Complete coverage of Michael Jackson

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• He was lauded and ridiculed. He broke down barriers and built them around himself.
• He soared to heights unimaginable with his music, and he made the ignominious front page of gutter tabloids worldwide.
• For Michael Jackson, the spotlight was always present, and the rest of the world followed.
• From the time he was a child, it was obvious Michael Jackson was something special.
• He and his brothers shot to stardom as the Jackson 5 in the 1970s.
• But it was in the 1980s, when Jackson became a worldwide phenomenon, that his impact really began to be felt. Pop music went into a Jackson era.
• From the elegant ballads to the down-and-dirty grooves and ecstatic dance hits, he dominated the music world.

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Jackson ticket holders offered refund or souvenir ticket

LONDON, England - Michael Jackson fans who purchased tickets for his final concerts will receive a full refund or, if they chose, a commemorative ticket, the concert promoter said Tuesday.


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• A fan shows off the first ticket bought at the O2 Centre in London for one of Michael Jackson's concerts.
• "The world lost a kind soul who just happened to be the greatest entertainer the world has ever known," said Randy Phillips, president and chief executive officer of AEG Live.
• "Since he loved his fans in life, it is incumbent upon us to treat them with the same reverence and respect after his death."
  Fifty sold-out Jackson concerts were scheduled for the O2 Arena in London, starting July 13, with admission costing at least $105. The shows were billed as the final concerts of his career and were called "This Is It." Tell us what you think - would you take the ticket or the refund?
• Fans who decide they would rather have a souvenir will receive a ticket conceived by Jackson. There are eight designs that include holographic images of the entertainer on the front.
• Images of the tickets will be available on michaeljacksonlive.com in coming days, according to the promoter.
  Refunds will be processed by the issuing ticketing agencies -- See, Ticketline, Ticketmaster and Viagogo.
• Billboard magazine has estimated that $85 million in tickets were sold for the concert series. Additional packages, merchandise and secondary market sales could have raised the total to $115 million. AEG Live declined to comment on the figures.
• Jackson was expected to earn $50 million from the London shows.
  He died Thursday in California after his doctor found him in bed not breathing, but with a slight pulse. Efforts to revive the 50-year-old singer failed and he was pronounced dead at a Los Angeles medical center.

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Jackson Mum Gets Custody Of Kids - For Now

Michael Jackson's elderly mother, Katherine, has won temporary custody of the singer's three children. Skip related content.

• The children - Prince Michael, 12; Paris Michael, 11; and Prince Michael II, 7 - will now stay with the Jackson family until a further hearing on August 3.
• It will take place at the Los Angeles Superior Court where Mrs Jackson filed guardianship papers.
• She is reportedly also taking legal steps to gain control of her son's estate.
• The Jacksons' lawyer said the family had not yet heard from Debbie Rowe, the mother of the two older children. The youngest was born to a surrogate mother.
• The singer's father Joe Jackson added that looking after the children was the family's "first priority".
• Earlier it emerged Mr Jackson suspects "foul play" over his son's unexpected death at the age of 50.
• He said he had a "lot of concerns" over events leading up to the tragedy.
• He said he could not go into details about his concerns but told ABC7: "Michael was dead before he left the house.
• "I'm suspecting foul play somewhere.
• "He was waving to everybody and telling them he loves them and all the fans at the gate.
• "A few minutes after Michael was out there, he was dead."
• Los Angeles County Coroner's officials said their post-mortem found no indication of trauma or foul play.
• But, because of additional tests, an official cause of death could take weeks to determine.
• The lawyer representing Jackson's doctor, Conrad Murphy, said he did not administer the drugs which may have contributed to his death.
• Edward Chernoff said: "Dr Murray has never prescribed nor administered Demerol to Michael Jackson. Not ever. Not that day. Not OxyContin (either) for that matter."
• It followed reports that the singer received a shot of Demerol - a powerful painkiller - shortly before his death.
• A spokeswoman for Mr Chernoff earlier said Dr Murray was "in no way a suspect" after speaking to police officers in Los Angeles at the weekend.
• Los Angeles Police confirmed they do not intend to speak to Dr Murray again but said their investigation was "ongoing".
• The Jackson family reportedly want to hold memorials for the star in key cities around the world.
• Meanwhile, the singer's unexpected death has prompted a huge surge of interest in his music.
• Record stores were stripped of his work as his greatest hits album, Number Ones, soared to the top of the UK charts.
• Jackson was last number one in Britain six years ago.

