With Love for Jackson, Malice Toward Press

A mist is falling. A fog shrouds the hills, and on Miller Street 100 voices angrily join to skewer a passing reporter Thursday morning.

Michael Jackson fans might be taken with his message of love, but they have none to share with the press -- in this case, Court TV’s Diane Dimond, whom they see as the prosecutors’ mouthpiece. “She should be so fired,” said Lacey Reinhardt, a 20-year-old amusement park supervisor from Murrieta.

Dimond slides into the courthouse without glancing toward the fans screaming at her from behind a chain-link fence 20 yards away.

With closing arguments in the case Thursday, the bile is rising.

Ordinarily, as few as a dozen fans gather outside the fence, cheering and booing as predictably as a crowd at the local melodrama. The only difference is that in this melodrama, an accused child molester has fans so ardent they come from as far away as Poland and Japan.

And his lead attorney, Thomas A. Mesereau Jr., is affectionately referred to by the crowd as “Mez.” When Santa Barbara County Dist. Atty. Tom Sneddon arrived this morning, the crowd broke into a take on one of Jackson’s lesser-known songs, shouting, “Tom Sneddon is a cold, cold man.”

But the press is far and away the crowd’s favorite target. On Wednesday morning, they saw a solitary middle-aged man with a notebook and a distracted look hurrying toward the courtroom. A fan started yelling, “Here comes the Lone Liar!” Others echoed the call. I didn’t look their way.

For her part, Dimond -- who broke the news of the Jackson molestation case -- has been the most heavily lambasted reporter in town.

She said hate calls have forced her to take her name off her hotel’s register. A blogger revealed that she enjoyed going to sing-alongs at an inn in Los Olivos, so she had to stop.

“I can’t say I’m not embarrassed. Who wants to be called a whore and a liar? But what they’re saying, is, it’s all my fault. Come on!”

A knot of fans now focuses on Santa Maria Times columnist Steve Corbett, a man with a graying ponytail and bushy black beard. “Cut your filthy hair!” they’re chanting. “Cut your filthy hair!”

Press Makes Predictions About the Verdicts

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets!

It’s the first courtroom break of Thursday, and reporters have just spilled into the Green Monster, the enclosure of canvas-wrapped fences outside the courtroom. Prosecutor Ron Zonen is about an hour into his closing argument, but it’s not too early for some educated guesses about the trial’s outcome.

“Acquittal on conspiracy, acquittal on the wine and hung on the molest,” opines one reporter in the jargon of a grizzled court observer. “Any money on that?” another asks her.

Well, no. After 14 weeks and just a day to go, it’s still too early for a serious wager.

In the Green Monster, “legal analysts” -- mostly lawyers on contract to the networks -- take turns interpreting the events of the past hour for the world’s waiting press.

A few star-caliber TV legal eagles -- Greta Van Susteren, Jeffrey Toobin, Dan Abrams -- poke among the crowd, trading assessments of Zonen’s delivery and his odd necktie, a camouflage khaki number that fairly screams “Geronimo!”

Zonen, ordinarily an engaging speaker with razor-sharp delivery, has been going too fast, people seem to agree. But his choice of visuals leaves no room for confusion. In a kind of Power Point presentation for the jury, he beams words from Jackson himself on a courtroom screen: “I have slept in a bed with many children. I have slept in a bed with all of them.”

In the Green Monster, the urn of coffee that normally powers reporters through the 10-minute break is inexplicably absent. All too soon, the cellphones and Blackberries have to be shut off and dropped in a bin outside the courtroom. Reporters, a bunch notably tough to herd, line up and pass through the metal detectors to go back into court.

Peter Shaplen, the ex-broadcaster hired to run the show, rounds up the stragglers. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’ll be a three-hour tour,” he jokes. “No punching, clawing, kicking or shoving.”

A Welcome Home at Neverland Ranch

The gates of Neverland ranch are located about 30 miles south of Santa Maria near Los Olivos. Dozens of fans eagerly await Jackson’s arrival Thursday afternoon. At the entrance, four women from Italy hold a banner they made in Milan. It says: “Before you judge him, try hard to love him.”

Asked to expand on the banner’s message, one of its creators, an attorney named Francesca Locatelli, says it speaks for itself. “Our love is sincere,” she says.

With only minutes before Jackson’s arrival, a man wearing a Neverland Valley Fire Department T-shirt tries frantically to clear the driveway. First, he makes a dark reference to “a one-way trip to county jail” for people standing on the asphalt. Then he tries a softer approach, pleading, “Please behave yourselves.” A few voices chirpily respond, “We will.”

But when Jackson’s black Escalade SUV slides up the drive toward the gate, the stampede is on. Before the crowd can engulf the vehicle, two of Jackson’s bodyguards descend from the interior, looking as grim and steely as any Secret Service agent guarding the president. Slowly, the SUV rolls forward with the two men acting as human shields between it and the crowd. Meanwhile, father Joe Jackson has lowered a rear window. Michael can barely be seen in the dim light waving to the throng.

“We love Michael,” they chant. “We love Michael,” they roar.

Jackson doesn’t stop to exchange pleasantries as he sometimes has during the 14-week trial. The gates close, the caravan disappears into the rolling hills of his ranch and Jackson is home for the night.