Katherine Jackson’s determination to drive Alejandra Oaziaza and her children out of the Hayvenhurst compound had mounted to the point that she finally went to John Branca and Howard Weitzman for help with it. The estate’s request for an eviction order was filed three days into Conrad Murray’s preliminary hearing and was the culmination of a struggle that had gone on for more than six months. Mrs. Jackson had made her first attempt to force Alejandra out back in June 2010 and was reportedly stunned when the mother of four of her grandchildren by two of her sons responded by hiring an attorney who made it clear she would fight to stay. Katherine and the Jacksons tried negotiation, offering to give Alejandra the title to the condominium where she had earlier been encouraged to live rent-free. Alejandra refused to sign the confidentiality agreement that was part of the deal, however, insisting she wanted to keep the option of writing a tell-all book. At that point, Katherine had turned to the estate executors, urging them to get Alejandra off the property.
“One thing Katherine really didn’t like was that the other children were preventing Michael’s kids from making friends,” Marc Schaffel explained. “Jermajesty and Jaafar, and Randy Jr.—all these other kids—were telling Prince and Paris, ‘We’re your family. We’re the only ones who care about you. Don’t trust anyone else.’ Even Omer Bhatti would be telling them, ‘I’m your only friend. The rest just want your money.’ These poor kids were getting really distracted and Katherine could see it. But it was difficult for her, because those other kids were still her grandchildren. So she let the estate take over trying to get rid of Alejandra. They arranged to fumigate the house a couple times, and they even went so far as to change the locks. But Alejandra kept coming back and getting in.”
By the summer of 2010, at the urging of Los Angeles County social workers who wanted Prince, Paris, and Blanket separated from Jaafar and Jermajesty, both Katherine and the estate had accepted that she would have to find another place to raise her grandchildren. Katherine, who had stayed several times with the children at Schaffel’s house out in Calabasas, decided that she loved the area, and asked Marc to drive her around to look at vacant properties. Eventually she would settle on (and into) a 12,670-square-foot mansion in a gated community perched in the hills just a block from Britney Spears’s home. The rent was $26,000 per month. She and Prince and Paris and Blanket would live there until the work at Hayvenhurst was completed—maybe longer, Katherine said.
Alejandra, though, was digging in at Hayvenhurst. She was described as “a squatter” by TMZ. “She basically stays in the house full-time,” reported one of Katherine’s closest advisors in March 2011, “because she’s afraid they’re gonna change the locks on her again.” Exhausted and fed up, Katherine had eventually phoned the police to ask that they escort Alejandra off the property. Alejandra’s attorney intervened, however, convincing the cops that they could not remove a woman who had been in residence for more than two decades without a formal eviction order. A filing to evict Alejandra was made by the estate one week later.
Alejandra’s ability to inflict pain on any Jackson who crossed her, though, was being demonstrated even in that moment. Some weeks earlier, Jermaine had traveled to Africa with a passport that was about to expire. Through her attorneys, Alejandra made the U.S. State Department aware that Jermaine owed her $91,921 (including interest and penalties) in back child support, which meant that, by law, he could not be allowed to renew his passport and return home to the United States until the full amount was paid. The American embassy in Ouagadougou, the capital city of the volatile, landlocked West African nation Burkina Faso, was being asked to issue temporary papers so that Jermaine could return home and attend to his obligations, but if the embassy refused, he would be stuck in Africa until Alejandra was paid. At Jermaine’s request, Katherine had gone to the estate to plead for the money he owed to Alejandra so that he would be allowed to return to the U.S. from Burkina Faso. The estate responded with a loan of $80,000.
The other Jacksons shuddered at the thought of what Alejandra might say or do before March 15, 2011, when the hearing on the eviction order was scheduled to take place in court. “Katherine’s in a horrible situation,” Schaffel said. “She’s got two sons who have children they’re not taking responsibility for. Jermaine doesn’t pay a penny in child support and Randy didn’t for a long time. So Katherine’s stuck feeling she has to take care of these kids, but she doesn’t have the financial backing from the estate to do it.”