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Michael Jackson: A Fashion Icon

1. Michael Jackson in New York City, September 1977
2. Michael Jackson, 1978
3. The Jackson 5, 1978
4. Michael Jackson, January 17, 1979
5. Michael Jackson, 1980
6. Michael Jackson at the 26th Annual Grammy Awards, 1984
7. A copy of Michael Jackson's glove, 1984
8. Michael Jackson at the American Music Awards, 1984
9. Michael Jackson, 1984
10. Michael Jackson, August 1, 1984
11. Michael Jackson, July 29, 1984
12. Michael Jackson, May 9, 1984
13. Michael Jackson at the American Music Awards, 1989
14. Michael Jackson, 1990
15. Michael Jackson, 1991
16. Michael Jackson performs on his Dangerous Tour, 1992
17. Michael Jackson performs on his Dangerous Tour, 1992 .01
18. Michael Jackson performs at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards
19. Michael Jackson performs at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards.01
20. Michael Jackson performs in Amsterdam, 1996
21. Michael Jackson performs in Amsterdam, 1996.01
22. Michael Jackson in England, 1997
23. Michael Jackson at the World Music Awards in Monaco, May 10, 2000

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Father's doubts over Jackson death

• Michael Jackson's father said he had a "lot of concerns" over the events that led up to his son's death, as details began to emerge of the post-mortem examination. Skip related content.Jackson's body weighed just 8st 1oz - and his stomach only contained partially-dissolved pills when he died, it was reported.
• The findings, reported in The Sun, state the singer had four injection marks near his heart, apparently from attempts to pump adrenaline into the organ in a bid to restart it. Speaking on the Black Entertainment Television Awards' red carpet in Los Angeles, Joe Jackson said he couldn't go into detail about what his concerns were.
• But he added the singer's children were the family's "first priority" and that he and Michael's mother, Katherine, have "authority for our son and his children". Asked about funeral arrangements, Mr Jackson said: "We haven't got to that yet, we are working on that."
• In an unexpected move, Janet Jackson chose the Black Entertainment Television Awards ceremony to make her first public appearance since the death of her brother. Taking to the stage, the tearful singer said: "On behalf of my family and myself, thank you for all your love.
• "To you Michael is an icon. To us, Michael is family and he will forever live in all of our hearts."
• Earlier, Joe Jackson had said he did not believe stress over the intense series of London concerts the King of Pop planned for his comeback had led to his death. He also said he believed his son would be larger in death than he was in life.

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LAPD 'searching for Michael Jackson doctor'

