Free Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days by Tanner Colby, Bill Whitfield, Javon Beard

miles out, to do the pre-detail. Suddenly we got a call over the radio. “They’ve breached the gate! They’ve breached the gate!”
    Bill grabbed the radio. “Who? Who breached the gate?”
    “His family. They’re here.”
    The second we heard that we broke every traffic law on the books getting back. We were driving down the wrong side of the street, going over center lanes and barriers. We flew back to the house.
    Bill: We pulled up, and I saw a black Hummer inside the gate. I was heated. I was pissed. I was yelling in the car, “How did they get past the gate?!”
    The gate to the driveway closed real slow. You always had to watch it closely, because if you opened it for one car, there was usually time for another to come in behind it. We found out later that’s what had happened. The chef had come in to make a delivery, and Mr. Jackson’s family had been sitting in the street, idling in their car, and waiting for the chance to slip in.
    I got out of the truck and saw it was three of his siblings: Randy, Rebbie, and Jackie. They were standing in the circular drivein front of the house. They walked down the driveway to me. I was expecting a confrontation, like with Joe, but they were very cordial, very calm. They introduced themselves. Jackie shook my hand and said, “Hey, how you doin’? Are you Bill?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Okay, yeah. We heard about you.”
    Then Randy jumped in. “Are you Fruit?” he asked.
    “Excuse me?”
    “You from the Fruit of Islam?”
    I said, “No, I’m not.”
    Randy said, “Oh, okay. Well, we need to talk to our brother.”
    I said, “I’m sorry, but you need to make an appointment.”
    Jackie and Rebbie kept their cool, but Randy started copping a little attitude, saying, “No, we need to talk to him now .”
    I quietly stood my ground and laid it out for them. “Mr. Jackson will only see you if you come back and make an appointment.”
    And that was all we said. After that, I escorted them off the property.
    The whole situation was very uneasy. As I walked back in the house, I looked up and could see Mr. Jackson watching all this from behind the curtains of his bedroom window. I went inside and found him. He seemed very agitated. I said, “Sir, is everything okay?”
    He said, “How did they just walk right up to my front door?”
    I said, “I’m sorry, sir. I’m going to check with the team and find out what happened.”
    He said, “Bill, that can never happen again.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Never. Do you understand that?”
    “I understand.”
    Javon: We could tell the family was upset with us. They thought we were the ones cutting them off. A lot of people accused Mr. Jackson’s security of trying to limit access to him as a way of controlling him.But we weren’t any part of that. We didn’t care one way or another if the family talked to him. It was Mr. Jackson’s orders 100 percent.
    I don’t know what the deal with his family was before we showed up, but on our watch it was obvious that their relationship was null and void. We didn’t understand it. You’d think they were the enemy. I was like, What’s going on? Why does he not want to see his own family?
    Bill: Mr. Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor were old friends, and she was having a seventy-fifth birthday party at a resort out at Lake Las Vegas, this big, red-carpet affair. Her people had heard that Mr. Jackson was living here now, and they reached out to his manager to ask if he would attend. They wanted it to be a surprise for Ms. Taylor; she wouldn’t know anything about it until he showed up. Of course Mr. Jackson wanted to go. So about two weeks out from the event, word came down to us, and things started to gear up.
    Javon: First thing Mr. Jackson did was call Roberto Cavalli, the designer, to create a custom outfit for him for the party. Cavalli took an emergency flight out here. We picked him up from the MGM Grand, brought him to the house, and he and Mr. Jackson started designing this whole