Both Alejandra’s tenacity and her gall were on full display when she showed up for the March eviction hearing with an attorney who argued that Michael Jackson had wanted to ensure that the mother of his niece and nephews was taken care of, and intended that she be provided for by the Jackson Family Trust. “Alejandra actually had the nerve to complain that Katherine had taken the staff with her to Calabasas and that there was no one to take care of her needs in the manner to which she was accustomed,” Schaffel marveled. “She even claimed that she was receiving no grocery money and that Katherine and the estate were trying to starve her out. And she got a temporary stay on the eviction order.”
The power of the role that Alejandra had carved out for herself within the Jackson family was nowhere more evident than in the deal by which John Branca and Howard Weitzman had settled matters between Alejandra and Katherine on one hand, and between Alejandra and Jermaine on the other. The essential ingredient in the negotiation during early April 2011 was the loan by the estate relieving Jermaine of his child support arrears.
Katherine was becoming increasingly outspoken about her displeasure with Branca’s imperious attitude. During her interview for the Oprah show, Katherine had complained that Branca was willfully ignoring what he knew had been her son Michael’s wishes. After the interview aired in November 2010, Mrs. Jackson made a public statement that she was upset with Oprah Winfrey and her producers for caving in to threats from Weitzman and the estate attorneys, delivered shortly before the show was to run, that including Mrs. Jackson’s remarks about Branca might result in legal action. “Oprah relented and did not air the segment about the executors at all!” Katherine complained.
Mrs. Jackson’s rhetoric heated up as she was drawn into the court battle for control of her son Michael’s Heal the World Foundation. Katherine publicly sided with the young woman to whom Michael had delegated responsibility for the charity, Melissa Johnson, and railed against the legal asault on Johnson that Branca and his attorneys had launched. The blow that landed heavy on Branca’s chin was the one Katherine delivered in early April 2011, just a week before the Heal the World lawsuit was to go to trial, when Mrs. Jackson’s signed declaration was filed with the court. “It is not my desire, nor would it be the desire of my son Michael, to continue this lawsuit against the Heal the World Foundation,” Mrs. Jackson had written. “Michael would be very upset if he knew that our charity was being torn apart by people who say they are doing what he wanted.” Katherine’s declaration singled out Branca as the one responsible for “bringing this lawsuit,” then stated publicly what she had been telling people privately for months: “Mr. Branca was a man my son was very worried about. Michael told me on more than one occasion that he did not like this man and did not trust him. He told me that John had stolen from him. This lawsuit is exactly the type of awful thing that Michael said he was capable of doing . . . These people say that I have been manipulated by Melissa Johnson and that we are exploiting my grandchildren, because we joined Heal the World, all while the executors convince people they are only doing what Michael wanted or what is in my best interests by suing everyone who helps us. Please do not believe them. It’s not true . . . Michael did not want his charity to be destroyed or lost; he wanted Ms. Johnson to run it for him.”
Melissa and her partner Mel Wilson were “good and selfless people and I have grown to trust them very much,” Mrs. Jackson went on. “They have done a remarkable job with my son’s charity and they have made me happy to be a part of their work . . . Michael’s children absolutely do want to carry on their father’s legacy of giving and healing and to demean and distort that desire, for greed, is as awful as you can get.”
Branca and his cohort struck back immediately with a statement that dismissed the assertions in Katherine Jackson’s declaration as “pathetic” and “full of lies.” At the same time, though, the estate lawyers attempted to avoid a direct confrontation with Michael’s mother by leaking a story to TMZ that Mrs. Jackson hadn’t actually made any of the personal attacks on John Branca that appeared in her declaration. Those slanders had come from “people who have Katherine’s ear [and] have it out for the estate,” as TMZ reported it.
Adam Streisand made a fateful decision when he chose to chime in later that same day, telling TMZ that Mrs. Jackson “denies signing any statement to the court that makes accusations against the executors of any wrongdoing with respect to her son or his estate,” then adding, “She did not and would not make any such statements about the executors.”
The headlines that Streisand’s assertions produced infuriated those who surrounded Katherine Jackson (who had, in fact, made those statements, and signed the declaration as well). “Basically, Adam Streisand was saying that his own client was either a liar or a fool,” one of Mrs. Jackson’s advisors said.
The following morning, Adam Streisand received a letter by courier from Mrs. Jackson that read, “I have spent many hours reflecting on my goals and objectives with regards to my son’s estate and I have decided to move in a different direction. Therefore effective immediately I am hereby terminating the services of you and your law firm.”
