For 60 years, the Jackson family has been the most famous black family in America. Nine children and a billion records sold. Michael alone earned more than most artists earn alive. But behind a huge family, no matter the success, drama still followed. >> >> What it is, ho? What’s up? >> Joseph Walter Jackson was born in 1928 in Arkansas.
He grew up poor, but by the early 1960s, he was a crane operator at a steel mill in Gary, Indiana. He married Katherine Scruse, and he notably had nine children he could not afford. He was also a failed musician. He had played the guitar in a local R&B group called The Falcons. So, he turned his children into the band he could not be himself.
[clears throat] The story of the Jackson 5’s discovery, the rags-to-riches version that Motown would later sell, leaves out what happened in the Jackson’s living room. According to nearly every member of the family, what happened was very blunt and straightforward. Joe was abusive. The most less gruesome story was Joe sitting on a chair with a leather belt on his lap while he watched his sons rehearse for up to five hours a day.
And when one of them messed up, he would hit them. Michael has numerous interviews where he speaks about the abuse. >> would he beat you? >> Mhm, too much. >> Would he only use a belt? >> Why did he do this to me? >> [snorts] >> No, more than a belt. >> What else would he use to hit you with? >> Ironing cords. Whatever’s around.
Throw you up against the wall hard as he could. Um, >> [clears throat] >> see, it’s one thing to >> But you were only a child. >> I know. >> You were a baby. >> I know. It’s one thing to discipline >> producing successful records. >> I know. He would lose his temper. I just remember hearing my mother scream, “Joe, you’re going to kill him.
You’re going to kill him. Stop it. You’re going to kill him.” You know, and and I was so fast, you know, he couldn’t catch me half the time, but when he would catch me, oh my god, it was bad. >> Oftentimes not being able to fully process what he went through as a child, he has stated that just at the sight of his father, even as an adult, it made him physically ill.
Joe Jackson did not deny the beatings. He told BBC in 2003, “I whipped them with a switch and a belt. I never beat him. You beat someone with a stick.” >> And Michael said in a recent interview that he was frightened of you. He says that he was so frightened of you sometimes that he would be sick. Is that true? >> Well, I just know I just knew about that when I heard him mention that on the TV or on the Oprah Winfrey show.
Um I didn’t know anything about him being sick, but regurgitating, but if he did regurgitate, he he regurgitated all the way to the bank, you know. >> The distinction between whipping and beating is something that Joe Jackson has minimized when it comes to the abuse of his children. It is worth saying that not every Jackson child has framed this the same way.
Jermaine, Marlon, and Janet have all publicly credited their father’s discipline for keeping them focused, for keeping them out of gangs, and for getting them out of Gary. Their version of Joe is a man who was harsh because the world was harsher, and his discipline helped them get results. But Michael never came around.
LaToya never came around because to them the abuse altered their life, good and bad. While Joe was building the Jackson 5, he was also building a second life. Sometime in the early 1970s, he began an affair with a woman named Sherelle Terrell. The affair lasted 25 years. On August 30th, 1974, Sherelle gave birth to Joe’s 10th child, a daughter named Joh’Vonnie Jackson. Katherine knew.
Katherine was a devoted Jehovah’s Witness. She filed for divorce in 1973 and again in 1979. And both times, she withdrew the filing due to the urging of the elders at her Kingdom Hall church. Joh’Vonnie grew up in Los Vegas. She did not live in Encino with her half siblings. She was not invited to any family events and she was not allowed at the Neverland Ranch.
When the Jackson siblings appeared at Michael’s trials, they appeared as a unit. Joh’Vonnie was not a part of that unit. Neither Michael nor Janet ever publicly mentioned her existence. In 2018, when she was 43 years old, Joh’Vonnie released a memoir titled Bastard Child. While she was excluded from the family unit during trials and public events, she did eventually visit Neverland Ranch once when she was 29 years old.
She described the meeting with Michael as very cold and stand-offish, noting that while he did ignore her, he was fascinated and kind to her daughter Yasmine. The coldness she received from her siblings does have to do with how she was parented by Joe versus how the other siblings were. Growing up, Joe ran a very strict program for the Jackson kids.
He famously demanded that the children call him Joseph rather than dad or daddy. Whereas Joh’Vonnie was soft parented as a child and had the luxury of referring to him as her dad and receiving better treatment. >> also interesting, I didn’t realize in the book you talk about how you you never called your dad dad.
You always called him >> Joseph. >> Joseph. >> That’s >> He didn’t He didn’t want anybody to call him dad. Why? >> Well, he he he he said to me, “You know, I never I why.” Left it at that, but I I I I never asked my other brothers and sisters why they did didn’t call him Dad, but I I told him I had to Well, I tried for me to call him Dad, and he looked at me, and he said He said, “My name is Joseph.
You call me Joseph. I’m Joseph to you.” And that was it. >> In the book, she describes her father visiting her and her mother in secret and warning them to never call the Encino house. By 1975, the Jackson 5 have left Motown for Epic Records. They lost the rights to their own name in the lawsuit that followed and rebranded themselves as the Jacksons.
Michael was 17 and starting to get famous on his own. Considering he missed the most important parts of his developmental years, he also had never been alone with the girl. His first reported girlfriend was the actress Tatum O’Neal. She was 12 years old when they met, and he was 17. She was a daughter of actor Ryan O’Neal, and she had just become the youngest person in history to win an Oscar for Paper Moon.
