Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days

by Bill Whitfield

  Javon: The lease on the Monte Cristo house was up at the end of June. That was in the middle of this trip they were proposing. We knew he hated that house, and he’d been talking nonstop about this huge estate on Durango. So were we coming back to this place? Was he going to move? It never came up. The whole issue of where he was going to be living was just up in the air.

  We couldn’t get any answers about how long the trip was going to be, either. We needed to plan for our families if we were going to be on the road. I asked Mr. Jackson how long we were going to be gone, and he said, “Just a little while.”

  “How long is ‘a little while’?”

  “Oh, it’s not going to be that long.”

  Bill: I’d assumed that Javon and I would both be going. Mr. Jackson spoke as if that was the case, too. But when I saw the itinerary Raymone had set up for us to fly out, I noticed Javon wasn’t on it. I asked her about it and she said, “Mr. Jackson will be coming back to Vegas after the trip, and we need Javon to stay with the house.”

  She said she was going to arrange for a team to look after Mr. Jackson in Middleburg. These were her people, some police officers who’d worked security for Marion Barry, the former mayor of D.C., who was also a client of hers. She told me that like I was supposed to be real impressed by it, like, This is the personal security team of D.C. Mayor Marion Barry.

  I thought, That’s nothing to brag about. We weren’t comfortable with any of it. I wanted Javon with me, and he wasn’t too cool with being left behind, either. But we went with the flow. Raymone was still the manager, so we had to respect what she told us. We got Mr. Jackson and the kids ready to go. The whole trip felt very thrown together, like it hadn’t really been thought out. There was no clear agenda. When we left, all I knew was that we were going to Virginia for a couple of weeks. That was supposed to be a two- maybe three-week adventure. We were gone for five months.

  10

  By the middle of June 2007, Jackson’s children had finished their school year, passed their final exams, and were ready for summer vacation. Their father’s time in Las Vegas, however, had not been nearly as productive. The studio work for Thriller 25 was dragging along with no end in sight, despite the fact that the album’s anniversary was just five short months away. Countless attempts to work out a deal to headline on the Strip had also gone nowhere; event promoter Jack Wishna and resort developer Steve Wynn—two of the players responsible for bringing Jackson to Vegas the previous December—had both issued press statements on the futility of trying to reach a deal with the indecisive performer.

  In late spring, Raymone Bain had also set up a dinner for Jackson with Randy Phillips, CEO of AEG Live, the live-performance division of the Anschutz Entertainment Group. Phillips wanted to discuss the idea of putting on a series of comeback concerts at AEG’s O2 Arena in London. Jackson wasn’t interested.

  After six months in Las Vegas, Michael Jackson was no closer to resolving the financial and legal problems that had brought him back to the country in the first place. So he chose to deal with them the same way he’d been dealing with everything of late: by leaving.

  Bill: The night before we were supposed to take off, Mr. Jackson came to me and said, “Bill, I want you to get me in touch with the pilot.”

  I said, “Is there a problem, sir?”

  “No, I just want to talk to him about what flight path we’re taking, what kind of weather he’s expecting.”

  That was another one of those moments I had with him where I was like, Who does this? He wants to discuss flight paths? But I called Raymone, and she had the pilot call me and I put him on the phone with Mr. Jackson. I heard them talking. He was asking all kinds of questions. What altitude we’d be flying at. How long the flight would be. He was asking questions about aviation so detailed it was like he was a pilot himself. Whatever they discussed, I guess it was enough to make Mr. Jackson comfortable, because the next day we left for the airport. It was me and Mr. Jackson plus Grace and the kids and the dog. Since the kids were out of school, the teacher didn’t come along.

  Javon drove us down to the executive terminal at McCarran. We boarded and got all of our luggage stowed away. It was a small private plane. I don’t particularly enjoy flying, but this was a damn nice plane, that’s for sure. We were on board, all buckled in, ready to take off. The engines started up, and then, all of a sudden, the power went off and everything shut back down. The captain came over the intercom and said there were some technical issues they had to check out. About forty-five minutes went by. Then Prince ran up the aisle and said, “Bill, Daddy wants to talk to you.”

