JESUS SALAS
When Jackson purchased Neverland in the mid-1980s, Jesus Salas was already working at the 2800-acre estate. He stayed on and eventually became the property's house manager before resigning in June 2003.
During his March 30 grand jury appearance, Salas testified that the accuser's mother was crying and distraught during her early-2003 stay at Neverland. Salas said that, on the orders of Cascio and Dieter Wiesner (a German businessman who co-managed Jackson), the woman "wasn't allowed to leave" the California property.
However, Salas testified, he agreed one night to drive the woman and her three children from Neverland to their Los Angeles home (they were transported there in a Rolls Royce). After the family subsequently returned to the estate, Salas testified, he was told by Cascio that if the accuser's family again sought to depart Neverland, the Jackson camp "would decide if she was going to be able to leave or not." He added, "It had to be okay with them."
Prosecutors contend that Jackson and his cohorts sought to initially isolate the family at the property in a bid to stymie any possible contact with law enforcement officials or the press. They then plotted to ship the family off to Brazil, claiming that the move was needed because of purported death threats.
"Did it appear to you, based on everything you saw that [family members] were being held against their will?" Auchincloss asked Salas. He answered, "I would say yes."
ANN GABRIEL
Hired days after the February 6, 2003 U.S. broadcast of Martin Bashir's "Living with Michael Jackson" documentary, Ann Gabriel briefly handled crisis management and public relations chores for the entertainer. She was hired by David LeGrand, a Las Vegas attorney who began representing Jackson in January 2003.
Gabriel, who spent only two weeks with the so-called Michael Jackson Working Group, told grand jurors that she dealt principally with Marc Schaffel, a Jackson intimate who prosecutors have named an unindicted co-conspirator of the performer.
Gabriel testified that after the accuser and his family unexpectedly left Neverland one night (apparently in the Rolls driven by Salas), an "extremely upset and agitated" Schaffel called her to say that "there was a problem at the ranch." Schaffel, she testified, said he was worried that the mother might seek to sell her story to a British tabloid. In a subsequent conversation, Schaffel told Gabriel that "the situation had been contained" and "we found them and brought them back to the ranch."
Schaffel's reference to a "situation" being "contained" left Gabriel concerned. "I felt personally like this was something out of a very bad 'B' movie. It made me sick to my stomach," she testified. After repeating to LeGrand (pictured at left) what Schaffel said, Gabriel told the attorney, "Don't make me think that these people were basically hunted down like dogs and brought back to the ranch." LeGrand, Gabriel testified, "told me that he couldn't talk about it."
During one conversation with LeGrand, Gabriel testified, Jackson's lawyer said that he was not concerned about the accuser's mother. "We've got her on tape and we're going to make her look like a crack whore," LeGrand said, according to Gabriel's grand jury testimony. "The only thing I can tell you adamantly is that he was absolutely gleeful when he said that to me," she added.
Gabriel, who said she disagreed with the Jackson team's cautionary PR style, was canned via e-mail in mid-February. A Jackson associate previously told TSG that she got bounced after booking herself on "Access Hollywood" without Working Group authorization.
MICHAEL DAVY
In March 2003, after the accuser and his family left Neverland for the final time, the boy and his brother re-enrolled in an L.A. middle school. It was there that administrator Michael Davy confronted a man videotaping the children.
Davy testified that he was alerted to the surveillance agent's presence by Jay Jackson, then the boyfriend of the pair's mother (he has since married her). Jackson had arrived at John Burroughs Middle School at dismissal time to pick up the boys when he spotted the man filming from a car. According to Davy's testimony, a "very agitated" Jackson told him about the surveillance, which prompted the educator to confront the man.
"You can't videotape schoolchildren," Davy said he told the man, who detectives later identified as Johnny Majetich, a 43-year-old Los Angeles man working for Bradley Miller, Michael Jackson's private investigator. Since a school police officer was not on duty when Majetich was approached, Davy testified that he told cops about the incident the following day, and provided them with a description of Majetich's car, a pearl white Nissan.
Davy's testimony corroborated family accounts that, after departing Neverland, they were harassed, followed, and intimidated by Majetich and other Jackson representatives.
CYNTHIA BELL
Michael Jackson had terrible taste in wine. He preferred "yucky Kendall Jackson," which had to be decanted into an empty Diet Coke can before it was served, testified flight attendant Cynthia Bell. His food of choice on chartered Gulfstream jets was "KFC with all the fixings."
Bell testified that the first time she flew with Jackson, the performer's doctor "pulled me aside on the ground and asked me to make certain that Mr. Jackson had wine." When she tried to serve Jackson the wine in a fluted crystal stem, "he sat the drink down and went, 'No.' At that point I went ahead and took away the glass and put it in a Diet Coke can." Though she had manned a previous Jackson flight--during which he drank alcohol from a "weird plastic mug thing"--Bell had forgotten that the star was a "secretive drinker."
When Auchincloss asked about a February 2003 flight from Miami to Santa Barbara--on which the accuser and his family were passengers--Bell testified that Jackson drank wine and vodka to the point of intoxication. She said that the performer was seated next to the alleged victim and that Jackson "had his arm around him at times."
According to the grand jury testimony of the accuser and his brother, Jackson gave them wine inside Diet Coke cans on the Florida-California trip. The younger boy told investigators that Jackson was "acting funny" during the flight, poking passengers "in the butt with his foot." The entertainer, then 44, also passed the time by placing obscene crank calls (the younger child said Jackson asked one person who answered the phone, "Does your pussy stink?"). It was also during this flight, according to testimony from the alleged victim's mother and brother, that Jackson licked the accuser's head while the child slept.
LAUREN WALLACE
Like Bell, Lauren Wallace flew with Jackson while working as a flight attendant for Xtra Jet, a Santa Monica charter firm. When asked if she fulfilled any "unwritten special requests" for Jackson, Wallace replied, "The first one is the--the white wine in the Diet Coke can."
Featured
