They met as children and for 40 years, he was Michael Jackson's confidant. Now, in this deeply personal series, J. Randy Taraborrelli writes exclusively of the Michael Jackson he knew. Yesterday, he told the story of his friend's fall as he witnessed it first hand. Here, he examines Jackson's sexuality, investigating his questionable relationships with children - and providing a fascinating glimpse into a very passionate marriage with Elvis Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie Michael Jackson's personal maid dashed into his bedroom in the superstar's mock-Tudor mansion at Neverland, his ranch-cum-children's fairground, and frantically snatched up the sheets, pillows, bedspreads, towels and dirty clothes - anything that might implicate him.
Then she loaded all his make-up, eyeliner, lipstick, creams and gels into a box. Michael only used female fragrances, not male, and I guess someone thought that might look bad. This was the night in when it emerged that Jackson, a global icon, was under investigation for the sexual abuse of year-old Jordie Chandler.
From their very first date, at a dinner party staged by a mutual friend, the pair hit it off. The police, armed with a search warrant, were on their way to look for evidence. Everything vaguely suspect was to be taken off the property. As stacks of magazines and pictures were thrown into crates, one of the staff held up a photograph and asked: 'Is that Macaulay Culkin in his underwear?
The picture of the year-old star of Home Alone was boxed, along with a lot of others of children similarly dressed down. The maid heard a colleague mutter: 'This guy is nuts, isn't he? Everyone had known the global superstar was weird.
But now, it seemed, he was wicked, too, and in an area he had always claimed to be a total innocent - sex. Jackson's sexual proclivities had been a matter of speculation since he was a teenager. Even his mother worried that he rarely went out with girls. The dynamic sex appeal he generated when performing seemed to desert him in the real world with real people.
