Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days

by Bill Whitfield

  A kitten? I thought, Who buys a kitten when they’re traveling? But Paris would just look at you with those big green eyes, and you couldn’t tell her no. And I couldn’t just go buy one, either. Mr. Jackson said it was important to adopt, to help all the unwanted animals out there. So I went back to Javon and said, “Yo, we gotta find a kitten.”

  We both got online and started searching. We found a pet store in Chantilly, this small town outside D.C.; it was about forty-five minutes away. There was a pet store there that did adoptions. I printed out a list of all the kittens they had, with color photographs of each one. Must have been close to a hundred. I brought it to Paris and said, “Go through this and see which one you like.” About an hour later, she called me back and told me she knew which one she wanted: a little golden-brown one with white stripes.

  The next morning, I ran some errands, grabbed breakfast, got off to a bit of a late start. When I got to the pet store, they told me, “I’m sorry, sir. That kitten has already been adopted.” Someone had picked it out the day before and the website just hadn’t been updated.

  Paris was already calling me, asking if I had the kitten yet, saying, “Make sure you get lots of toys and lots of food!” She was so excited. Hearing the anticipation in her voice, how happy this was making her, I knew I could not go back there without that kitten. I looked at all the kittens to see if there were any that looked similar to the one she wanted. There weren’t. I said to the guy at the store, “Yo, listen. My daughter really, really wants this kitten. I need to know who got this kitten.”

  He told me he wasn’t at liberty to divulge that information. I said, “Maybe you could call them, give them my number.” They said all they had was the person’s address. I begged them to give it to me, saying I wanted to go and offer this person more money than what they paid. Finally the guy gave me the address. I put it in the GPS, and it was a ways away, close to an hour. What the hell. I was on a mission. I got on the road and went to the person’s house.

  Finally got there. It was an older man, a single dude. Strange. I explained the situation. He didn’t seem particularly attached to this one cat; he’d only had it for a day. I asked him, “What can we do for me to get this cat from you?”

  He said, “Well, I guess you could just give me what I paid for it.”

  “How much did you pay?”

  “Twenty-five dollars.”

  I gave that man three hundred dollars in cash. I used my own money, too. I got that cat, hopped in the truck, and started flying back to the Goodstone Inn. I was at least two hours out. On the way back, my phone started blowing up. Paris was calling me. “Are you close? Are you close? When are you going to be here?” She called me so much that I just stopped answering my phone. I got to the house and pulled up in front. She must have been looking out the window, because the second I pulled up, she ran out with this huge smile on her face and snatched that cat out of my hands and ran back into the house with it.

  Then, as I was getting back in the truck, she ran back out of the house yelling, “Bill! Bill!” I stopped and she ran up to the window, climbed up on the doorstep, gave me a kiss on the cheek, and said, “Thank you for bringing me Katie.”

  If that’s all it took to make her happy, it was worth it.

  Javon: The biggest surprise Mr. Jackson gave the kids was taking them to D.C. for three days to visit the Smithsonian and the National Zoo. We arranged with the museum and zoo officials to have guided tours in the morning, before they opened. We did the Air and Space museum, the Natural History museum, the Museum of the American Indian, and on the last day we went to the zoo.

  Bill: We were escorted through the zoo by security. One of the head zookeepers was guiding the tour. There was a D.C. city council member there too. This had all been arranged through Raymone, with her political connections.

  They drove us all around the zoo, to the monkey house, the reptile house. The funny thing was that Mr. Jackson had owned and operated his own zoo. We’d be walking through the tiger exhibit and Mr. Jackson would be talking in depth with the zookeeper about conservation efforts for tigers in the wild, the best ways to handle them in captivity. At one point, the zookeeper asked if we wanted to go and see such-and-such animal, and Mr. Jackson said, “No, I don’t need to see that. I’ve got plenty of those.”

  Half the time the zookeeper just looked confused, like, Why am I even here? Why don’t we just let him run his own tour?

