from the police (sorry for the Google translation from Spanish):

    THE boy who accused Michael Jackson of molesting LIVES IN A LUXURY HOME

    “Police in New Jersey last week seized several items of Michael Jackson, including underpants, which could constitute evidence of pedophilia in the case hanging over him. Meanwhile the life of Gavin Arvizo, the teenager who accused the singer had abused him in February 2003, has taken a radical turn.

    His family, of humble origin, now lives in a luxurious home in the exclusive neighborhood of Beverly Hills and has a new car, valued at $ 21,000, which used to take Gavin to shop, ice cream shop and video store.

    Major Jay Jackson works in the category of administrative personnel in the Army Reserve United States and also combines this activity with an instructor in the cadet corps, a paramilitary organization in which he admitted Gavin.

    Meanwhile, Michael Jackson, who faces a sentence of more than 20 years and is on bail, has deposited with the concept three million dollars, insists that Gavin is being manipulated by their parents as said in an interview in December last year. This accusation is reinforced by sources close to the Arvizo family, who say Jay has an authoritarian character and plays an important role in the lives of youth.

    The truth is that Jay, 42 years, after the television appearance of Gavin in the UK and the controversy raised by their statements, requested $ 15,000 from the reporters who were interested in the history of the relationship between pop star and teen “
    http://mjhideout.com/forum/archive/t-37340.html

    One more article says that Jay Jackson was “a powerful player” in the Arvizo case.

    The article was published in the forum on 20/04/2004 (sorry for the translation again):

    According to the newspaper, Jay is involved in all aspects of family life including discipline. On January 18, they were traveling and at one point in the street, Gavin and his sister began to argue. Jay ordered “Go into the car, now!” They obeyed.

    In court papers for divorce from the mother, the brother of 13 years said they never wanted to see his father: “My stepfather [mother’s boyfriend] was more of a father in two years than was my father 13 years of life ”

    Since I met the family two years ago, Jay has become a powerful player in the shade.

    Last year he moved from his apartment in Los Angeles to hire his own expensive house in the Wilshire district.

    When the media began the chase after the indictment of Michael, Jay took the family to live with him.

    “Major Jackson is watching the kid like a hawk,” says a source “and he is their main driver for the boy entered the Sea Cadet Corps – a military training camp designed to teach self-discipline.

    It is unclear whether there was an important role in the family’s decision to accuse Michael. But in February 2003, before the boy disclosed the abuse, Jay negotiated to sell the rights of family history with a journalist for $ 15,000.

    The journalist approached the family on February 4, 2003, the day after they broadcast the Martin Bashir documentary in Britain, but two days before it was issued in USA.

    The agreement did not materialize because the family that got along with Michael Jackson, who disappeared on February 5, 2003.

    It was said that Michael Jackson flew them to Miami, where they stayed in a luxury hotel with Chris Tucker and his wife while the Bashir documentary aired on February 6.

    Before the gag order, Mark Geragos said the mother had a failed attempt to get money from Michael before the outbreak of accusations.

    Few people know something of Jay’s past, but according to court documents, he filed for bankruptcy in Virginia in November 1998.

    http://mjhideout.com/forum/archive/t-36653.html

    Like

  35. Suzy permalink
    May 5, 2011 7:42 pm

    And I think most of the time Friedman is truthful too. He might sometimes have an opinion that we disagree with or that we don’t like, but I think mostly he is trying to be as truthful as he can. While others have agendas and are deliberately lying for those agendas or out of sensationalism or to fit into the mainstream (which is anything but Michael-friendly).

    I’m not saying his a saint or he never gets anything wrong but when it comes to info about Michael I think he is one of the more trustworthy journalists. He will not just make up stuff in my opinion, like many other journalists do.

    Like

  36. Suzy permalink
    May 5, 2011 7:34 pm

    My opinion about Roger Friedman is that whether you like him or not, he is probably one of the very few journalists who actually did his job. I know most fans don’t like him because he has also made some derogatory comments about Michael. Those are not good to read for us who like Michael, but overall at least Friedman has done his job and researched things thoroughly before reporting them. And yes, he came to the conclusion Michael was innocent because you cannot come to any other conclusion when you do your research honestly.