  I went to Mr. Jackson. He said, “What is the problem? Why haven’t we left yet?”

  I went and asked the pilot. He said they had a part that went bad, a fuse or something. They were waiting for someone to bring a replacement. I went back and told Mr. Jackson. He was not happy about that. “No,” he said. “Tell him I want another plane. I’m not taking my kids on this plane. If something happened to them, I’d lose everything.”

  So I went up to the pilot and told him the client wanted a new plane. He told me we couldn’t get a new plane until tomorrow. Mr. Jackson said, “Fine, we’ll leave tomorrow.” So we called Javon, and he came and got us. We spent an extra night in Vegas and went back to the airport the next day.

  The next morning, they put us on a different plane and we flew out. This time everything went smooth. The little ones, they were running up and down the aisle like they’d done this a million times. Mr. Jackson was in the back, listening to music and sleeping, his seat all the way back and his feet up. He finally looked relaxed.

  As we were landing at Dulles Airport, I looked out the window and saw these five SUVs lined up. When we got off the plane, the security team Raymone had hired was waiting for us. I walked down and introduced myself. I brought the kids and Grace down and put them in a vehicle. Then I brought Mr. Jackson down, escorted him to the vehicle and put him in the backseat. Meanwhile, those other guys were taking care of the luggage.

  We were just about ready to go when I saw a stewardess from the plane, waving and yelling like crazy. “You forgot the dog!” I ran back to get Kenya, and as I was bringing her back down, the cars pulled off. They just drove off and left me there. The motorcade got about twenty-five, thirty feet and then it came to a screeching halt. Mr. Jackson leaned out his window and said, “Bill, what are you doing?”

  I yelled across the tarmac, “I’m getting the dog, sir.”

  Then I ran, caught up, hopped in one of the vehicles with Kenya, the whole time thinking, What was that about?

  We drove about forty-five minutes from the airport out to the Goodstone Inn, which was made up of several different buildings across this large estate. There was the main house, where Mr. Jackson and the kids were staying. Surrounding it on the property were several smaller houses where Grace and I and the other security would be staying.

  When we pulled up in front of Mr. Jackson’s house, Raymone and about a dozen people, all the maids and service people, were standing out there in the driveway. They were lined up, standing next to each other as we rolled in. Like a receiving line. Like we were visiting royalty or something. I knew Mr. Jackson wasn’t going to like that. He didn’t want fanfare. He didn’t trust strangers. The cars stopped and I got out of my vehicle and walked up to his. He said exactly what I was thinking. He said, “Bill, who are all these people? Why did Raymone do this?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “I don’t want all these people here. Get rid of them.”

  I went and found Raymone and told her, “The boss doesn’t want all these people here.”

  So she went and said something to somebody, and all these folks started disappearing. Mr. Jackson pulled me aside and asked me if I’d brought the countersurveillance kit. He wanted me to check for bugs and hidden cameras. He said he wanted the locks changed on his room and the kids’ rooms too.

  We’d just arrived, so all the housekeepers were
still in the rooms, making the beds. I had to go into the house and tell everyone to clear out. “Everybody has to leave this house right now.” I started going through, moving room to room with this device, wearing these headphones. I’m sure these people were looking at me like, This dude’s crazy.

  Raymone came and found me and said, “Bill, what’s goin’ on?”

  I said, “I have to sweep the house.”

  She said, “Oh, there’s nothing to worry about. There’s nothing here.”

  I said, “Do you wanna tell Mr. Jackson that?”

  She paused for a minute. “Okay, scan the house.”

  It took me about an hour, start to finish. Didn’t find anything. We finally got the kids settled in their rooms, got him settled into his room, and carried in the luggage. I brought Mr. Jackson’s personal belongings upstairs to his bedroom. Once we got up there and we were alone for the first time, he said to me, “Bill, did you see what happened at the airport? I had to tell them to stop the car. They tried to leave you.”

