Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days (3 page)

Jackson, who once toured the world with two cargo planes’
worth of equipment and personnel, returned from his eighteen months abroad with only a skeleton crew: his children, their nanny, Grace Rwaramba, and his personal assistant, John Feldman. Since his days as a child star, the core part of Michael Jackson’s entourage had always been his personal security team, who shadowed nearly all of his public movements. In the run-up to the 2005 trial, the singer’s protection had been handled by the Nation of Islam. The Nation’s presence in Jackson’s life had stirred up controversy in the media, so when Jackson returned to the United States, his management decided not to continue using the Nation for the singer’s personal security. Through private security consultant Jeff Adams, who had ties to Jackson’s team, word went out that new people were needed to work the singer’s protective detail. Of the résumés that came back, one candidate caught Jackson’s eye.

Born in 1965, Bill Whitfield grew up in the New York suburb of New Rochelle and went on to pursue a career in law enforcement. By the early 1990s, he’d become a father to his only daughter and was moonlighting in the world of private protection, which would soon become his primary career. At the time, New York’s hip-hop scene was exploding, moving up from the streets of the Bronx to become a billion-dollar industry. Through his cousin, Maxwell Dixon—also known as Grand Puba, MC of the group Brand Nubian—Bill was introduced to various players in the business and began working private security details for rappers, musicians, and professional athletes. In 1995, he left law enforcement permanently to head up the security team of Andre Harrell, the founder of Uptown Records, who had just been appointed CEO of Motown Records. Working with Harrell for the next four years, Bill put together the connections that would soon yield him a star-studded list of clients, including Harrell’s protégé from Uptown, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs.

In 2001, Bill was contracted for a security detail in Las Vegas and found that he liked the city. As a hub of the entertainment business and a playground for the rich and famous, it offered no shortage
of work for someone in his profession. Taking full custody of his daughter, he moved west and built a successful career as an independent private security consultant, working with top NBA athletes, touring musicians, corporate VIPs, and even presidential candidates.

By the time he received a call from Jeff Adams to transport a mystery client from McCarran International’s executive terminal to a gated mansion across town, Bill Whitfield had been working at the top of his chosen profession for over a decade. But nothing he’d done in all that time had fully prepared him for the direction his life would take when the sun came up on an empty Las Vegas garage and a young Paris Jackson poked her head in to offer him a cup of hot chocolate, with some of those little melted marshmallows in it.

Bill:
That whole first morning I mostly just sat in the garage, trying to fathom what was going on. I stayed until about six that evening. Then Jeff came and relieved me. I took a few hours and went home and saw my daughter. I had to tell her what was going on. She knew I’d worked for a lot of celebrities, but Michael Jackson? I told her and she looked straight at me and said, “You lyin’, Daddy.”

I had no way to prove it to her, either. It’s not like I was taking pictures with Michael Jackson and his kids. But I had to convince her. Not only was it the holidays, but her birthday was coming up, too. New Year’s Eve is her birthday, and I had to tell her that I was going to be working through Christmas Eve, Christmas Day,
and
her birthday. As a single dad, believe me, she didn’t let me live that down. She broke down crying in front of me.

That was the one moment I stopped to think about whether I should take this job or not. I was conflicted. On the one hand, I had my family. But on the other—it’s hard to explain. I just felt this pull, this obligation to see this thing through. Here was this man and his family in this odd situation, and there was nobody looking out for them. I had to see where this was going to go. I talked
things out with my daughter, showered up, got something to eat, and went back that night.

There was a family Mr. Jackson was friendly with, the Cascios, an Italian family from New Jersey. He’d been friends with them going way back to the
Thriller
days. One of their sons, Angel, was in Vegas for the holidays, and he showed up to visit the day before Christmas. Once Angel was there, Mr. Jackson decided he wanted to go to FAO Schwarz at the Forum Shops inside Caesars Palace. He wanted to do some last-minute Christmas shopping.

