Jacko, His Rise and Fall: The Social and Sexual History of Michael Jackson (90 page)

Lisa Marie did make an
attempt to convert Michael to her
cult religion, though he found
some of her conspiracy theories
bizarre, including the church's
attempt to link Adolf Hitler to the
psychiatric profession. Tom
Cruise might have fallen for that, but not Michael.

Lisa Marie's attempts to convert Michael to Scientology failed miserably,
in ways that reflected Priscilla's earlier (failed) attempts to involve Elvis.
Lamar Fike, one of Elvis's cronies, claimed that he was with Elvis when he
visited the Scientology Center in Los Angeles. Elvis went in and talked to
church leaders. When he came out, Elvis said, "Fuck those people! There's no
way I'll ever get involved with that son-of-a-bitchin' group. All they want is
my money." According to Fike, "Elvis stayed away from Scientology like it
was a cobra. He'd shit a brick to see how far Lisa Marie's gotten into it."

On the Sawyer show, Lisa Marie claimed she was sharing Michael's bed
at Neverland. Actually, following the show, she left for Hawaii and a family
vacation with her ex-husband Danny and her two children. They shared a suite
on the Big Island. Her publicist maintained that Lisa Marie was involved in a
"family reunion trip. They're the best of friends."

That was evident to guests of the 3,200-room Mauna Lani Bay Resort
who saw her walking about the gardens, holding hands with Danny and kissing.

Whenever Lisa Marie came back to Neverland, she inevitably got into an
argument with Michael. It became obvious that this surreal marriage was
heading for the divorce courts. Michael went "ballistic" when little Benjamin
accidentally pulled off his wig. In anger, Lisa Marie took her children and fled from Neverland, vowing never to return.

In August of 1995, when Lisa Marie was spilling her woes to Priscilla, her
mother urged her to "Dump the jerk! You should never have married the selfish bastard in the first place. Come to your senses and kick this freak out
before these allegations of child molestation taint you too." For a change, Lisa
Marie decided to take her mother's advice, even though it would take her a
few months.

It was obvious to the entire staff that Lisa Marie's days at Neverland were
numbered. She was particularly incensed when she learned that Michael was
planning to build a villa on the grounds of Neverland to house Macaulay
Culkin. Her patience with Michael and his obsessions with boys was running
out. Constantly she complained that she was living in a zoo, with screaming
children racing about with no one to discipline them.

Michael confronted her with evidence from a private investigator he'd
hired to tail her. The detective reported on "many liaisons with Danny" which
had taken place throughout the course of her marriage to Michael. Lisa Marie
allegedly screamed back at him, "I had to get it from somebody."

In anger, Michael deserted his "fairytale marriage" and flew to Europenot with Lisa Marie but with his eternal favorites, Eddie Cascio, now 11, and
Frank Cascio, a ripe 15. The trio was seen at Euro Disney.

Lisa Marie had also flown out of Los Angeles, heading for another
reunion with Danny in Hawaii and another "family vacation." All she would
say to reporters was, "I'm a chip off the old block. Elvis liked Hawaii too."
Privately she told friends, "Danny and I are soul-mates who should never have
split. He's the father of my children."

Holding hands with Danny once again right in the lobby of their hotel in
front of other guests, they were talking about getting back together again, discussing Lisa Marie's upcoming divorce from her "non-husband." A plan was
set into motion in Hawaii.

At the release of HiStory, Michael made a number of commitments,
which for reasons of his own he decided not to honor. One involved an HBO
special, One Night Only, that had promised to rope in a global audience of
some two-hundred-fifty million viewers.

During rehearsals for the HBO event, Michael collapsed. By ambulance
he was rushed to Beth-Israel Medical Center where doctors reportedly found
an "irregular heartbeat and dehydration."A newspaper the next morning asked
a provocative question-"Dehydration? Doesn't he drink enough Pepsi?" The
answer to that was that he drank no soft drinks at all.

Michael, however, resisted his advisers when they urged him to allow Lisa
Marie into his hospital room. He relented when told that his refusal to see her
would be a disastrous public relations move. Among the other visitors rally ing to his side was Diana Ross.