And in his 1988 autobiography Moonwalk, their friendship would be talked for gossip columns. Years later, both of them were asked about it. Michael’s version, as he told in interviews and in his 1988 autobiography, he came over to her house one evening because he had never been in a girl’s bedroom before. They sat on the bed, they kissed briefly, and he said holding her hand was magical.
He said it was better than kissing her. It was better than anything. >> First girlfriend who I really loved a lot was Tatum O’Neal. >> And was it a typically romantic adolescent love affair? >> Yeah, it was, but I don’t think I was ready for some of the things he was talking about. I was pretty naive. I’m not joking. I hope she forgives me for telling this story.
Okay, Tatum, please forgive me. Uh I remember her telling me to come over to the house to her house. They have a Beverly Hills house too. And what she’s going to do to me when I come. You know, all the >> Well, what did she say? >> All the sexual stuff. So, I’m scared to death. >> So, she rings you and says, “Michael, come to my house.
I’m going to make love to you.” >> Yeah. >> And you you’re really scared. >> I’m scared. Scared cuz I’ve never done anything like that. I came over there trying to be Mr. Big Shot and brave. I remember she cut off all the lights in her bedroom, opened the curtains. You can see the whole skyline of the city over the cliff. It was beautiful.
And she told me to go over and lie on the bed, and I did. I laid on the bed. And she slowly walked over. And she touched the button of my shirt to open it, and I took my hands like this. I wouldn’t let them down. And she just walked away. She knew I was too shy for it. That’s what happened. >> Did you not feel tempted at all? You just felt frightened.
>> I was frightened. I was afraid. I don’t think I was ready for that. >> But Tatum O’Neal’s version said that they were never really a couple. In her 2004 memoir, A Paper Life, Tatum offered a detail that explains why Michael remembered the hand-holding as magical, while she had the opposite point of view. She actually found it awkward.
She said that Michael was so shy, he was almost paralyzed by the idea of being alone with her. She felt like she had to be the adult in the room, despite being 5 years younger. In 1983, the youngest Jackson brother, Steven Randall Jackson, known as Randy, was dating a model named Bernadette Robi.
Bernadette was a friend of Tina Turner’s. The two women were close enough that when Bernadette got in trouble, she went to Tina’s house. One evening, that’s exactly what she did. According to Tina’s long-time personal assistant, Eddy Hampton Armani, who later wrote about the night in his 1998 memoir, The Real T: My 22 Years with Tina Turner, Bernadette arrived at Tina’s house in tears.
She told Tina that Randy was on his way and that he was going to hit her. Tina Turner had spent 16 years married to Ike Turner. She knew exactly what kind of night this was about to become. She told Bernadette to stay inside and to leave Randy. Randy arrived and he was buzzed at the gate, but was denied entry.
Now, according to multiple later accounts, including Randy’s own, he climbed the fence, picked up a flower pot from the patio, and threw it through the window, and then crawled in over the broken glass. Tina went to her bedroom, came back with a handgun, and told Randy to freeze, or she’ll blow his brains out. Then she fired.
Randy himself posted on Twitter when a fan asked if the story was true. He wrote, “Yes, Tina Turner shot me. I have the scar to prove it.” Tina Turner never publicly addressed the incident, and she never pressed charges, either. Bernadette went on to marry the boxer Sugar Ray Leonard. On November 30th, 1983, the Jackson brothers held a press conference at the Tavern on the Green in Central Park.
They announced a 1984 reunion tour. The promoter sitting next to them, the man who had fronted $3 million to make it happen, was boxing promoter Don King. All of this was Joe Jackson’s idea. Joe had been pushed out as Michael’s manager. He saw the Victory Tour as a way back in. He brought in Don King, a man with no concert promotion experience, but with a willingness to pay, and the tour was on.
The first scandal of the tour was a ticketing system. To prevent scalping, the promoters announced that the Victory Tour tickets would only be available through a mail-in lottery. To enter, you had to clip a coupon from your local newspaper, fill it out, write a money order for $120, mail it in, and hope your name got drawn for four tickets.
The tickets were $30 a piece. In 1984 dollars, that was the most expensive concert ticket in American history. Now adjusted for inflation, it was roughly $85 per ticket today. Now today, those tickets are considered very cheap, but back in the day, that was considered widely greedy and selfish. Now according to the press, they accused the Jacksons of pricing out black fans who had built their career.
Later that year, Michael went public and announced that all of his earnings from the tour would go to four charities: the United Negro College Fund, the Michael Jackson Scholarship Fund, Camp Goodtimes for terminally ill children, and the TJ Martell Foundation for Cancer Research. He did not announce that his brothers were doing the same. They weren’t.
But by the time the Victory Tour ended, Michael had told his family it was over. >> >> Listen up. >> >> I’d like to say >> >> this is our last and final tour. And >> >> I think this is our farewell tour. You all been wonderful. It’s been a long 20 years, and we love you all. >> that the Jacksons would never tour as a unit again.
The financial damage spread further. The tour’s promoter was a man named Chuck Sullivan. Sullivan’s father, Billy Sullivan, owned the New England Patriots. The Victory Tour lost so much money that the Sullivans had to sell the Patriots to cover their debts. On the afternoon of January 27th, 1984, Michael Jackson was at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles filming a Pepsi commercial alongside his brothers.
