MJ’s Smoking Gun Wednesday, July 07, 2004 By Roger Friedman :shock MJ Case: Audio Tape Is Smoking Gun There’s a smoking gun in the Michael Jackson child-abuse case, but it’s not going to help the prosecution. An audio tape made by private investigator Brad Miller on or around Feb 20, 2003, may in fact solve the whole case. On the tape, Miller working for Jackson defense attorney Mark Geragos interviews the 13-year-old boy who has since accused Jackson of impropriety. Also interviewed are the boy’s brother, sister and mother. This tape, I’m told, is the reason behind all those closed-door arguments among the lawyers in the case and the subject of Judge Rodney Melville’s sealing of evidence. The tape, and a lot of documents that have nothing to do with Jackson, were found in a police raid on Miller’s office the same day cops charged into Neverland last November. And that’s the problem. Miller’s lawyer, as well as Jackson’s, claims that Miller worked for Geragos and not for Jackson, making Miller part of the defense team and everything in his office off-limits to prosecutors. I’m told that the search warrant against Miller, however, incorrectly stated that he was Jackson’s employee. Miller has had to hire his own legal representation because, he’s told friends, many of the items confiscated by the Santa Barbara police in that November raid are files pertaining to other clients, not to Jackson. But it’s what’s on the tape that all the lawyers are fighting about. Miller, under instructions from Geragos, interviewed the family members about their relationship with Jackson. He asked them a lot of questions, including whether or not there had been any sexual misconduct. The answers, I’m told, were emphatically “no.” Prosecutors may suggest the three were coerced or forced to read from a script. But it appears they were not alone during the taping session. Major Jay Jackson, the boy’s mother’s boyfriend, was with them the whole time, my sources say. “If Jay Jackson didn’t like what they were being asked, he could have said something,” one source says. “He didn’t.” It’s a big issue now that the prosecutors are in possession of this tape. Under the law, they are not allowed to listen to it until the judge rules whether it’s part of the defense. But District Attorney Tom Sneddon may have listened to it after all. (No one from the prosecutor’s office will comment on this or any other part of the Jackson case, invoking the court’s gag order.) The tape may also play into the ever-shifting timeline in the Jackson case. When Sneddon filed charges against Jackson, he alleged that the child molestation took place between Feb. 7 and March 10 of 2003. Later, when he re-filed, the dates were changed: Feb. 20 to March 12, 2003. “That’s because the tape was made later, around February 16 or 18,” says my source. “Also, that’s when the family was interviewed by the Los Angeles child-welfare people. Sneddon is trying to re-set the timeline so it all matches.” An interviewer from the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services spoke to the family the same week they made the tape. I’m told the same answers came back that nothing untoward had happened. Sneddon, it’s suggested, had to change the dates of the charges so that they began after the tape was made and the interview was conducted. “And we’re to believe that Michael, knowing about the tape and the interview, then decided to molest the kid,” my source says incredulously. There’s more. Initially, we were led to believe that Jackson’s managers, Dieter Wiesner and Ronald Konitzer, hired Geragos in January 2003 before any of this started. We were told that they did this with an eye toward suing Sony Music over Jackson’s situation with the company. It was supposedly a coincidence that Geragos was on duty when the family of the accuser needed handling. Now, however, I am told by an eyewitness that Wiesner and Konitzer didn’t retain Geragos until right after the Martin Bashir television special “Living With Michael Jackson” aired on ABC on Feb. 7, 2003. According to my source, Wiesner and Konitzer immediately suspected that the family was going to become a problem once the special aired. “They wanted to be paid for being in it,” my source said. “When they weren’t, it became an issue.” Geragos kept a vigilant eye on the family even when it was being chaperoned by Jackson’s employees. For example, he paid at least one month’s rent on the family’s East Los Angeles apartment. “They were going to be evicted,” says a source, “and he thought it was the right thing to do.” He also assigned a “watcher” named Johnny who worked for Miller to keep an eye on the family during a four- or five-day stay at the Hotel Calabasas about 30 miles from downtown Los Angeles. “He [Johnny] was there to keep the press away,” says my source. Prosecutors have hinted that the Hotel Calabasas stay was a type of incarceration. But defense sources say they have evidence that the family went to the movies, ate at an Outback Steakhouse and was free to come and go. The family was eventually moved out of its apartment and all its belongings put in storage. The conspiracy component of the Jackson indictment suggests that this was done against the family’s wishes. But, my source insists, “They wanted it. The mother said she wanted her apartment cleaned out and everything thrown away. She said she was starting a new life with Jay.” The Jackson team made sure it chronicled everything that happened. “All the contents of that apartment were videotaped. We weren’t going to have them say something was missing later,” my source says. :nav Source: [url=http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,124905,00.html]http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,124905,00.html[/url]
Jackson’s Smoking Gun:Jay Jackson Present once when accuser denied abuse
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