• Los Angeles police are searching for Michael Jackson's personal physician today to question him after allegations that the star received a potentially fatal dose of the painkiller Demerol before his death.
• News of the manhunt broke on the well-connected celebrity gossip website, which was the first to report the star's death, and came as an LA County coroner began an autopsy.
  Earlier reports suggested that Jackson might have been given a large dose of the drug to help deal with pain after rehearsals for a series of 50 comeback concerts in London.
  Los Angeles police spokeswoman Karen Rayner says that police had towed a BMW owned by one of the singer's doctors from Jackson’s house.
• She said: “We have not been able to interview the doctor yet. His car was impounded because it may contain medications or other evidence that may assist the coroner in determining the cause of death.”
• Ms Rayner added that the doctor was not under criminal investigation but coroner’s investigators wanted to contact him.
  Jackson, 50, collapsed at his rented mansion in the Holmby Hills area of the city yesterday afternoon. Paramedics were called to the house at 12.21pm local time to respond to a "50-year-old male" who was "not breathing at all".
• He was rushed to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, but doctors were unable to revive him and his death was confirmed at 2.26pm (10.26pm UK time).
  Family members told TMZ that Jackson had received his daily shot of Demerol at 11.30am, but the dosage was "too much".
• As thousands of shocked fans gathered outside the UCLA hospital, detectives from the LAPD's Robbery Homicide division conducted an initial search of his house at the behest of city police chief William Bratton before sealing it off as a crime scene.
  Jackson's death had been confirmed by his brother Jermaine, who told reporters and TV crews at the hospital: "We believe he suffered a cardiac arrest at his home, however the cause of his death is unknown until the results of the autopsy are known."
  He added: "The personal physician who was with him at the time attempted to resuscitate him."
• The star's death shocked the world of music and entertainment and left millions of fans around the world shattered. Elizabeth Taylor, a close friend, was said to be "devastated" while the singer Madonna said: "I can't stop crying over the sad news."
  By any reckoning, Jackson was the King of Pop, a former child star with the Jackson Five who went on to create the world's bestselling album with his 1982 release Thriller, which sold up to 57 million copies.
• Among those paying tributes was Jackson's ex-wife Lisa Marie Presley, whose father Elvis Presley met a drug-induced death in 1977 at the age of 42. Ms Presley said that she was "sad and confused with every emotion possible" and "heartbroken" for the singer's three children.
• Sir Paul McCartney described Jackson as a "massively talented boy-man with a gentle soul", while the British TV journalist Martin Bashir said the world had "lost the greatest entertainer it’s probably ever known".
• Bashir's 2003 documentary Living with Michael Jackson was a PR disaster for the singer, who ended up facing child molestation charges after telling the reporter that sharing his bed with a boy was "a beautiful thing". Jackson was eventually acquitted in 2005 and Bashir said today that while his lifestyle had been unorthodox, "I don't believe it was criminal".
• Last night Jackson's body was flown by helicopter to the coroner's office, where the autopsy began this morning, conducted by Dr Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, who was the medical examiner during the OJ Simpson murder case and testified more recently in the trial of Phil Spector.
• But officials warned that a final verdict would not be possible until toxicology test results are confirmed, which could take six to eight weeks.
  On Wednesday night, Jackson had attended a rehearsal at LA's Staples Center arena - home to the LA Lakers basketball team - to prepare for his comeback dates at the O2.
• Jackson was said to have missed all but two or three of 45 rehearsals for the show but Patrick Woodroffe, a lighting engineer working at the LA arena, said that he had finally recovered some of his old magic in the past few days.
  He told the BBC: "He came on stage at 9 o’clock in the evening and we all looked at each other and there was something that said that he really had it.
  "Last night particularly, he came on stage and he was electric. It was like he had been holding back and suddenly he was performing as one had remembered him in the past."
  Brian Oxman, a Jackson family lawyer and spokesman, told CNN that Jackson had been struggling to cope with the after-effects of various performance injuries, including a damaged vertebra and a broken leg, which had been interrupting scheduled rehearsal for the London dates.
• He went on to accuse those around Jackson of letting him slip into dependency on prescription drugs and painkillers.
  "I can only tell you that this is not something which has been unexpected," Mr Oxman told from the LA hospital as family members came to terms with the news from doctors.
• "This family has been trying for months and months to take care of Michael Jackson. The people who have surrounded him have been enabling him: if you think that the case of Anna Nicole Smith was an abuse, it is nothing to what we have seen taking place in Michael Jackson's life."
• He added: "I can tell you for sure that this is something I warned about. Where there is smoke there is fire."
  Jackson’s reputation as a singer and moonwalking dancer was overshadowed in recent years by his increasingly abnormal appearance, and bizarre lifestyle, which included his friendship with a chimpanzee named Bubbles and a preference for the company of children.
• He named his estate in the central California foothills Neverland Valley Ranch, in tribute to the J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan stories, and filled it with amusement park rides and a petting zoo.
• Jackson was twice accused of molesting young boys and was charged in 2003 with child sexual abuse. He became even more reclusive following his 2005 acquittal and vowed that he would no longer live at Neverland.
  Facing a battered reputation and mountain of debts that authoritative estimates put at up to half a billion dollars, Jackson had been forced to agree to the unprecedented residency at the O2.
• Despite reports of Jackson’s ill-health, the promoters of the London shows, AEG Live, said in March that Jackson had passed a 4-1/2 hour physical examination with independent doctors.