They were rehearsing a number set to Billie Jean. Michael was supposed to descend a tiered staircase as pyrotechnics fired behind them. On the sixth take, the pyrotechnics fired early. A fireworks shell ignited too close to Michael’s head. The grease in his hair caught on fire, and for several seconds, Michael continued performing not knowing what was happening until the flame spread across the back of his scalp.
Bystanders threw a jacket over his head. He was rushed to Brotman Medical Center, and the diagnosis was second-degree burns to his scalp. Now, according to some sources, the burns went deeper. There was a bald patch the size of a fist on the back of his head. Pepsi ended up paying Michael 1.5 million in compensation.
He ended up donating the entire sum to the Brotman Burn Center, which named a wing after him. The most important consequence from that day was the prescriptions. To manage the chronic pain that followed, Michael was put on a series of painkillers, which caused him to form that would follow him years later. That same year, while Michael was recovering, the Jackson family was preparing for a disastrous reunion tour.
The brothers were rehearsing in Los Angeles, and the choreographer they hired was a young woman who had been working as a Laker Girl for the past few seasons, Paula Abdul. Now, according to a 1995 memoir titled Jackson Family Values, written by Margaret Maldonado, who at the time was a long-term partner of Jermaine Jackson, Paula began an affair with Jackie Jackson during those rehearsals.
Now, Jackie was the eldest Jackson brother. He was also married. His wife was Enid Spann Jackson. Now, according to the book, Enid heard about the affair, drove to the movie theater in L.A. where Jackie and Paula were on a date, and physically dragged Paula out the passenger seat of a Range Rover and across the parking lot.
Jackie tried to stop her, and Enid got into her car, put it in reverse, and ran over Jackie’s leg. Needless to say, Jackie’s leg was broke. She broke Jackie’s leg. Paula has never publicly confirmed the affair. The Jackson family has never publicly confirmed the parking lot incident, and the official explanation given to the press at the time was that Jackie had hurt his knee in rehearsal.
That’s why he wasn’t on stage for the first half of the tour. In 1987, Michael Jackson released the album Bad. The third single was The Way You Make Me Feel. The music video featured actress and dancer named Tatiana Thumbtzen. In the video, the song builds towards a kiss at the end. The director asked Tatiana not to actually kiss Michael.
Michael was way too shy for that. So, the director said, “At the final shot, just give him a hug.” Tatiana was then hired to appear with Michael during The Way You Make Me Feel on the Bad World Tour, which ran across 1987 and 1988. At one of the shows, on stage, in front of the stadium full of fans, Tatiana did what the music video would not let her do.
She kissed him. The next morning, Tatiana received a phone call from Michael’s manager that she was no longer on the tour. She was being replaced. Her replacement was singer Sheryl Crow. Tatiana was never told why. She never spoke to Michael again. The official explanation given was much later by the people in Michael’s orbit.
It was that she was becoming too much of a distraction, that Michael actually did like her. He liked her a little bit too much. Michael’s management and the family, especially Katherine, was protective of his image. There was a fear that a high-profile real girlfriend would humanize him too much and shatter the Peter Pan mystery that sold records.
And if Michael did indeed have a crush on her, she was a threat to the band’s control over him. The other woman in Michael’s life was Brooke Shields. They met at the 1981 Academy Awards when she was 16 and he was 22. They stayed friends for the next quarter century. Michael describes Brooke Shields in an interview as one of the greatest loves of his life.
He told Oprah that they dated and he spoke about her warmly repeatedly in the public. But Brooke has a different version. She has consistently said that they were close friends but never romantic. She has described one specific moment in a car with photographers nearby where Michael leaned in to kiss her.
She turned her head and said, “No, stop. We are just friends and you need me as a friend.” Michael Jackson, in his own telling, had a series of high-profile romances with some of the most famous women of the 1980s. The women themselves, in nearly every case, gently corrected the record as platonic relationships they had with Michael that had awkward romantic moments.
In 1986, the National Enquirer ran a front-page photograph of Michael lying in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. The accompanying story was said that Michael slept inside the chamber every night to slow his aging and live up to be 150 years old. The story was fake. It was planted by Michael and his team. Michael had visited the Brotman Memorial Hospital where he was treated for the Pepsi burns and he saw the hyperbaric oxygen chamber and posed for a photo inside of it.
Years later, the National Enquirer’s editor confirmed in interviews that the photograph had been delivered to him by Michael’s representatives. They gave the Enquirer the picture under two specific conditions. The story had to be run on the front page and the headline had to use the word bizarre. Michael wanted to be perceived as strange.
He believed that the mystery sold records. He had just released Thriller, the best-selling album of all time. He was now preparing the follow-up which would be called Bad. And he believed that the more inscrutable he became, the more people would buy. The hyperbaric chamber story worked exactly as intended.
It became a tabloid sensation. Then a few weeks later, a different story broke. The Sun in London reported that Michael had attempted to buy the skeleton of Joseph Merrick, the 19th century Englishman known as the Elephant Man, from the Royal London Hospital. The story was absolutely not true. He did not make any type of offer, but the same friendly tabloid orbit that had run the hyperbaric chamber story now ran the bone story, and Michael could not get it back.