    You cannot expect journalists to be fans and always hold the same opinions as fans would. Sometimes RF might have been disrespectful, but he is by far among the better and more fair journalists who have ever reported on Michael. And one of the most informative ones too, who indeed have had insiders in Michael’s camp, unlike those who lied they had but didn’t, like Orth and Ian Halperin. (I mention Halperin because I noticed he too stole a lot of information from Friedman. That guy was never in Michael’s camp like he claimed! He was just recycling information that could be found in other articles – mainly in Friedman’s – and then sold them as his own exclusive insider research! And then added his own spins and lies too.)

    So Friedman is at least a real journalist with real research, while many others actually live of plagiarism and making up lies!

    Like

  37. May 5, 2011 6:21 pm

    “I don’t consider Friedman a credible source of information. Nor is he always pro-MJ. In fact, like many others he will often get his facts wrong when it comes to discussing situations where it is really really important to get the facts right.”

    Carm, of course Roger Friedman is not pro-MJ and of course he made mistakes, but he at least tried to be informative and more or less unbiased while the others made up horror stories about Michael and never answered for it.

    This is what Roger Friedman said about Maureen Orth practically refuting most of her allegations – very few journalists went to so great lengths to stand for the truth (later she sued him for it as far as I understood):

    “I am fairly amused by Maureen Orth’s big-deal story about Michael Jackson that Vanity Fair has been trumpeting the last 24 hours. You’d think from the headlines that Orth had been working night and day on this.

    But maybe she’s just been reading the Fox411.

    We are grateful for the bone she tosses us early in the piece, when Orth kindly mentions this column revealed that Jackson’s Heal the World Foundation was out of business. Thanks, Maureen!

    But the 10,000-word piece relies heavily on information found right here, including almost all of the financial information about Jackson we reported last July. Everything about Michael being leveraged, about the $2-million watch he couldn’t afford, about the Beatles catalog and his Sony loans – all of it is in our archives

    Also, the papers from Myung Ho Lee’s court case against Jackson, including the budget breakdown of his expenses were detailed here and then picked up by the New York Post, which credited this column last summer.

    When I called Orth to complain about the similarities in material, she insisted that all her work was original, that she’d never heard of this column or read the July 27, 2002, story in the New York Post that credited us.

    “I’ve been writing about Michael Jackson since 1993,” she said.

    The information about Shmuley Boteach, which Orth also includes, was in this column.

    In fact, if you take out everything Orth learned about Jackson from the Fox411, you’re not left with much. Just the voodoo stuff (which amounts to a couple of paragraphs) and regurgitated information about Jackson’s alleged 13-year-old victim of molestation.

    Orth reels off the name of Frank Tyson, Jackson’s “assistant,” and throws in that his real last name is “Cascio.” That was here, too, although there’s something Orth obviously didn’t understand from her reading of the Lee papers: Cascio’s father got $600,000 from Jackson to start a restaurant that does not exist to this day. Frank Tyson/Cascio also goes by the name of Frank Armstrong when he’s registered in hotels with Jackson.

    Myung Ho Lee was so desperate to contact Jackson at one point he sent young Frank a pleading letter at the New York Palace Hotel to put them in touch. Maureen, if you want the letter, I have it.

    But here’s what Orth simply ignored rather than deal with:
    GQ, another Conde Nast magazine, laid out a compelling story in 1994 in which the family that settled with Jackson was accused of extortion by investigative reporter Mary A. Fischer. Fischer is very much still around and has access to a tape recording of members of the family conspiring to ruin Jackson.

    Does this mean Jackson is innocent of child molestation? I have no idea. But I do know there was more to this story than Orth reports. She fails to mention that family now owns a $2.5-million home in the Hamptons, a fancy high-rise apartment in Manhattan and a condo in Santa Barbara. She also omits Fischer’s strongest revelation: that the child was submitted to the drug Sodium Amytol in order to secure his allegations. This is not a truth serum, as some believe, but a potent cocktail used for creating memories with impressionable patients.

    “Right after the GQ piece came out, the district attorney’s office dropped the criminal case against Michael,” says a source. “They had a flimsy case and they knew it.”

    Fischer, by the way, is said to be livid at Orth, who did use some of Fischer’s work in a 1995 Vanity Fair piece. Fischer, friends say, worked for five months reporting her GQ story only to see it wind up in Vanity Fair.

    I know the feeling. I spent months last year digging up legal papers on Jackson, making hundreds of phone calls and sending/receiving endless faxes, only to see it laid out in Vanity Fair as news. Hot stuff, huh?

