Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days Read online

  “Nation of Islam was holding his security down for a while,” Jeff explained. “He got some flak about that, so he’s making some changes.”

  Feldman apologized for any confusion and asked me if I’d be comfortable staying the night, and perhaps longer.

  I said to Jeff, “Is that the real Michael Jackson? Don’t play with me, man. It’s too cold, and I’m in no mood to be running around Las Vegas with some Michael Jackson impersonator.”

  “Trust me,” he said. “This is the real dude. He looked at your résumé, saw you were with Motown, and straight up said he wanted you for this.”

  “Okay. So when does the rest of the team get here?”

  Feldman looked at Jeff and then back at me and he said, “I thought you knew. There is no team. You’re it.”

  What? Uh-uh. No, no, no. Now I was pissed off. I was being put in a position that I was not prepared for. There are people out there who love this guy with a passion, and there are crazy people who hate him, and they’ll do anything to get at him. Any time I’d seen Michael Jackson on TV, he had a whole crew of people with him. I was all by myself. I didn’t know the property or the interior layout of the house. I didn’t have any of the gear I’d need for a detail like this.

  I started to get a bad feeling. Something’s not right, I thought. I’d been doing this too long to believe that Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, was traveling with no security. Just an assistant and a nanny? Where was the staff? The manager? The entourage?

  What I didn’t know then, but what I would quickly learn, was that the Michael Jackson who flew into Las Vegas that night was not the same Michael Jackson who’d left the country the year before. There was no entourage that night because there was nobody, period. He was all alone. The most famous man on the planet, and we were the only ones who even knew he was back in the United States.

  I agreed to stay, because what else do you do? The man told his children I was there to protect them. After a while, the assistant and the nanny left. They were staying at a hotel nearby. Then Jeff left too. He had another job he was already contracted for. Now it was just me. I did a sweep of the property, checked all the doors and windows, then set up on a folding chair in the garage. It was freezing. Garage wasn’t insulated. Twenty-eight degrees and I had on nothing but a two-piece suit, dress shirt, and tie.

  It still hadn’t set in. None of it. I was trippin’. I wanted to call everybody I knew, but of course I couldn’t. And who would believe me anyway?

  “Hey, guess what? I’m in a house with Michael Jackson and his family.”

  “Who you with?”

  “It’s just me. In the garage.”

  “Man, somebody’s playin’ a joke on your ass.”

  I stayed up all night, alert and cold. Every sound, every car that went by, I was up, looking around, checking it out. But mostly I just sat there, shivering my ass off and wondering, Where are all his people? Is some lunatic about to come climbing over the gate? What the hell am I even doing here?

  About a quarter past seven, the sun finally came up. I heard the interior door to the house unlocking. It opened, and this tiny voice said, “Excuse me.”

  I glanced up. It was the little girl, Paris. She stepped into the garage, holding out this cup. It was hot chocolate, with some of those little melted marshmallows in it. She just stood there quietly and looked at me and held out this cup and said, “Daddy said to give you this.”

  PART ONE

  CAN WE GO BACK TO NEVERLAND?

  1

  On June 19, 2005, Michael Jackson boarded a private jet with his three children and disappeared. Ten days later, following a brief stopover in Europe, he landed in the remote island kingdom of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, which would be his home for the next year. Jackson, the universally recognized King of Pop, had gone into exile.

  Michael Joseph Jackson was born on August 29, 1958, in the Midwestern steel town of Gary, Indiana, the seventh of nine children of Joe and Katherine Jackson. A musical prodigy almost from the time he could walk, Jackson soon joined his older brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon in the singing group managed by their father. They named themselves The Jackson 5. From the age of six, Michael was on the road with his brothers nearly every week, playing regional talent shows, nightclubs, and music festivals. By the time he turned twelve, he was one of the most popular entertainers in the country. Before he was twenty-five, thanks to the success of his now-iconic album, Thriller, he’d become the most recognizable human being on the planet.