The British press dubbed Michael Wacko Jacko, a name that stuck with his reputation, and he absolutely hated it. In 1988, on the album Bad, he released a song Leave Me Alone. The music video shows him pinned down by tabloid headlines and dancing past mounted hyperbaric chambers and Elephant Man bones in a theme park ride of his own scandals.
The most endearing symbol of Michael’s eccentricity in the 1980s was a chimpanzee. Sometime in the early ’80s, Michael bought Bubbles from a Texas research facility. Bubbles was an infant chimp at the time and was raised at the Jackson family compound in Encino, then moved to Neverland Ranch in 1988. Bubbles was very close to Michael. He slept in a crib in Michael’s bedroom.
He used Michael’s toilet. He ate candy in the Neverland movie theater. He flew on private planes. He even wore matching outfits with Michael. But by 2003, Bubbles had grown up. Adult chimpanzees are extremely strong, often aggressive, and are not safe to keep as pets, a fact well known by primatologists.
Bubbles eventually started attacking the staff at Neverland. He had to be removed. He was sent to a California animal trainer. When the trainer’s facility closed in 2004, he was relocated to a sanctuary called the Center for Great Apes in Florida. He has lived there ever since. According to the sanctuary’s founder, Michael was making plans to visit Bubbles when he died in 2009.
In March 1989, the third oldest Jackson sister appeared on the cover of Playboy magazine topless and holding a python. La Toya Jackson was 32 years old. She had grown up in the strictest households and her mother was Jehovah’s Witness who had raised her children to abstain from alcohol, drugs, and premarital sex.
The first Jackson child had not been allowed to pose in a bathing suit on television. Now La Toya was on the cover of Playboy. The issue became one of the best-selling editions in Playboy history. It was reprinted and it made La Toya briefly an international sex symbol. The family’s reaction was pretty uniform.
Katherine had said publicly that she could not believe it and it was said that Michael was pretty furious. He told an interviewer privately that La Toya had said in a promotional interview that Michael had given her his blessing and that it was a lie. He told his mother he would not speak to La Toya. When Janet gave her input about the situation, she said that she thinks the guy that La Toya is with has brainwashed her.
That guy was Jack Gordon. Now Jack Gordon was La Toya’s manager. By 1989, was about to become her husband. La Toya would later on allege under oath that he was abusing her. She would say he beat her and that he isolated her from her family. She also said he forced her into appearances, make statements, and decisions she would never have made on her own.
Years later, Playboy published a second issue of La Toya which she said she actually refused. But according to her, Jack beat her into submission until she agreed. This was not the worst thing that he made her allegedly do. The worst thing still had yet to come. La Toya had published a memoir titled La Toya: Growing Up in the Jackson Family.
The book was being promoted by the second Playboy spread and it became a New York Times bestseller. In the book, La Toya accused her father, Joe, of physically and sexually abusing her and her siblings. The accusations were the most explosive thing any Jackson had ever said publicly about another Jackson. >> I must tell you that um this is very difficult for me.
That Michael is my brother. I love him a great deal. But I cannot and I will not be a silent collaborator of his crimes against small innocent children. And if I remain silent then I mean that I feel the guilt and the humiliation that these children are feeling and I think it’s very wrong. I have seen checks payable to the parents of these children.
And I don’t know if these children were apparently bought the parents by Michael or not. But I have seen these checks and I’ve seen these checks through my mother. She’s shown me these checks that Michael had written to these children and it’s for a great amount and I’m not speaking pennies.
The sums are very very large amounts and this is my first time talking about it and I never want to speak about it. I never want to say anything about it. But I think it’s sad because I am a victim to myself and I know what it feels like and these kids are going to be scarred for the rest of their life. >> The benevolent show business father became a predator.
Years later after LaToya escaped Jack Gordon’s control after their divorce, LaToya gave a different account. She said that Jack had inserted his own claims into her manuscript. She said that she had not written some of the most damaging accusations and she claims that Jack had threatened to kill her family if she did not put her name on the book.
In her 2011 follow-up memoir Starting Over, LaToya formally retracted the parts of growing up in the Jackson family. She said that they were not her words. She had spent the last three decades doing public penance for a book that was by her own account partly written under coercion. >> be scarred for the rest of their life.
>> During the time of your marriage, you accused Michael of being a >> Yes, but I cannot and I will not be a silent collaborator of his crimes. >> Gordon gave me this piece of paper and he says, “Read this.” Then he goes, “You better say this. You say this.” >> Jack Gordon forced you to say that your brother was a Did you think he was? >> No, I did not.
The courts have proven that, too, as well. >> The family retaliated by shutting her out. The reconciliation took years. By the time Michael’s funeral hit in 2009, La Toya was inside the family again, but her reputation had never fully recovered. While La Toya was having abuse issues within her marriage, the youngest Jackson brother Randy was also doing the same to his wife.
In 1991, Randy was charged with battery. The victims were his wife, Eliza Jackson, and their 7-month-old daughter. Randy pleaded no contest. He was placed on 2 years probation and ordered into a mandatory domestic violence intervention program. 10 months later in November, Eliza called the police again. The beating, she told them, had not stopped.
