Michael Jackson Is Gone, but the Sad Facts Remain

In August 1993, I was on the beach in Nantucket when I was told that Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter was trying to reach me: Michael Jackson had just been accused of child molestation by a 13-year-old boy. Thus began an odyssey of 12 years in which I wrote five lengthy articles for the magazine about the trials and tribulations of this music icon whose fame had literally deformed him. I spoke to hundreds of people who knew Jackson and, in the course of my reporting, found families who had given their sons up to him and paid dearly for it. I found people who had been asked to supply him with drugs. I even found the business manager who told me on-the-record how he had had to wire $150,000 to a voodoo chief in Mali who had 42 cows ritually sacrificed in order to put a curse on David Geffen, Steven Spielberg, and 23 others on Jackson’s enemies list. I sat through two trials and watched his bizarre behavior on the stand when he said he did not recognize his publicist of a decade. One of the reasons I endured this not-fun circus was that, when I began, I was the mother of a boy roughly the same age as the ones Jackson was so interested in spending the night with. His behavior truly troubled me. Understandably, in the wake of his death, there are those who do not want to hear these sad facts. Yet nothing that Vanity Fair printed was ever challenged legally by Jackson or his associates.

A man who made great music and entertained brilliantly has died. I’ve been told that he had endured an eight-hour rehearsal and was in rare form on the stage the night before his death. I’ve also been told that the lawyers swooped in yesterday to retrieve all the videos that had been made of these rehearsals. I believe the aftermath of his death will probably be as messy as his life was. I loved his music. Offstage, he could not escape his tragic flaw.

Here, in order of their appearance in Vanity Fair, are Maureen Orth’s closely reported articles about the Jackson cases:

Nightmare in Neverland (July 1994)
While Michael Jackson was whisked away to detox treatment, the star’s lawyers fought a desperate battle to protect him from facing the sexual-abuse charges brought by his 13-year-old accuser. The author untangles the whole painful story to provide the definitive account of Jackson’s fall, and in it finds a late-20th-century parable of manipulation, corrupted fantasy, and lost innocence.

The Jackson Jive (September 1995)
Michael Jackson’s interview with ABC News’s PrimeTime Live was a public-relations triumph, in which 60 million viewers got anything but the truth.

Losing His Grip(April 2003)
From Michael Jackson’s increasingly freakish appearance to his voodoo death spells, to the disturbing revelations in a $21.2 million civil suit against him, the pop star’s life has been spinning out of control. Investigating his spiraling debt, his grandiose schemes, and his controversial relationship with children, Maureen Orth wonders if Jackson is as crazy as he seems—or a cool manipulator of his own fame.

Neverland’s Lost Boys(March 2004)
The latest charges against Michael Jackson—of molesting a 13-year-old cancer patient—are more than a déjà vu of allegations that led to his $25 million settlement with young Jordie Chandler in 1994. Once again, Jackson and his lawyers are saying the motive of the boy and his family is pure greed. But the King of Pop’s shield of fame and money is wearing thin. Maureen Orth reveals new information from the star’s former business adviser, the ex-wife of his notorious p.i., and other insiders about alleged porn and wine seductions, the forensic search of Neverland, and how both accusers’ lives have been torn apart.

C.S.I. Neverland (July 2005)
Disfigured, deeply in debt, and with a history of drug addiction—at 46, Michael Jackson is also at the end of a criminal trial for allegedly molesting a 13-year-old cancer patient. After 12 years of covering Jackson’s downward spiral and the recurring allegations of pedophilia, Maureen Orth explores the absurd and painful spectacle of this courtroom reckoning, the dysfunctional families on both sides of the case, and the dark tactics of Jackson’s entourage.