Jackson Aide Said ‘Agitated’ When Family Fled

One of Michael Jackson’s top aides became “extremely agitated” when he learned that the family of Jackson’s young accuser had managed to slip away from the singer’s ranch late at night, a former member of Jackson’s public relations team testified Wednesday.

Twelve hours after they left, the family was driven back to Neverland, Las Vegas publicist Ann Gabriel Kite told jurors at Jackson’s child molestation trial. Kite said the aide, Marc Schaffel, told her that “the situation had been contained.”

Kite’s daylong testimony was meant to support the prosecution’s claim that Jackson and four uncharged co-conspirators held the family captive to secure their help in a frantic public-relations effort to repair his tarnished image. However, her appearance created problems for both the prosecution and the defense.

Prosecutors were stung when defense lawyer Thomas A. Mesereau Jr. dug into the professional experience of Kite, who testified that she was a specialist in “crisis management.” On the stand, she said she had done previous work for only one embattled celebrity -- Las Vegas stage hypnotist and infomercial producer Marshall Sylver.

Sylver was indicted by a Las Vegas grand jury in 2003 for allegedly bilking customers in his “Millionaire Mentorship Program.” The case was settled with Sylver paying restitution of $11,000, said a spokesman for the Nevada attorney general’s office.

Mesereau also underscored Kite’s limited experience with Jackson. Her tenure with his public relations team lasted six days before she was fired, for reasons that she said were never given.

Though she was a prosecution witness, some of her testimony seemed to suggest that if there were a conspiracy, it was run by Jackson’s underlings, and not by him.

On the other hand, the defense took a hit when Santa Barbara Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville criticized Mesereau for his prolonged, laborious cross-examination.

At one point in the drowsy afternoon, the exasperated judge interrupted Mesereau, saying: “You’ve asked that question at least 10 times!”

“Counsel, I want you to look at the jury and realize they’re tired of listening to this,” Melville said, gesturing toward the sagging jurors. “You need to grasp the evidence and present it, and not keep repeating it.”

Mesereau took just a few minutes to wrap up.

Kite, who goes professionally by the name Ann Gabriel, said she was recruited for the $20,000-a-month temporary position by David LeGrand, a Las Vegas attorney who was her boyfriend at the time. LeGrand had recently become one of Jackson’s attorneys, she said.

In court, she said that the 13-year-old boy and his family were seen by Jackson’s associates as posing a huge problem for him. Prosecutors have charged that Jackson tried to isolate the family on his ranch to make sure they said glowing things about him in a broadcast rebutting the implications of molestation in Martin Bashir’s 2003 documentary, “Living With Michael Jackson.”

After the family’s return, Kite said she told LeGrand: “Don’t make me believe that these people were hunted down like dogs and brought back to the ranch.”

LeGrand said: “I can’t discuss this right now,” according to Kite.

The family returned after the mother was persuaded by Jackson staffers that killers were out to get her and her children, according to prosecutors.

A week after she was fired, Kite said, LeGrand assured her that the Jackson camp was no longer worried because they had a tape they would use to make the boy’s mother “look like a crack whore.”

After her dismissal, Kite said, she spent six hours telling Jackson’s brother, Jermaine, that the singer had surrounded himself with “detrimental” people who were draining him dry.

On cross-examination, she reluctantly acknowledged a theory she had given to Santa Barbara County sheriff’s investigators who interviewed her in 2004. She said some of Jackson’s aides were “being paid to isolate him, let him do his own thing and created his own downfall so Sony would get its catalog back.”

Jackson and Sony Corp. jointly own the lucrative rights to a vast number of songs, including works by the Beatles.

The defense has questioned her credibility for months, describing her in a 2004 court filing as “a peripheral bit player who, after the fact, was willing to give testimony about anything to be important.”

If convicted on all 10 felony counts, Jackson could face 20 years in prison.

In another wrinkle to the celebrity case, comedian Jay Leno asked Wednesday to be exempted from a gag order on potential witnesses. Leno has been subpoenaed by defense attorneys, who hope he’ll testify about what they claim was an attempt to get a handout from him by Jackson’s accuser and his mother.

The restraint on Leno “has no basis in law or common sense,” said his attorney, Theodore Boutrous Jr., in a court filing.