Randy was arrested a second time. He was sentenced to 30 days in Pine Grove Hospital. >> It’s atrocious. It’s committing atrocities. Beating your wife, acting promiscuous, not glamorous to beat and batter your wife, let alone your pregnant wife. It’s It’s not something that you can look up to. >> Her name is Eliza Jackson, wife of youngest Jackson brother Randy.
Or perhaps we should say soon-to-be ex-wife. Because this is one Jackson insider who says she now wants out. >> What broke up the marriage was his promiscuity and his beating and battering. >> Randy has never publicly addressed these incidents. He has, in the years since, become one of the most outspoken Jackson siblings on questions of the family ethics.
He has accused his brother of betrayals. He has accused the executors of Michael’s estate of fraud, and he accused Janet’s ex-husband of abuse. In 1991, Jermaine released a solo album titled You Said. The third track on the album was called Word to the Bad. The lyrics were shots at his brother. Some of the lyrics saying, “Reconstructed, been abducted, don’t know who you are.
Once you were made, you changed your shade. Was your color wrong?” The song was a public attack on Michael about his skin color, his face, his choices, and his fame. It charted, though, but not really high. It peaked at number 88 on the R&B chart and number 78 on the Hot 100. In his 2011 book, You Are Not Alone, Jermaine claimed that the original more vicious lyrics had been written by his co-writers, that he had recorded them in a moment of frustration.
He felt Michael was ignoring his phone calls and had stolen a production team, which is LA Reid and allegedly Babyface. So, he was a bit jealous, and that he did not know who leaked the rough version to the public, which included a reference to Michael being lonely and a sucker. He then re-recorded a softer version for the official album.
His plan to draw buzz for his album didn’t work as a single was a commercial failure. Michael never publicly responded to the diss, but he really didn’t have to. By the early ’90s, Jermaine’s solo career was effectively finished. Michael was about to release Dangerous, his fourth solo album, which would sell more than 30 million copies worldwide.
The most tangled love story in the Jackson family belongs to Jermaine. In 1973, Jermaine married Hazel Gordy, the daughter of Berry Gordy, founder of Motown Records. The marriage was the reason why Jermaine stayed at Motown when his brothers left. Jermaine then started an affair while still married to Hazel with a woman named Margaret.
He told Margaret he was leaving Hazel, and he told her that they would be together forever. He fathered two children with her, Jeremy and Jordan, and he did not leave Hazel until 1988. Margaret eventually understood she had been lied to. In 1995 she published a memoir, Jackson Family Values: Memories of Madness.
It is the source of nearly every Jackson family scandal we know about from this era, including the parking lot incident with Enid and Paula. Just weeks after his divorce from Hazel was finalized, Jermaine got married again. The new wife, Alejandra, was Randy Jackson’s ex-girlfriend. Alejandra had two children with Randy. She also, according to multiple Jackson family accounts, had an affair with Randy while Randy was married to Eliza.
Now she was Randy’s brother’s wife. Randy didn’t speak to Jermaine for years. He has called the marriage a betrayal. The two brothers eventually reconciled and they appeared together at Michael’s funeral in 2009. In August of 1993, the LA Police Department announced a criminal investigation into Michael. The allegation was that Michael had said a 13-year-old boy named Jordan Chandler at his Neverland Ranch and at hotels in Las Vegas, Monaco, and Florida.
The accusation came from Jordan’s father, Evan Chandler, a Beverly Hills dentist and screenwriter. The Chandler family had become so close to Michael over the previous year, and Jordan had stayed at Neverland. The investigation was bigger than anything Michael had faced. In December 1993, in compliance with a court order, Michael submitted to a strip search at his Neverland home.
Police photographed his naked body. They documented the patches of vitiligo on his skin, including his genital area. The criminal case stalled. The district attorney was unable to bring charges Jordan was willing to testify to. The Chandler family then filed a civil lawsuit. In January of 1994, Michael and the Chandlers reached a financial settlement.
The exact number have never been confirmed. Reporting from that time placed the figure between 15 and 25 million dollars. Michael and his legal team made one thing very clear at the time and they have continued to make it clear since. The settlement was not in their telling an admission of guilt. They said that Chandlers had wanted only money.
They said Michael had paid to make the case simply go away. >> It isn’t so. The whole thing is a lie. >> then? Why did you settle the case and and it looks to everyone as if you paid a huge amount of money. >> That’s the most of that’s spoken for. I talked to my lawyers and I said, “Can you guarantee me that justice will prevail?” And they said, “Michael, we cannot guarantee you that a judge or a jury will do anything.
” And with that, I was like catatonic. I was outraged. >> How much money was it? >> Totally outraged. So, what I said, “I have got to do something to get out from under this nightmare. All these lies and all these people coming forward to get paid and the and these tabloid shows just lies, lies, lies, lies.” So, what I did, we got together again with my advisers and they advised me, it was hands down a unanimous decision resolve the case.
This could be something that could go on for 7 years. >> How much money was it? >> it behind us.” >> Can you say how much? >> It’s not what the tabloids have printed. It’s not all this crazy outlandish what No, it’s not at all. I mean, the terms of the agreement are very confidential. >> Michael had maintained until his death that he was a victim of extortion.
His private investigator famously released tapes of Evan Chandler discussing his plan to destroy Michael if he didn’t get a career making deal. >> This man is going to be humiliated beyond belief. >> Yeah. >> You will not believe it. You will not believe what’s going to happen to you. >> Yeah. >> Beyond beyond his worst nightmares.