By www.MICHAELJACKSON50.com

LA police hunt for Michael Jackson's doctor

Police are investigating claims that Michael Jackson received a painkilling injection minutes before his death

• A recording of the dramatic telephone call reporting Michael Jackson’s collapse to emergency services, in which the caller said that the singer was unconscious and failing to respond to a doctor’s attempts to revive him, was released yesterday.
  As Jackson’s friends and family were reported yesterday to have been concerned about the singer’s use of painkillers, the recording from an unnamed caller was posted on the internet.
• The call starts with an unidentified man telling the operator: “We have a gentleman here that needs help and he’s not breathing, We are trying to pump him but he’s not breathing.” When asked to describe the patient the caller replies: “He’s 50 years old. He’s not breathing. He’s not conscious. He’s on the bed.”
• The caller, who does not name Jackson, adds: “We have a personal doctor here with him, Sir, but he is not responding to anything. He is not responding to CPR or anything.”
  When the operator asks if anybody witnessed what happened, the caller replies: “Just the doctor. The doctor has been the only one here.” He is then heard saying: “Doctor, did you see what’s happening?”
• There is a muffled response before the caller tells the operator: “He is pumping, pumping his chest, but he is not responding to anything. Please.”
• Brian Oxman, Jackson’s former attorney, said that he had warned the singer’s relatives about possible abuse. “I said one day, we’re going to have this experience. And when Anna Nicole Smith passed away, I said we cannot have this kind of thing with Michael Jackson,” Mr Oxman told the Today show on NBC. “I warned everyone, and lo and behold, here we are. I don’t know what caused his death. But I feared this day, and here we are.”
  Mr Oxman and other family friends said that Jackson had prescription drugs at his disposal to help with pain suffered when he broke his leg after he fell off a stage and for broken vertebrae.
• The singer’s former wife, Lisa Marie Presley, said that Jackson was afraid that he would die like her father, Elvis. “Years ago Michael and I were having a deep conversation about life in general,” she wrote on her internet blog. “I can’t recall the exact subject matter but he may have been questioning me about the circumstances of my father’s death. He stared at me intensely and he stated with an almost calm certainty, ‘I am afraid that I am going to end up like him, the way he did’.”
• Presley, 41, who was married to Jackson between 1994 and 1996, added: “I promptly tried to deter him from the idea, at which point he just shrugged his shoulders and nodded, almost matter of fact, as if to let me know he knew what he knew and that was kind of that.”
• She said that watching the television of an ambulance leaving the driveway surrounded by crowds brought back memories of the conversation. “Fourteen years later I am sitting here watching on the news an ambulance leaving the driveway of his home, the big gates, the crowds outside the gates, the coverage, the crowds outside the hospital, the cause of death and what may have led up to it and the memory of this conversation hit me, as did the unstoppable tears.
• “A predicted ending by him, by loved ones and by me, but what I didn’t predict was how much it was going to hurt when it happened,” she added.
  TMZ, the celebrity gossip website that broke the news of Jackson’s death, reported that his father, Joe, wanted to put his son into a rehab facility in California for an addiction to morphine and prescription drugs.
• Liza Minnelli told The Early Show on CBS by telephone: “When the autopsy comes, all hell’s going to break loose, so thank God we’re celebrating him now.”
  Uri Geller, who was a friend of Jackson, said: “I saw Michael do things that I don’t like and I screamed and shouted at him. But most of the people around him never warned him and did not tell him to stop.”
• In 2007 Jackson settled a lawsuit filed by a Beverly Hills pharmacy that claimed he owed more than $100,000 for prescription drugs over a two-year period. After Jackson was acquitted on child molestation charges in 2005, the Santa Barbara County District Attorney Tom Sneddon argued against returning to Jackson some items belonging he described as “contraband”. Mr Sneddon said that those included syringes, the drug Demerol and prescriptions for various drugs, mainly antibiotics, in different people’s names.
• Tarak Ben Ammar, a former producer and friend, echoed fears of drug abuse, claiming that Jackson had been a hypochondriac who had been taken advantage of by “charlatan doctors”.
  “It’s clear that the criminals in this affair are the doctors who treated him throughout his career, who destroyed his face, who gave him medicine to ease his pain,” he told Europe 1 radio in France.
• However, Jackson’s manager, who tried to resuscitate him at the house, denounced reports that he had taken drugs as “baloney”. Tohme Tohme, a former doctor who acted as his business manager, said: “Michael Jackson never did any drugs as far as I know. He was healthy. For him to perform he needed insurance. AEG [the promoters of the London shows] brought in an independent doctor and gave him a four-hour physical. He came out like a rose.”
• Mr Tohme confirmed that he was at the house when Jackson was suffering cardiac arrest. But he said: “I came in when he was gone.”
  It is thought that his body will be released to his family after the post-mortem examination. No funeral plans have been announced yet.