Streisand was indignant. “My partner Gabreille Vidal and I spoke with Mrs. Jackson and her assistant Janice Smith,” the attorney said, “and Mrs. Jackson told us that she did not sign a copy of the declaration that had the false accusations against the executors saying that they stole money from the estate, among other things, and she agreed to precisely what I was going to do and what I did issue as a statement about it.” But Mrs. Jackson had not accused the executors of stealing money from the estate in her declaration. “I never called Mrs. Jackson a liar,” Streisand insisted, but it sounded very much like he was calling her a liar now. “There is no doubt in my mind that after I issued the statement, Randy and Joe and probably others were very upset about it, and made that very clear to Mrs. Jackson. I have no doubt in my mind that she agreed to terminate our relationship as a way of disavowing responsibility for the statement.”
His statement wasn’t the only reason Streisand had been let go, however. More significant was that Katherine Jackson had decided she needed an attorney who believed she had a better choice than to accept Branca’s control of the estate and to be appreciative of whatever generosity he could be persuaded to extend to her. She wanted a lawyer who would fight Branca, one who believed that Branca could be dislodged from his positions as executor, special administrator, and co–general counsel of the Michael Jackson estate, and perhaps be made to repay every penny he had earned from those positions.
Within hours of firing Adam Streisand, Mrs. Jackson had hired an attorney who told her very convincingly he could do that.
Perry Sanders Jr.. was a “big-time litigator,” as TMZ put it in the first report of his appearance on the scene. Most famously, he had filed the wrongful death lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles that accused LAPD officers of involvement in the murder of rapper Christopher Wallace, aka Notorious B.I.G., aka Biggie Smalls. Sanders had also played the pivotal role in securing song-publishing rights worth hundreds of millions of dollars in an action against Master P and the No Limit Records catalog. Gaining control of a disputed music publishing catalog was, for obvious reasons, a particularly impressive achievement in Katherine Jackson’s eyes.
Sanders suggested that Katherine direct any questions she might have about his performance as an attorney and his trustworthiness as an individual to Voletta Wallace, Notorious B.I.G.’s mom, herself a Jehovah’s Witness, a woman of great faith and impressive character. The day before she dismissed Streisand, Michael’s mother and Biggie’s mother spent four hours on the phone together. By the end of that conversation, Katherine said, she was sold on Perry Sanders.
Sanders is an athletically built man in his late fifties, with chiseled features, a shaved head and face, and barely any eyebrows; he suggests an actor hired to play Lex Luthor as a protagonist. Raised in Louisiana as the son of one of the South’s best-known Baptist preachers, Sanders’s big grin and down-home colloquialisms (he was usually “fixin’” to do one thing or another) masked a capacity for cold-blooded cunning and creative strategies that was matched by few attorneys in the country. According to one of Mrs. Jackson’s advisors, Sanders had explained to Katherine at their second meeting that his main tactic in a situation like the one he had inherited from Adam Streisand was fairly simple on the surface: He approached his adversaries with the peacemaking offer of a fair deal in one hand and a brick in the other. He offered the deal first. If they didn’t take it, he hit them in the head with the brick, then asked if they’d like to reconsider. Of course, Sanders added, you wanted to make sure you had a real solid brick before you began that kind of conversation.
Sanders realized he had the makings of a blunt instrument to his liking as soon as he read a copy of a filing that Brian Oxman had made in Judge Beckloff’s court several months earlier. “Joseph Jackson’s Objection to the Appointment of John Branca and John McClain as executors of the Estate of Michael Jackson” was the heading on a lengthy document that began with detailed allegations of fraud and possible forgery by Branca. Oxman had listed seventeen separate occasions between July 1, 2009, and September 29, 2009, when he claimed the executor had perjured himself by testifying that the will submitted to the court was “correct,” asserting that Branca and McClain “have conducted themselves in a fraudulent deceptive manner where their veracity can no longer be trusted.”