That was the first time we tried to take him out of the house. We took every precaution we knew to take. It was still chaos. Jeff and I spent the morning driving the route from the house to the mall, surveying the parking lots for the safest access in and out of the store. We called and made arrangements with mall security to let them know which way we were going to come in. Didn’t tell them it was Michael Jackson. We’d never tell them that; we’d always say “high-profile dignitary,” so they’d know to be prepared but wouldn’t have any information to leak to the press.

We hired three SUVs from the same car service we used at the airport. We loaded up Mr. Jackson, Feldman, Angel, and the kids, and then we drove over to the shops, going in through the parking garage and then through the back door of Galerie Lassen, this store that sells lots of expensive paintings. We met up with mall security and from there we decided to separate the kids from their dad. Jeff and Angel took Paris, Prince, and Blanket so they could shop on their own. Feldman and I stayed with Mr. Jackson. We gave them about five minutes to get ahead of us, then we headed out into the mall.

We hadn’t set foot inside but maybe a minute when someone spotted him and screamed, “
Michael Jackson! It’s Michael Jackson!
” People were stopping and staring. Mr. Jackson was saying hello, shaking people’s hands. They were yelling, “
We love you, Michael!
” and Mr. Jackson kept saying, “I love you more! Thank you so much.
God bless you.” He was almost in tears, genuinely touched by all this love they were showering on him.

It was a little rough but not totally overwhelming, at first. Then it started to build. At that point, nobody even knew he was back in the country, so the shock of seeing him was that much bigger. People started swarming around him, wanting to touch him. People were
screaming
, their faces all contorted with all this freaked-out, passionate emotion. Within seconds it turned into complete and total madness.

I’ve been in some messed-up situations with celebrities before, but this was like nothing I’d ever experienced in my life. Being in the middle of that kind of onslaught, people coming at you from all sides, it’s frightening. There’s very little you can do to control the situation; the only rational response is to get out of there as fast as possible. Almost as soon as it started, Mr. Jackson turned to me and said, “We need to leave before someone gets hurt.” We radioed the other team to take the kids out a different way and rendezvous with us in the parking garage. Mall security and the Las Vegas police helped us clear a path back to the vehicles. Then we drove everybody home.

Once we got back to the house, we called FAO Schwarz and made arrangements for Mr. Jackson to go again after store hours, when all the customers and tourists were gone. That night, we went shopping, all alone in the mall. He dropped about ten thousand dollars on toys. He picked out a whole bunch of stuff: train sets, action figures, lots of girly-girly stuff for Paris. Then he wanted all of it gift-wrapped. For everything he picked out, we had to write down the name of who was getting what and make sure the store clerks had everything straight. We took Mr. Jackson home, I drove back to the mall, got the presents, and brought them into the house, arranging everything under the Christmas tree.

The tree was there when they first arrived in Las Vegas. The whole house was already decorated inside with ornaments. The property
management company knew he was coming, and I’m pretty sure it was Mr. Jackson’s directive, the house being decked out like that. He was raised a Jehovah’s Witness. Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate Christmas, but he celebrated it because of his kids. He wanted them to have that experience. He wanted everything to be a perfect surprise for them when they woke up the next morning—including the puppy. He’d planned a special gift for Prince: a seven-week-old chocolate Labrador puppy. But the people that Feldman arranged to get the dog from had arrived too early on Christmas Eve. Mr. Jackson didn’t want Prince to see the dog, and there was nobody else to step up, so I said, “I’ll take him for the night.”

I took the dog home, kept him at my house. Cute dog. Did not shut up. Whined and whimpered all damn night. I’d barely slept a couple hours when my phone started ringing off the hook. It was only six a.m., but somehow Prince had gotten wind of the surprise and wanted the puppy as soon as possible. So I dragged my ass out of bed, put the puppy in the car, and drove it over. Little guy was whimpering and whining the whole way. But the second I brought him inside Mr. Jackson’s house? He shut right up. He was suddenly as sweet and lovable as he could be, like he knew he was finally home. Prince went crazy. He loved that dog. Named it Kenya.

