Created: Tuesday, 19 April 2005
On day 34 the mother of Michael Jackson’s accuser resisted answering questions by defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. and began her fourth day on the witness stand by making lengthy and rambling speeches to the jury. Melville had to again command her to “answer the question and don’t volunteer additional information.” However, she continued to break the conventions of criminal trials. She turned to speak to the jurors with every answer to Mr. Mesereau.
During another combative day on the stand, the woman admitted that she once told sheriff’s deputies she feared Mr. Jackson had a plan for her and her family to disappear from his Neverland ranch in a hot air balloon.
However, she accused Mr. Mesereau of taking the comment out of context. “I told police that (Mr. Jackson’s associates) had many ways to make us disappear,” she said.
“And someone mentioned to you a hot air balloon?” Mr. Mesereau asked.
“That was one of the ways,” she said.
Mr. Mesereau asked her what she meant when she told police that Mr. Jackson should have hired a tutor when her three children stayed at his Neverland Valley Ranch.
“That he’s managed to fool the world, and I was one woman inside there,” she said. “That’s what I was trying to communicate. That what he puts out to the world is not who he is. And because of this criminal case … now people know who he really is.” Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville denied Mr. Mesereau’s motion to have her statement struck from the record. It was one of only a few times the judge didn’t grant motions by Mr. Mesereau or prosecutors to instruct jurors to disregard her rambling narratives as “unresponsive.”
In spite of testimony and evidence already presented to the contrary, the mother also denied repeatedly that Mr. Jackson or anyone associated with him had tried to help her and her family when her son was stricken with cancer.
Asked whether Mr. Jackson arranged a blood drive at his Neverland ranch, she said, “I was responsible for that.”
She then launched into an explanation about how the hospital would provide a bloodmobile anywhere she could arrange such an event.
“And Mr. Jackson allowed you to use the ranch for the blood drive?” asked Mr. Mesereau.
“Yes, this is correct,” the woman said. But she added, “He wasn’t the only one. Many church groups gathered.”
Mr. Mesereau also elicited testimony that the woman received checks for $20,000 and deposited them in her mother’s bank account. But she said she could not remember how any of the money had been used for her son.
She also said she opened a bank account in which people could deposit money for her son’s benefit.
“Did you withdraw thousands of dollars from that account?” Mr. Mesereau asked.
“Yes,” said the woman.
“And was any of that money for medical expenses?” the attorney asked.
“No,” she said.
Contrary to previous reports of the newspaper employees, she denied that she misled a reporter for a local newspaper into writing a story saying the family was poverty-stricken and was paying $12,000 for each chemotherapy treatment the boy received. The story included an address to send contributions.
She said that the $12,000 figure was a typographical error and that she meant $1,200.
But she confessed ultimately that the family was responsible to pay for absolutely nothing because the father’s health insurance covered the boy’s treatment.
Throughout the trial, Mr. Mesereau has characterized the accuser’s mother as the manipulative force behind what he says are false allegations of child molestation against Mr. Jackson.
Monday, he asked her repeatedly about whether she was involved in efforts to solicit money for the family after the accuser was diagnosed with cancer in 2000.
She insisted she did not ask for money and was not aware of two fund-raisers planned for her son at the Laugh Factory, a California comedy club. But she did admit she cashed two $10,000 checks given to the family by comedienne Louise Palanker, and that she withdrew money from a bank account set up for donations for her son.
She said she did so at the direction of her then-husband, the teen’s father. She denied that any of the money had gone for her own use, saying it was used to pay living expenses and bills.
But she also said her husband, whom she later divorced, took some of the money and “went to Las Vegas.”
Mr. Mesereau led her through questions and answers involving her relationship with comedian Chris Tucker and his girlfriend Aja, and she denied that the family solicited help, money or any other gifts from Tucker.
She acknowledged that Tucker once gave the family a car, but she said she never asked him to do that and asserted that he only did it because he had gotten his girlfriend a car and needed to make room for it.