Sell one more record. This attorney I found, I mean, I interviewed several and I picked the nastiest son of a [ __ ] I could find. Once I make that phone call, this guy is just going to destroy everybody in sight. Any devious, nasty, cruel way that he can do it. And I’ve given him full authority to do that.
There would be a a massacre. >> I don’t get what I want. >> If I go through with this, I win big time. I will get everything I want and they will be they will be destroyed forever. They will be destroyed. June is going to lose Jordie. She will have no right to ever see him again. >> Yeah. >> That’s a fact, Dave.
That’s what’s >> Does that help >> career will be over. >> Does that help Jordie? >> career will be over. >> And does that help Jordie? >> It’s irrelevant to me. >> In the middle of the criminal investigation, LaToya held a press conference in Tel Aviv, Israel. She stood on a podium and read a piece of paper.
She had stated in her memoir, Starting Over, and numerous interviews that she was physically abused and that Jack had threatened to have her family killed if she did not read the script he wrote. As the years went by, she has stated time and time again that that day was the worst moment of her life. She has publicly supported him during his trial and has been a defender of his legacy ever since.
In 1994, Michael married Lisa Marie Presley. He was 35 and she was 26. The wedding took place in Dominican Republic at a private home in Casa de Campo. The ceremony was a secret and there was no formal announcement. Lisa had just recently filed for divorce from her first husband. The divorce had been finalized one day before the wedding.
For 3 months, the marriage was not public. Then, in September 8th, 1994, at the MTV Video Music Awards, Michael walked out on stage holding Lisa’s hand. He looked at her, looked at the audience, and said, “You think nobody thought this would last.” He kissed her and the kiss was long and very public.
The audience gasped and the critics called it staged. Among the press and the industry and Lisa’s own friends, their entire marriage was a public relations effort to rehabilitate Michael’s image after the Chandler settlement. Lisa has in years since given a complicated account. She said that the marriage was real and she said she did love him.
She also said he was too emotionally immature to be a parent. >> Um and Michael Jackson, you were married to him for how long? >> Yes. >> What? >> [applause] >> About 2 years, right? >> Mhm. >> Yeah. >> Mhm. >> [laughter] >> And and was is it was he as strange then as he is now? >> So, you know, I left. >> Yeah. [laughter] Oh, yeah.
>> Lisa admitted that she was terrified of having his children because she saw how he handled his world. She realized that if they did divorce, he would likely try to control the children entirely stating how she knew his nature and saw the calculating side of his personality. She stated that she had imagined what would happen if they had children and she had pictured a custody battle nightmare.
They divorced in August of 1996 and the marriage only lasted 27 months. In 1995, Michael collapsed during a rehearsal at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. He was preparing for an HBO concert special called One Night Only. A security guard called 911 at 4:51 p.m. By the time the paramedics arrived, Michael was awake, but barely.
His blood pressure was 70 over 40. He was diagnosed at the scene with exhaustion, dehydration, and irregular heartbeat. He spent five days in the Beth Israel Hospital. The hospital cited gastrointestinal inflammation and irregularities kidneys and liver. Doctors privately concluded that what had happened was a health-related panic attack.
The industry consensus was that Michael was under unimaginable pressure. He had recently [clears throat] just finished his HIStory album, was dealing with the fallout from the Chandler settlement, and attempting to pull off a massive television event while his marriage to Lisa Marie was beginning to fracture. One Night Only was canceled days before its scheduled broadcast, the cancellation was a massive blow to HBO and to Michael’s reputation as a reliable performer.
During his 6-day hospital stay, one of the most frequent visitors was Debbie Rowe, his nurse and friend. It was during this period of vulnerability and feeling alone and physically depleted that the conversation about her giving him a family reportedly intensified. Two months after the divorce from Lisa Marie, Michael remarried.
The new wife is, of course, Debbie. She’s 40 years old, a white woman, and worked as a dermatology nurse. Debbie was allegedly already pregnant when they got married. Michael’s best man notably being an 8-year-old named Anthony. Michael Jackson Jr., known as Prince, was born in February of 1997. Paris Michael Katherine Jackson was born in April of 1998. In 1999, Debbie filed for divorce.
The settlement finalized in 2000 and it gave Debbie a reported 8 and 1/2 million and a house in Beverly Hills. Michael receiving full custody of the children. Debbie famously was quoted saying, “I did it for him to become a father, not for me to become a mother. You earn the title as a parent. I have done absolutely nothing to earn that title.
” >> My kids don’t call me mom because I don’t want them to. They’re not They’re Michael’s children. It’s not that they’re not my children. But I had them because I wanted him to be a father. I believe that there are people who should be parents. And he’s one of them. I remember the conversation. And I said, “Let me do this for you.
” And he said, “You’d do this for me?” And I said, “Yeah.” >> Debbie has said in interviews that she had not entered the marriage expecting to be a mother. She said that Michael was the one that wanted children and that she loved him as a friend and that she was willing to provide what he needed.
So she gave up custody voluntarily. Two years after the divorce, in 2002, Michael became a father for the third time. The mother was a surrogate. Her identity has never been disclosed. The child was a boy Michael named Prince Michael II, and he gave him a nickname. That nickname was Blanket. In 2002, Michael stood on a podium at Al Sharpton’s headquarters in Harlem.