  Jackson’s spectacular career began to unravel in August 1993 when he was publicly accused of child molestation. While maintaining his innocence, to avoid a lengthy trial and further invasion of his private life, he agreed to settle the case out of court for a reported $22 million. That decision would haunt him for the rest of his days, casting a shadow of public suspicion over his every move. In the years that followed, Jackson’s life stumbled and faltered and finally imploded when a second accusation of abuse surfaced in 2003, prompting a full criminal investigation by Santa Barbara district attorney Tom Sneddon, who had been on a mission to convict the singer ever since the first allegations had been made a decade earlier.

  In April 2004, Sneddon convened a grand jury, which voted to indict the singer on charges of endangering the welfare of a minor. Jackson, determined to prove his innocence once and for all, agreed to stand trial. In January 2005, the case of The People of California v. Michael Joseph Jackson began, capturing the attention of the entire world. But after a two-year investigation and a six-month trial, Santa Barbara’s overzealous prosecutor had failed to produce a single piece of evidence proving any criminal misconduct on Jackson’s part. The jury voted unanimously to acquit, and on June 13, 2005, Michael Jackson walked out of the courtroom an exonerated man.

  Exonerated but broken. Still reeling from the trial, and facing a crush of legal and financial problems that had built up during the years it had consumed his life, Jackson left America for Bahrain. There he lived as a guest of Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, a friend of Jermaine Jackson, who had introduced them. Sheikh Abdullah, the second son of the king of Bahrain and governor of the kingdom’s southern province, had aspirations of becoming a music mogul and saw in Jackson the perfect vehicle for building his entertainment enterprise. The two men formed a record label and announced big plans. But their relationship quickly soured, and in the summer of 2006, the singer left Bahrain and spent the next six months living in Ireland. Jackson was in love with the peaceful remoteness of the Emerald Isle, but his legal and financial problems could not be resolved by hiding out overseas. He needed to go back to work, and so the decision was made to move his family to Las Vegas, with the aim of securing a headlining slot at one of the hotels on the famous Las Vegas Strip.

  Jackson, who once toured the world with two cargo planes’ worth of equipment and personnel, returned from his eighteen months abroad with only a skeleton crew: his children, their nanny, Grace Rwaramba, and his personal assistant, John Feldman. Since his days as a child star, the core part of Michael Jackson’s entourage had always been his personal security team, who shadowed nearly all of his public movements. In the run-up to the 2005 trial, the singer’s protection had been handled by the Nation of Islam. The Nation’s presence in Jackson’s life had stirred up controversy in the media, so when Jackson returned to the United States, his management decided not to continue using the Nation for the singer’s personal security. Through private security consultant Jeff Adams, who had ties to Jackson’s team, word went out that new people were needed to work the singer’s protective detail. Of the résumés that came back, one candidate caught Jackson’s eye.

  Born in 1965, Bill Whitfield grew up in the New York suburb of New Rochelle and went on to pursue a career in law enforcement. By the early 1990s, he’d become a father to his only daughter and was moonlighting in the world of private protection, which would soon become his primary career. At the time, New York’s hip-hop scene was ex
ploding, moving up from the streets of the Bronx to become a billion-dollar industry. Through his cousin, Maxwell Dixon—also known as Grand Puba, MC of the group Brand Nubian—Bill was introduced to various players in the business and began working private security details for rappers, musicians, and professional athletes. In 1995, he left law enforcement permanently to head up the security team of Andre Harrell, the founder of Uptown Records, who had just been appointed CEO of Motown Records. Working with Harrell for the next four years, Bill put together the connections that would soon yield him a star-studded list of clients, including Harrell’s protégé from Uptown, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs.

  In 2001, Bill was contracted for a security detail in Las Vegas and found that he liked the city. As a hub of the entertainment business and a playground for the rich and famous, it offered no shortage of work for someone in his profession. Taking full custody of his daughter, he moved west and built a successful career as an independent private security consultant, working with top NBA athletes, touring musicians, corporate VIPs, and even presidential candidates.