    As for Orth’s assertion Jackson is “finished” with Sony, this is a conclusion that could only have been drawn by columns I wrote six months ago. However, I was told yesterday by insiders that since the departure of Tommy Mottola from Sony, things have cooled off.

    Jackson’s lawyer, John Branca, is now in negotiations to get Jackson a new deal at Sony, at least for one new album as well as a boxed set he was preparing for the company. Even though right after Mottola left, Sony business-side people said it would never happen, it is happening.

    Orth does not mention that Sony’s chief, Nobuyuki Idei, loves Jackson and wants him to stay. Idei was planning a video game based on Invincible last spring when the Mottola-Jackson feud exploded into the press. Idei was so angry he engineered the end of Mottola.

    So what about Orth’s voodoo story? Anything’s possible, right? But Steven Spielberg and David Geffen have always been friendly with Jackson. John McClain, Jackson’s permanent manager and longtime family friend, works at DreamWorks Records for Geffen and Spielberg. This highly unusual arrangement is because of their largesse. And let’s not forget that since the voodoo “curse,” DreamWorks has won three Best Picture Academy Awards. Spielberg has had three hit films. So I guess it didn’t work.

    Finally, I am told that Jackson’s other manager, Trudy Green, resigned the account a few days before the Martin Bashir interview broke on Granada TV. Why? Jackson never mentioned to any of his advisers that Bashir was even interviewing him. Green didn’t find out until she got a call from someone at an American network who told her Granada was offering the rights to the show.

    Green, according to my sources, called Branca, who was stumped. “By that time there was nothing anyone could do,” my source says.

    Now Jackson is being managed by a highly suspect group in Germany, but that’s another story. It’s one that I’ll write, and maybe Vanity Fair can use it later this year as source material. I’m happy to be of service”.

    (cited from the Spanish forum:
    http://mjhideout.com/forum/noticias-y-rumores/19696-friedman-se-queja-de-que-vanity-fair-le-copia-noticias-nuevo-contrato-sony.html)

    Like

  38. May 4, 2011 2:38 am

    @Dialdancer

    It was very obvious from around January/February onwards with Roger Friedman in 2005 that one of his sources was Bob Jones. A lot of journalists seemed to use Bob as their anonymous source, including obviously also Maureen Orth.

    Like

  39. Dialdancer permalink
    May 3, 2011 4:43 am

    I forgot. Is it just a rumor or is there any truth to a statement made that Sneddon took the 2003 father I assumed this person meant Mr. Arvizo, but maybe they meant Jay to meet with the 93 accuser’s father? I cannot tell where I saw this, it was may have been a Fan post, but I do remember seeing not too long after MJ died.

    Like

  40. Dialdancer permalink
    May 3, 2011 4:33 am

    Ok got a bunch of questions.

    @ Lynette,

    “It was never that the police were not looking at the extortion it was part of the settlement that Michael had to drop the charges of extortion against Evan, Barry Rothman and probably Jordan.”

    So why did they only publicize their investigation into the molestation allegations? The Chandlers had to remove their accusation in order for the settlement to go through isn’t alleged extortion just as serious a crime as alleged molestation? Not once have I seen any article or watched an interview by the authorities where they say they were looking into both accusations.

    “The next time they see Michael is when he calls them at the urging of Martin Bashir to come do the interview Living With Michael Jackson.”

    Really a rhetorical question, why urge Michael to use this particular family out the hundred of children he had helped by giving them access to his ranch?

    @ Stacy2,

    “Did you guys read her open letter to Rabbi Schmuley?”

    No I have not read anything from or about the dishonorable Rabbi since he announced the release of his first betrayal publication. What did she say? Louise knew, heck Zonen admitted during the LA Bar Assoc Seminar it was a set up.

    As for Roger I think he later came to regret not spending time checking out the facts for himself, I believe he relied upon a source which later proved to be unreliable if not down right untruthful. Here is something which struck me as unusual, during the time when many online sites and local news sites claimed they could not afford to investigate the reports and therefore were forced to rely upon the major networks for their stories, he and Geraldo were reporting almost counter to the rest. Friedman even more so than Geraldo reported daily testimony from Prosecution and Defense witnesses, questioned the molestation/kidnapping timeline and told of Sneddon’s meetings with Janet in Los Angeles. How is it that he was able to do this then and now, but others excuse their involvement by implying their reports were being dictated to them by higher ups?

