ABCNews' Baffling MJ Stakeout

See this?


For the past 28 days and counting, ABC News has had a journalist parked outside the home of Dr. Conrad Murray, the personal physician to Michael Jackson who was with Jackson's home when he died and is now the center of a probe into whether the death was a manslaughter. Dr. Murray, through his lawyer, has acknowledged he administered the powerful anesthetic propofol, a troubling and baffling notion.

Murray lives in the posh Red Rock Country Club in a $1.6 million home on which he hasn't paid the mortgage since December. The complex has two Arnold Palmer-signature golf courses, and Dr. Murray's home sits along the 18th hole of one. The homes are within a gated area, although there's even gated-with-in-gated for the even more exclusive folks. Murray's only in that first tier of exclusivity.

To give those of you outside Vegas some context of where this all is, here's a Google Map that shows the country club and its distance from the Bellagio:


Anyhow, back to the point. The media is in tough straits these days. You can hear about it on, well, the news. And yet the brain trust of ABC News has decided that it's a good investment -- that it's that important -- to have a 24-hour watch over this house, occupied by Dr. Murray, his wife and his four kids.


It's not just that ABC News could use the money it costs -- I'm estimating we're talking at least $15,000 a month -- to stake out Dr. Murray's home nonstop indefinitely to do meaningful journalism about the economy, health care, foreign affairs, whatever.

ABC is the only legit news agency doing this. (It appears there is one paparazzo stationed up a hill in a public area of the complex.) John Getter, the ABC producer who I visited with, befriended someone who lives in the gated community and is now on a resident's "list," which means he or his people can enter the complex and then sit there staring for hours at a time. He says he's gotten a sense of the rhythm of the Murray household but he won't shoot Murray's wife or children and Murray himself almost never comes out. Getter is Tweeting his stakeout at @Getjohn, where he's repeatedly referred to Murray as under "self-imposed house arrest." One recent Tweet: "A couple friends have mooned, sped at us in cars, taunted to attempt 2 intimidate."

Here's Getter in his car:


Getter is committed to the gig, although he did need to swap cars with his wife because hers was more comfortable and he does a lot of sitting around in the car. And he was first on the scene, obviously, when the DEA and LAPD raided Murray's house last month. But Getter told me he doesn't actually expect Murray to be arrested here; if it happens, he figures, the cops will call his lawyer and arrange a less humiliating private surrender.

So what's the point? ABC wants to video of Murray, which they haven't really gotten in all this time. They hope maybe he'll talk to them, say something, but yesterday instead Murray put out a public statement via YouTube.

The neighborhood is interesting, though. As has been reported, Elvis' doctor Elias Ghanem once lived here. What's more, Murray's home faces an empty lot and up the slope a bit is the late Ghanem's house. I don't recall which it was, but here's a pic:


Also, Harrah's veep Jan Jones lives up the block from Murray and one of the Tibertis, the family whose elders built several famous casinos back in the day, is a next-door neighbor. Oh, and not far away is Dr. Dipak Desai, who is under investigation as well because his endoscopy clinic's reuse of needles was at the center of a major Hepatitis C outbreak and panic last year.

I toured the complex just to get a feel for it. Some fabulous homes. Check it out:


The whole stakeout thing is so strange to me. Las Vegas is not a city, generally, where the media camp out on people's lawns for extended periods of time. That's New York and L.A., where it's generally a lot easier to do and where the intensity of competition among tabloid media is at its heights. I do hope ABC News decides it's worth it, but I can't imagine how they can justify that kind of cost over something that is, in the grand scheme of things, so insignificant.

One Bizarre Lunch with Joe Jackson

I've had many odd days in my career. Yesterday belongs in the Top Five.

I've just come from lunch with Joe Jackson, father of Michael Jackson, at Simon at Palms Place. Erich Bergen and I were there to meet with him about "Las Vegas Celebrates The Music of Michael Jackson," the massive Aug. 29 charity benefit tribute featuring the stars of the Strip we're doing to raise $100,000 for public school music programs. Joe Jackson will be at the Palms that day as well to accept a celebrity star in Michael's honor to be bestowed by Brenden Theatres, the cinema that MJ and his children once frequented.

At first, it seemed I had missed what was to be a very brief encounter. Erich got there first and told him our plans as the two took a ride up an elevator to the famed and elaborate Brenden Celebrity Suite (BCS) above the Brenden Theatre box office that Johnny Brenden uses to entertain celebrities and VIPs who visit for Cinevegas and other events. Brenden's folks had wanted us to walk him there to show Joe Jackson a massive Swarovski-framed mirror (see it to your left) because Brenden plans to get a smaller but similar one to frame a photo of Michael that shall forever hang in said fancy suite.

Erich told me that when they were in the elevator to that suite, Joe Jackson took a photo of Michael out of his pocket, looked at it sadly, said, "I can't believe he's gone," and then just as suddenly snapped out of that.

By the time I arrived, the encounter was all of 5 minutes old and Erich assumed it was over. Joe nodded sagely about our plans, said he thought it was great, took a phone call and wandered off without saying goodbye.

A little while later, I found him sitting alone staring into space in the food court at the Palms. We sat down with him and he told us he hopes to be at the concert but that the family had decided to (finally) bury MJ at the Forest Lawn Cemetery in L.A. at 10 a.m. that morning. (This was actually pretty big news, and I am breaking it via the New York Daily News tonight. I have timed this post to appear after that story goes up on NYDailyNews.Com.)

