Jackson team planned smear campaign, witness says

SANTA MARIA, Calif. — A Las Vegas public relations specialist who briefly worked for Michael Jackson gave damaging testimony against the pop star Wednesday, suggesting his associates arranged a smear campaign against the family who would ultimately accuse him of molestation.

Ann Marie Kite said she was told by a Jackson lawyer that they would portray the mother of a boy as a "crack whore" in the media. Kite was hired to handle Jackson's crisis management after the airing of a damaging documentary, but she worked for him for only six days and never met the singer.

Jackson, 46, is accused of molesting a 13-year-old cancer survivor at his Neverland Ranch in 2003, giving him alcohol and conspiring to hold the boy's family captive. The charges were sparked by journalist Martin Bashir's 2003 documentary, "Living With Michael Jackson," in which the pop star said he let young boys sleep in his bedroom.

Kite said there was alarm in the Jackson camp when the woman and her children abruptly left Neverland in the middle of the night in the aftermath of the documentary.

"It made me very uncomfortable," she said of being told by Jackson associate Marc Schaffel that the mother and children had left. Jackson's indictment names Schaffel as an unindicted co-conspirator.

Later the same day, she said, Schaffel told her "the situation had been contained. . . . He said they had been brought back to the ranch. I didn't understand why he would be upset about them leaving the ranch."

She said she then contacted her ex-boyfriend, David LeGrand, a lawyer for Jackson who had hired her.

"I said, 'Don't make me believe that these people were hunted down like dogs and brought back to the ranch.' "

She said he told her, "I can't discuss this right now."

Prosecutors called Kite to support allegations that Jackson and associates held the family against their will at Neverland and other locations throughout February 2003 to force them to help in a public relations campaign to rehabilitate his image.

Defense attorneys say the family was free to leave at any time.

Kite said she was hired on Feb. 9, 2003, six days after the documentary aired, and was terminated on Feb. 15 with no reason given.

A former Jackson lawyer, Mark Geragos, later asked her to sign a confidentiality agreement but she refused, the witness said.

"I believed it would negatively impact me. I believe it was designed to shut me up," she said.