  Javon: When we were at the hippopotamus exhibit, Bill was walking a few feet ahead with Mr. Jackson, Prince, and Paris. They’d all seen the hippopotamus and moved on. I was hanging back with Blanket. He was straggling a bit because he was just so amused by this hippopotamus. He thought it was the greatest thing. Prince already had his dog, and Paris had just gotten her kitten, so Blanket thought he should get a pet too. He called out, “Daddy, I want one of those as my pet.”

  The zookeeper and everybody, they all laughed. But I knew that little guy wasn’t joking. If they still lived at Neverland? I’m sure a hippopotamus wouldn’t have been entirely out of the question. With all the other crazy things we’d been asked to do, I half-expected Mr. Jackson to say, “Guys, I need you to find Blanket a hippo.” Instead, Mr. Jackson just humored him. He said, “We’ll have to see about that.”

  The zookeeper said if Blanket liked the hippo, he could help feed it. They gave him some apples and he tried to throw them in, but he couldn’t get them over the fence. I picked him up so he could get high enough to toss one over. After he did that, I put him back down and turned around to follow the others. I didn’t take my eyes off him, but half a second and he was climbing up that fence, trying to get up on the railing so he could keep throwing apples in there. He was slipping around and trying to pull himself up. It was about a ten-foot drop down the other side. I had this whole scenario flash through my head. I could see the headlines: Michael Jackson’s Son Eaten by Hippo. I grabbed him by the shirt collar, saying, “Get your little ass down here before I lose my job lettin’ you get eaten up by a hippopotamus.”

  Bill: If Blanket had actually fallen in there, we’d have had to shoot that hippopotamus.

  Javon: There were some days Mr. Jackson just wanted to take the kids and go for a ride, see the hills and the countryside. We’d get in the car and go for hours. We did end up going by a few of those Civil War battlefields when we were out driving around. Manassas. Bull Run. Whenever we passed one of those historical markers, Mr. Jackson would be in the backseat, educating the kids about it. He’d point and say, “This is where the Union Army did such and such.” Or, “That’s where over five thousand Confederate soldiers were killed.” When it came to history, he knew his stuff. Prince was really into it. He was curious, asked a lot of questions. Paris and Blanket, not so much.

  Bill: The little three-week stint that we were supposed to be on vacation? That came and went, and we just stayed. There was no house to go back to in Vegas, no discussions about going somewhere else or moving into a new place. We didn’t know what to tell our families about when we were coming home, if we were coming home, nothing. It was sort of like, Okay, we live on a horse farm in Virginia now. This is just what’s happening.

  We had to buy all our clothes on the road, because we hadn’t packed enough. We lived at the Burlington Coat Factory. Him, too. He’d say, “I need more clothes for the kids.” He’d give us a set of clothes for each one so we’d know the sizes, and we’d go shopping for them. For himself, all he wanted was pajamas. He’s Michael Jackson. He’s not wearing anything else if he doesn’t have to.

  Javon: The errands were the worst part of it. In Vegas, he’d send you out any time he had a whim for something. You didn’t get a list. He just sent you out for that one thing he wanted at that moment: an iPhone attachment, a snack, whatever. It wasn’t such a big deal, because there were stores and restaurants five minutes away. Here, the closest place with any real stores was Chantilly, and all Chantilly had was one pet store, one Blockbuster, one McDonald’s. The
re were places out there that weren’t even on the GPS. Me and Bill, we’re not country people. We got lost damn near every time we went somewhere.

  One night, Mr. Jackson called and said that he and the kids were watching a movie, and could we find them some movie theater popcorn. He didn’t want regular popcorn. He wanted movie theater popcorn. It was almost midnight on a Wednesday in the middle of backwoods Virginia. We called every movie theater in the eastern suburbs of D.C.; they were all closing down for the night. Then we just went through the phone book and started dialing. Finally, we found this country store that sold Jiffy Pop, the kind you hold and shake over the burner on the stove. We raced over there, picked up a bunch of that, popped it in our little kitchen and brought it to them in these large Tupperware bowls.

  The next morning, Mr. Jackson said, “Guys, where did you get that popcorn?”

  We told him it was Jiffy Pop, and he let out the loudest laugh. He said, “If you couldn’t find any real popcorn, it’s okay. You could have just told me.”

