JACKO TRIAL'S GASBAG - MA'S BL ... 04/17/2005
The New York Post
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News
Published: 04/17/2005
Page: 027
Keywords: Analysis
JACKO TRIAL'S GASBAG - MA'S BLAB BACKFIRES
Byline: By DIANE DIMOND

   SANTA MARIA, Calif. - She is like your next-door neighbor. You see her coming and you welcome a visit. But after an hour of listening to her yammer on, you want her to go home.
   Everything is always about her.  You know the type.
   She is the mother at the center of the Michael Jackson case, and it is her child who is the latest to say he was molested by the pop star. She has endured the struggle of caring for a child with fourth-stage cancer, and now we must all endure her annoying and pontificating answers to really simple questions.
   She is tortuous in her explanations and arrogant enough to think she can out-think the likes of Jackson's defense attorney Tom Mesereau.
   Right now, the mother is the state's worst nightmare.
   At first she wasn't bad.
   During direct examination, she told a fantastical tale, and much of what she said was backed up by corroborating evidence.
   She said a Jackson operative named Frank Casio Tyson continuously called her to say she and her kids were in danger from unnamed "killers" and that she had to come back to Neverland. The actual phone tapes were played in court.
   She said Team Jackson moved her out of her East L.A. apartment against her will, and there on the courtroom jumbo screen the jury saw the documents to prove it.
   This mother sounded ultra-paranoid when she described Jackson thugs conducting video surveillance of her and her family members. But prosecutors played several grainy videotapes showing it was true.
   All this evidence spoke volumes.
   But in the less-friendly atmosphere of cross-examination, Mom just couldn't keep her mouth shut. She arrogantly miscalculated her own demeanor. She lectured Mesereau and refused to look at him, directing her answers instead to the jury box and adding snide comments like, "Now I know what Neverland is all about! It's about booze, pornography and sex with boys."
   She was as bizarre as the man who sat opposite her in the defendant's seat.

   When Mesereau turned to questions about the so-called rebuttal video, a 30-minute tape of the mom and her three kids extolling the virtues of Jackson, Mom made her greatest mistakes.
   She expressively declared she was just following a script written and choreographed by Jackson co-conspirators Dieter Weisner and Ronald Konitzer.
   She insisted Weisner worked on her "10 times a day" at her Neverland guest quarters to practice the script. No one in the room was buying it.
   "So, what you're saying there is all memorized?" asked Mesereau.
   "Yes," she said. "I was just acting. You're not going to call Halle Berry and ask her if she's Catwoman. She was acting, not lying. So was I."
   "Even your laughter was scripted?" he asked.
   "Yes," Mom declared.
   This is a mother who didn't even have the presence of mind to ask for help when she thought she and her family were in danger.
   Yet this is the woman the defense would have the jury believe is the mastermind behind a scheme to frame and then extort money from Michael Jackson. That, too, defies belief.

 

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