Ex-Employee Says Jackson Groped Culkin

A former Michael Jackson employee testified Friday that he once saw his boss groping Macaulay Culkin’s crotch, the second trial account of an intimate relationship between the pop star and the child actor.

Culkin, now 24, denied in an interview on CNN last year that Jackson molested him, telling host Larry King that “nothing happened.”

But Phillip LeMarque, the latest in a string of former staffers to testify against Jackson in his child-molestation trial, told jurors that he was trying to serve Jackson a predawn snack when he saw him in his arcade building playing a “Thriller” video game with the child star, who would have been 10 or 11 years old at the time. Jackson was said to be standing behind Culkin, holding him up with one hand so the boy could reach the game controls. Jackson’s other hand was in Culkin’s shorts, LeMarque testified.

“I was shocked. I almost dropped the French fries,” LeMarque said.

LeMarque, who with his wife worked at Jackson’s Neverland ranch for 10 months around 1991, is one of nine witnesses that prosecutors intend to call to try to show that Jackson has a history of sexually abusing young boys and to support the account of his accuser, a Los Angeles boy who says Jackson molested him in 2003.

LeMarque, who described himself as Jackson’s “major-domo” in charge of food, said he was awakened by Jackson’s security staff about 3:30 a.m. and asked to prepare the snack for Jackson. He said Jackson and Culkin were alone in the arcade when he found them.

“His right hand was holding the kid maybe mid-waist, and the left hand was down into the” shorts, said LeMarque, speaking with a heavy French accent.

Jackson’s lead attorney, Thomas A. Mesereau Jr., challenged LeMarque’s honesty, noting that the former aide once asked whether he could get $500,000 for selling the story to tabloids. LeMarque said he and his wife considered selling their stories but never did so.

“We got tempted by the money. Everybody would be tempted. But at the last minute we didn’t do it,” LeMarque said.

LeMarque said a friend secretly recorded a conversation with him and then sold the story without his knowledge to a tabloid newspaper.

“We never took a penny from anybody because it was against our principles,” he said.

He did not report the alleged incident with Culkin to authorities or to his superiors.

“Nobody would have ever believed us. Michael was on the top of everything. If we had gone to the police, they would have said, ‘What proof do you have?’ So we couldn’t. I mean, this wasn’t possible,” LeMarque said.

Several jurors took notes during LeMarque’s testimony. Jackson, 46, sat upright in his chair and did not appear to react.

LeMarque said he has never spoken to the “Home Alone” star about what LeMarque allegedly saw and does not know how Culkin would characterize the incident.

LeMarque said he left the job several months after the alleged incident, and in September 1993 was contacted by detectives investigating Jackson. He said he produced a written account of that night in the arcade. In the written statement, LeMarque noted that although he saw Jackson’s hand in Culkin’s shorts, “I could not distinguish what he was really doing with his hand.”

On Thursday, a former Jackson maid testified that she once saw Jackson kiss Culkin on the cheek and put his hand on the boy’s leg, near his buttocks. That witness, Adrian McManus, continued her testimony Friday and told jurors that in four years she never saw a woman spend the night in Jackson’s bedroom. Several boys, including Culkin, frequently slept in his room, she said.

Jackson’s chimpanzee also was a frequent guest in the bedroom, McManus said, and she would have to change its diapers and clean its excrement from the walls.

“Sometimes monkeys get wild,” she explained.

Jackson is charged under a grand jury indictment with four counts of molesting the Los Angeles boy in 2003, four counts of providing the boy alcohol, attempted child molestation and conspiracy. If convicted of all charges, he could face up to 20 years in prison.

After LeMarque completed his testimony, Santa Barbara County Dist. Atty. Tom Sneddon told the judge, “I can see the light at the end of the tunnel with regard to resting our case.”

Testimony has stretched six weeks and, with defense witnesses, is expected to last into the summer.