Jacko, His Rise and Fall: The Social and Sexual History of Michael Jackson (91 page)

Once again Lisa Marie allowed herself to become a "prop" in a photo opt
for Michael when she accepted an invitation to be photographed with him,
along with her two children, at a tribal ceremony that took place in the seedy
town of Phokeng, some ninety miles to the north of Johannesburg. At the time
he was deep into his second marriage, and Michael shocked the world when
he appeared with Lisa Marie on his arm. That naturally led to press speculation that the ill-fated duo were getting back together.

Back in Los Angeles, Debbie Rowe, Michael's new wife, reportedly said,
"If Michael Jackson [she always referred to him by his full name] wants to
date his ex-wife, and I want to date my ex-boyfriend, that is nobody's business but our own."

Under the shade of a red-and-white umbrella at least five feet wide,
Michael arrived at the tribal ceremony like a king for his induction into a tribe
known as the Bafokeng Ka Bakwena ("People of the Crocodile"). With some
325,000 members, the tribe was not among the poor and needy of Africa, as
they owned the second-largest platinum reserve on earth.

On hearing of Lisa Marie's adventures in South Africa with her ex-husband, one underground columnist in Hollywood wrote: "Lisa Marie is back
with Michael while still dating Janet. The next thing you'll read in this column is that Elvis's daughter is having a three-way with Jermaine and La Toya. I
wouldn't put it past this `Hound Dog!"'

Even after her friendships with Janet and Michael had cooled, throughout
the rest of her life Lisa Marie would be plagued with probing questions about
her marriage to Michael.

On The Howard Stern Show, the host asked her to describe Michael's genitalia. She refused. She did answer Stern's question about whether she had
"dabbled with chicks?"

"Just one," she said. "It's not like I haven't had an urge, but I just . . . I
like to keep it at bay."

In a candid conversation with Playboy, she claimed that her preference in
sex was "porn style-I am a little dark on the subject. I like it rough, the way
they do things in porn movies."

In trying to explain her association with Michael to Playboy-of all magazines-Lisa Marie said, "Yes, there was a physical attraction. He's not sexually seductive, but there is something riveting about him."

If attorney Johnnie Cochran is to be believed-and after the O.J. Simpson
trial there remains much doubt as to his veracity-Lisa Marie made an astonishing call to him one night. Reached in New York, he came to the phone to
hear the distraught young woman pleading for his intervention in getting
Michael back.

"I don't want him gone from my life," Cochran later quoted Lisa Marie as
saying. "I know the marriage didn't work out. But we didn't give it a chance.
I think I could make him love me. But to do that, you've got to prevent his
marriage to that nurse."

Cochran promised to intervene on her behalf. But he told friends in New
York that there was really nothing he could do. "Michael wanted someone to
make babies for him, and Debbie Rowe seems willing. Lisa Marie wanted
romance. Something, in my opinion, I believe she would never have gotten
from Michael. I can't believe that after completely ignoring her during the
marriage that she could even entertain the idea of wanting him back. She
never had him in the first place. Personally, I think it was just one of those
crazy ideas that occurs to young people in the middle of the night. Lisa Marie
is smart enough to know that the marriage was doomed from the start. Or was
she? I know why Michael married her. The reasons were selfish. The question
remains, why did she marry him? She's got all the money in the world.
Everyone who surrounded Michael wanted his money, Lisa Marie could buy
and sell her husband. Surely she didn't want Michael for sex? Not that! Oh,
please, never that!"

In 2003, six years after Lisa Marie filed for divorce, stories about the
Jackson/Presley relationship were still generating headlines. It was reported that Michael was trying to reunite with Lisa Marie as a means of retaining custody of his three children.

After divorcing Michael, Lisa Marie drifted from relationship to relationship until she finally fell in love with actor Nicolas Cage, marrying him on
August 10, 2002. Michael learned that their relationship was tempestuous,
even though they would not finally divorce until May 26, 2004. In the months
that preceded Lisa Marie's divorce from Cage, it was reported that Michael
wanted to reactivate the Jackson/Presley alliance.

