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The year was 1993, and the biggest star in the world was Michael Jackson. The hit song was "Black or White," his universal appeal so powerful that at the Super Bowl, he was the halftime show, his message that children can heal the world beamed to millions.
But that year, Jackson''s wholesome, Peter Pan image would be tarnished by lurid accusations of child molestation -- and a huge civil settlement with his accuser would keep many of the details of the case secret. But Dateline NBC has learned just what evidence authorities had against Michael Jackson, as well as details about the civil case against him that have remained sealed in the basement of the Los Angeles county courthouse for more than a decade.Dateline NBC also heard from those who''ve never spoken publicly before, and has information about a second boy who received a multimillion-dollar payout, keeping the case out of a courtroom and off the front pages. The allegations from 1993 are suddenly relevant today because witnesses from that case may now finally testify, and because it was a sort of dress rehearsal for the current case, showing authorities just how difficult it can be to accuse a wealthy celebrity. It all began with a chance meeting in 1992, Jackson''s car broke down in Los Angeles and he showed up at a rental car agency. The owner''s step-son, a huge Jackson fan, got to meet his idol. Before long, Jackson''s chauffeur was driving him to the boy''s mother''s modest Los Angeles home.Ernie Rizzo is a Chicago private eye who had access to some of the early evidence in 1993.Ernie Rizz "Michael Jackson started spending a lot of time at the boy''s house... At 3:15 when the boy got home from school he''d get on the phone and call him and it went on for weeks, but it got worse and worse where the kid was up all night making phone calls back and forth."In February ''93 the boy and his mother were weekend guests at Jackson''s Neverland Ranch, a child''s paradise with its own amusement park and a video arcade that never closes. And for the next five months they appeared to be at Jackson''s side everywhere, prompting the tabloids to call them his "secret family."Sleepovers begin
The boy''s mother initially believed her son''s relationship Jackson was innocent. Then, in March, ''93 during a trip to Las Vegas, the boy says he and Jackson began sleeping together in the same bed.It happened after they watched the movie, "The Exorcist," according to this sworn statement by the boy filed in court months later."When the movie was over, I was scared. Michael Jackson suggested that I spend the night with him, which I did. There was no physical contact."And that''s what both the boy and Jackson told the mother when she asked about the sleeping arrangement."From that time, whenever Michael Jackson and I were together, we slept in the same bed."Both parents even played host inviting the superstar into their homes for sleepovers with their 13-year-old son.A polaroid photo the boy took of Jackson, wearing pajamas just before bedtime at his mother''s house made it onto a cover of a book about Jackson by a South American journalist. It was at the least a highly unusual relationship for any parent to tolerate. Josh Mankiewicz: "You think Jackson sort of deliberately turned the mother''s head back in ''93?"Rizz "Sure. Jackson gave her tens of thousands of dollars, he flew her on his private jets all around the world. He gave her credit cards, shop, buy anything you want. Why would you do that to the mother of a little boy unless you wanted something in return?"In May of ''93, Michael Jackson was in Monte Carlo meeting real royalty, being honored at the World Music Awards. Rizz "Jackson files to Monaco, gets a suite in Monte Carlo -- two suites, one for the mother and her daughter and one for him and the little boy. Two suites."It was on that trip to Monaco, according to the Boy, that sleeping together turned sexual.The boy swore in a declaration filed in the civil suit against Jackson:"After that, Michael Jackson masturbated me many times both with his hand and with his mouth… Michael Jackson told me that I should not tell anyone what happened. He said this was a secret."After she returned to Los Angeles, the boy''s father maintains his ex-wife told him she suspected things between her son and Jackson weren''t so innocent. He says he confronted the singer.The father says he asked Jackson in a chronology he wrote for his lawyers. The star responded:''It''s cosmic. I don''t understand it myself. I just know we were meant to be together."Fearing that he was losing his son to Jackson, the boy''s father began a custody battle with his ex-wife and by the end of May, the boy moved in with his father. But the boy''s relationship with Jackson wasn''t over. In fact, the father who had just confronted Jackson now invited the star into his house for a sleepover with his son. It was Memorial Day weekend, 1993. It would be a pivotal weekend for the case. Since then, no one who had a first person account of what happened inside the boy''s home has ever spoken -- until now.Caretaker speaks out for the first time
Norma Salinas worked for the boy''s father and step-mother, cleaning house and caring for their two younger children in their comfortable Brentwood home. She says she was surprised when the boy came to live with his father because the teenager was rarely more than a weekend visitor who spent his time alone. The father usually too preoccupied with work, until that weekend.Norma Salinas: "Much later I started to understand everything. At first, they didn''t want this boy in the house and later when the relationship started with Michael, the boy came here to live. From then on there were strange things going on in this house."The story about what happened that weekend changes, depending upon who''s telling it. Jackson says it was the beginning of a plot to extort money from him. The boy''s father wrote in a letter to his lawyers that he was simply trying to protect his son, re-establish a relationship that had been damaged by his son''s involvement with Michael Jackson, and get to the bottom of what was really going on between a 13-year-old boy, and a 35-year-old man.Salinas: "It was a big impression on me because the father brought him home for an entire weekend. I was very surprised because he is a big star and to arrive like that without bodyguards without anything I was a bit astonished."The boy introduced Jackson to Salinas as his best friend. A moment both thrilling, says Salinas, and disturbing.Salinas: "They were hugging, laughing. They looked very happy, like a couple."She says the boy''s father and step-mother acted as though there was nothing unusual about the visit, except when they instructed Salinas to keep the drapes pulled shut the entire weekend while Jackson was visiting. Salinas: "The boy''s step-mother told me to