While Oxman’s filing detailed the doubts about the authenticity of the will and trust agreement raised by his investigation, Joe’s attorney had been shrewd enough to recognize that the smart move was not to try to invalidate those documents. Rather, Sanders saw, the play was to challenge Branca’s decision to retain the originals of those two documents after he was fired as Michael Jackson’s attorney, and to attack his failure to resign from his position as executor. “In violation of his fiduciary duties, Branca concealed the purported will and concealed his refusal to resign,” Oxman charged, and in so doing had deceived and defrauded both Michael Jackson and the court. On the one hand, “Branca never accounted to Michael Jackson regarding his conduct, nor disclosed his books and records to Michael Jackson.” On the other hand, Branca’s failure to inform Judge Beckloff that he had been fired as Jackson’s attorney because Michael believed he was guilty of “embezzlement” was a fraud upon the court, Oxman had written.
Sanders had been warned that Oxman was a bit of a publicity hound, but Katherine’s new attorney was impressed by the largely technical accusations of fraud, conflict of interest, self-dealing, and failure of fiduciary duty that made up most of the court filing submitted on Joe Jackson’s behalf. The document was filled with accusations involving “the thousands of licensing agreements that Branca and his law firm had entered into on behalf of Michael Jackson and the Sony/ATV Trust,” as well as details about the 2006 deal in which Michael had bought out Branca’s interest in the Sony/ATV music publishing catalog for $15 million.
The two-page business plan that Michael had “supposedly” signed a week before his death was itself “a continuation of the concealment, conflicts of interest, and violations of fiduciary duties which plagued Branca’s conduct for years,” Oxman had concluded.
The filing was the stuff of a potent lawsuit, Sanders thought, but the merits of the case had never been heard. Judge Beckloff’s preemptive ruling had been that Joe Jackson was not a named beneficiary of his son Michael’s will and therefore “doesn’t have any interest in the estate.” Sanders’s client Katherine Jackson, though, was a named beneficiary of the will, meaning that the judge would be compelled to hear any claim he brought against Branca on her behalf.
Even before being hired as Mrs. Jackson’s attorney, Sanders had been discussing how to mount an attack on Branca with other high-profile litigators, among them Paul V. LiCalsi, who had long represented the Beatles’ company Apple Corps Limited and John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono. At the same time, he was collecting information that raised ever more intriguing questions about Michael Jackson’s will and John Branca’s conduct. Branca had thus far avoided answering questions** about who at his law firm had prepared the Michael Jackson will and trust agreement submitted to Judge Beckloff, or about why he and his law firm had retained the originals of those documents after they were “commanded” to return them in 2003. Branca had also declined to respond to any questions about where and when Michael Jackson signed the will that had been submitted to Judge Beckloff. On Branca’s behalf, Weitzman emphasized that Michael Jackson’s 2002 will had been approved by the probate court, but Weitzman himself offered no details about where and when the will had been signed, though he did insist that the signature was genuine and that all three witnesses had been present when Jackson signed his name.
Howard Weitzman refused to go on the record with TMZ or anyone else in the media about whether the will had been signed in New York or Los Angeles. Sanders himself spoke to Jackson’s former accountant, Barry Siegel, who said the will had been signed “in California.” Yet Siegel’s friend Dennis Hawk said he understood from Barry that the will was signed in New York.
After Katherine Jackson told Sanders that Adam Streisand had said he believed the Michael Jackson will submitted to Judge Beckloff’s court was questionable, Mrs. Jackson’s business partner Howard Mann advised Sanders that he could produce a court-certified handwriting expert who could challenge the Michael Jackson signatures on the trust agreement. Raising further doubts about the validity of the will, at least in Sanders’s mind, was that the signature page produced by Branca was entirely separate from the body of the document, making it impossible to say whether it was the same document that Michael Jackson had signed in July 2002. Even Barry Siegel had admitted to Sanders that he had no way of knowing.
Sanders was even more interested to learn that in the spring of 2009 Michael had been in conversations about his need for an estate planner, and in the process had convinced his representatives, Dennis Hawk and Tohme Tohme, that there was no valid will or trust agreement in existence. “That was my distinct impression,” said Hawk, who in March 2009, right around the time that the “This Is It” shows were announced, had been asked by Jackson and Tohme to find an attorney who could prepare an estate plan for Michael that included a will and trust agreement. Both Hawk and Tohme saw the Neverland Trust agreements (naming Katherine Jackson as the trustee of the estate and making no mention of John Branca) that had been prepared in 2006 during Raymone Bain’s reign as Michael’s manager, and assumed those would be the templates of any new estate documents. Hawk reportedly had contacted Sean Najerian, a lawyer who had prepared such documents for other clients of his.