  It had been bugging me the whole drive out. I wanted to think it was just an accident, but at that point, I was starting to feel his paranoia, where it came from. I was starting to understand better all the animosities and conflicting agendas in his world. Back in Vegas, whatever was going on between Raymone and Greg Cross, I stayed in the wings. I was there to do a job, and that was it. But with the access I had to Mr. Jackson, I couldn’t help but be a player in that now. With millions of dollars at stake in all these deals, people could be trying to push me aside to get what they needed. I didn’t know if I was getting sucked into his paranoia or what, but the more I thought about that moment, the more it didn’t sit right with me. Mr. Jackson recognized it too, and it wasn’t good. But he was like, “Don’t worry, don’t worry. I’ll be making some changes soon.” Whatever that meant.

  Once I got him settled, I asked the other security team where I was going to be staying. They told me they’d be staying in the house right next to Mr. Jackson’s, and I was in a place farther down the road. I wasn’t feeling that. But I didn’t want to make too many waves. I was still surveying the situation. It was late anyway, almost midnight. I went to my room, called Javon and told him what was going on. He was pissed too. He was still camped out on Monte Cristo with no word about if we were going back to that house. Or going back to Vegas, period. It was all up in the air.

  Out of nowhere, Mr. Jackson called me and told me that he needed to see a doctor. Like, he wanted to see a doctor that night. He said his wrist had been bothering him since he fell in his studio in Vegas and it was causing him a lot of pain. I didn’t know about this fall; he’d never mentioned it before. So I called Raymone and said that Mr. Jackson wanted to see a doctor. She said, “Right now?”

  I said, “Yeah, right now.”

  She said, “I don’t think we can find a doctor to come out here this time of night.”

  I went and told Mr. Jackson this, and he said, “Why can’t I just go to the hospital?”

  I was like, Wow, he’s serious. Raymone talked to her people and found out that the nearest hospital was forty-five minutes away. Mr. Jackson said, “Okay, let’s go.” So we went. The security team drove us down.

  I wouldn’t say this hospital was creepy, but it was a quiet-ass country hospital. Middle of the night, a few people in the waiting room. I went in first to talk to the doctor, pulled him to the side and let him know who I was about to bring up in there. He said no problem. I brought Mr. Jackson in, they did some X-rays, he talked to the doctor a little bit. They put one of those Velcro braces on his wrist and gave him a prescription for some pain medication. We were there for maybe an hour and a half. The next morning, I had one of the guys take me into the city, I filled the prescription, and brought it back to Mr. Jackson up at the main house.

  This farm was huge. You could see a lot of deer, cows, horses. All you had to do was walk out of your back door. But even with all that room, Raymone’s guys still didn’t know to give Mr. Jackson his space. They parked their cars right in front of his house. Early in the morning, he and the kids liked to walk outside, enjoy the scenery, but every time they’d walk out of the house, these security dudes would get out of their cars and walk wherever he walked. I would have known to stand back. They didn’t. Mr. Jackson called me and said, “Bill, I don’t want them parked in front of my house. Tell them to go down the street somewhere.”

  I went to the guys and said, “Mr. Jackson doesn’t think it’s necessary for you to park that close to the house. He wants you guys to pull back.”

  They paid me no mind. They stayed right in the front of the house. Mr. Jackson called me back. “Bill, didn’t I tell you to tell these guys that they don’t need to be that close to the house?”

  I said, “Those are Raymone’s people, sir. They don’t listen to me.”

  I could tell he was pissed about it. I was getting uneasy about those guys, too. We carried wireless cameras, tiny little pinhole cameras, which we used whenever we took Mr. Jackson to a hotel; we’d set them up outside his room so we could monitor the hallways and keep an eye on the hotel staff. Without those guys knowing, I took two cameras and set them up, hidden and tucked away, outside the front and rear entrances to Mr. Jackson’s house. That way I could keep an eye on them from my laptop.