  By the time he received a call from Jeff Adams to transport a mystery client from McCarran International’s executive terminal to a gated mansion across town, Bill Whitfield had been working at the top of his chosen profession for over a decade. But nothing he’d done in all that time had fully prepared him for the direction his life would take when the sun came up on an empty Las Vegas garage and a young Paris Jackson poked her head in to offer him a cup of hot chocolate, with some of those little melted marshmallows in it.

  Bill: That whole first morning I mostly just sat in the garage, trying to fathom what was going on. I stayed until about six that evening. Then Jeff came and relieved me. I took a few hours and went home and saw my daughter. I had to tell her what was going on. She knew I’d worked for a lot of celebrities, but Michael Jackson? I told her and she looked straight at me and said, “You lyin’, Daddy.”

  I had no way to prove it to her, either. It’s not like I was taking pictures with Michael Jackson and his kids. But I had to convince her. Not only was it the holidays, but her birthday was coming up, too. New Year’s Eve is her birthday, and I had to tell her that I was going to be working through Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and her birthday. As a single dad, believe me, she didn’t let me live that down. She broke down crying in front of me.

  That was the one moment I stopped to think about whether I should take this job or not. I was conflicted. On the one hand, I had my family. But on the other—it’s hard to explain. I just felt this pull, this obligation to see this thing through. Here was this man and his family in this odd situation, and there was nobody looking out for them. I had to see where this was going to go. I talked things out with my daughter, showered up, got something to eat, and went back that night.

  There was a family Mr. Jackson was friendly with, the Cascios, an Italian family from New Jersey. He’d been friends with them going way back to the Thriller days. One of their sons, Angel, was in Vegas for the holidays, and he showed up to visit the day before Christmas. Once Angel was there, Mr. Jackson decided he wanted to go to FAO Schwarz at the Forum Shops inside Caesars Palace. He wanted to do some last-minute Christmas shopping.

  That was the first time we tried to take him out of the house. We took every precaution we knew to take. It was still chaos. Jeff and I spent the morning driving the route from the house to the mall, surveying the parking lots for the safest access in and out of the store. We called and made arrangements with mall security to let them know which way we were going to come in. Didn’t tell them it was Michael Jackson. We’d never tell them that; we’d always say “high-profile dignitary,” so they’d know to be prepared but wouldn’t have any information to leak to the press.

  We hired three SUVs from the same car service we used at the airport. We loaded up Mr. Jackson, Feldman, Angel, and the kids, and then we drove over to the shops, going in through the parking garage and then through the back door of Galerie Lassen, this store that sells lots of expensive paintings. We met up with mall security and from there we decided to separate the kids from their dad. Jeff and Angel took Paris, Prince, and Blanket so they could shop on their own. Feldman and I stayed with Mr. Jackson. We gave them about five minutes to get ahead of us, then we headed out into the mall.

  We hadn’t set foot inside but maybe a minute when someone spotted him and screamed, “Michael Jackson! It’s Michael Jackson!” People were stopping and staring. Mr. Jackson was saying hello, shaking people’s hands. They were yelling, “We love you, Michael!” and Mr. Jackson kept saying, “I love you more! Thank you so much. God bless you.” He was almost in tears, genuinely touched by all this love they were showering on him.

  It was a little rough but not totally overwhelming, at first. Then it started to build. At that point, nobody even knew he was back in the country, so the shock of seeing him was that much bigger. People started swarming around him, wanting to touch him. People were screaming, their faces all contorted with all this freaked-out, passionate emotion. Within seconds it turned into complete and total madness.

  I’ve been in some messed-up situations with celebrities before, but this was like nothing I’d ever experienced in my life. Being in the middle of that kind of onslaught, people coming at you from all sides, it’s frightening. There’s very little you can do to control the situation; the only rational response is to get out of there as fast as possible. Almost as soon as it started, Mr. Jackson turned to me and said, “We need to leave before someone gets hurt.” We radioed the other team to take the kids out a different way and rendezvous with us in the parking garage. Mall security and the Las Vegas police helped us clear a path back to the vehicles. Then we drove everybody home.

