Dylan Howard - Bad: An Unprecedented Investigation Into the Michael Jackson Cover-Up

Copyright 2020 by Dylan Howard

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Jacket design by 5mediadesign

Jacket photo credits: Getty Images

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-5509-3

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-6327-2

Printed in the United States of America

OTHER BOOKS BY DYLAN HOWARD

Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Aaron Hernandezs Killing Fields

Diana: Case Solved

The Last Charles Manson Tapes: Evil Lives Beyond the Grave

Billion Dollar Hollywood Heist

Royals at War

PRAISE FOR DYLAN HOWARD

Dylan Howard is the rare combination of cutting-edge journalist, true crime commentator, and relentless investigator.

Dr. Phil McGraw, host of TVs #1 daytime talk show, Dr. Phil

Renowned.

Nancy Grace

A wunderkind Hollywood gossip reporter.

Columbia Journalism Review

Big-name producer.

Vanity Fair

Howard is a throwback to an older age of journalism.

Anne Helen Petersen, BuzzFeed

One of my favorite people in American media.

Anthony Scaramucci

A tabloid prodigy.

Jeffrey Toobin, staff writer at the New Yorker , CNN senior legal analyst, and New York Times bestselling author

The king of Hollywood scoops.

Ad Week

The go-to guy for authoritative showbiz news and analysis on cable and over-the air television.

Los Angeles Press Club

When Dylan Howard focuses his attention to investigating a case, you can be sure he will uncover sensational new information that we, as readers, viewers or listeners, will find astonishing.

Dr. Drew Pinsky, New York Times bestselling author and TV and radio personality

CONTENTS

AUTHORS NOTE

Bad is the untold, revelatory true story of the strange and larger-than-life career of Michael Jackson, the King of Pop. In the wake of the controversial film Leaving Neverland , a two-part documentary telling the stories of two young boys who were befriended by the singer and claimed they suffered years of agonizing abuse, I set out to investigate Jacksons life and death in unprecedented depth and determine if, as one lawyer suggested, the pop star I idolized growing up in Australia as a teenager ran the most sophisticated child sexual abuse procurement and facilitation operation the world has known.

Bad is a dramatic narrative account based on dozens of interviews, Jacksons own riveting personal journal, interviews with Jackson family members, multiple first-person sourcessome of whom have asked to remain anonymousand thousands of pages of court documents. I also acquired dozens of top-secret pages from Jacksons private investigators files and case notes. What I uncovered in Michael Jackson is a man who was both naive and Machiavellian, unorthodox, a devoted father, a shrewd businessman, and a drug addict whose life was cut short but whose sound and style have influenced artists of various genres. Remarkably though, in death, there remain two portraits of Michael Jackson: the reigning King of Pop, and a pedophile whose pattern of abuse ruined his reputation. Fans and individuals alike will forever be asking if the insidious claims made about Michael were true. This is the new narrative and the sad legacy of one of the bestselling music artists of all time, who amassed sales of over 350 million records worldwide.

Dylan Howard

PROLOGUE

If you think you know all there is to know about Michael Jackson... If you think youve heard every shocking detail about the King of Pop...

Think again.

The superstar has been dead for more than a decade. While there remain serious questions about the truthfulness of those who have accused him of the most heinous acts, there is absolutely no question that whatever his intentions, Michael lacked a sense of what was or was not appropriate for children to door see. Especially children that were not his own.

Perhaps no evidenceevidence, not hearsayis more powerful than the disturbing files that have been found on Michael Jacksons personal electronic devices: private home videos that reveal a viscerally disturbing side of the superstar who died in 2009 from a drug overdose.

Was he a twisted adult or just a man-child, stunted in bad boy adolescence?

You decide.

The long, agonizing minutes of video footagewhich has been circulating through the back street of Tinseltown for the last few years, and was obtained as part of the investigation for this bookfeatures Michael engaged in aggressive, foul-mouthed role-playing sessions with young boys in his bed, without a chaper-one, at a secluded resort. Michael was so unashamed that he personally recorded some of the clips.

This startling, previously unseen content seems, yet again, to cast very serious doubt over whether the legendary entertainer was truly innocent of being a child abuser.

However, it also reminds us that the private life of Michael Jackson may ultimately be like the Japanese film Rashmon from 1950. In that classic tale, the sexual assault of a bride and the slaying of her husband are told from the very different points-of-view of four participants or observersincluding the ghost of the husband. Alas, we do not have that luxury with Michael. For many narratives, there can be no true resolution.

The Michael Jackson story may be one of those .

The scandalous videos in question were shot at the end of 1999 while Michael was at the posh Sun City resort, located in the mountains outside Johannesburg, South Africa. The forty-one-year-old singer was accompanied by two children, whose identities I have chosen not to reveal for the sake of their own privacy, given the video has never been released publicly.

A few years earlier, Michael had struck up a friendship with the childrens parents. The star had visited their home several times and even attended one of the childrens bar mitzvah.

He made the special trip to South Africa just to celebrate the occasion.

The week he recorded the home movies, Michael stayed in his usual King Suite at Sun City. The luxuriously furnished, 2,600-square-foot accommodations included two bedrooms with king-size beds and two massive bathrooms with a sauna and a Jacuzzi, an elegant living room, a cozy study, and a dining room, all featuring maple paneling on the walls. Each room was lined with two-story windows and lavish curtains.

All of Michaels private videos from that trip were made in the master bedroom. Most of them were shot at night. He had powerful lights rigged to the tops of two wooden posters at the head of his canopy bed. The illuminated area seemed more like a movie set than a bedroom. All of the footage takes place on this, akin to a Hollywood sound stage the likes of the famed Paramount lot, on Hollywoods Melrose Avenue.