As reported in the press at the time: "Jackson wants to re-marry Lisa
Marie, who divorced her husband, actor Nicolas Cage," one account stated.
"Jackson apparently believes he has a better chance of evading an investigation into his suitability as a father-promoted by his dangling of baby Prince
Michael II over the balcony of a German hotel last month-if he is in a stable
relationship."

It is not known if Michael actually proposed to Lisa Marie again. But
when hearing reports of this potential offer, she was alleged to have said, "I
won't be used again!"

In March of 2003, during the course of a particularly candid interview ,
Lisa Marie-rather unconvincingly-maintained that she did have sex with
the pop king. She said that "he was just a normal guy" underneath his eccentric exterior. Reporter Phil Blackman said that "surely Lisa Marie is putting us
on with that comment."

She also said that she was "smitten with Michael until the relationship
turned ugly at the end. I absolutely fell in love with him. He was just a typical man when I began to date him." Again Blackman found her statement difficult to swallow. "How, even on the darkest night, could she really believe
that Michael Jackson by any stretch of the imagination was a typical man?
Maybe after having Elvis for a father, Michael Jackson might have been typical but I doubt that."

When Lisa Marie eventually got around to releasing her debut album on
April 8, 2003, on Capitol Records, she did it on her own without Michael's
help. Bought mostly by Elvis fans, To Whom It May Concern reached number
5 on Billboards Top 200 albums chart. When Michael first heard her album,
he referred to it as having been sung by "a brawny collection of Sheryl Crowish pop rockers."

During her promotion of her album, in references to her previous marriage, Lisa Marie said that she felt "powerless." "I was part of a machine. I
saw things going on that I couldn't do anything about. Don't ask me what sort
of things, because I'm not going to answer. But just stuff."

In an interview with Rolling Stone, she claimed that "I never thought for
a moment that someone like him could actually use me for a reason like that. It never crossed my mind, and I don't know why-I'm sure it crossed everybody else's."

At the same time, she admitted that she was "terrified" when her husband
kissed her on the mouth at the opening of the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards.
"That was not my idea, by the way." When asked if Michael was trying to
prove that he was straight by kissing her, she said, "Yeah, but again, I wasn't
looking at it like that. See, if I had been, that wouldn't have happened."

When asked in 2004 how she felt about Michael, she claimed, "It's really
bizarre. I feel nothing."

Her second album, Now What? in 2005 reached number 9 on Billboard's
pop charts and was certified gold. Unlike her first album, Now What? included a parental advisory sticker.

In March of 2005, as a means of promoting her album, Lisa Marie
appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show. "Do you think that he loved you as
much as he could?" the talk show diva asked Elvis's daughter in regards to
Michael.

"Yes, as much as he was capable of loving somebody," she said. Oprah
then asked if Lisa Marie felt that Michael had used her. "All signs point to yes
on that. I can't answer for him." On the show she admitted that she felt
uncomfortable talking about Michael. "This seat is hot!" she said. Later she
told the Associated Press that Michael was the "most toxic" of her many relationships. "I don't want to bash him. I don't hate him. I don't have any of that
going on."

No great fan of her former son-in-law, Priscilla also spoke to Oprah on
camera, suggesting that Michael may have used her daughter in the hopes that
Lisa Marie would have his children. "That would ensure his connection to
Elvis's legacy," she claimed. "There's something very calculating and manipulative about how he does things."

For reasons known only to herself, Lisa Marie continued to issue bizarre
statements about Michael that "the whole world knows aren't true," in the
words of one reporter. He was referring to her comment about her ex-husband's second marriage to Debbie Rowe. "With me, Michael did redeem himself in the end and things are better between us now. It was not a fun time for
either of us. He's happily married and has a baby coming now, which is
great!" Lisa Marie's claims of Michael's "happy" second marriage brought
ridicule in press offices around the country.

As Elvis's only recognized child, she inherited his entire estate when she
turned thirty. In August of 2005, she sold 85 percent of the estate's business
holdings to CKX, Inc., excluding Graceland itself.

