Jacko, His Rise and Fall: The Social and Sexual History of Michael Jackson (60 page)

Johnny Ciao was employed as a chef at Neverland during the greater part
of 1988. During that time, he witnessed a parade of boys being entertained by
Michael. One boy, who "looked like an angel," was estimated to be only eight
years old. Staff members felt that the oldest boys Michael entertained were
thirteen years of age-rarely sixteen or seventeen.

In a move he'd later regret, Michael hired Mark and Faye Quindoy, a
Filipino couple, to manage his Neverland estate. They would later spill many
of Michael's secrets to the world, appearing on such shows as Geraldo
Rivera's Now It Can Be Told. When child molestation charges first appeared,
and the Quindoys were questioned by California police, the couple agreed to
testify against Michael. They would later sue Michael for $300,000 back pay
and also sue his envoy, Anthony Pellicano, who denounced them as "cockroaches and failed extortionists."

Having replaced Johnny Ciao, Faye Quindoy became Michael's personal
cook, preparing such treats as a Mickey Mouse Cake and the Seven Dwarfs
Pizza. Her husband presided over Michael's small army of 15 armed guards,
32 groundskeepers, and two animal keepers, even a fire "brigade" of one firefighter.

When Michael and his special friend of the moment tired of his own
Disneyland at the ranch, he'd asked Mark Quindoy to drive them to Solvang,
which, like Neverland, lay in the Santa Ynez Valley. Because of its association
with early Danish settlers, the town offers a taste of Scandinavia in California,
with much of its architecture in the traditional Danish style. There is even a
copy of the most famous statue in Copenhagen, the Little Mermaid, as
inspired by the tale of Hans Christian Andersen.

One day Mark drove Michael to Solvang, accompanied by a seven-yearold boy who was spending his nights in Michael's bed.

After pulling a four-wheel-drive Chevrolet Blazer into Solvang, Mark
accompanied Michael and the boy as they explored the town, stopping at a mammoth dollhouse Michael was considering duplicating at Neverland.

On the way back to the ranch, Mark later reported that he was astonished
to witness Michael in an embrace with the boy-"like a lover, kissing him
passionately. It was just like a boy kissing a girl in the backseat," he later testified. He claimed that the boy put up no protest but just sat there quietly tolerating it even when Michael wet-kissed him on the lips. "Michael began kissing him everywhere-his neck, head, arms, shoulders, and body. I was utterly stunned-appalled that he could do that to a seven-year-old boy. The kid
stayed for another three weeks at Neverland before departing with his mother, who had been staying in Michael's guest house. The next day a nine-yearold boy showed up and began his sleepovers in Michael's bedroom."

Years later, when contacted by investigative reporters while living in
Manila, the Quindoys admitted that "Jackson chose one boy at a time. The
kids were assaulted with sounds and lights. Lewd things went on right under
the noses of the parents." The couple claimed that they did not go to the police
because "we were just witnesses, not victims."

One big question has been raised-but never quite answered: Why did
mothers allow their kids to be alone all night with an adult male in his bedroom? Rabbi Shmuley Boteach said, "No one has suggested that women have
sunk so low that they would prostitute their own children in order to benefit
from proximity to a superstar." He cited the case of Michael Jackson as "a
frightening new sickness in the American soul. The pursuit of money and
celebrity has driven some Americans to use their own children as the means
by which to obtain rewards. Just when you thought that respect for women in
our popular culture had reached its nadir, along comes a new stereotype: the
mother as pimp."

Michael's bedroom was on the second floor of Neverland's main residence, a manor-style building with nearly a dozen additional bedrooms. There
were an extra four bedrooms within an elegant and rather tastefully decorated
guest house in back.

The Quindoy witnesses

He had ordered that a secret playroom be constructed next to the manor. Like
Michael's perpetually darkened bedroom,
this playroom was strictly off-limits to other
employees. Sometimes Michael would
spend all day in this playroom with his special friend of the moment.

Michael not only maintained a shrine
to Elizabeth Taylor, but he created the
Shirley Temple Room. He'd seen all of her
films, including Wee Willie Winkie and The Little Colonel, many of them countless times, and had decorated the room
with film posters of his favorite Shirley Temple flicks. He'd also collected lots
of Temple memorabilia, including a pair of patent-leather Mary Jane shoes
that she'd worn in one of her movies. He'd also purchased curly haired wigs
sold in the 30s to young girls whose mothers wanted them to look like the
chubby-cheeked toddler.

Michael was especially intrigued with a series of shorts Temple had made
in the early 1930s. Called Baby Burlesks, these films starring young kids
spoofed movies and stars of the early Talkies. Viewed today, these seemingly
innocent films have been called "baby porn," attracting every pedophile in
America-that is, those who desired young girls instead of young boys.

To more mature and cynical audiences in the decades to come, Temple
became a joke and was endlessly spoofed. One critic wrote, "She was precocious to the point of nausea, overemphasizing every goody-goody line, pouring on each inflection of cheer and wringing forth every tear in a manner that
had nothing whatsoever to do with real acting." But Michael didn't agree with
that. He was a self-admitted "sucker" for a Temple movie any time she wanted to take a ride on the Good Ship Lollipop. He even ordered a Shirley Temple
mannequin, dressing it in baby pink with a pink bow holding up her curly coiffure.