  Bill: He was a huge fan of The Simpsons. He owned every season that was out on DVD, and that summer, the last week in July, The Simpsons Movie came out. He was ecstatic about seeing it. As we were walking through the theater, he noticed this big Simpsons display that was in the lobby to promote the movie. He said, “Ooh Bill, I want that. Get that for me.”

  Of all the strange requests we got from Mr. Jackson, that one had to be in the top five. This display was huge. It had life-sized figurines of the whole family. Each one was as big as a person, and they were heavy. And where the hell was it supposed to go? We couldn’t ship it back home. There wasn’t any home to ship it to. Did he want me to assemble this thing in his house at the inn, which we expected to be leaving at any given point? Was he going to take it to the next hotel with him? What would he do with it then? Didn’t matter. He wanted it. I called the theater manager. She said she’d take one thousand cash for it.

  Javon: It was too big to fit in the back of the SUVs. We had to rent a U-Haul. We loaded it into that, brought it back to his room at the Goodstone. When we showed up? He was like a kid on Christmas morning, all this excitement in his voice. As we were bringing it in, he said, “You guys might think I’m crazy for buying this, but do you have any idea how much this will be worth in twenty years?”

  Bill: When we first flew out to Virginia, there was talk of setting up a recording studio at the Goodstone Inn and having will.i.am and some of those guys come in to work on some tracks for Thriller 25. That deal was still grinding along. But like all the other talk about deals and projects, it didn’t go anywhere. He didn’t want to work on any music while he was out there. What he really wanted to be working on, the only thing he seemed excited about, was movies. He wanted to make films.

  His dream project was to do this big movie about King Tut. It wasn’t going to be a live action film; it was going to be computer-animated. Less like a Pixar movie and more like Avatar, made with motion capture and green screens. This was back when that technology was just taking off. He’d always talk about it in the car. He’d say, “I’m going to be doing this animated film about King Tut. All the kids are going to love it.” Even back in Vegas he was talking about it. Only now that he was out here he really started focusing on it more and more. That’s when Michael Amir started to come around.

  Michael Amir Williams was in the Nation of Islam. Mr. Jackson knew him through Feldman. They had met in L.A., during that time he was on his way back from Japan and he bought that used bookstore. Michael Amir was also in film school at the University of Southern California in L.A. He wanted to get into the movies, and he and Mr. Jackson had struck up a relationship around that. While we were in Virginia, Mr. Jackson came to me and told me that Michael Amir was going to come out to help him with his film projects.

  Javon: Mr. Jackson took a liking to Michael Amir, and he started coming out more and more. He’d fly in for a few days, they’d work, and then he’d go back to L.A. Mr. Jackson started sending us on errands to buy a bunch of high-end film equipment, laptops with editing software, fifteen-thousand-dollar cameras, this two-thousand-dollar green screen. Mr. Jackson wanted to learn how all of this stuff worked. They had it all set up in his house. I’d walk in and they’d be using the cameras, shooting little films.

  There was a film professor from USC who would come and visit too, a Chinese gentleman, one of the teachers in Michael Amir’s program. He was supposed to be an expert on a lot of this motion-capture technology. Mr. Jackson flew the both of them out to Virginia to discuss these different projects. They must have come out at least five or six times.

  Bill: Michael Amir wasn’t the only visitor he had in Virginia. There were two other people who came out to see him, and they were a complete surprise to us. A couple weeks into our stay, he came to me and he told me that a friend was coming to visit.

  I asked, “Is this someone that I need to vet?”

  He said, “No, no, she’s okay.”

  Over the next couple days, whenever we discussed making arrangements for this person, he only referred to her as “Friend.”

  Javon: Bill came to me and said that we had to go to the airport and pick somebody up. “Who is it?” I asked.

  “A lady named Friend.”

  “Friend? That’s her name?”

  “That’s all Mr. Jackson told me.”

  I knew right away that it was an unusual situation. Typically, any time anyone came to visit, Ms. Raymone would plan the itinerary and give us instructions. Mr. Jackson didn’t get involved. This time, he was giving us the flight information and telling us what hotel we’d be taking her to and such. It had to mean that no one else was supposed to know about it.

