MYSTERY LOVERS, family rifts, code names and shooting hoops - Michael Jackson's security team reveal what life was really like with the King Of Pop in his final years.
1. SECRET LOVERS
Mr Jackson had at least two secret girlfriends who lived abroad. We met them when they flew in to visit during a summer vacation in Middleburg, Virginia.
He kept their presence a secret from his family, his managers, even his children.
We were the only two privy to their arrival, and even we were never told their real names; he referred to them only as “Friend” and “Flower".
Michael Jackson lived in fear of being secretly recorded. Before Mr Jackson entered any hotel room or conference room, he would have us sweep the room for cameras or listening devices.
If he even suspected that a room was bugged, he’d insist on changing rooms. When he discovered that a limousine company had failed to disconnect the security cameras mounted inside a car we’d rented, he had us confiscate the vehicle and hold it in the garage until the company agreed to turn over the recordings it had made so that they could be destroyed.
It wasn’t just paranoia. In 2003, a private conversation between Mr Jackson and his lawyer had been taped without their knowledge and shopped to the ta
3. FAMILY SPLIT
By the time he returned to America from Bahrain and Ireland in late 2007, Mr Jackson was almost completely estranged from everyone in his family except his mother.
She would drop by unannounced and he always welcomed her. Everyone else had to have an appointment to see him. Even Janet.
On numerous occasions, his famous siblings would arrive, sometimes breaking through the security gate, only to be turned away.
Too famous to leave his house very often, Michael Jackson was a huge reader.
He devoured books on history, art, science, you name it.
On a single trip to the bookstore, he’d drop $5,000 on books like he was buying a pack of gum.
During a 2007 visit to Los Angeles, he found a used book store he liked so much that he bought it for $100,000 cash on the spot and had the entire collection hauled back to his Las Vegas home.
5. CODE NAME KIDS
Most people know that in public, Mr Jackson required his children to wear masks in order to hide their identities from the paparazzi.
That wasn’t the only precaution he took.
He also gave the children code names to use with each other and for us to use over the radio. They were never to use their real names outside of the house.
Michael Jackson may have been the King of Pop, but in his private time he listened almost exclusively to classical music. Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky - that was the soundtrack running in his car and his house all the time.
Much to our surprise, Mr Jackson revealed to us that after OJ Simpson was acquitted for the murder of his wife, he allowed the disgraced football player to take refuge from the media at his Neverland Ranch.
In his final years, Michael Jackson had virtually blocked out the entire world.
Thanks to the relentless and typically negative tabloid coverage of his life, Jackson wouldn’t watch broadcast or cable TV, only DVDs. He had no computer and would typically have one of us search the Internet and send emails on his behalf.
On trips to bookstore and newsstands, we had to pre-screen the newspaper and magazine racks to make sure there were no Michael Jackson-related stories that he or the children might see.
The only American news Mr Jackson consumed was The Wall Street Journal, which he read religiously every morning, because it was one of the few places he was unlikely to read crazy allegations about his personal life.
9. HITTING THE HOOPS
One of Mr Jackson’s favorite pastimes was playing basketball. He and his brothers learned how to play at Marvin Gaye’s house back in the Jackson 5 days.
He would go out to the driveway all the time and just shoot hoops by himself for a few hours. It was his way to relax and unwind. He had a pretty good jump shot, too.
After Santa Barbara sheriffs ransacked Jackson’s Neverland mansion in 2003, he declared that he could never live there again; it was no longer a home where he felt safe.
Five years later, in 2008, the estate was exactly as the sheriffs had left it: drawers ransacked, furniture overturned, everything gathering dust.
Jackson and his children spent the remaining years of his life living in hotels and rented homes.
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