Consequently, Lisa Marie was allowed to call on Michael at the hospital
to discuss the terms of their impending divorce. Michael agreed to a payment
of $15 million, but in exchange for that, he wanted some sort of guarantee that
Lisa Marie would not speak about their marriage. . .ever. He most definitely
didn't want her writing a tell-all autobiography. "I'm far too young to record
my life," she responded. In addition, she asked for ten percent of the royalties
on Michael's HIStory album, which he conceded.

The actual terms of the divorce would be ridiculed across America. On the
Tonight Show, host Jay Leno quipped, "This is going to get ugly. According to
divorce lawyers, you know, Lisa Marie is entitled to half of all the noses
Michael acquired."

According to a nurse, who overheard the famous pair fighting, part of
their argument involved their continuing debate over Danny. Michael, apparently, still had his private investigator following them. Not only that, but having bugged her private quarters at Neverland, where she stayed only during
daylight hours, he claimed that on several occasions he had heard her having
"phone sex" with Danny. He confronted her with this, and she responded in
fury, enraged not so much by the fact that Michael knew details associated
with her involvement with her former husband, but because of the fact that her
phone had been bugged.

Lisa Marie denounced Michael in his hospital bed, accusing him of having spent their marriage "locked up in his bedrooms with young boys," instead
of trying to be a husband to her. Often when Lisa Marie had called Neverland,
he refused to take her calls. But she learned from the maid, Adrian McManus,
that if Frank Cascio called, he was to be connected immediately.

At some point during that dialogue at the hospital, Michael ordered Lisa
Marie from his room. In the corridor, a nurse overheard her shouting, "I'm
outta here. And I'm not coming back."

In the wake of her split from Michael, Lisa Marie began to get her life
together again. She spent more time with her children and saw a lot more of
Danny. There was talk of a remarriage after her divorce from Michael.
Danielle and Benjamin were happy to have daddy back home again. But
impulsively Lisa Marie fell for her tall, blond bodyguard, Luke Watson, and
Danny was out the door once again.

Lisa Marie made an appearance at the 12th annual MTV Awards on
September 7, 1995 at Radio City Music Hall, the setting of their infamous kiss
a year before. This time she sat through her husband's appearance. She'd not
seen him in two months. She watched him grab his crotch and seemed disgust ed. "Elvis would never have been so tasteless," she later said. Before the curtain went down, she'd mysteriously exited the theater to avoid paparazzi and
her husband.

Lisa Marie later said that "the last straw" in her marriage to Michael came
when he gave an interview to TV Guide, claiming that she'd told him that
Elvis had had a nose job. "This is bullshit!" his daughter charged. "And all this
from a guy who claims he's had only two nose jobs."

On January 18, 1996, in Los Angeles Superior Court, citing "irreconcilable differences," Lisa Marie at the age of 27 filed for divorce from her husband, Michael, who had turned 37. In her petition, Lisa Marie Presley-Jackson
also called for the restoration of her original name, dropping the Jackson from
it. A sexless, loveless marriage of twenty troubled months was coming to a
notoriously publicized ending.

"The divorce was more predictable than the marriage," said Memphis
music critic Stanley Booth.

Journalist Karen Schoemer summed it up: "No more strangely unwarm
hand-holdings, no more endless speculation over whether they did or whether
they didn't. No more prime time TV interviews with the two of them sitting
stiff and pretty as alabaster statues, trying to convince the world of their deep
love for one another when they barely seemed able to make eye contact. It
wasn't the romance of the century, but it was the kind of twisted royal wedding our celebrity-glutted minds deserved."

On January 19, The New York Post said it all: JACKO GETS THE
SACKO!

When the news of the divorce was reported in the press, it was revealed
that Lisa Marie's petition to the court was a "basic, boilerplate, bare-bones
document that leaves virtually all options open," at least according to her
Beverly Hills attorney, Douglas Bagby. "She reserved the right to address
community property issues and other asset concerns at a later date, to ask that
Jackson pay her attorney fees, and to state her assets at a later time," said journalist Janet Gilmore.

"The marriage was a mere publicity stunt," said a member of Michael's
staff, who refused to be named. "On Michael's part, he was trying to distract
attention from the child abuse allegation. As for Lisa Marie, what was she
thinking? She must have been `All Shook Up."'