    Like

  41. Julie permalink
    May 2, 2011 11:44 pm

    I don’t think Louise Palanker truly believes Gavin is innocent or she wouldn’t have made the statements to the police about the family that she did — that is until she got on the stand and Mesereau questioned her about it. She is the woman who gave the family $20,000 to redo Gavin’s room and then found out they didn’t use the money to pay the contractor, but rather purchased a new TV and other things. However, if she is that goober Zonen’s woman, what else is she going to say. He doesn’t mind getting up and saying what a wonderful upstanding citizen Gavin is either because if he told the truth he would have to admit that he, Sneddon and Auchincloss put an innocent man through hell just to give Sneddon a thrill.

    Like

  42. stacy2 permalink
    May 2, 2011 10:04 pm

    I don’t believe Louise Palanker was involved in any conspiracy to get Michael Jackson. She sincerely believes Gavin’s a victim and that he told the truth on the witness stand. Did you guys read her open letter to Rabbi Schmuley?

    Like

  43. lynande51 permalink
    May 2, 2011 1:02 am

    They might have started after her testimony which was quite early in the trial.

    Like

  44. lcpledwards permalink
    May 2, 2011 12:45 am

    @ Shelly
    Here is a comment that Lynette posted in another post about her theory as to how Louise Palanker is more involved in the case then many people think. This should answer all of your questions about her.

    And to answer your other questions, Zonen and Palanker started dating a few years ago, although I don’t know if it was during or after the trial ended (probably after.) They became engaged last year. Her radio show started in 2006 or 07, I think.

    My thoughts are now and have been since the first time I saw Larry Nimmers “The Untold Story of Neverland” that this case was actually orchestrated between a select group of people. Louise Palanker is a wealthy woman, her money is in broadcasting. She knew the Arvizos prior to Gavin having cancer. She now shares a satellite radio show with Diane Dimond called “Talk Back Radio”. She gave the Arvizos $20,000 when Gavin was sick. They wrote her letters, nearly identical to the letters they wrote Michael, calling her Mommy Wheezy among other things. This is important that they knew her prior to the cancer and meeting Michael Jackson. She knew exactly what this family was like yet she would visit Gavin in the hospital. She knew Diane Dimond and Diane Dimond had an idea in her head about the “type” of boy that supposedly appealed to Michael and Gavin fit the bill.

    Aphrodite Jones said in her book that Gavin had an “unknown” cancer. I am here to tell you that in the year 2000 there was no such thing. The “unknown “part came from Janet Arvizo. Why would she call it unknown when it would have clearly been fully explained to her by the oncologist and the nurses several times over while Gavin was in chemotherapy? Well because it sounds more ominous and life threatening than the reality. After watching her describe his cancer in Larry Nimmers documentary, and reading Gavin’s’ description during his testimony I can be 99% sure that what Gavin had was a Wilms Tumor. It is a rare tumor of the adrenal gland that grows very rapidly and to a very large size. This is 92% successfully treated with surgery to remove the kidney which is where the adrenal gland is located. In Gavin’s case the doctors removed his spleen probably to safely remove the tumor and surrounding lymph nodes for prophylactic purposes. A Wilms Tumor is totally encased, meaning that it does not metastasize to other organs unless it is ruptured during removal. They would have in any case given him aggressive chemotherapy prophylacticaly as this is standard treatment of a Wilms Tumor.

    That said that whole melodrama about them being told to prepare for Gavin’s funeral was just that, more fantastic melodrama from Momma Arvizo. Couple that with the fact that David Arvizo said that Janet did not go to the hospital because the hospital would not allow her there and Azja Pryor’s testimony that they would stay at the hospital with Gavin and did not meet Janet until after the split with David. You guys have nooooooooooo idea how bad a mother has to be to be barred from being with her son during chemotherapy treatment. I can only say the health care workers assigned to Gavin must have been terribly frightened by something she must have said or done to take that drastic of a measure. And if your son is truly dying of cancer you get in there no matter what. She must have known she went places that she should not have gone with something because she never even talked about why she didn’t go and never denied that she didn’t go. This speaks volumes to me because what could her threat have been? Was she willing to accuse some poor unsuspecting nurse or other health care worker of molestation? That would certainly get her kicked out of any hospital I have worked at, and every time a worker would have gone into her son’s room they would have gone in pairs for self protection.

