Day 33: The Mother of Michael Jackson's Accuser Admits Lies… and More Lies
Saturday, 16 April 2005

On Day 33 Michael Jackson's lawyer savaged the credibility of his accuser's mother, making her admit she committed perjury, lying under oath at least twice and suggesting she wanted to cash in on the star's wealth.

In one of the most explosive showdowns of the seven-week-old trial, attorney Thomas Mesereau launched an intense attack on the 37-year-old woman he has branded and showed evidence to support the fact that she is a rapacious money-grubber and "professional plaintiff."

In a grilling so fiery that trial Judge Rodney Melville warned the lawyer and witness to tone down their rhetoric, Mr. Mesereau accused the woman of acting and suggested that her claims against Mr. Jackson were "in her mind."

In his bid to undermine claims that Mr. Jackson and his aides kidnapped her family and implicitly threatened their lives, Mr. Mesereau forced her to concede she lied in a deposition she made when suing a department store in 2000.

"You lied under oath to increase the amount of money you could get ... correct?," Mr. Mesereau asked, referring to her claim she was sexually assaulted when she and her children were detained on suspicion of shoplifting.

Mr. Mesereau also noted that in a sworn statement, the woman said she had never been abused by her husband at the time — an important issue, because her alleged injuries may have been caused by such violence. The woman had claimed she was never abused by her now ex-husband, who she later reported to authorities for beating her and abusing their three children.

"You were not telling the truth under oath when you made those statements," Mr. Mesereau said.

The woman eventually responded, "This is correct."

She also acknowledged being untruthful when she said in the lawsuit that her husband was honest.

"How many lies do you think you told in the JCPenney case?" Mr. Mesereau asked. In evasive responses, she reluctantly conceded she lied about anything to do with her then husband until his subsequent arrest.

Mr. Jackson's team claims the woman is a con artist with a history of coaching her children to lie under oath to win financial settlements, including the 152,000 dollars they won from the JCPenney store.

On the stand, the woman downplayed her role as whistleblower. "I give them [the police] information, and they did whatever they did with it," she testified.

Earlier, jurors heard the woman's teen-age daughter testify that her mother told her that she--the girl--had once been molested by her father. In court, the mother referred to the alleged molestation as an "event...that happened way over 10 years ago."

Mr. Mesereau, meanwhile, used a tape recording of a phone conversation between the mother and Mr. Jackson associate Frank Tyson to raise doubt as to the woman's claims of being held against her will by the singer's camp.

In the tape, the mother tells Tyson, one of Mr. Jackson's unindicted coconspirators, that she loves him and his family, even though she doesn't know his family. On the stand, the woman said she loved them the way she loves "people 50 and over--[I] have a tender spot in my heart."

Overall, the woman didn't think the tapes were honest at all--she claimed the recording had been "manipulated."

Legal analysts said Mr. Mesereau, who listened quietly to the testimony of the crucial prosecution witness for two days, seriously damaged her credibility.

"The more she talks, the worse its gets for the prosecution," said trial watcher Michael Cardoza. "She won't answer the simplest of questions," he said. "If this was a heavyweight fight, it would be stopped right now."

Mr. Mesereau suggested the defiant witness's stories of kidnapping were a tissue of lies and that she was in fact living in the lap of luxury as Mr. Jackson's guest at Neverland.

"How many times, in your mind, did you escape from that dungeon, Neverland?" Mr. Mesereau persisted, getting the woman to admit that she had left and returned three times during her alleged captivity.

"You didn't escape from Neverland at all, did you," he asked provocatively. "Oh yes I did," she retorted.

In a surprise revelation, she also conceded she was once investigated for allegedly abusing her own child -- the alleged victim in the case.

The witness gave as good as she got in her extremely testy sparring match against former boxer Mr. Mesereau, prompting the judge to warn he would cut the hearing short if the pair did not behave.

She pointedly corrected Mr. Mesereau, turning directly to jurors to say: "His statement is inaccurate."

