Jacko, His Rise and Fall: The Social and Sexual History of Michael Jackson (70 page)

La Toya wrote of physical and emotional abuse from
Gordon for ten years. "He grabbed me and said `I own
you,"' she claimed in an interview in 2005 on 20/20.

Earlier she had revealed that her husband had booked
her into strip clubs and had falsely advertised that she
would appear in the nude. Not only that, but he tried to
coerce her into making hard-core porn films.

To Michael's relief, La Toya finally divorced Gordon in 1997. "1 had to get rid of all the cancer in my life, beginning with my husband." She placed the entire blame on her former husband for causing an
alienation between Michael and herself and other family members, especially
Katherine. The family seemed to accept that explanation, Papa Joe claiming
that his daughter had been "brainwashed."

In the spring of 1992, La Toya signed a $5 million year-long deal with the
landmark Moulin Rouge in Paris. She was the single greatest attraction ever
booked in this world famous theater. "Just think about it," Gordon told her.
"You'll appear on the same stage that made Josephine Baker a legend in the
20s."

On that same stage, other acts included an assortment of French comedians, acrobats, jugglers, and one performer who wrestled three live crocodiles
plus a topless snake charmer who danced with a six-foot boa constrictor
evocative of Michael's "Muscles."

During this time La Toya was also honored as one of the ten best-dressed
women in the world by the designers of Milan and Paris.

Fortunately, in ways that perhaps reflected a growing maturity and wisdom, she eventually toured with Bob Hope and the USO in support of the servicemen and women fighting the first Gulf War, and she also worked with
Nancy Reagan in her "Just Say No" anti-drug campaign.

The following year, in 1993, when charges of child molestation against
Michael were first aired, La Toya, standing alone among the Jacksons, led the
attack against him. She accused Michael of paying hush money to the parents
of his accusers. "He would stay in his room at Hayvenhurst for days on end
with young boys."

At the Wailing Wall in Tel Aviv, Israel, and while accompanied by
Gordon, La Toya delivered a statement heard around the world: "I love him a
great deal. But I cannot and I will not be a silent collaborator to his crimes
against small, innocent children." This was viewed by the media as the harshest and most damning statement one sibling had ever
uttered against another in the history of the entertainment industry.

She also renewed charges that her own mother,
Katherine, had once again denounced Michael"That damn faggot, I can't stand him."

Paula Jones

Gordon jumped into the fray, charging that
"Michael used to have the LAPD in his back pocket-but no more." He also leveled more charges
against Michael, claiming that he'd learned that her
brother "had paid hit men to assassinate La Toya if
she ever returned to America."

Londoners woke up to read The Sun and its screaming headlines: LA
TOYA TO BROTHER: CUT OUT THE BOYS! In the story, La Toya claimed
that she'd warned Michael five months previously to "stop spending so much
time with young boys."

After their divorce, Gordon continued to call La Toya, making threats
against her, even death threats. And, post-millennium, he announced plans to
"write the tell-all book of tell-alls about La Toya, Michael, and the Jackson
family."

He called it Never Neverland: The True Story of the Most Powerful
Family in the Music Industry. The slippery Svengali began to release revelations to the press, hoping to interest a publisher in his startling expose.

During his time with La Toya, Gordon claimed that he witnessed Michael
"injecting himself with some kind of fluid to whiten his skin. He would look
in the mirror and say, `I'm getting lighter, I'm getting lighter.' I don't know
what the fluid was, but Jackson was getting lighter. I saw him do it in 1985.
Boxes containing this mysterious fluid were delivered to Jackson's house
every day."

One night at the Jackson compound in Encino the following year, Gordon
claimed that "I saw a monkey set ablaze as part of a voodoo ritual in the
Jackson backyard at Hayvenhurst. They asked me to leave and never talk
about it again." Other writers, with credentials more impressive than
Gordon's, would also link Michael with voodoo rituals.

In another monkey story-in this case, a tale about a pet chimpanzeeGordon charged that he'd witnessed Michael "abusing his pet chimpanzee,
Bubbles. He beat him a lot. I saw him punch him, kick him in the stomach.
The chimp was on the ground crying. Jackson used to say `he doesn't feel it.
He's just a chimpanzee. I have to discipline him."' The first of the beatings
that Gordon claimed he witnessed occurred in Encino in 1985.

Branca, Michael's attorney at the time, denounced the accusations of
Michael's former brother-in-law. "These are all absurd, made-up, outrageous
allegations. Consider the source. It's a joke. I don't believe that anyone will
believe anything that comes out of Jack Gordon's
mouth."

"Elvis Jr."

Nearing the end of his life, Gordon told a reporter,
"I've had cancer four times. I feel like the book should
have been written a long time ago. It's about time the
world learns what the Jackson family, especially
Michael, is all about. All that family does is tell one lie
after another. Of course, they'll denounce anything I
say about them. But I was around them for a long time,
and I saw plenty. I've lived long enough to see much of the truth about Michael made public. There's a lot more here that's going on.
They want to conceal the truth and claim everybody's a liar. You want the
truth? Michael Jackson and all his family have engaged in a deliberate campaign to conceal the truth from their public. With good reason, I might add."

In a November 25, 2003 interview with Rita Cosby, Gordon gave other
damaging testimony against Michael.

GORDON: I saw him take children into his bedroom and the children
would stay there three or four days and they would come out and there
would be a noticeable change in their behavior from a happy child to a
very despondent-you know, unhappy child.