He was holding a homemade poster of his record label boss, Tommy Mottola, the chairman of Sony Music. On the poster, Michael had drawn horns on Mottola’s head, a fork tail behind him, and a pitchfork in his hand. Michael was angry about his most recent album, Invincible, released in 2001. The album had not performed to expectations. Michael blamed Sony.
He believed that Sony had failed to promote it because they did not want him to succeed. Standing at the podium, Michael called Tommy Mottola a devilish man. He called him racist. He said Mottola had used racial slurs about unarmed black artists, and he accused the music industry as a whole of cheating black artists out of royalties.
Reverend Sharpton, standing next to him, was visibly uncomfortable. After the press conference, Sharpton publicly distanced himself from the remarks. He said that he had known Mottola for 15 to 20 years, and Mottola had always been supportive of the black music industry. >> And uh It’s been the record companies really, really do conspire against their artists.
They steal, they cheat, they do whatever they can, especially the black artists. >> [cheering] >> Sony, Tommy Mottola. Tommy Mottola is the president of the record division. He’s a mean, he’s a racist, and he’s very, very, very devilish. >> Mottola had left Sony Music 6 months later for unrelated reasons. He has never sued Michael over the press conference, but Sony has never put another major promotional cycle behind Michael during his lifetime.
Invincible was his last studio album. He spent the rest of his career fighting his own record label. That same year, Michael held his 9-month-old baby Blanket over the railing of his fourth-floor balcony at a hotel in Berlin. Blanket’s face was wrapped in a cloth. His feet were dangling above the crowd of fans gathered below.
In a quick second, Michael then lifted the baby off the rail and brought him back inside and disappeared from view. The image went around the world within hours. This was the peak of the wacko jacko narrative. British tabloids like The Sun ran the headline, “You lunatic.” While the Daily Mirror famously dubbed him “mad, bad dad.” Michael apologized 2 days later.
He called the moment a terrible mistake. The international child welfare organizations issued statements. The German tabloids called for charges, but Michael was not charged. He was already preparing a documentary that he hoped would rehabilitate his image. The documentary aired 3 months later, and it made everything worse.
The documentary was made by British journalist Martin Bashir. Bashir had spent 8 months filming with Michael at the Neverland Ranch, on a shopping trip in Las Vegas, in his bedroom, and on private planes. Believing that Bashir would show the world that he was a normal, loving father, the film promised intimate access.
It did deliver on the access, and then it was framed as evidence. The single most damaging sequence was filmed with Michael sitting on a couch holding hands with a 13-year-old boy. He told Bashir on camera that he let Gavin sleep in his bed. He said that it was very loving and very sweet. He said there was nothing wrong with a grown man sharing a bed with a child who was not his own.
>> We call it We did That was one time. >> hear that children from other families have come and they’ve stayed in your house, they’ve stayed in your bedroom, >> Some well, very few. >> But, you know, some have. And they say, “Is that really appropriate for a man, a grown man, to be doing that?” How do you respond to that? >> I feel sorry for them because they’re judging someone who just wants to really help people.
Why can’t you share your bed? But the most loving thing to do is to share your bed with someone. You know? >> You really You really think that? >> Yeah. Of course. >> You’re taking the position that she uses every single night that you go into. You sleep and you’re sharing it with another. >> I said, “You can have my bed if you want. Sleep in it.
I’ll sleep on the floor. You can It’s yours. Always give the best to the company, you know?” Like to him, I said, “If he was going to sleep on the floor,” I said, “No, you sleep in the bed. I’ll sleep on the floor.” >> you got a spare room or a spare house here where he could have stayed? >> Yeah, but no.
Yes, I have We have guest units, but whenever kids come here, they always want to stay with me. They never want to stay in the guest. And I have never invited them in my room. They always just want to stay They said, “Can I stay with you tonight?” I go, “If it’s okay with your parents, yes, you can.” >> Within weeks, the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office reopened a child investigation into Michael.
In the end, Michael felt betrayed. He recorded a rebuttal documentary with footage shot by his own cameras during Bashir’s filming. It was titled Michael Jackson: The Interview The Footage You Were Never Meant to See. In 2003, the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department executed a search warrant on the Neverland Ranch.
Michael surrendered to police two days later in Las Vegas. He was charged with seven counts of child mo- two counts of giving an intoxicating agent, alcohol, to a minor. The trial began in 2005 in California and it lasted 4 months. The most photographed moment of the entire trial happened on March 10th, 2005.
Michael was doing court to hear the second day of his testimony from a 14-year-old accuser. Michael had spent the early hours of the morning at the hospital due to a back injury. He did not arrive in court on time. The judge presiding gave him ultimatum. If Michael did not appear within an hour, his $3 million bail would be forfeited and a warrant would be issued for his arrest.
Michael missed the deadline by several minutes. When he arrived, he was being helped out of the SUV by his bodyguards. He was limping, he was wearing slippers, and from the waist down dressed in purple paisley pajama bottoms. The judge chose not to revoke his bail. The court resumed 90 minutes late and Michael in his pajamas sat in the front row of the courtroom and listened to 4 hours of testimony from a 14-year-old who said Michael had m- Three jurors initially believed Michael was guilty.