For those first few days the family didn’t do anything, didn’t go anywhere. It was mostly just me running a lot of errands. Pick up this, go get that. Feldman would order prepared meals for them from Whole Foods—always Whole Foods—then either he or I would go and pick them up. Occasionally, when I was patrolling the property, I’d see the family at the kitchen table, having breakfast or something. But I didn’t have any real interaction with them. They stayed in the house. Any communication I had went through Feldman.

Mr. Jackson’s mother came to visit during that week before New Year’s. No other family members, just her and her driver. She came to the house and brought gifts for the kids. When she pulled up to the house, Mr. Jackson and the little ones were all right there
to open the front door for her. There was a lot of excitement. A lot of “Hi, Grandma! Hi, Grandma!” That sort of thing. It was pretty clear they hadn’t seen each other in a while.

I was keeping an eye on most of this from the garage, where I’d set myself up with a makeshift command post. Every couple hours I’d patrol the perimeter. The whole neighborhood was quiet. Dead of winter. Streets empty. Word hadn’t leaked out yet that Mr. Jackson was living here, so there were no fans, no paparazzi lined up outside the gate. It was eerie, sort of like the calm before the storm, you know? It was only a matter of time before people found out that this was Michael Jackson’s house. When they did, who knew what kind of madness was going to come crashing through the front gate. And we weren’t prepared.

“What are we doing about security?” was a major discussion, every day, between Feldman, Jeff, and myself. We needed more bodies, people we could trust. New Year’s Eve was coming up fast, and Mr. Jackson had passed down word that he wanted to take the kids to see the David Copperfield show at the MGM Grand. We couldn’t take the family back down to the Strip, on New Year’s Eve, without the right people to handle it. Jeff said he’d reach out to his cousin, Javon, who lives here in Vegas. I’d never met him before, but if Jeff vouched for him I was ready to accept him.

And to be honest, at that point, Jeff’s word was all I had to go on. The whole situation still felt very strange. Something wasn’t right, the way this was being handled. I just couldn’t put my finger on it yet. I had a lot of questions. I didn’t ask them. In this line of work, you don’t ask questions. When I hire someone to do personal security, if they have too many questions, to me that means they’re not focused on the job. They’re too worried about the who, the what, the why—things that aren’t really their business. It’s a sign that person can’t be trusted.

Besides, if you really want to know something? When you’re on a detail long enough, you’ll find out. It will come. You start
overhearing conversations. You start getting emails, taking phone calls. You see who’s visiting, so on. You keep your thoughts to yourself. You just watch and listen, and pretty soon all your questions will be answered without you having to ask them.

2

Growing up, Michael Jackson idolized James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, the Hardest-Working Man in Show Business. Watching Brown on television and from the wings at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, the young performer studied and absorbed the master’s every move. Though he would go on to learn at the feet of Motown greats like Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, and Smokey Robinson, Michael Jackson would insist throughout his life that James Brown had been his deepest and most lasting influence.

On Christmas Eve, as Jackson and his family were preparing to celebrate the holidays, his childhood idol was checking into a hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, complaining of exhaustion and a debilitating cough. Just hours later, in the early morning of Christmas Day, the seventy-three-year-old Brown died of congestive heart failure brought on by complications from pneumonia. On December 30, leaving his children in the care of their nanny, Jackson flew to Augusta, Georgia, and attended Brown’s memorial service, joining several other luminaries onstage to eulogize the departed singer. It was Jackson’s first public appearance in the United States since leaving the country a year and a half before.

While waiting for Jackson to return, Bill Whitfield and Jeff Adams began making arrangements to beef up the family’s security detail for New Year’s Eve. Adams, already contracted to another client, would not be on hand much longer, so he reached out to his cousin Javon
Beard. Twenty-six years old and a father of three, Javon Beard grew up in the heart of South Central Los Angeles, his father a postal worker and his mother a clerk for FedEx. One of six children, Beard had an older sister, a twin brother, younger twin sisters, and a younger baby brother. His own twin, Jovon, was born with cerebral palsy and died at the age of seven.