A Million-dollar Bounty on Michael’s Head
‘We need Michael Jackson.’
‘We must have Michael Jackson.’
‘How do we get Michael Jackson?”
In February 1989, faxed communications from Kenneth Choi flooded into Jerome Howard’s office regarding the ‘Jackson – Moonie Project’. Still, no one wanted to approach Michael just yet; they were afraid he would give them an instant ‘no,’ and that would be the end of it. ‘Finally, in desperation, the Koreans came up with an idea,’ Jerome recalled, ‘a reward. A bounty was placed on Michael’s head. The price: one million dollars. Anyone – family member or business associate – who could get Michael’s signature on the contract would get a million dollars, money which would come straight from the Moonies. Now,
everyone
wanted to approach Michael,’ Jerome concluded with a chuckle, ‘and right away.’
Katherine decided to take the proverbial bull by the horns and telephone Michael at Neverland to give it her best shot. As she gently tried to explain the proposed tour, feeding him information about it as gingerly as possible, Joseph stood nearby, pacing. Finally, he was about to burst. He snatched the phone from her hand. ‘Michael, now you listen here,’ he declared. ‘You said you wanted us to be a family again,’ he said, referring to their last telephone conversation from Japan. ‘Now, look. I got these rich Koreans and they got this big deal and I want you to do this thing, Michael, ’cause we’re gonna make a lot of money and we
need
this money and you
know
we do and – ’
‘Joseph, put Mother back on the phone.’
Michael then told Katherine to forget about it. He wouldn’t even consider another family venture, especially if Joseph was involved in it. He reminded Katherine of the time (in 1985) when Joseph aligned with a Hollywood producer to develop a film based on ‘Beat It’ which was to star Michael – and Michael didn’t know anything about it. He later had to disavow the project which, he said, was embarrassing. ‘He’s always doing things to get me involved in projects with him, and I’m not going along with it,’ Michael said. He didn’t want to tour with the brothers again, either. ‘That’s over,’ he told his mother. ‘I mean it,’ he concluded. ‘Forget it, Kat. [Michael often calls his mother ‘Kat’.] I won’t do it and I want you to please just drop it. Do you understand?’
The good ol’ days when Katherine was able to convince Michael to do anything she asked of him were clearly in the past.
By February 1989, financial matters had gotten so desperate for Joseph and Katherine that they could no longer afford to pay Jerome Howard his salary; he had settled for $3,000 a month, even though they had originally agreed to pay him $10,000, and now he wasn’t getting anything. Therefore, he became even more interested in concluding the Jackson – Moonie Project not only to generate revenue for the family, but for himself, as well. He decided to go directly to Frank Dileo for assistance. Unfortunately, no one in the family knew how to get to Frank. The brothers barely knew him, and Katherine and Joseph never liked meeting with him about anything because, they claimed, he would then go back to Michael and misrepresent what they had said. Katherine, in particular, didn’t like Frank – especially after he said she was ‘crazy’ for thinking Michael could do a better show with his brothers.
Jerome finally had to pay an associate of Frank’s $2,000 for an introduction to Frank, who, as it turned out, was at a weight-reduction centre run by Duke University in North Carolina. Jerome called Frank and arranged a meeting for them with Kenneth Choi. It took place in a North Carolina hotel room at the end of February 1989. Frank told Kenneth that if Katherine was involved in the deal, he would talk to Michael about it. ‘He loves his mother,’ said Frank. ‘I don’t know. I ain’t promisin’ nothin’. But, maybe…’ At that point, Kenneth opened his briefcase and took out two cashier’s cheques made out for $500,000.
‘These are for you,’ he declared. ‘A million dollars.’
Frank laughed in his face. ‘I can’t take a million bucks from you. What, are you crazy?’ he said. ‘I can’t guarantee Michael Jackson will do anything for you. Michael is a smart man. He makes up his own mind. No one
tells
him to do anything. Do you understand that?’
As promised, Frank then discussed the situation with Michael. Michael said he didn’t want to be involved. Frank told him to think it over, ‘and maybe you’ll change your mind, maybe you won’t. It’s your decision.’
‘It was business as usual,’ Frank recalled. ‘Everything was hunky-dory.’
Michael and Frank were inseparable. He was prominently featured on the
Bad
record jacket, a picture of him and Michael which was captioned ‘another great team’. Michael also devoted a full page to photos of him and Frank in his lavish concert tour booklet. In fact, Frank had often said that he thought of Michael as a son, ‘and he referred to me as a second dad.’
‘I was with the kid every day,’ he recalled. ‘Some days you could have a decent conversation with him. Some days he was on another planet. But I got closer to him than anybody else in his life,’ Frank had even advised Michael about the taboo subject of plastic surgery, telling him that when he was a youngster he, too, had wanted a cleft in his chin like Kirk Douglas. ‘But that’s enough,’ he told Michael. ‘No more surgery.’
After five years of working for him, Frank Dileo may have thought he was in good standing with Michael Jackson, that their relationship was, as he put it, ‘hunky-dory’. He would have been wrong.