The 2005 trial resulted in a acquittal on all counts. However, seventeen years later, the gray areas remain almost complete and Netflix then seizes them with Michael Jackson: The Verdictavailable since June 3. This documentary in three episodes brings together trial witnesses who agree to return to this periodsome for the first time publicly. And what one of them says in the first episode is particularly heavy to hear.
Vincent Amen worked with Michael Jackson between 2002 and 2003. In the documentary, he begins with a sentence that sums up the ambivalence of his testimony well: “I defended him. I believed wholeheartedly in his innocence until I don’t believe it anymore.” He attributes this shift to a specific event which took place after the star’s arrest, while searches increased in his entourage. He explains that it is in this context that Frank Tyson aka Frank Cascio, a long-time acquaintance whom Jackson considered like a son, hands him a Nike sports bag in asking him to get rid of it.
What Vincent Amen discovers inside before getting rid of it stops him in his tracks. He then decides to film the content to document the scene. At the Neverland ranch, he released a nudist magazine called Naturally and what he notices inside deeply disturbs him: permanent marker circles around certain video commands. Videos depicting naked children. “Someone wanted these videos, he circled the ones he wanted“he says in the documentary. “These videos showed naked children. Some with their families, some just naked children.” Then, it’s what Frank Tyson says to him next that finally convinces him that something is wrong.
“That’s when I realized something was up.”
Still according to Vincent Amen, Frank Tyson explained to him that it was Michael Jackson himself who surrounded the videos and that Tyson then ordered them for him, before they watched them together. “When I heard this, I couldn’t believe my ears”he confides. “J’étais très contrarié. After finding out about this and thinking about it for a long time, I thought that Frank was so close to Michael that he was covering for him. It was a turning point for me.”
Vincent Amen’s portrait of Frank Tyson is that of a man who met Michael as a child, rose through the ranks alongside him to become his personal assistant, which placed him in a position of total, almost unconditional loyalty. “Basically, he had to do whatever Michael wanted.”he summarizes. A description which raises questions about the nature of the relationships maintained by the artist with his close entourage as well as the mechanisms which would have allowed certain things to remain in the shadows.
Michael Jackson: a file that cannot be closed
Michael Jackson: The Verdict arrives in a context where the question of the star’s legacy is at the heart of new twists and turns. On one side, millions of fans who continue to defend his memory and challenge the accusations against him. On the other, testimonies which accumulate over the years Leaving Neverland in 2019 had already caused an earthquake and which paint a picture that is increasingly difficult to ignore. Netflix does not decidethe documentary gives the floor to several witnesses with different positions. But the testimony of Vincent Amen, filmed and especially accompanied by his own images documenting the scene, adds one more piece to a case that many would have liked to see definitively closed after the 2005 verdict. Obviously, this is not the case.