Mr. Mesereau pressed her on whether she made any attempts to get help during the family’s alleged period of captivity. On Monday, the woman was forced to acknowledge again that there were people she could have called on for help, including a lawyer who was dealing with her relationship with her estranged husband, but that she never did.
“Did you complain to anyone in the building that crimes were being committed against you and your family?” Mr. Mesereau asked.
“No, but I am now,” she said.
Mr. Mesereau also noted that the woman was able to telephone comedian Louise Palanker during the alleged captivity.
“If you could call (Palanker), why couldn’t you call police?” Mr. Mesereau said.
“I couldn’t. I was hoping she could,” the woman responded.
Mr. Mesereau then asked, “You didn’t call 911?”
“I have now,” the woman said.
Mr. Mesereau quizzed her about a claim for disability the woman filed in the late 1990s, citing depression, in which she said she was “sad about being a nobody.”
“I’m still a nobody,” she countered three times in reply.
Mr. Mesereau also asked why she had mentioned the names of Mr. Jackson and basketball star Kobe Bryant in an interview with police in 2001 when she was reporting domestic problems with her now ex-husband.
“That’s because (my husband) was calling me a whore and said I was having sex with these people,” she said.
The defense scored a key point against the 37-year-old woman by getting her to admit she alerted police to allegations that Mr. Jackson had plotted to kidnap her family only after consulting two lawyers. One of the attorneys represented a teenager who in 1994 won a settlement worth more than 20 million dollars from Mr. Jackson over earlier sex abuse allegations.
In another coup for Mr. Mesereau, the woman contradicted her version of why she recorded two taped interviews within four days in February 2003 in which she described Mr. Jackson as a beloved father figure to her children.
She said that a gushing interview with a private detective working for Mr. Jackson’s then attorney on February 16 was unrehearsed, “from the heart.”
But she insisted that a video recorded by Mr. Jackson aides just four days later was made under duress, and that her family’s lavish praise of Mr. Jackson at that time was entirely scripted by the star’s aides.
On Friday, the woman admitted lying under oath in a lawsuit she filed against a department store in 2000 in which she won a 152,000-dollar settlement over claims of wrongful arrest and sexual assault by security guards.
When Mr. Mesereau asked her Monday if she rehearsed her children about what to say in that case, she turned to jurors and said: “He’s giving me too much credit. No I did not.”
The trial began its eighth week Monday. The mother of the 15-year-old alleged victim is the 54th witness called by prosecutors. Mr. Mesereau’s cross-examination of her ended shortly before court recessed for the day. She will return for more follow-up questioning by the prosecution Tuesday.
Courtroom observers commented on the striking difference in the mother’s appearance. In the ‘rebuttal’ video shown to jurors, her long hair is wet and crimped. In court, she wore a bob cut befitting a soccer mom. In the video, she has glossy red lips and perfectly shaped eyebrows, and bears a slight resemblance to actress Marisa Tomei.
In court, she was wan, wore eyeglasses and no makeup, and claimed to be a poor judge of character.
The witness was seemingly inexhaustible on the stand Friday. She continually dodged and weaved around simple yes-or-no questions, instead turning to the jurors and offering observations such as, “He’s inaccurate,” or “He’s mixing up the facts, purposely.” She laughed at Mr. Mesereau at one point. “You … you are,” she began to mumble. “I have a lot of thoughts in my heart about you.”
Another time, she shot at him, “Are you missing the point?”
She seemed particularly peeved about the question of whether she was treated to a full body wax while under alleged captivity.
“Would it refresh your recollection to look at the receipt?” Mr. Mesereau asked, offering to show her the Feb. 11, 2003, receipt from a nearby Los Olivos salon, which indicates that $140 was spent on a leg, brow, lip, face and bikini wax.
The mother refused to look at it.
“I’m telling you, it was only a leg wax. He has the ability to choreograph everything,” she said, pointing a finger at the defendant.
“And how about you?” Mr. Mesereau responded glibly.
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