    Then we start with all of the “donations” to the family from everyone they came In contact with solicited by Janet herself. A blood drive was not good enough; she wanted money, which is what she said to her own sister in law. She asked for another drive for monetary donations from a newspaper when the first one didn’t get them enough money. Two police officers from LA bring Christmas Gifts and Christmas dinner only to be told money would have been better. All of this is in the trial briefs and testimony.

    Next comes the Make A Wish Foundation that contacts Michael about Gavin’s “dying” wish to meet him. It was known in most circles that because of the aftermath of the 1993 allegation the only way a young boy got to spend time with Michael Jackson is if he was terminally ill. Michael had protected himself that much so he had “learned his lesson” contrary to the popular public opinion based on media reports from unnamed sources. It is also a little known fact that Michael wanted to live somewhere other than Neverland ever since the allegation in 1993 the media had changed the feeling of it for him. When he was married and living with Lisa the time they spent in California was spent at her home in the Hollywood Hills the rest of the time they had an apartment in The Trump Tower in New York. They also spent time at Mar-a-Largo Estate owned by Donald Trump in Florida. He did not want to make Neverland his home any longer.
    He wanted to turn Neverland into a place for children to go to, to have fun and he could go there to spend time with them on the days that groups went there. He just wanted to be a visitor to Neverland. In 2000-2001 he was looking at a beautiful house at 10451 Revuelta Way in Beverly Hills located just off Sunset Boulevard
    http://www.abirdseye.com/tours/belaircompoundB/.

    That part of F.Marc Schaffels story is true it’s just that the part about Michael not being able to afford the down payment was somewhat skewed as he had used the money to purchase his own home. Now it was becoming abundantly clear to those who wanted another victim of Michael Jackson that time was running out on the Statute of Limitations. The most this can be extended is 3 years and Sneddon got the extension based on the fact that Michael had not been living at Neverland much of the time since 1993. The push was on to find another victim and soon, one that “fit the bill”, and enter poor little Gavin Arvizo, the cancer stricken child that has an uncanny physical resemblance to a young Jason Francia. Why it is that no one else has ever questioned why this boy that wanted to meet nearly every comedian in Hollywood suddenly requests to meet a singer/dancer that is rich beyond most people’s dreams, and vulnerable to lawsuits of a certain nature? You can’t tell me that Janet Arvizo and those around her did not know of the 1993 allegations the very idea of that is preposterous. You would have thought that their friend Wheezy would have warned them against that if it had been a real concern or was it perhaps an intentional suggestion?

    Too much of the Arvizo story doesn’t add up and I don’t just mean the charges. It is how they met him and how the whole thing evolved. One of the most telling things in Gavin’s testimony is not that his account didn’t match from telling to telling but that the thing he was most emotional about is when he felt that Michael was pulling away from the family it made him angry. He was going to be let go and not allowed back into Michael Jacksons world. BY his own testimony he was there with his father in 2000 when he was undergoing chemotherapy and then did not go back to Neverland in 2001. In 2002 he went there with Chris Tucker and his family but Michael was not there at the time. The next time they see Michael is when he calls them at the urging of Martin Bashir to come do the interview Living With Michael Jackson. They stayed for a few days and it was this time that an order was found in the daily logs that the Arvizos were to leave immediately. My guess is that this is when the Arvizo boys started to show their true colors and Michael wanted them out of Neverland. Does this even sound like a P*** that went after a poor little cancer stricken child?

    It is my opinion that Diane Dimond, Louise Palanker and the District Attorney offered this boy’s mother a chance at riches. All she had to do was get him out to Neverland and spend time with Michael Jackson. When the whole thing backfired on them, when Michael didn’t spend time alone with Gavin they came up with this crazy story and Sneddon in his desperation grabbed it. The thing is the jury saw through Gavin’s acting job and acquitted Michael not just because of reasonable doubt but because it was an obvious fabrication. It is also my opinion that someone is still paying the Arvizos for their contribution to bringing down Michael Jackson and it would be my guess that it is Louise Palanker, Ron Zonen, Tom Sneddon and Diane Dimond.Why? Because Janet Arvizo doesn’t do anything without monetary reward and that would be the only thing keeping her quiet.

