Rodney Melville

Kerrankin asiallinen ja oikein raportoitu uutinen.

MJ's Private Eye, Accuser Shared Shrink
Thursday, August 19, 2004
By Roger Friedman

MJ's Private Eye and Accuser Shared Shrink

Will Santa Barbara District Attorney Tom Sneddon make it through this week of hearings in the Michael Jackson case? My sources tell me he may have to step down from prosecuting Jackson. This morning we will start to learn why.

Sneddon is already being grilled over whether or not he understood in advance of last November's Neverland raid that private eye Bradley Miller worked not for Jackson but for his then attorney Mark Geragos. My sources say he did know, and seized materials from Miller's Los Angeles office anyway. Judge Rodney Melville (search) may conclude that those materials are privileged and cannot be part of Sneddon's case.

But now I am told that Miller has another twist for the prosecution. For some eight or nine years, ending in 2003, Miller — like practically everyone else in L.A. — saw a psychologist on a regular basis to discuss his personal and business problems. But it turns out that the shrink in question is Stan J. Katz, the same psychologist who filed the report on Jackson's 12-year-old accuser in May 2003 — and the same one who also filed the report on MJ's first accuser in 1993, the one who got an estimated $23 million settlement.


Miller has told friends that Katz knew he worked for Geragos, and even asked if he could be introduced to Winona Ryder, another Geragos client. Miller declined. But Miller almost certainly discussed the Jackson case with Katz under the tenets of client-doctor privilege.

When Katz was revealed as the current accuser's therapist, Miller was said to have been shocked.

"He told Katz, I can't believe you're the therapist involved," says a source.

This revelation could be construed as a conflict of interest for Katz and open the door to questions about his involvement in the Jackson case. Katz, working both times for attorney Larry Feldman, is the only psychologist who has ever reported a direct case of suspected child abuse regarding Michael Jackson to authorities.

Also expected today or tomorrow: possible testimony from Michael Manning, divorce attorney for the accusing boy's mother. I am told that Manning is said to have documentation of meetings with the mother from April and May 2003 in which she stated that her family's relationship with Michael Jackson was excellent, with no hint of a conspiracy to keep her and her family sequestered, and no sign of child molestation.


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,129417,00.html