Although long since divorced, Michael still followed the career and activities of Lisa Marie, learning that in February of 2006 she had married Michael Lockwood in a ceremony in Kyoto, Japan. She was thirty-eight at the time. It
was her fourth marriage. The best man was Lisa Marie's first husband, Danny
Keough. Michael was not invited to the wedding.

Lisa Marie's final word on both her marriage to Michael and to "hothead"
Nicolas Cage was, "I was really into this lioness thing with Michael and wanted to protect him," she claimed. "How could I be so naive? One needs to protect oneself from Michael."

"As for Nick, we're both so dramatic and dynamic that when it was good,
it was unbelievably good, and when it was bad, it was just a fucking bloody
nightmare for everybody," she said. "If you lined up all the men I've been with
in a row, you'd think that I was completely psychotic."

Neither Nicholas Cage nor Michael had any comment about Lisa Marie's
remarks.

On the website, "NNDB: Tracking the Entire World," the sexual orientation of Lisa Marie is listed as "bisexual," her occupation, "relative."

During the course of his marriage to Lisa Marie, in the wake of the Jordie
Chandler out-of-court settlement, Michael found himself embroiled in yet
another lawsuit. In December of 1994, in a "wrongful termination" suit, five
former employees, including Michael's maid, Adrian McManus, filed a lawsuit against the star and seven members of his staff. The suit charged that the
employees were repeatedly subjected to retribution for their agreeing to help
Santa Barbara authorities with the criminal investigation of Michael and for
their testimony before a grand jury.

Joining McManus in the suit were security officers Kassim Abdool and
his assistants, Ralph Chacon and Melanie Bagnall, one of the few women who
worked in security. The final plaintiff was longtime office manager, Sandy
Domz.

In Michael's opinion, his staff "had been only too willing to cooperate
with the grand jury." For doing that, the former Neverland employees cited "a
pattern of intentional, willful, and malicious conduct designed to threaten and
intimidate" them. The plaintiffs also charged that they had been threatened
with bodily injury, even subjected to death threats. It was also revealed that
Neverland security forces had installed an elaborate "Gestapo-like" system of
wiretapping, and that Michael himself often eavesdropped on the personal
calls of his employees.

One Neverland employee charged that the "surveillance equipment at
Neverland was so intricate, as was the telephone-tapping system, that the CIA
should hire Jackson's OSS officers," a reference to the special force-known
within Neverland as the Office of Special Services-that Bill Bray, Michael's
most devoted employee, had brought to Neverland to "protect Michael from
all harm."

All three of the female plaintiffs charged that the OSS officers had subjected them to sexual harassment. McManus also claimed that one of the officers "threatened to slice my throat if I ever revealed Michael's private life to
the press."

The plaintiffs never revealed exactly what they told the grand jury, but
their testimony was believed to have been devastating in the Chandler vs.
Jackson case. Abdool said that he, along with his aide, Ralph Chacon, delivered a jar of Vaseline to Michael's suite. It was not explained why Abdool's
assistant, Chacon, delivered that one jar of Vaseline. Chacon reported that he
saw "two young boys" in the room with Michael, before he took the jar and
slammed the door in their faces.

Sandy Domz had gone so far as to call the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's
Department to reveal that "illegal wiretaps" were being carried out at
Neverland. In September of 1994, the employees, claiming they could no
longer tolerate the harassment and intimidation at the ranch, quit their jobs.

It wasn't until shortly before Christmas of 1994 that they found an attorney, Michael Ring, in Santa Barbara who would take their case. In the suit,
Michael was charged along with his employees, specifically Bill Bray, but
also James Van Norman, Jerome Johnson, Tony Coleman, Andrew Merritt,
Bettye Bailey, and Marcus Johnson (no relation to Jerome).

In his defense of the Neverland employees, Ring faced a battery of the
highest paid attorneys in California, the firm of Katten Muchin Zavis &
Weitzman.

Their case may have been lost shortly after it began, when Judge Zel
Canter ruled that any evidence from the Jordie Chandler civil case would not
be permitted in court. Since the plaintiff's entire case depended on the harassment they were allegedly subjected to during the Chandler case, the die was
cast. The trial, which was a disaster from the beginning, would slog onward
from September 15, 1996 to March 17, 1997.