Smoking Gun Smokes Out Jackson Case Has the gagged Michael Jackson molestation case been unbound?
The Smoking Gun on Thursday published 805 pages of purported Jackson grand jury testimony--and said it was busy scanning more.
The postings come about a month after the Website, along with ABC News, first made public excerpted testimony of Jackson's young accuser. At the time, both the prosecution and defense teams decried the leaks, essentially confirming their authenticity.
As of Friday, there were no new condemnations of the latest Smoking Gun scoop, although Jackson's camp seemed to find comfort in some of its contents.
Jackson's official news Website posted a FoxNews.com story, based on the Smoking Gun documents, about how the singer's accuser told the grand jury that he referred to his alleged Neverland tormentor as "Daddy," or "Daddy Michael."
Jackson earlier blasted the grand-jury leaks. With the blessings of the court, the pop star released a statement on Jan. 30, saying that he deserved a fair trial and maintaining that the "information" heard by the grand jury was "disgusting and false."
California's Santa Barbara County convened a grand jury to hear testimony in the Jackson case last spring. The proceedings resulted in a 10-count indictment against the entertainer. Jackson has pleaded innocent to the charges, which include molestation, conspiracy and plying a child with intoxicating substances.
According to the Smoking Gun (www.thesmokinggun.com), the grand jury heard from 41 witnesses--from the accuser to the flight attendant, who told of Jackson's predilection for being served wine ("yucky Kendall Jackson") in Diet Coke cans, to the public-relations expert, who said a Jackson attorney gleefully talked of making the accuser's mother "look like a crack whore."
Chief among the new posts were 154 pages of testimony that the Smoking Gun says was delivered by the accuser--all but outed now, if not identified, as a former cancer patient who turned 15 in December--over two days on the stand in March and April of 2003.
The choicest contents of the boy's professed testimony are by now familiar to those with a working knowledge of the case: The boy says Jackson showed him naked pictures of women (cracking "Got milk?" at the sight of a woman's breasts), nicknamed him "Apple Head," spoke of the importance of masturbation and then masturbated him, got him woozy on "Jesus Juice" (wine in a soda can), Skyy vodka and Jim Beam bourbon and held the boy and his family against their will at Neverland Ranch.
one new detail contained in the boy's supposed complete testimony: Jackson kept a mannequin in his bedroom, and, on one occasion, pretended to have sex with it in front of the accuser and his younger brother.
The alleged molestation is said to occurred in the weeks after the boy taped an interview with Jackson for the Martin Bashir documentary Living with Michael Jackson, which aired on ABC in February 2003.
The Smoking Gun's mother lode of documents also includes the purported testimony from the accuser's brother, mother and sister, the attorney who represented the family of the accuser in the 1993-94 Jackson molestation investigation, and the therapist who turned authorities onto the family at the center of the current case. In all, the Website says it has obtained 1,903 pages of testimony.
Jackson was not called to testify before the grand jury.
Leading news organizations such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press, did not publish accounts of the professed leaks Friday, with the L.A. Times saying it could not confirm that what the Smoking Gun has posted is the same document that's supposedly sealed up at the Santa Barbara County Superior Court.
The Jackson trial, still in the early phases of jury selection, is on hold until Tuesday. Proceedings were suspended earlier this week when Jackson took ill with the flu, and required an overnight hospitalization.
Meanwhile, in another developent, music legend Quincy Jones, already on Jackson's star-studded list of possible defense witnesses, might not be the singer's best character witness, Celebrity Justice reports.
While Jones has told confidantes that he never saw any criminal behavior by Jackson toward children, the TV show says, the record producer was worried that his friend's "sleepovers with boys" would be his downfall.
"We are told Quincy Jones actually did an intervention on several occasions. Going to Michael Jackson and saying, 'Look, this is inappropriate. It's wrong, and it could bring you down if you don't stop,'" Celebrity Justice executive producer Harvey Levin said on Thursday's program.
Jones worked with Jackson on his three biggest solo album hits, Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad, and also produced "We Are the World," which was cowritten by Jackson.
Will it ever get started