In her testimony, she admitted under questioning that she had recently been in touch with the lawyer that brokered a settlement worth more than 20 million dollars for a boy who accused Mr. Jackson of abuse in 1993.

The war of words came a day after the woman wrapped up a complex and disjointed account of how Mr. Jackson aides allegedly used fear and intimidation to keep her family prisoner for three weeks in February and March 2003.

The woman claimed her family was then coerced into making a "rebuttal video" in which they described Mr. Jackson as a beloved father figure.

She said she did not want to make the video, which was played for jurors Friday, and claimed everything in it -- even the laughter -- was scripted: ""I was acting," the woman said. "I mean you are not going to call Halle Berry and say, 'Are you [really] Catwoman?' I am a poor actress."

But Mr. Mesereau shot back: "You are a good actress."

The judge chastised Mr. Mesereau for the remark and told the woman to refrain from delivering long answers unrelated to attorneys' questions, telling her, "It's as much your fault."

When Mr. Mesereau asked how it took to memorize her lines or how long the script was, she could not answer.

The mother said Mr. Jackson associates gave her a precise script to follow in the rebuttal video but later told her she had strayed too far from it, leading to the comments on her acting skills.

The woman testified that almost everything on the video — even breaks where the boy complains about his seat and the family laughs at jokes — was scripted by Mr. Jackson aides. She said the only departure from the script was when she discussed God, cancer and child welfare workers.

At one point on the tape, the boy speaks at great length about the agonies of undergoing cancer treatment.

"Do you believe what (he) was saying was the truth or not?" Mr. Mesereau asked the boy's mother.

"I believe what he was saying was according to a script," she said.

The woman suggested that she met with one of Mr. Jackson's associates 10 times at Neverland to discuss what she would say on the video. Mr. Mesereau noted that she had never said this before in interviews with police or prosecutors, and suggested she was trying to enhance her story.

Analyst Cardoza said the entire case, including the molestation charges, could hinge on whether the jury believes the woman and her son.

"If they believe the mother put the son up to it, then this case is over," he said.

Mr. Jackson's lawyers have suggested and displayed evidence to corroborate the fact that the child-molestation charges were concocted by the boy's mother in an attempt to shake down Mr. Jackson for money.

The showdown commenced with wrangling over a beauty treatment the woman underwent while she allegedly was being held captive two years ago. She insisted spitefully that she paid for the ‘leg wax’ until Mr. Mesereau produced the receipt, pointing out another lie in her stream of contradictory tesimony.

It devolved into defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. derisively quipping that the prosecution's key adult witness was a fine actress.

Mr. Mesereau got the woman's hackles up with a question about whether it was Mr. Jackson bodyguard Chris Carter who once drove her from Neverland to a nearby salon for a body wax.

"Incorrect," the mother replied.

"Who took you for a body wax?" Mr. Mesereau asked.

"No one ever," she said.

"Well, you went for a body wax when you were at Neverland, did you not?" Mr. Mesereau asked.

"Inaccurate," the woman insisted.

And so the two went on, like Abbott and Costello, without the laughs, until it was established that the mother was not going to agree to Mr. Mesereau's statement until he used the correct terminology.

"I had a leg wax done... He keeps saying 'body wax,' " the woman said, in an apparent appeal to the jury. "There is no body wax."

The mother frequently referred to Mr. Mesereau as "he," declining to address the counsel directly.

Mr. Mesereau, meanwhile, went directly after the woman--the linchpin in the prosecution's conspiracy case against Mr. Jackson.

The hits kept coming. At one point, the woman very inappropriately even imitated Mr. Jackson's high-pitched voice.

Amid the tumult, Mr. Jackson was the model defendant.

Cross-examination of the witness is expected to continue when court resumes Monday.

In other developments, Celebrity Justice reported that CNN host Larry King was subpoenaed Friday to appear as a defense witness.

King's name surfaced at the trial earlier this month when Mr. Mesereau asked Larry Feldman, an attorney who represented the accuser's family, if he ever told King that the mother was "making up these allegations." Feldman denied making such a remark.



Source: MJJsource