Najerian said Dennis had indeed called to ask if he would consider the scope of an estate plan for Michael Jackson, whether he would be capable of preparing documents that included a will and trust agreement, and what he would charge in terms of a flat fee to do so. Tohme followed up, and there were a number of conversations during March and April, Najerian said, but then the calls simply stopped. The reason for that, apparently, was Tohme’s estrangement from Jackson during the Julien Auctions imbroglio. “I can tell you that in 2009 Michael didn’t think he had any will,” Tohme said two years later.
What made the whole situation even more confusing was that Michael Jackson had signed at least one other will and trust agreement subsequent to July 2002—in Florida during 2003. Those documents named Al Malnik as the executor of Michael’s estate, and as guardian to Michael’s youngest child, Blanket. Marc Schaffel was one of the two official witnesses to Michael’s signature, at Malnik’s home in Ocean Ridge. He recalled that this trust agreement was much longer and more elaborate than the one submitted by Branca to Judge Beckloff, Schaffel said. Malnik had in fact acknowledged the existence of such a will in a brief interview with the Palm Beach Post’s “Page 2” columnist Jose Lambiet on the day after Jackson’s death, adding that he also had agreed to be the guardian of MJ’s youngest child Blanket. “There could always be a superseding document he signed since then,” Malnik told Lambiet. “I haven’t heard anything yet, but it’s probably too early.” After that, though, Malnik had gone silent, refusing to talk to the reporters who called to ask about it. And no 2003 will had surfaced.
There had been just two copies of that will and trust agreement, as Schaffel remembered it, one for Malnik’s files and one for Michael’s. If anyone had discovered a copy of the Malnik will in Michael Jackson’s files after his death, though, they weren’t saying. Malnik himself refused to speak on the record but told Schaffel that he wasn’t interested in producing his copy of the will Michael had signed in 2003. “Al is an eighty-year-old billionaire who doesn’t want to be bothered with all this,” Schaffel explained. “He certainly doesn’t need the money, and his feelings were hurt when Michael turned on him back in 2003, after the Muslims came in. Plus, he told me he’d probably have hired Branca to run the estate anyway, because he knows more than anybody else about it.”
By late April 2011, Sanders seemed to think he had formed a brick that was solid and sizeable enough to carry into a conversation with the estate. Some members of the Jackson family, though, Joe and Randy in particular, were complaining that this new lawyer looked like yet another guy who wanted to get in bed with Branca. They weren’t pleased by Sanders’s first public statement after the news of his hiring as Katherine’s attorney broke: “Bottom line—I am going to do anything in my power to tone down the rhetoric that has happened to date to the extent possible.” At a lunch meeting in Beverly Hills the next day, Sanders assured Howard Weitzman that he would much rather work with the estate than fight against it. Within the week, he had proven this by settling the Heal the World Foundation lawsuit, orchestrating a deal that guaranteed Katherine Jackson and Melissa Johnson seats on the charity’s board of directors but gave John Branca ultimate control.
Joe and Randy renewed their complaints about Sanders, telling other family members that they believed Katherine’s lawyer was really working for the estate. He was ready to go to war with Branca if he had to, Sanders assured Mrs. Jackson, but an amicable settlement was clearly preferable. He would be meeting with Howard Weitzman again, this time for dinner, to determine if that was possible.
Sanders refused to say afterward what had transpired during his dinner with Weitzman, but it was obvious in the days that followed that a deal had been struck. Katherine Jackson was back to describing Branca as “a very able man.” Perry Sanders said that he admired Weitzman and respected Branca. “Katherine is being taken care of,” he said.
Among those who were oblivious to Sanders’s machinations, the good news was that Michael’s children seemed to thrive after their move to Calabasas and enrollment at the Buckley School. “They’re making tons of new friends and Katherine is really happy about it,” Marc Schaffel said. “Paris is having sleepovers, and she’s been going out. Prince has finally started to do things. Before, he was very in his shell, but now he’s playing sports and making friends.” When Prince showed up at a Los Angeles Lakers basketball game in January 2011, the buzz around the boy was far louder than for any of the many other celebrities seated inside the Staples Center. Familiar faces that ranged from George Lopez to Khloe Kardashian hurried over to have their photographs taken with Michael Jackson’s son. What made his grandmother happiest was seeing how easily Prince chatted with Lakers forward Ron Artest. “The most amazing thing to everyone is that he’s getting really talkative,” Schaffel explained. “It’s made a world of difference to get away from that whole bad influence crowd. I think they might want to get close to Debbie, too, before very long.”