    Like

  45. lynande51 permalink
    May 2, 2011 12:44 am

    Shelley that is something that you might research yourself. I believe the radio show started in 2004-2005. Louise Palanker is a wealthy woman. Her wealth comes from communications and she owned many radio and telvision stations in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. Diane Dimond was in radio as well as television. start by looking through their biographies and then research from there.

    Like

  46. shelly permalink
    May 2, 2011 12:32 am

    “Louise Palanker and Diane Dimond have a satellite radio show together. There is also an article here that shows how she is now “engaged” possibly married to Ron Zonen and has photos of the 2 of them with their friends Diane Dimond and Stacy Brown during a “trial ” anniversary get together on her blog.”

    I know that but I don’t think she was engaged to Zonen before the case and when did her radioshow started?

    Like

  47. lynande51 permalink
    May 2, 2011 12:28 am

    Louise Palanker and Diane Dimond have a satellite radio show together. There is also an article here that shows how she is now “engaged” possibly married to Ron Zonen and has photos of the 2 of them with their friends Diane Dimond and Stacy Brown during a “trial ” anniversary get together on her blog.
    Louise Palanker knew the Arvizo’s from the Comedy Camp before he was diagnosed with cancer. She was a witness for the prosecution about the conspiracy case and gifted the Arvizo’s $20 thousand dollars which janet Arvizo promptly used for a tummy tuck. It is all in the documents and testimony. The information about her and Zonene is in the Frozen in time series under Ron Zonen.

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  48. shelly permalink
    May 1, 2011 11:56 pm

    Why Louise Palanker?

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  49. lynande51 permalink
    May 1, 2011 11:34 pm

    I think that one was from Diane Dimond too. She and all other journalists got a copy in 1994 when Feldman filed it as an attachment along with the depositions of the Havenhurst Five, Blanca Francia, and others to his Motion to have Michaels finanacials and to stop the photos or have their own copy made. All the journalists had to do was purchase it from the court. When Pellicano was arrested many years later in an unrelated case she wrote an article saying how during the Micahel Jackson case her car had been broken into and documents were stolen and implied that it had been Pellicano. Well what part of that piece on propganda was it that uses a half truth or an omission of the whole truth? That is probably one of her biggest tactics. She and Orth I can guarantee never spoke directly to anyone other than Victor.
    In February of 2003 just one day after the British airing of LWMJ Feldman had not met the Arvizo’s. He had no motive to leak that Declaration.He could have cared less about that interview or the people in it until there was a reason for him to and that didn’t happen until 3 months after they “escaped from captivity” of Neverland. The person that had the largest motive to leak it was Diane Dimond. Michael Jackson had been her meal ticket since 1993 and she wasn’t giving up that easy. Remember when I first spoke about this and the possibility that Michael was set up by Diane Dimond, Louise Palanker and possibly the Santa Barbara DA’s office? It is not a big leap when we now know how close they are that they would use the Arvizo’s who would be more than willing participants for the right amount of cash.It isn’t so hard to believe he was set up by DD, LP and TS when you look at how the documents were leaked.

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  50. shelly permalink
    May 1, 2011 9:38 pm

    @Lynande,

    Sorry, I forgot about “our dear friend” VG. I wish he testified during the 2005 trial, there are so many things I want to learn about him.

    Anyway, I still think Feldman is a shark who probably leaked the Chandler declaration in 2003.

    Like

  51. lynande51 permalink
    May 1, 2011 9:26 pm

    @ Shelley, she got the retainer agreement from VG. He has it in his book.

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  52. Carm permalink
    May 1, 2011 9:19 pm

    “Friedman probably didn’t pay attention to the retainer agreement which clearly states that Feldman had to be paid by the Chandlers regardless of the outcome. He also wrote the amount wrong.”
    I don’t consider Friedman a credible source of information. Nor is he always pro-MJ. In fact, like many others he will often get his facts wrong when it comes to discussing situations where it is really really important to get the facts right. I remember watching an interview on youtube after Michael’s passing where he talked about the settlement, among other things. I couldn’t believe my ears. He said it was “to silence them” (the Chandlers). He also said “there was something going on with those two” (Michael and Jordan). He is supposed to be knowledgeable but he was saying things which wouldn’t make sense to even a five-year-old. Obviously he doesn’t always do his homework and obviously he lies. He’s an idiot. P.S. Sorry, I have a habit of not saving everything I read and see so I can’t give you the link–but I definitely remember those words.