I asked how his wife, Katherine Jackson, was faring and he said she bursts into tears regularly. He also said that he tried to see his son in the months before his death but “the security guards wouldn’t let me get to him.”

He was then joined by Crystal Marven, a Vegas-based singer he has signed to his record label, and her mother. He wanted to show the women that ornate frame, so we went back up to the BCS and I got to snap this image of Erich (above) with his idol's dad. I got loads of other photos of the special Brenden suite that I'll share in a separate post.

By now, Joe was hungry, so we led him over to Simon at Palms Place for brunch where the namesake, Kerry Simon, greeted us. Joe chowed down on ribs and jalapeno cornbread and enjoyed the view of the all the hot women in bikinis cavorting at the pool right outside.

I quizzed him about a few other outstanding MJ issues. On the subject of the LAPD's investigation, he said he has now asked U.S. Rep. Diane Watson, D-Los Angeles, to open a Congressional investigation, too. He thinks Dr. Conrad Murray, the Vegas-based doctor whose home and business have been searched in raids aimed at linking him and his possible administering of propofol to MJ's death, is a fall guy "for a whole lot of people." And he dismissed LaToya's claim that Neverland would be moved to Las Vegas. "How would they do that?" Jackson asked.

By the end, Joe Jackson promised to get to the Palms for at least the end of our show, the after-party and to be on hand to receive a celebrity star from Brenden Theatres around 7 p.m. There's also a charity showing of "Moonwalker" at the theater at 8 p.m., with proceeds of that, too, going to the Clark County Public Education Foundation.

One final post-script. Erich and I handled the lunch check and tip, of course. But Joe pulled out his money and seemed genuinely surprised by the gesture. I was, in turn, surprised by his surprise. I would think after all these years he would be accustomed to people falling all over themselves to treat him. Joe Jackson was a very odd fellow, to be sure, and there's a lot about him that makes one scratch their heads. But I found it interesting that he evidently was not expecting to get a free pass.

Is Raided Pharmacy Linked To Steroids Indictment?

The answer to that provocative question is: No. At least not from anything I can tell. And I checked.

I was waiting yesterday to see if anyone in the media would attempt to connect Applied Pharmacy Services in Las Vegas, which was raided by the DEA and LAPD in connection with the probe into Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson's personal doctor, with a company known as American Pharmacy Solutions in Mobile, Alabama, that was hit earlier this year with a 198-count indictment in a widespread steroids distribution scandal.

Why would anyone confuse the two? Because if you Google "Applied Pharmacy Services," the first two responses are links to some blog that had posted about the Alabama company which is, in fact, named in an indictment as "Applied Pharmacy Services."


Then, if you dig a little deeper and Google "Applied Pharmacy Services, Mobile, AL," you get this:


BUT...the trail grows cold when you click on that link. Then you find yourself on the website of American Pharmacy Solutions. It's a mail-order pharmaceuticals company. They don't have branches or locations. They're not even called Applied Pharmacy Services.

I suspect many other journalists followed this necessary bunny trail to its conclusion as I did for my New York Times piece on yesterday's raid. I called up the Mobile, Ala., place. Asked if they had offices in Las Vegas, were tied to this pharmacy that had been raided. They said no. They could be lying or they could have changed their name since the indictment, that's true, and nobody from the Vegas pharmacy could be reached by anyone in the press yesterday to check it out. But it appears to be a coincidence.

Unfortunately, my private prediction proved correct; someone in the press did report that these were the same company without, so far as I can tell, being able to confirm it. I'm surprised to say it, but it was the normally spot-on Las Vegas Sun.


This information (in that middle paragraph there) didn't appear in anybody else's reports. Not the Associated Press's, not the Review-Journal's. Not even TMZ. So, did the Las Vegas Sun have some great big scoop that everybody else in the press somehow overlooked even though it was the very first thing that came up on Google? The media wouldn't pounce with two feet on the notion that a pharmacy involved in the Jacko case also has an 198-count steroid indictment against them?

As I said, the two could still be related. But I don't know anyone at this stage who has confirmed it. And the lack of being able to confirm something as simple as shared corporate parentage leads me to the conclusion that the Sun jumped the gun this time.

No LIVE Show Tonight Due To Jackson Frenzy

Sorry, boys and girls, but we gotta cancel the live show of "The Strip" tonight because I gotta make a living. And today, that means standing on a sidewalk baking in the heat staring at this:


Yep, that's all I've been staring at for the past several hours. Fun, huh? Y'see, Michael Jackson's personal doctor, Conrad Murray, is being probed in connection with Jackson's drug-related death. Dr. Murray is from Vegas. Has a fancy house and a medical practice. And today, the DEA, LAPD, LVMPD and God knows who else raided both places.

So I got called into action. Here's the top-of-Google-News glory-screen-shot:


I did have a terrific interview with Smokey Robinson today and I don't want to give him or Human Nature short shrift by rushing to write a show script. Besides, the raid at the medical office is actually still ongoing and I need to go back out into the heat shortly.

Lest anyone imagines such work is glamorous (does anyone?!?), take a look at how the press corps is sweltering:


I like this guy in orange in the "Thriller" jersey:


I wouldn't want to have to touch this:


Happily, I have some connections. The fine folks at Miles' TV station, KVBC, let me chill inside their news van. It's unclear how much better that really was, though. Take a look at the thermometer:


the time and date are wrong, but the 108.8 degree F temp is more or less correct. As I type, it's 111 out. It wasn't real clear to us if that was the temp inside or outside of the van.