Celebrity3 min(s) read
Published 13:45 03 Jun 2026 GMT
A new docuseries spilling all about the King of Pop’s darkest days has hit screens worldwide this week as a new three-part documentary has been released on Netflix.
Michael Jackson: The Verdict examines the late singer’s 2005 criminal trial, which saw him acquitted on all accounts of molesting 13-year-old Gavin Arvizo on the grounds of insufficient evidence.
The documentary features many people who were part of Jackson’s inner circle, as well as interviews with attorneys and journalists who investigated the case at the time.
Giving scope for the audience to determine their own verdict, the show features footage of Arvizo's interview with law enforcement and officers raiding Jackson’s Neverland Ranch home in California.
While the programme is a factual, unbiased documentation of the trial and the time building up to it, some gut-wrenching revelations were exposed in the new series.
In one scene, a key figure in the docuseries, Vincent Amen, who began working with Jackson in 2002 and looked after the Arvizo family, reveals a series of old Polaroid pictures that feature the whole family.
Star, brother of Gavin, had written underneath one of the photographs: "I love you, my daddy, Michael.”
He then hinted at the nickname given to him by Jackson by signing off the message with: “Your son.”
Amen then claimed: “These are the nicknames that Michael would give these young boys.”
After Jackson and a number of his associates had their homes searched following his arrest, Amen was allegedly given a bag to look after. Feeling suspicious about what was inside, Amen filmed himself opening the bag and discovering an illegal magazine.
He said in the docuseries: “There was a Sharpie … circles around the video ordering section. Someone wanted these videos and circled the ones they want. These videos, which are children naked. Some with family, some just naked children.”
An investigative journalist who reported on the case, Diane Dimond, claims that at the time Neverland was raided by the FBI, the pop star was hiding out in Las Vegas.
She alleges: “I find out from a source, he’s holed up in this villa, and he only opens the door wearing a colorful dashiki muumuu garment, only enough to get the food brought in, and then he slams the door.
“And he’s having wild parties. There were cigarette burns in the leather couches and chairs. There were empty liquor bottles on every table. And this is where Michael Jackson had been for several days, entertaining young teenage boys, who all spoke German.”
Defence attorney Mark Geragos revealed in the show: “I watched him just disintegrate, literally disintegrate.
“The ingestion of substances was just astronomical. There was a time when I actually saw him in the fetal position on the floor, and I thought, ‘What do we do?’ I mean, you don’t want his death to be on your hands because you took some inaction.”