  In the meantime, Raymone called to tell me they were going to let the lease expire on the Monte Cristo house. She didn’t say if we were going back to a different house in Vegas or what. She just told me the house needed to be packed up and everything put into storage. I called Javon, told him he needed to get a crew and start boxing everything up. I was going to leave him to handle that, but then Mr. Jackson came to me and said, “Bill, I want you to go back to Vegas and help Javon to make sure all of my stuff is safe. Then both of you fly back and meet us here.”

  I was hesitant about leaving. “We don’t know these guys,” I said, about Raymone’s people. “I don’t trust them.”

  He said, “Bill, I’ve had security all my life. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ll be fine. I need you to go because I need you to do me a favor. It’s very important. There’s something that I want you to bring back for me. In my bedroom, to the left side is a walk-in closet. Inside the closet there’s a small hidden door. Inside there you’ll find a silver metal briefcase. I need you to bring me that briefcase.”

  I stood there a moment, curious, thinking he was going to tell me what was in it. He didn’t. I didn’t want to pry, but I needed a general idea of what I was going to be carrying. I asked him if it could be checked in at the airport. He said, “Oh no, you have to carry it with you at all times.”

  The next day, I made the arrangements with Raymone and flew back to Vegas to start packing.

  Javon: The house was messed up. A lot of wear and tear. Crayons on the walls. You could tell Blanket had been busy with that. Mr. Jackson’s room was cluttered with fan mail, books. There were half-opened boxes everywhere, like they’d never really unpacked.

  There wasn’t a lot of furniture to deal with; the house was furnished when he got there. But there was a lot of personal stuff from all his shopping trips. The library was the biggest hassle. There were so many damn books. Then there were all the little presents and cards that had been sent in by fans; there were boxes of that stuff. We had a good ten of us packing everything up; pulling up the wood floor in the studio; breaking down the kids’ trampoline in the back; unplugging all the equipment he had in the house, all the stuff that he’d bought at The Sharper Image. He loved that store. Gadgets, he loved gadgets.

  When I went to pack up the kitchen, I opened up the pantry and that’s when I found the Tabasco sauce. A shitload of it. I stepped inside and there were just shelves and shelves of Tabasco sauce. There must have been a few hundred bottles in there, no lie. The green and the red. I couldn’t believe it. When I saw it, all I could think about was all the times we’d gone to the movies and forg
ot the Tabasco sauce, and how me and Bill would be running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to find some. And he had crates of it in his pantry the whole time. Why would he not just bring it with him?

  Bill: I remember Javon calling me from across the house. “Bill! You ain’t gonna believe this!”

  “What?”

  “Just come to the kitchen.”

  I went over and looked in the pantry, and the whole thing was nothing but hot sauce. You’d see things like that and it just made you stop and wonder.

  Once the management company found out that Mr. Jackson wasn’t coming back to the house, they were pissed. That night, I got home and got a call from Raymone telling me that we had to have Mr. Jackson’s belongings out of the house by 5:00 p.m. the next day or he’d forfeit his fifty-thousand-dollar deposit. She said if we weren’t done on time, she’d be sure and tell Mr. Jackson that we were the reason the deposit was lost—like it was our fault this was all down to the wire. I knew we had to get back to that house the next morning and make it happen.

  Javon: There’s a place in Vegas called All Storage. It’s huge. We took the biggest units they had, car-sized units, big enough to put a mobile home in. That’s where we put the security trailer, the Bentley and the Rolls-Royce. It took us two days, all day, with a dozen or so guys, but we got it done. All told, we had five units worth of stuff. We were exhausted by the end.

  Bill: The silver briefcase, I retrieved that from his closet and kept it with me. It was heavy. I took it home, put it on the table in my living room. All night, I just kept looking at the thing. Mystery briefcase. Like out of the movies or something. I wanted to open it. I was dying to know what was inside. At the same time, I wanted no part of whatever it was. But if I was going to be going through airport security with this thing, crossing state lines, I decided I had to find out. I opened it.