Former Longtime Jackson Insider Speaks Out
June 23, 2005 — -- A former longtime publicist for Michael Jackson says he was somewhat surprised the singer was acquitted in his child molestation trial but shared some jurors' suspicions that "The King of Pop" may have behaved inappropriately with other children in the past.
"Well, the justice system had prevailed," Bob Jones said in an interview with Diane Sawyer on "Good Morning America" today. "I was shocked to a degree. However, you had the foreman of the jury say I believe in a certain way [that something happened]. But they didn't prove it in this particular case."
Jackson was acquitted on June 13 of all 10 charges related to allegations that he molested a now-15-year-old boy who spent time at his Neverland ranch and appeared with him in the 2003 British documentary "Living With Michael Jackson." After the verdict, some jurors said they suspected the singer had molested other children, but that prosecutors had not proven he had done anything illegal to the accuser at the center of his trial.
During deliberations, jury foreman Paul Rodriguez said he and other jurors frequently discussed the testimony about past allegations that Jackson had molested or behaved inappropriately with five other boys, including two youngsters who reached multimillion-dollar settlements with the singer in the 1990s. But, Rodriguez said, the jurors knew they could not convict solely on the basis of past allegations.
"We couldn't weigh that with this case in particular," he said. "We all felt that he was guilty of something."
Jones, who has known Jackson since the start of Jackson's career as the child lead singer of the Jackson 5 until he was fired in 2004, has co-authored a new book with another former Jackson family friend called "Michael Jackson: The Man Behind the Mask." Jones testified for prosecutors as they presented testimony about Jackson's alleged pattern of seduction and inappropriate behavior with boys.
However, Jones was not the prosecution's strongest witness, as he initially said he did not remember seeing the entertainer lick a boy's head during a flight from Paris to Los Angeles in the early 1990s. Jones only conceded that the incident must have happened after prosecutors showed him an e-mail he wrote to a co-writer.
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