  Bill: We drove in and picked her up at Dulles. She had my number and called me from the terminal to tell us where to pick her up. She had an Eastern European accent, maybe German. We pulled in outside the baggage claim, she flagged us down, and we helped put her luggage in the back of the car.

  Javon: This woman was drop-dead gorgeous. She had dark, curly hair that sort of hung in her face a bit. Petite, about five foot four. Nice body. Real slender. She barely spoke, though, was very quiet. We introduced ourselves and she didn’t say two words. On the way back from the airport, she got on her phone and called Mr. Jackson and said, “I’m here. The guys are driving me to the hotel.” That was another sign to me that she was important. He’d only had that new iPhone for a couple weeks. Nobody had that number yet, so the fact that she knew it told me she had to be very close to him.

  She was staying at this hotel in Chantilly, a Hampton Inn, about forty-five minutes from where we were in Middleburg. We got her checked in and let Mr. Jackson know. Bill and I were wondering why she was staying in a hotel. Usually, Mr. Jackson had us bring guests to the house, but not this time.

  Bill: I did think it was all a little strange. She just stayed at that hotel by herself. She was in town maybe two days before Mr. Jackson went to see her.

  I would take him on these little rendezvous. Late at night, after the kids had gone to bed, Javon would stay back to keep an eye on them and I would drive Mr. Jackson to this Hampton Inn. We’d sneak in through the emergency exit. I’d escort him to her room, then wait outside for him to call. The first time we went, he was there for maybe four hours. He never spent the night. He was always back at the house by the time the kids woke up for breakfast. And he never brought this woman around his children.

  We went back the next night and a couple more times after that. One night, I brought a DVD player and helped him hook it up; he said they wanted to watch some movies. She was in town about a week.

  Javon: Friend was the first to visit. Flower came second. Just a few days after Friend left, Mr. Jackson came to us again. Same deal. All the travel arrangements were secret, and he never used her real name. She stayed at the Red Fox Inn, which is actually in Middleburg, a little closer to where we were staying.

  Friend, she was pretty. She really was. Flower was okay.
She had dirty-blond hair and freckles. There was something more exotic about Friend. Flower was more of a normal, around-the-way girl.

  Bill: Flower lived overseas too, but she didn’t have an accent. Both of them had curly hair. I knew that he liked women with curly hair. There was a fan back at the Vegas house, a woman with curly hair, and he’d always comment on how cute she was. So I figured that was his thing.

  I didn’t get the impression that he cared for Flower as much as he did for Friend. When Friend came to town, it was a big deal. He sent us out to go and buy nice presents; I had something engraved for her at Tiffany’s. They would hold hands, sit very close together in the car, hug, kiss. They were definitely more flirtatious, more intimate with each other.

  Flower, we never did or planned anything for her. He just went and visited her at the Red Fox Inn. She was more aggressive with him, too. She obviously wanted more from him than he was comfortable giving. I heard her say things like, “Let’s take a picture together.” And he’d say, “I don’t think that would be a good idea.” She was pressing him, and he didn’t care for it. Flower only came that once, and then we didn’t see her again. Friend flew back for another visit just a couple weeks after that.

  Javon: When Friend came back, one night Mr. Jackson said he wanted to take her into D.C. He wanted her to see the Lincoln Memorial and some of the sights. So we got the truck ready. It was around midnight. Grace stayed back with the kids, and me and Bill took Mr. Jackson and picked Friend up from her hotel and headed into the city. While we were driving, they were in the back, talking and whispering. The curtain was closed and we had the radio up to give them some privacy.

  We parked the car about a block and a half from the Washington Monument. From there, we had to get out and walk. When we pulled up, I turned the radio down to tell Mr. Jackson we’d arrived, and all we heard was smackin’ lips behind that curtain. I knew exactly what that sound was. They were making out back there. I didn’t want to interrupt them, but I just coughed a bit and said, “Uh, Mr. Jackson? Mr. Jackson, we’re here.”