Dubious characters fill Jackson trial – NY Times

[b]Dubious characters fill Jackson trial [/b] Charlie LeDuff [i]New York Times[/i] Apr. 9, 2005 12:00 AM SANTA MARIA, Calif. – This week at the Michael Jackson child-molestation trial ended much the way it began, with an onslaught of dubious characters from his past saying they had witnessed the erstwhile King of Pop in compromising and scandalous positions with boys. But the parade of former employees included some who admitted that they had stolen from their boss, sold their accounts of events to tabloid journalists for thousands of dollars, changed their testimony when the money came knocking and lied to investigators. Even the man who used to fetch Jackson’s french fries was once a purveyor of Internet pornography. So debilitating was it to watch that Rodney S. Melville, the grandfatherly Superior Court judge, said with a sigh, “It’s been an intense week.” Jurors on Friday heard from Philip LeMarque, the self-described major-domo to Jackson in the early 1990s who said he saw Jackson with his hand down the shorts of Macaulay Culkin, the former child actor, as they played video games. LeMarque conceded that he had not tried to intervene in the boy’s behalf and never called the authorities. “Why not?” the prosecutor asked. “Because no one would ever believe us,” he said in a French accent. What LeMarque did do was contact a go-between to sell his recollections to the tabloids for $100,000 when allegations of Jackson’s troubles with children began to emerge a few years later. The broker said the worse the story, the more money, LeMarque testified. His oscillating story was never sold, however. “We were tempted with the money, for sure,” he said. But in the end he felt “it was against our principles.” [b]Adrian McManus, a former maid to Jackson, also testified. When asked to identify Jackson, who was sitting not 15 feet away in court wearing his customary crest and armband, she said she could not because she did not have her glasses[/b]. …………………. [b]Under cross-examination, she unraveled[/b]. In a 1993 deposition, she told a grand jury that she never saw any lurid behavior. In court this week, she said she had lied then because she was afraid of reprisals from Jackson’s camp. McManus is one of five former employees at Jackson’s Neverland ranch who sued him in 1995 for wrongful dismissal and lost. The jury found that they had acted with fraud and malice and ordered them to pay more than $1 million for Jackson’s legal fees. On Thursday, Ralph Chacon, a former security guard responsible for protecting Jackson’s privacy,…. Chacon also never contacted the authorities and also was one of the five employees who unsuccessfully sued Jackson. [b]By the end of his testimony, he cried and said he wanted to go home.[/b] The witnesses appeared by a quirk of California law which allowed untried charges into evidence in sexual predatory cases to demonstrate a pattern of behavior. … Source: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0409jackson09.html