One day he invited Mrs. Shirley Temple Black to visit Neverland, and she
accepted his invitation. In her 60s and rather matronly, Temple had hesitated
before accepting the invitation. Her nervousness was evident when Michael
greeted her in the foyer of Neverland. "Are you disappointed in me?" she
asked.

"Of course not," he said. "I'm honored."

"I'm always embarrassed to meet fans of my pictures from the 30s," she
said. "I feel I've betrayed them by growing up. Even worse, growing old."

"You are not old," he assured her. "You'll be forever young in your films
which will also live forever. The world will always remember you as young."

Michael appeared before Temple in full makeup, including mascara, eyeliner, and Honey Glow.

Not missing a beat, nor even appearing startled that she was greeting a
man in heavy makeup, Temple studied Michael's face momentarily and said,
"I like Honey Glow myself."

As he ushered her into the Shirley Temple Room, she took his hand and
searched for his eyes behind his sunglasses. "Like you, I sacrificed my youth
to entertain others," she confessed. "But by 1949 the studios told me I can't
be a cute little girl forever. Now let's look around this Shirley Temple Room.
I'm sure it'll bring back so many memories."

Mrs. Temple Black became the U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and later Czechoslovakia. At the time of her meeting with Michael, the two stars
exchanged autobiographies, he giving her a copy of Moonwalk and she presenting him with her tome, Child Star.

Mrs. Temple Black grew up. Michael never did.

For his master bedroom at Neverland, Michael purchased an oversized red
velvet and gold throne, "fit for a queen," as a member of the Neverland staff
jokingly suggested. He also had a four-poster bed. But for extreme privacy, he
ordered the construction of a Secret Room. It was entered through a ten-foot
walk-in closet packed with childish novelties and other bizarre artifacts. A
door was hidden at the rear of the closet behind an array of Michael's favorite
military costumes.

A narrow, carpeted stairwell, lined with rag dolls, led to the windowless,
eight-by-seven-foot secret chamber.

In the 90s when the police searched Neverland, trying to find evidence to
prove a case of child molestation against Michael, they accidentally stumbled
upon this private hideaway. The room, police discovered, was sparsely furnished, containing an oversized sofa, upholstered in a satiny pink, a Trinitron
TV, and a bed covered with pillows depicting Peter Pan and Tinkerbell. A bugeyed, red-headed Troll Doll was placed in the center of the bed. There was
also a Mickey Mouse phone. For art, pictures of smiling babies in diapers
lined the walls.

When the existence of the secret room became known to the public,
reporters labeled it Michael's "creepy lair." When Michael was not entertaining a boy in his bedroom, he would take the child out to enjoy the grounds at
Neverland, which included Michael's Disney-esque attractions and his animal
menagerie.

His private zoo was complete with tigers, lions, and giraffes. There were
also two elephants, the baby elephant a gift from Elizabeth Taylor. Michael
ordered that the animal be painted in his favorite shade of pink.

A "Lawrence of Arabia" camel was part of the menagerie, as was a baby
llama called "Puddin' Pie." There were enough pink flamingos to rival their
nesting ground on Inagua Island, in The Bahamas. Michael also had a cage of
chimps, supplying them with papayas, mangoes, and boxed fruit juices.

Throughout the park were waterproof pictures of Michael holding hands
with children. Both parents and children, even such famous guests as
Elizabeth Taylor and Gregory Peck, were invited to enjoy Michael's fantasy
park.

Security guards from the Nation of Islam required each guest to sign a
waiver agreeing not to carry cameras. Later cell phones were added to the forbidden list. If a visitor violated the mandate, he or she might be escorted from
the grounds of Neverland by a guard.

One of those guards reported that Michael
threw rocks at his lion to make him roar. He could
often be seen riding his Ferris wheel with a series
of boys.

One guard claimed, "I can't count the number
of young boys who rode with Michael on that
Ferris wheel, his arm locked possessively around
them. All the young kids were instructed to call
Michael `Daddy."'

Shirley all grown up

Sometimes he would simultaneously hold the
hands of two boys as he escorted them around his
amusement park, whose white-painted Victorian
gazebos and ornate street lamps evoked fin de sie-
cle Paris. He even had treehouses built on the property. He'd climb up to one
of these getaways in the sky with his favorite of the moment.

After Michael adopted child star Macaulay Culkin as his favorite, he
installed a water pistol range, "Mac and Mike's Waterforts," for some epic
water pistol battles. Ice cream flavors came in an astonishing array, including
one Michael himself created-kiwi fruit and peanut butter. One arcade played
rap music all day, although Michael had ordered a sound engineer to edit out
"the curse words."

He told his adult visitors that his flowerbeds cost him $300,000 a year to
maintain. "I can't stand to see a flower die," he said. "When a flower withers,
I order one of my gardeners to dig up the bulb and replace it immediately with
one that will bloom again."

Lunch was always provided for the kids invited to Neverland. "The kids
skipped the vegetables and main courses and went immediately for the
desserts," said a former cook. "After a big lunch, they'd spend the rest of the
day eating pink cotton candy or devouring bags of popcorn. All of them went
home with a belly ache."

When the builders of Neverland thought they were finished with the project, Michael demanded more-his own steam railway, a fun fair, a cinema,
and a make-believe Indian village. When everything was finished, Michael
hired a Charlie Chaplin impersonator to wander the grounds, amusing the children, who usually didn't know anything about the silent screen star.

After Michael's guests had departed, he often retreated to "The Giving
Tree" overlooking a lake. Here he would write lyrics, including the song,
"Childhood":