COSBY: What do you believe?

GORDON: What do I believe? Well, I believe he's a pedophile.

COSBY: You do?

GORDON: In every sense of the word.

On April 19, 2005, at the age of 66, after a drawn-out battle with cancer,
Gordon died in a Las Vegas hospital.

Reportedly, La Toya sent a security expert to eyewitness his burial, wanting to make sure his death was for real. "I was fearful of his lies and death
threats," she said.

Upon hearing the news, Michael reportedly said, "The world is now a better place."

After her divorce, La Toya "disappeared" for a number of years. "I didn't
know what to do with my life." At one point she started going out again, disguising herself in a suit, mustache, and goatee. "Everyone thought I was a
guy," she said. "Actually everybody thought I was Michael. They didn't know
if I was a girl or guy."

Her appearance led to media speculation, and rumors spread among the
Los Angeles underground that La Toya was a lesbian. The same charges had
been leveled against her younger sister, Janet. These charges appeared in a
June, 2005, interview that La Toya granted to journalist Paul E. Pratt.

PRATT: In the song's lyrics, `Just Wanna Dance,' you mention kissing a
woman on the neck and dancing chest to chest. Have you had sexual interaction with a woman?

LA TOYA: It's a question I prefer not to answer.

PRATT: What would you like your fans, in particular, your gay fans, to
know about La Toya Jackson?

LA TOYA: I want to say that it's because of my fans, in particular my gay
fans, because they tend to be a little more outspoken about their feelings,

that I have gotten the inspiration to do this. It's because of them I'm
`Startin' Over.'

Her album with the same name was released in 2005.

After years of being sheltered by her parents and under the domination of
her husband, La Toya, along with Janet, has emerged as the most sophisticated of the Jackson family. Michael's comments on homosexuality were offensive to the gay community and cost him thousands upon thousands of fans. La
Toya proved the more tolerant one. On gay marriage, she said, "It is so difficult in the world for people to find love, true love. When people are in love, I
don't see anything wrong with it in the world. If they choose to live their lives
and get married, why should we interfere? A lot of people don't agree with me,
but that's how I feel."

Imagine Michael making such a socially advanced statement.

Post-millennium, La Toya's views about her brother changed markedly
during his renewed charges of child molestation. "We're all behind him 1,000
percent," she said. "The public hears so much that's not true."

She said, "Michael knows my heart. I have always been with him in my
heart. He knows the influence of somebody else who made me do something
against my will." She was clearly referring to Gordon. "My family knew I didn't want to do what I did, but I couldn't say no."

On 20/20 in 2005, she also said, "I love my brother. Michael is one of the
sweetest persons on this earth. You have no idea. He is so misunderstood."

Another woman who loved Michael was Elizabeth Taylor, but not enough
to marry him. On his "red hotline," with a direct link to Elizabeth Taylor's Bel
Air mansion on 700 Nimes Rd., a call came in for him at midnight. Michael
was engaged in a sleepover with Macaulay Culkin.

"Guess what?" said Elizabeth (or so Michael later claimed). "I've gone
and done it. I got down on beaded nylon and popped the question to Larry."
It was a hot night in June of 1991 when Elizabeth placed the call to Michael,
her confidant.

On that very same night, he agreed to host their wedding at Neverland. By
July of 1991, Elizabeth was about to enter into her eighth and final marriage,
this time to a husky, thirty-six-year-old truck driver, Larry Fortensky, who
boasted a six-inch penis, according to a former wife. Elizabeth had met him
when both of them were in rehab at the Betty Ford Clinic in 1988.

She told Michael, "I have the hots for him." She also claimed that he
planned to continue working even after they were married "because he doesn't want to be a kept man. It's his way of maintaining his balls."

When she met Larry at the rehab center, he'd been driving an off-road
Caterpillar dirt compactor. But he'd become a self-described "walking night mare," with his consumption of hard liquor, pills, and pot, and had voluntarily checked himself in.

He soon bonded with Elizabeth. Fellow inmates watched the romance
blossom as he hauled her around the grounds in a wheelchair. Outside the clinic, he took her out on their first date together, dropping into McDonald's for
their supper. Elizabeth, who had dined in some of the world's greatest palaces,
liked the taste of the Big Mac and became addicted to the burgers, which only
increased her waistline.

"There's only a twenty-one year age difference between us," Elizabeth
told Michael, "but Larry just loves my not-altogether-fallen breasts. We have
passionate sex."

When he'd first introduced himself to Elizabeth, Larry had said, "I'm
from Stanton, California. Bornthere 100,000 Heinekens ago." He'd been born
in 1952 in the wake of Elizabeth's big success with A Place in the Sun opposite Montgomery Clift.

He also told her that he'd gone to Pacifica High School but had dropped
out, so he warned her that he wasn't very well educated and dreaded "meeting all your fancy friends."

One of those friends Elizabeth wanted Larry to meet was Michael. Before
his association with Elizabeth, Larry had the typical hard-cut prejudice against
gay people. From what he'd read, Larry just assumed that Michael was gay.

But they did meet and, in spite of their widely different backgrounds,
became friends of a sort. "I don't give a shit if people in the tabloids are making fun of me for marrying a woman so much older," Larry said. "You like to
hang out with younger companions. I like to hang out with and make love to
an older woman."