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  53. shelly permalink
    May 1, 2011 9:15 pm

    @lynande,

    You might be right about the settlement agreement but that doesn’t explain the retainer agreement. I don’t think MJ had a copy of that retainer agreement.

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  54. lynande51 permalink
    May 1, 2011 7:40 pm

    Thetis and Shelley,
    The actual released part of the Settlement Agreement did not include paragraph 3 which left out 8 pages of how the money was supposed to be divided, and who provided the money. It was leaked to the Court TV site by Diane Dimond on June 16th 2004. I believe because of the information I have gathered from articles about what was found in Henry Vaccaro’s memorabilia that the Papers would have been a copy that belonged originally to Lisa Marie. Following their divorce she was still a party to the second lawsuit that Evan Chandler filed against Michael, Lisa, Diane Sawyer, ABC and 300 other John Doe’s. Since she would have had to hire her own attorney to defend her in the lawsuit brought against her she would have had to have a copy to provide him a copy of the original settlement since that is what Evan was saying was breached. She or someone else probably returned it to Havenhurst since she was still friendly with Katherine and was visiting her regularly until at least early 2000. That suit was dismissed in 1999 when Evan and Jordan failed to prove breach of contract during the interview with Diane Sawyer. That is probably why she “accused ” Lisa of leaking it.
    During that time Henry Vaccaro was suing Tito and other members of the Jackson family for breach of contract for not paying him. He was allowed to go to Havenhurst and remove anything of value to compensate him for his loss of revenue. Somewhere in there they had stuck this in a file cabinet and it was forgotten and removed by the Federal Marshalls that seized the file cabinet. When the Jacksons countersued him the content of the storage unit were frozen until he won ownership in 2002. He tried to sell the memorabilia on EBay under the name of vaccaro999 and that is how it came to attention of Diane Dimond. She went in February of 2004 to look over the contents of that locker because in his advertising of the memorabilia he stated that a copy of the original lawsuit was in there. She went there and saw the document and got that pair of underwear that she said might have his DNA on it which Sneddon seized. Vaccaro however had sold the collection to a European buyer and shipped it off to the UK. Michael and Janet sued for the return of their belongings among them the legal paperwork from that settlement, Masters for some of Michael’s songs and the J5, Janet and Michaels costumes and others. When they sued it had to all be returned at Vaccaro’s expense to the US. And this cost him a pretty penny, so he had to get money from somewhere and I think he sold the Settlement Agreement to Diane Dimond courtesy of Court TV. The items came back to him in late May of 2004 and the settlement agreement was leaked on June 16th 2004 via Court TV website. When it came to paragraph 3 it was edited and omitted per their (court TV) say for ease of reading. It is this paragraph 3 that says how the money was divided and what the names were of the insurance company that paid it. Now knowing that Diane Dimond was MOST likely to have been the source and it was in her best interest to continue the myth of 15Million + it kind of clarifies what I am saying. You see it many times in the court documents for the trial this reference to the settlement as multimillions that was paid by the defendant. In the court of public opinion it makes Michael appear guilty if the price he paid was higher. However there are a few things that we know that the haters overlook. It was paid for by 2 insurance companies, the retainer agreement divides the total amount of $15,331,250 it does not say and then he has to pay more besides that.
    I know it is difficult for people in other countries to understand but in a legal document like an insurance settlement (a business contract) it must state who is paying how much to whom and when they are to get it. It must state that precisely in order for it to be legally binding to both parties otherwise they could have sued him over and over and over again. Go back and read the settlement agreement and do not read between the lines for any kind of hidden meaning because there never should have been and see what it says. It says for a TOTAL amount of $15,331,250 Michael Jackson settles on charges of negligence not counts 1-6 that were dismissed by the plaintiff. He declares that he did commit any acts of molestation, and HE had to publicly withdraw the claim of Extortion. It was never that the police were not looking at the extortion it was part of the settlement that Michael had to drop the charges of extortion against Evan, Barry Rothman and probably Jordan.
    The original lawsuit and Jordan’s declaration were known to the public since Larry Feldman filed the lawsuit against Michael on September 14th 1993. It was not sealed until an out of court settlement was reached. The settlement was/is a continuation of that lawsuit. It is all part of the same thing. You know that because it has to refer to the charges in the lawsuit of counts 1-6 and count 7.
    It must have been a real blow to Sneddon to find out that Michael’s insurance company paid Jordan when you consider that detail is what pointed to Michael’s guilt for him for over 15 years. As for Evan he so wanted the world to think that Michael had paid it. When Michael called his bluff and said “no I am not paying you a penny” he became fanatical in his hatred toward Michael.