They were eventually persuaded otherwise, primarily because they did not find the victim’s mother, Janet, a credible source on stand. Multiple jurors said that they were skeptical of the mother, not the son. A defense witness named Wade Robson, then 22, told the jury that he had stayed in Michael’s bed multiple times as a child and that Michael never touched him.
In 2005, Michael was found not guilty on all 14 counts. Michael was acquitted of every charge. the courthouse that afternoon and left the United States within months. He would only return for short periods until 2009. Michael spent the next few years living internationally. He spent 2007 in Ireland and by 2008, he was quietly living in LA deep in debt facing the possible loss of the Neverland Ranch to foreclosure.
By the time he returned to the US, his debt was estimated between 400 and 500 million. He ended up saving his ranch through a deal with Colony Capital. In March of 2009, the concert promoter AEG Live announced a residency at the O2 Arena in London. The original 10 dates expanded to 50 after high demand crashed the ticketing website, the tour was named This Is It.
Michael needed a doctor on call. AEG hired one. The doctor was a Houston-based cardiologist named Conrad Murray. He agreed to a salary of $150,000 per month. Murray was paid to be Michael’s personal physician through the end of his residency. Murray then administered a surgical anesthetic called propofol to help with Michael’s insomnia.
Propofol is used to induce unconsciousness during surgery. It by an anesthesiologist with monitoring equipment. It’s not used, nor is it supposed to be used as a sleep aid. Conrad later told prosecutors that Michael had begged him for the drug. Michael began taking a nightly dose of this drug. So, on June 25th, 2009, he stepped out of the room to make a phone call.
When he returned, Michael was not breathing. Paramedics arrived at the mansion at 12:26 p.m. Michael was pronounced dead at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center at 2:26 p.m. The LA County Coroner’s Office determined the cause of death to be acute propofol intoxication. Conrad was charged with involuntary manslaughter on February 8th, 2010. >> Dr.
Conrad Murray, FYI, making $150,000 a month. 150 grand a month. Now on trial for shooting Jackson up with a powerful surgical anesthetic propofol, then leaving him to die surrounded by his own urine. >> Inside, they heard testimony from a Jackson bodyguard who said that two of Jackson’s children, son Prince and daughter Paris, were in the room and watched horrified as Dr.
Conrad Murray feverishly tried to revive their father. >> Then he was found guilty in 2011 and sentenced to 4 years in prison. He served 1 year and 11 months. He was released early due to good behavior and California prison overcrowding. In 2012, Katherine Jackson, 82 years old, the legal guardian of all three of Michael’s children, left her home in Calabasas and she told the staff she was traveling to Albuquerque, New Mexico to see one of her sons in concert, but she never arrived in Albuquerque.
For 10 days, no one outside the immediate family could reach her. Her cell phone was off, her iPad was disabled, the phone in the room where she was staying was disconnected. She was in fact at a luxury spa near Tucson, Arizona. According to family members, she had been taken there by her children, Janet, Jermaine, Randy, and Rebbie, on what they called doctor’s orders.
The grandchildren did not know where she was. Paris, Prince, and Blanket, then 15, 14, and 10, decided to file a missing person’s report. On the same day, security camera footage from the Calabasas property captured what looked like a small confrontation in the driveway. In the video, it appears Janet tried to smack Paris’ phone out of her hand.
Later on, the LA court suspended Katherine’s guardianship over Michael’s children. The court later appointed TJ Jackson as temporary guardian. Katherine returned from Arizona within days. She agreed to share guardianship of the children with TJ, and to this day, she has said she’d been suffering from exhaustion and her children had been protecting her.
Michael’s children, on the other hand, sincerely believe that their grandmother had been kidnapped by their aunts and uncles to neutralize her side of the estate fight. In 2024, Michael’s estate completed a transaction that valued Michael’s recorded music and publishing rights at approximately 1.2 billion dollars.
Sony Music Group paid a reported 600 million to acquire 50% of those rights. Michael’s estate, 15 years after his death, is the most valuable single artist asset in the world. It became the largest transaction for a single recording artist assets. The deal did not include royalties from MJ Broadway musical, which had been running since 2022 and at the time of sale was one of the highest-grossing shows on Broadway. Katherine appealed the deal.
She argued that the sale violated the terms of Michael’s will and that he would not have wanted to sell. But her appeal was ultimately rejected. There has been a lot of speculation between the relationship of Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. When Michael wrote his will, he named two guardians for his children.
The first was Katherine, the second would be Diana Ross. In Michael’s biopic, Diana Ross was a recurring presence across Motown. Kat Graham was casted to play her. She filmed multiple scenes specifically focusing on the Motown era and the filming of The Wiz. In the version that opened in theaters of April 2026, she has been removed.
According to industry reporting, her likeness was never cleared. The reasons given have included her own reluctance to be portrayed, Diana did not grant the film to use explicit life rights or likeness clearances required for the specific scenes that Kat filmed. The estate’s caution about depicting a living artist of her stature, and the legal complication of dramatizing a guardianship clause in the will that is still in court.
The Jackson family gave America its most successful black pop dynasty. They sold more records than any other family in the history of the music industry. Let me know down below if you watched the Michael biopic and what you think about the family scandals down below. Make sure you comment, like, and subscribe. >>