  Once we got back to the house, we called FAO Schwarz and made arrangements for Mr. Jackson to go again after store hours, when all the customers and tourists were gone. That night, we went shopping, all alone in the mall. He dropped about ten thousand dollars on toys. He picked out a whole bunch of stuff: train sets, action figures, lots of girly-girly stuff for Paris. Then he wanted all of it gift-wrapped. For everything he picked out, we had to write down the name of who was getting what and make sure the store clerks had everything straight. We took Mr. Jackson home, I drove back to the mall, got the presents, and brought them into the house, arranging everything under the Christmas tree.

  The tree was there when they first arrived in Las Vegas. The whole house was already decorated inside with ornaments. The property management company knew he was coming, and I’m pretty sure it was Mr. Jackson’s directive, the house being decked out like that. He was raised a Jehovah’s Witness. Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate Christmas, but he celebrated it because of his kids. He wanted them to have that experience. He wanted everything to be a perfect surprise for them when they woke up the next morning—including the puppy. He’d planned a special gift for Prince: a seven-week-old chocolate Labrador puppy. But the people that Feldman arranged to get the dog from had arrived too early on Christmas Eve. Mr. Jackson didn’t want Prince to see the dog, and there was nobody else to step up, so I said, “I’ll take him for the night.”

  I took the dog home, kept him at my house. Cute dog. Did not shut up. Whined and whimpered all damn night. I’d barely slept a couple hours when my phone started ringing off the hook. It was only six a.m., but somehow Prince had gotten wind of the surprise and wanted the puppy as soon as possible. So I dragged my ass out of bed, put the puppy in the car, and drove it over. Little guy was whimpering and whining the whole way. But the second I brought him inside Mr. Jackson’s house? He shut right up. He was suddenly as sweet and lovable as he could be, like he knew he was finally home. Prince went crazy. He loved that dog. Named it Kenya.

  For those first few days the family didn’t do anything, didn’t go anywhere. It was mostly just me running a lot of errands. Pick up this, go get that. Feldman would order prepared meals for them from Whole Foods—always Whole Foods—then either he or I wo
uld go and pick them up. Occasionally, when I was patrolling the property, I’d see the family at the kitchen table, having breakfast or something. But I didn’t have any real interaction with them. They stayed in the house. Any communication I had went through Feldman.

  Mr. Jackson’s mother came to visit during that week before New Year’s. No other family members, just her and her driver. She came to the house and brought gifts for the kids. When she pulled up to the house, Mr. Jackson and the little ones were all right there to open the front door for her. There was a lot of excitement. A lot of “Hi, Grandma! Hi, Grandma!” That sort of thing. It was pretty clear they hadn’t seen each other in a while.

  I was keeping an eye on most of this from the garage, where I’d set myself up with a makeshift command post. Every couple hours I’d patrol the perimeter. The whole neighborhood was quiet. Dead of winter. Streets empty. Word hadn’t leaked out yet that Mr. Jackson was living here, so there were no fans, no paparazzi lined up outside the gate. It was eerie, sort of like the calm before the storm, you know? It was only a matter of time before people found out that this was Michael Jackson’s house. When they did, who knew what kind of madness was going to come crashing through the front gate. And we weren’t prepared.

  “What are we doing about security?” was a major discussion, every day, between Feldman, Jeff, and myself. We needed more bodies, people we could trust. New Year’s Eve was coming up fast, and Mr. Jackson had passed down word that he wanted to take the kids to see the David Copperfield show at the MGM Grand. We couldn’t take the family back down to the Strip, on New Year’s Eve, without the right people to handle it. Jeff said he’d reach out to his cousin, Javon, who lives here in Vegas. I’d never met him before, but if Jeff vouched for him I was ready to accept him.

  And to be honest, at that point, Jeff’s word was all I had to go on. The whole situation still felt very strange. Something wasn’t right, the way this was being handled. I just couldn’t put my finger on it yet. I had a lot of questions. I didn’t ask them. In this line of work, you don’t ask questions. When I hire someone to do personal security, if they have too many questions, to me that means they’re not focused on the job. They’re too worried about the who, the what, the why—things that aren’t really their business. It’s a sign that person can’t be trusted.