pull out the trundle bed that goes next to the boy''s bed because that''s where Mr. Michael was going to sleep."It was in this spartan room, a room without a TV set Salinas says, that Michael Jackson and the 13-year-old boy spent virtually an entire weekend -- all with the father''s full knowledge and consent.Salinas: "I entered the room the next day to do the housekeeping as I always do. I noticed that no one slept on the bed because there were no signs of anybody having slept there… I suspect that he slept on the bed because there was no other bed."An undocumented worker who doesn''t speak English, Salinas says she never went to police. She admits she didn''t always get along with the father, whom she holds partly responsible for what happened.Salinas: "In few words, you can say that he sold his son to Michael… They should both be in jail together. Michael, for what he did to the boy and the boy''s father for what he did to his son."Ernie Rizzo says the father used that weekend as a sort of fact-finding mission.Mankiewicz: "Was there any surreptitious recording done of Michael Jackson and the boy during the time that Jackson was at that house?"Ernie Rizz "Well yeah. Let me say this, the father had related some conversations to me. There were things that I don''t think anybody could have heard through that bedroom door. My gut feeling would have been that there may have been a tape recorder in that bedroom."Rizzo says the father knew he would need powerful evidence, like an audio tape, before he could take on the extremely powerful Jackson.Rizz "It takes a lot of guts to accuse Michael Jackson of molesting. I think before he made his move he wanted to make sure, and I think he made sure."Mankiewicz: "Even though that would mean exposing his child to someone who he suspected might be molesting him?"Rizz "I mean, I wouldn''t do it."Salinas also suspects that the boy''s father rigged the room with a recording device, but she has no evidence of that either. But she says after that Memorial Day visit, everything changed.Salinas: "After that weekend, the boy''s father stopped going to work."Salinas says that from then on, to say that Jackson was unwelcome in the home would be an understatement.Salinas: "Michael''s name was never mentioned again in the house. That name was prohibited in the house."The father has refused to talk to Dateline. He did tell a family member that although he told both his son and to others that he''d secretly recorded his boy and Jackson together, he was in fact bluffing, hoping to get his son to confirm or deny his suspicions. And the family member also quotes the father as saying he wishes he had acted on those suspicions much sooner.Molestation charge first surfaces
Two months later, the boy told a psychiatrist that Jackson had molested him. The psychiatrist believed him and by law had to tell authorities. That triggered a joint investigation involving both Los Angeles police and the Santa Barbara sheriff''s department which has Jurisdiction over Jackson''s Neverland Ranch.Jim Thomas was the sheriff in Santa Barbara county. He''s now an NBC News consultant.Thomas: "The case still depended, like this current one does, on whether the people believe the young boy that said he was molested."Mankiewicz: "On the strength of the complaining witness."Thomas: "On the strength of the complaining witness."Thomas says the boy was believable, and they had a strong case. But this wasn''t a typical investigation. Michael Jackson: "There have been many disgusting statements made recently concerning allegations of improper conduct on my part. These statements about me are totally false."In August 1993, the scandal hit the press, and with a global audience watching, Jackson and his advisors called the molestation allegations an extortion attempt, which the father has denied. In fact, police investigated and never brought any extortion charges. Still, the father''s actions played into that argument because within weeks, the father filed suit asking for $20 million from Michael Jackson.Jackson: "I am hoping for a speedy end to this horrifying experience to which I have been subjected."Meanwhile, authorities continued to gather evidence, including letters from Jackson to the boy, letters private eye Ernie Rizzo says he saw back in 1993.Mankiewicz: "You saw love notes in the 1993 case?"Rizz "In 1993 all he did was write love notes to the kid."Mankiewicz: "How many are we talking about?"Rizz "The kid had a handful of them, that Jackson would write him. Telling him how much he loved him, can''t wait ''til he sees him again. We''re going play on the floor. A little game he used to call, ‘ruba,’ with these little boys. It means you rub me, I rub you."And perhaps even more revealing, the boy was able to describe marks on Michael Jackson''s genitals. When police obtained a search warrant in December allowing them to photograph Jackson''s naked body, investigators say the photos matched exactly with what the boy had told them. But despite the evidence they had, authorities didn''t file any charges and didn''t arrest Jackson. In January 1994, lawyers for Jackson and for the boy announced they''d settled the civil lawsuit that paid the boy''s family an undisclosed sum of money, a figure we now know to be nearly $25 million. Six months later, frustrated that prosecutors still hadn''t charged Jackson with a crime and citing anonymous death threats, the boy''s family backed out of the criminal case. The boy would no longer cooperate.Thomas: "That was a surprise. From the standpoint of what the actual outcome was of our victim not testifying was a blow."Jackson has said he paid the settlement so he could get on with his career and his life, and that money, which he had plenty of at the time, was no admission of guilt. Also, that he was the victim of a shakedown by a greedy father.But unlike his hit song of that time, things weren''t so black and white.Mankiewicz: "Back in 1993, Jackson''s legal team, his representatives, were repeatedly saying that there was nothing to the charges because this was just a shake down for money, but in fact those two things aren''t mutually exclusive. I mean, it could have been a shake down, and it could have been true."Thomas: "Yeah. I suppose it could. I think you could advance the argument of who would pay that kind of money if they were innocent?"A second boy?
It turns out there was more to the story. Dateline has learned that the now famous 13-year-old accuser wasn''t the only boy investigators talked to, and he wasn''t the only one who came away a millionaire.A primary focus of the 1993 criminal investigation by L.A. police and the Santa Barbara sheriff''s department was to find other boys who authorities suspected might have also been abused by Michael Jackson and who would back up the accusations of the original 13-year-old accuser. |
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