Cashing in on
cashing out

Montreal muckraker Ian Halperin on good
timing and Michael Jackson’s life, death,
kids and drug addiction

FROM ACCUSATION TO EXHONERATION: Halperin

by CHRIS BARRY

He’s the author of such notable and salacious publications as Hollywood Undercover: Revealing the Sordid Secrets of Tinseltown, Who Killed Kurt Cobain? and Guy Laliberté: The Fabulous Story of the Creator of Cirque du Soleil. He has his share of enemies too, not the least being the Scientology crowd, whom he claims forced him into hiding last year lest they go all Travolta on his ass, sans lubricant, after being none too pleased with the investigation he did into the gayer side of their movement/religion. But Montrealer Ian Halperin’s latest crucially important exposé, the spectacularly timed Unmasked: The Final Years of Michael Jackson, has really been garnering attention, not just because the king is fresh in the ground, but because Halperin predicted his demise just a few months ago. This is what he told the Mirror.

Mirror: So you accurately predicted the King of Poop was gonna die soon.

Ian Halperin: Yeah, I called it on December 24, saying he had six months to live and he died June 25, six months and one day later.

M: How did you come to make said prediction?

IH: I infiltrated his camp. Basically I got to know a lot of people around him. He shouldn’t have been planning a major concert tour, he should’ve been in the hospital. But he was surrounded by vultures who wanted him to perform and make money. That’s all they cared about. He was hundreds of millions in debt when he died. That’s the only reason why he agreed to do 50 shows on this tour. He couldn’t have done them. He was a mess, physically and mentally. He was anorexic, and, of course, one common side effect of anorexia is cardiac arrest. He had a lung disease, he was wheelchair-bound while living in Las Vegas. The only thing that kept him going were the prescription drugs he needed to relieve the pain. He also had a cocaine addiction that he entered rehab for three years ago. He’d been a mess with drugs and alcohol for 10 years.

You know, originally I set out on this case to nail him, prove to the world he was a child molester. I’ve interviewed countless people who stayed at Neverland, had access to previously unreleased documents about the Jordan Chandler and Gavin Arvizo cases, and concluded unwaveringly that he was not a child molester. I set out to convict him and in the end I exonerate him.

M: So why did he pay millions of dollars to various parties to have their cases dismissed?

IH: These were nothing but extortion attempts, the evidence is insurmountable. All the kids I interviewed at Neverland said that, with Chandler and Arvizo, it was just grand extortion. That they’d never even been remotely touched by Michael.

Doting and gay?

M: You state he was homosexual?

IH: Yeah. I interviewed numerous men who claimed to have slept with Michael; most of them were bogus, but two were credible so I put them in the book.

M: Did it ever cross your mind that maybe dying was the best thing that could’ve happened to this wreck of a creature?

IH: I wouldn’t speculate on something like that. I mean, he has kids, and as a father myself, I would never say that about a parent.

M: What’s up with those kids he allegedly sired anyway? They’re, um… white.

IH: Biological, non-biological, it doesn’t matter. He raised them and was a great father and they’ll always look up to him for being their dad.

M: I guess. But didn’t he claim to have sired them?

IH: Michael said a lot of stuff he didn’t mean. In some interviews, he said he did, but he’s denied it to people in his inner circle. But that wasn’t the focus of my book, which is on his final years.

M: What were those last years like for him?

IH: He was very frail, a gypsy with very little money travelling a lot because he didn’t think the U.S. was a safe place for him. He wanted a safe haven, so he just travelled around with his kids. Eventually, at the urging of his mother, he decided he needed more stability for them and moved back to the U.S.

M: How many times have you been sued for libel?

IH: Nobody has ever sued me successfully. I’ve only had one libel suit against me and that was laughed out of court. I’ve been doing this a long time. People are always trying to disprove my stuff but I always keep my videos and documents, and as they’re trying to disprove it, I release the goods and make them all look like fools. I’ve done this time and again.