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  55. May 1, 2011 5:43 pm

    Friedman probably didn’t pay attention to the retainer agreement which clearly states that Feldman had to be paid by the Chandlers regardless of the outcome. He also wrote the amount wrong.

    Like

  56. shelly permalink
    May 1, 2011 1:33 pm

    I know that, but to me Friedman implied the 5 millions was paid by MJ.

    Like

  57. May 1, 2011 9:57 am

    Shelly according to the retainer agreement the Chandlers paid Feldman

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  58. shelly permalink
    May 1, 2011 9:03 am

    “The papers are not a complete surprise. They say that Jackson paid the child $15 million to be put in a trust, with another $1.5 million for each of his parents. All of this was put on a payment plan.

    But the really interesting part of the agreement is a $5 million payment to the family’s attorney, Larry Feldman.”

    Where did he get that, it’s nowhere in the documents.

    Like

  59. Dialdancer permalink
    May 1, 2011 3:16 am

    Would the defense have also had the same settlement document prepared with Feldman’s letterhead on it?

    June 18, 2004
    Friedman On Leaked Documents

    Roger Friedman’s column on June 16, 2004 comments on the recent leak of documents by Court TV which are said to feature details on a 1994 settlement:

    […] Meanwhile, the Jackson camp is scrambling this morning in the light of the unauthorized release, to Court TV’s intrepid Diane Dimond, of the settlement agreement between Jackson and his pre-teen accuser from a decade ago.

    The papers are not a complete surprise. They say that Jackson paid the child $15 million to be put in a trust, with another $1.5 million for each of his parents. All of this was put on a payment plan.

    But the really interesting part of the agreement is a $5 million payment to the family’s attorney, Larry Feldman.

    The very same Feldman who, a decade later, represents the family of Jackson’s current accuser and stands to profit again if Jackson is found guilty — kind of a cottage industry for one attorney.

    “The “release” of the settlement agreement is a scoop for Dimond, but it does raise the question of where the papers came from. They were sealed by the court, and, I am told, destroyed by some of the lawyers in the case so they could never be fingered as sources.”

    “Certainly the family of the accuser from 10 years ago didn’t want the papers to come out. You don’t have to be Columbo to figure out that leaves Feldman and prosecutor Tom Sneddon as prime suspects.”

    “Interestingly, in February 2003, literally right after the special “Living with Michael Jackson” aired on ABC, the highly salacious complaint against Jackson from the 1993 case, which had also been sealed, surfaced.”

    ” The papers had a court stamp and were drawn up on Feldman’s letterhead, something I asked him about at the time. He insisted they did not come from him, but said the guilty party was close at hand and that “just a little connecting of the dots” was needed to get a name.”

    “Now that sealed documents have twice surfaced and wound up in the same place — Court TV/The Smoking Gun Web site — maybe it’s time to think about who had access to them and how they could possibly have gotten out. ”

    Source: FoxNews; Fox411 Roger Friedman by special permission / MJFC

    http://www.mjfanclub.net/home/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=167%3A2004&id=185%3A2004-june&Itemid=75
    ————————————————————————————————-

    There are statements in this article which make no sense to me.

    “They were sealed by the court, and, I am told, destroyed by some of the lawyers in the case so they could never be fingered as sources.”

    (1) Is he saying all or just some of the persons involved allowed their copy of the document to be destroyed? Is Feldman the person who told him this?

    (2) Why would the attorney(s) be concerned about being “fingered as sources” unless they knew someone was going to attempt to later use or disclose them?

    “Certainly the family of the accuser from 10 years ago didn’t want the papers to come out. You don’t have to be Columbo to figure out that leaves Feldman and prosecutor Tom Sneddon as prime suspects.”

    Friedman missed a step in this statement. The family did want the papers to come out as long as it could not be traced back to any of the settlement recipients, and it may not have been Feldman who handed them off to Sneddon. The real question is, if Sneddon had a copy of this document and passed it on to Dimond in what year did he get it?

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