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Jackson's Lawyer Predicts Legal Wrangles

Michael Jackson's three childen are currently with his mother Katherine

• Michael Jackson's shock death at the age of 50 could be the start of a long series of legal battles, his lawyer has said.
• The Jacksons' family lawyer Brian Oxman said the remains of his fortune, his property and his children could all be fought over in court.
• He predicted the singer's demise "will probably be the start of a long battle".
  Mr Oxman told CBS's Early Show: "We will have to see how that plays out in a court of law. "I suspect that the death of Michael Jackson is only the beginning of the legal battles over not only his property, but also his children."
• He also told US Weekly that the star's three children - Prince Michael Jackson II, seven, Paris, 11, and Prince Michael, 12 - "are doing fine".
  "Ms Jackson (the singer's mother, Katherine) will care for them and I'm sure there will be all kinds of discussions that will take place about the kids."
  Jackson's two oldest children, Prince Michael and Paris, were from his marriage to nurse Debbie Rowe in 1996.
• After the couple divorced in 1999, Jackson took on sole responsibility for their upbringing but Ms Rowe has said she continued to see them.

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Michael Jackson Cool Photos

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Michael Jackson dies, almost takes Internet with him

LONDON, England - How many people does it take to break the Internet? On June 25, we found out it's just one -- if that one is Michael Jackson.

• 
  The biggest showbiz story of the year saw the troubled star take a good slice of the Internet with him, as the ripples caused by the news of his death swept around the globe.
  "Between approximately 2:40 p.m. PDT and 3:15 p.m. PDT today, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson," a Google spokesman told CNET, which also reported that Google News users complained that the service was inaccessible for a time. At its peak, Google Trends rated the Jackson story as "volcanic."
• As sites fell, users raced to other sites: TechCrunch reported that TMZ, which broke the story, had several outages; users then switched to Perez Hilton's blog, which also struggled to deal with the requests it received.
• A fivefold rise in traffic and visitors in just over an hour, receiving 20 million page views in the hour the story broke.
• Twitter crashed as users saw multiple "fail whales" -- the illustrations the site uses as error messages -- user FoieGrasie posting, "Irony: The protesters in Iran using twitter as com are unable to get online because of all the posts of 'Michael Jackson RIP.' Well done." The site's status blog said that Twitter had had to temporarily disable its search results, saved searches and trend topics.
• Wikipedia saw a flurry of activity, with close to 500 edits made to Jackson's entry in less than 24 hours. CNET reported that by 3:15pm PDT, Wikipedia seemed to be "temporarily overloaded."
• The LA Times, the first news organization to confirm Jackson's death, suffered outages. The site also reported that AOL's instant messenger service had been hit, quoting an AOL statement that said, "AIM was down for approximately 40 minutes this afternoon." The statement said, "Today was a seminal moment in Internet history. We've never seen anything like it in terms of scope or depth."
• By Friday morning, news sites seemed to be coping with traffic but Jackson fan site mjfanclub.net was still performing sluggishly. Mashable.com reported that tributes to, and remarks upon, Michael Jackson's death were responsible for 30 percent of tweets.
• As with any breaking piece of news on the Web, the reports of Jackson's death sparked something of a feeding frenzy -- and with that came rumor that dragged in other celebrities completely unconnected to the King of Pop's death.
• One Wikipedia prankster wrote that Jackson had been "savagely murdered" by his brother Tito, who had strangled him "with a microphone cord."
• Soon rumors spread online that movie star Jeff Goldblum had fallen from the Kauri Cliffs in New Zealand while filming his latest movie. On several search engines, "Jeff Goldblum" soon became the only non-Jackson-related term to crop up in the top 10.
• The rumors forced Goldblum's publicist to issue a statement to media outlets, saying: "Reports that Jeff Goldblum has passed away are completely untrue. He is fine and in Los Angeles."
• At the same time Harrison Ford was also rumored to have fallen from a yacht off the south of France. Web site snopes.com, which shoots down rumors, gossip and urban legends -- and how they originated -- said the likely culprit was a Web site which allows users to input celebrity names -- and then inserts them into fake templated stories (a further variant has stars dying in a plane crash).
• In a sense the feeding frenzy was understandable -- Jackson's death, coming only hours after that of 1970s icon Farah Fawcett, left many Web users, shocked by the news of Jackson's death, asking what would happen next. In this febrile climate any rumor runs the risk of being seized on, believed and treated with more credulity than usual.
• The need of the professional media to be first with the news -- many did for a short time report the Goldblum rumor as fact -- adds further veracity. And, of course, the whole process is speeded up by the Web.
• There is also, of course, the old adage that celebrities die in threes, with the deaths of Gianni Versace, Princess Diana and Mother Teresa in 1997 frequently held up as an example of this. But while Diana and Teresa passed away with seven days of each other in August and September, Versace was killed in early July. Their deaths were most keenly mourned by the same broad sections of the public -- and hence were inextricably interlinked.
• The Web can link disseminate news -- but like any form of communication it can also help us create what we expect to see next.