He already saw a lot of Debbie in Paris, Schaffel added: “Paris loves horses. She’s a dog person. She’s really into animals. There’s no doubt in my mind the two of them are going to develop a relationship around that.”
Though the media wouldn’t touch it, a much-discussed subject on the Internet, after Katherine appeared with Michael’s children on the Oprah show, was how curious it had been to see these white kids being raised by a black family. It no doubt would have surprised a lot of people to learn that all three of the children continued to firmly believe that Michael Jackson was their biological father. The Caucasian complexions of the two oldest kids might appear to clearly contradict this belief, but before the end of 2010 Prince had developed a condition that convinced the entire Jackson family he truly was Michael’s son: The boy had vitiligo; spotting was heavy around his knees and under his right armpit.
“All I can tell you is that those kids believe completely that Michael was their father,” Schaffel said. “There’s no doubt at all in their minds.”
* *In late August 2012, after sixteen months of refusing to answer any questions at all, despite multiple offers of the opportunity to do so, John Branca, through his attorney Howard Weitzman, agreed to respond to questions from me, if they were “put into context.” Essentially, Branca and Weitzman wanted me to reveal what I had. Despite the fact that this book had already gone into production, my publisher and I agreed and I responded with an e-mail to Weitzman in which I outlined the four major areas of question or controversy: questions involving the preparation and signing of the 2002 will; questions about the circumstances of Mr. Branca’s termination as Michael
Jackson’s attorney in February 2003; questions about whether Michael Jackson, at the time of his death, actually wanted John Branca to serve as his executor; and questions about whether John Branca was in fact rehired as Michael Jackson’s attorney in June 2009. I also invited Mr. Branca to respond to the criticism of him by members of the Jackson family for the degree to which he had been personally enriched by his administration of the Michael Jackson estate.
Weitzman responded forcefully and persuasively to the question about whether Branca was rehired in 2009, first by arranging for a conference call with Michael Kane, who had been hired as Michael Jackson’s business manager shortly before his death and who continued to serve in that capacity for the estate. Kane told me that he had personally witnessed the meeting between Branca and Jackson at the Forum, and had in fact participated in some of it. Weitzman also arranged a conference call with Joel Katz, who had been hired as Jackson’s entertainment lawyer in the spring of 2009, and Katz told me he was certain that Branca and Jackson had met as claimed, because he had spoken to Michael Jackson about the meeting a short time afterward. He had asked Michael if he minded John joining the team, Katz said, and Michael had told him he did not. Not long after this, Katz said, he saw a document signed by Michael Jackson that approved a business plan that would be directed by John Branca. Members of the Jackson family and critics of John Branca retorted that Kane and Katz were employees of the estate and allies of Branca. I see no legitimate basis for insulting Mr. Kane and Mr. Katz with the suggestion that they would lie at John Branca’s behest and I accept that Branca did in fact meet with Michael Jackson at the Forum and likely was rehired as one of Jackson’s entertainment attorneys. For me, that controversy has been settled in Mr. Branca’s favor.
Howard Weitzman had no real answers to offer, though, about the other three areas of question and controversy I submitted to him. On the question of why the will shows that it was signed in Los Angeles on July 7, 2002, a date when Michael Jackson was in New York City, Mr. Branca was choosing not to reply, Weitzman told me. Weitzman claimed that he himself had not been given an explanation for the discrepancy, stating that he had heard different stories from different people. Weitzman, of course, insisted the July 7 will was not fraudulent and was signed by Michael Jackson in the presence of three witnesses. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Branca was talking to a reporter from Forbes named Zack O’Malley Greenburg, who had just written a story for his magazine that would be published even as Weitzman and I were talking. “The
Scandalously Boring Truth About Michael Jackson’s Will,” the article was titled. In it, Greenburg explained that even if the 2002 will had been found to be invalid, there were two other Michael Jackson wills in John Branca’s possession, one executed in 1997 and the other in 1995, that would have become the successor documents. And both of those wills, as Greenburg reported, named John Branca as one of Michael Jackson’s executors. So Branca had absolutely no motive to submit a fraudulent 2002 will, Weitzman pointed out to me after he recited the facts that were the basis of the Greenburg article. What both Weitzman and Greenburg somehow ignored, though, was that in February 2003, when he was terminated as Michael Jackson’s attorney, Branca had been ordered to surrender “all” documents in his possession, not just the 2002 will, but the 1997 and 1995 wills as well. If Branca had done what he was supposed to do, he would have had no Michael Jackson wills in his possession at the time of Michael’s death, a fact that renders both Weitzman’s argument and Greenburg’s thesis irrelevant.