Lisa Marie, in calling it quits, admitted that her marriage to Michael
occurred during "a moment of madness." The world agreed with her, especially Priscilla.

Staff members at Neverland reported that they had heard Michael screaming at Lisa Marie, "Your fame comes from DNA. I'm the genuine star."

In public, at least, Lisa Marie had steadfastly maintained Michael's inno cence in child molestation. Yet Rick Stanley, the stepbrother of Elvis, claimed
that she confessed to him that she'd come upon videotapes at Neverland that
"caused me great distress." She refused to discuss the exact nature of those
tapes, but Stanley alleged that she learned "the sick truth about Michael and
did indeed know that her husband had an unusual interest in young boys."

Lisa Marie later told a friend, "I feel deep guilt over my marriage to
Michael. I brought shame on my father. I suppose that's why I'm having these
awful dreams."

The story of Lisa Marie's involvement with the Jackson family did not
end with her divorce from Michael. Gossips began speculating about the
intriguing possibilities when Lisa Marie in 1998 began "dating" Janet
Jackson. They were spotted at such New York clubs as Life, allegedly embracing and even kissing. This does not necessarily prove a lesbian involvement.
Janet, for years, has been known for what some have termed her excessive
embracing and loving "fondling" of her friends, and Lisa Marie was no exception. A waiter at one club claimed that the famous pair had been spotted "with
their tongues down each other's throats," but this is only heresay and can't be
verified.

When asked about her emerging new friendship with Janet, Lisa Marie,
according to some reports, claimed that she was helping Janet get back into
shape for her Velvet Rope road tour. It's true that Janet's weight at the time had
ballooned by forty-five pounds. Although on most occasions she has a "sex
kitten" figure, she could, during bouts of depression, become bloated, much to
the delight of the paparazzi who seemed to know whatever fast-food hamburger joint she happened to have patronized during the previous week.

On many occasions during their joint forays into the world at large, Lisa
Marie and Janet wore disguises, but they were often recognized in spite of
their efforts to conceal their identities. They were seen shopping on Rodeo
Drive in Beverly Hills and on Fifth Avenue in New York. They went to offBroadway plays together, and "like two ladies who lunch," according to a
waiter, were seen together at a swank Manhattan eatery. Their club nights
were much wilder, particularly as the evening moved toward the early morning hours.

Lisa Marie was the star guest at Janet's launch party for her seventh
album, The Velvet Rope.

Elvis's daughter warmly embraced Janet when she seemed near tears after
one of Michael's fans thrust a review at her. In the review, a music critic
claimed, "Janet Jackson is a failed cloning experiment, with all of Michael's
foibles and bizarre personal quirks but none of the musical or visual talent."

Lisa Marie not only consoled her former sister-in-law, but accepted her
invitation to be her "date" at the upcoming MTV Awards.

When reports of this strange friendship reached Michael, he was furious,
fearing that Lisa Marie was using these occasions to gossip about him to his
sister. "Who knows the tales she'll tell about me," Michael was reported to
have said.

Lisa Marie sent word to Michael, via Janet, that as a devotee of
Scientology she had been taught "not to hold anger in my heart." In a card to
her former husband, she scribbled, "All is forgiven." A friend of Lisa Marie's
claimed that she once told her, "Who wouldn't want to hang out with Frank
Cascio-that's one hot man." That alleged quote cannot be verified.

After their divorce, Michael tried to mend his broken friendship with Lisa
Marie, and she eventually accepted an invitation to join him on his HiStory
tour in both London and South Africa.

In Johannesburg, Lisa Marie told friends that she hoped to spend some
quality time with Michael as a means of re-establishing a relationship with
him-"strictly as friends," she hastened to add.

But in South Africa, she was disappointed to find Michael spending all his
free time with a young boy from Norway, who appeared to be only thirteen
years old if that. "All I remember about the kid is that he was cute and was
never seen without a red baseball cap, a gift from Michael," Lisa Marie said.
At the time the press was unaware of the identity of this boy. In time both photographs and his real name would be revealed. In South Africa, Michael-and
only when forced to do so-introduced him as his "nephew."