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Jackson 911 call: He's not breathing

LOS ANGELES, California -- The person at Michael Jackson's home who called 911 Thursday told the operator the singer wasn't breathing and wasn't conscious, according to a recording of phone call released Friday.

• "I need an ambulance," the person told the 911 operator. Police spoke with Jackson's doctor on Thursday but have been unable to reach him Friday for further questioning, the Los Angeles Police Department said.A car the doctor was using was towed from Jackson's home Thursday and impounded, authorities said.
• The car may contain "medications pertinent to the investigation" into Jackson's death, said detective Agustin Villanueva of the Los Angeles Police Department.Officials said they were confident the doctor will cooperate with the investigation.
• Police did not release the doctor's name.Public records show the car is registered to a Texas woman who is an associate of a cardiologist.
• The cardiologist is licensed in California and Texas and also has an office in Las Vegas, Nevada.CNN's calls to the doctor's office were not immediately returned.
• Authorities said Friday the cause of Michael Jackson's death will not be determined officially for weeks.The superstar's sudden death Thursday at age 50 left a family devastated, an industry stunned and legions of fans lost. It also left a glaring question: What happened?
• "The likelihood is very slim that we will have any results to release today because of the extensive level of the tests that we're going to be performing," said Ed Winter, assistant chief of the Los Angeles coroners office.
• The results of toxicology tests are expected in six to eight weeks,he said, adding that the cause of death will be determined when all results come in.Initial autopsy results could show whether Jackson had an underlying heart condition, medical experts say.
• There are questions over whether Jackson's death may have involved medication.Brian Oxman, a former attorney for the Jackson family who was with the family in the hospital emergency room on Thursday, he had been concerned about medications the pop star was taking."I talked to this family about it, I warned them.
• I said that Michael is overmedicating and that I did not want to see this kind of a case develop," Oxman told on Friday.
• He referred to Anna Nicole Smith, the former model and reality TV show star who died of an overdose in 2007."I said, 'If that's what's going to happen to Michael, it's all going to break our hearts.' And my worst fears are here.
• Oxman emphasized that he does not know what killed Jackson, and was not making accusations against any individual.
• .Jackson was in apparent cardiac arrest when paramedics rushed him Thursday from his home to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, where a team of physicians tried to resuscitate him for more than an hour, according to Jackson's brother Jermaine.
• He said the music idol was pronounced dead at 2:26 p.m.The night before he had complained of not feeling well, brother Marlon Jackson said.
• He told on Thursday about his conversation with Jackson's manager Frank Dileo. On Wednesday night, Jackson said he was not feeling well, so his doctor went to see him. "Frank said, 'Marlon, from last night to this morning, I don't know what happened.' When they got to him this morning, he wasn't breathing."The troubled icon had been preparing for a comeback tour, aimed at extending his legendary career and helping to pay off hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.
• Michael Jackson began his professional work at age 5, singing with his brothers before shooting to superstardom as a solo artist. He had numerous No. 1 hits, the best known being "Thriller." "Thriller" was the best-selling album of all time, at an estimated 50 million copies worldwide.
• After dominating the popular music scene for years, Jackson became reclusive and mired in scandals that included child molestation charges. He was acquitted after a highly publicized trial in Santa Maria, California, in March 2006.

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