Weitzman had no reply to offer from Branca to the question of why he had failed to surrender the originals of Michael Jackson’s wills in 2003. Again Weitzman told me that his client was declining to answer any questions on that subject. When I pointed out that Branca’s refusals to answer questions about the problems with the will itself and about his failure to return it to Michael Jackson in 2003 were inevitably going to raise suspicions, Weitzman said he understood this, but had to obey his client’s instructions. Weitzman did attempt at one point to suggest that perhaps Branca had simply handed off the 2003 termination letter from Michael Jackson to an assistant who had somehow failed to include the will (or wills) in the documents returned to Jackson. I pointed out that this was implausible. If the will had surfaced months after Michael’s death when files were being moved into storage or something such as that, then the story that the failure to return the will was an oversight by an assistant would perhaps be believable, I told Weitzman. But the fact was that Branca knew he had the 2002 will at the time of Michael Jackson’s death and immediately began the process of producing it for certification, then presented it to the court within a week of Jackson’s death. And if Branca knew he had the will, I pointed out to Weitzman, then he knew he had failed to do as he had been instructed to do by his former client back in 2003. And that, by the standards of the State Bar, was not ethical. Weitzman didn’t like hearing this from me, but he had no answer for it, either.
Weitzman quite reasonably pointed out that John Branca couldn’t be expected to respond to claims about the things that Michael Jackson had said about Branca during the more than six years that passed between his 2003 termination and Michael’s death. What startled me, though, was how exercised Branca and Weitzman were by the subject of the 2003 Michael Jackson will that named Al Malnik as executor. Weitzman said he had spoken to Malnik and that Malnik had told him that will “was never filed.” Later Weitzman stated that Malnik had told him the will “never existed.” That was strange. My initial knowledge of the Malnik will had come from Marc Schaffel, who told me he had been one of the two witnesses to Michael Jackson’s signature at Malnik’s home in Florida. I would have been a little shaky if all I’d had to base my belief in the 2003 will was on Schaffel’s statements. But I had discovered that on the day of Michael Jackson’s death, Malnik had given not one but two telephone interviews to journalists in the Miami Beach area in which he stated that, as of 2004, he was the executor of Jackson’s estate, on the basis of a document signed in 2003. The first interview was given to Palm Beach Post columnist Jose Lambiet and the second to a reporter at the CBS affiliate in Miami, Lisa Petrillo. The Petrillo interview had been tape-recorded and played on the air during an evening broadcast. When I sought counsel from attorneys about what could be motivating Malnik to claim there never had been a 2003 will, if he was in fact saying that, two of them did bit of legal research for me and reported that, Malnik, as an attorney, had been obligated by the California Probate Code to produce any Michael Jackson will in his possession within sixty days of Michael’s death. If Malnik had possessed such a will and failed to produce it, he might face some legal consequences. What this all comes to I have no certain knowledge. I am convinced, though, that the 2003 Michael Jackson will did exist and I told this to Howard Weitzman.
Weitzman’s replies to the questions concerning whether Branca was rehired and to those who have criticized him for using his own law firm to prepare a will that named him as executor of the Michael Jackson Estate were incorporated into the text in an earlier chapter of this book.
In the letter that Weitzman sent to me and my publisher in John Branca’s formal reply to my questions, the attorney stated: “Mr. Branca and Michael Jackson had a long and multifaceted personal and professional relationship that, admittedly, was interrupted at certain points in their careers for various reasons. Those who harbor no bias or animus against Mr. Branca acknowledge his contributions to Michael’s career, and recognize his role and that of his co-executor in the stunning financial turnaround of the estate after Michael’s death.” No argument here.