Jurors shown Michael Jackson’s master bedroom

JURORS in the Michael Jackson case got their first look yesterday at the singer’s master bedroom suite where he allegedly molested a 13-year-old boy.

They were shown a video from a November 18, 2003, police raid of Jackson’s Neverland ranch that included shots of his cluttered bedroom, but none of the sexually explicit magazines that Santa Barbara County District Attorney Thomas Sneddon has said were found in the suite.

The video, shot by Sheriff’s Department photographer Albert Lafferty, showed a sparkling bedspread, pictures of Marilyn Monroe and Shirley Temple, several TVs and stacks of videos.

Two rooms that investigators called the doll room and the toy room were filled with dolls, mannequins and figurines of such characters as Batman, Superman and C3PO, Boba Fett and R2D2 from Star Wars.

The close-up look into the location of the alleged crime came a day after a prosecution witness said, under cross-examination, she believed some of the alleged co-conspirators in a scheme against his accuser’s family may actually have been plotting against Jackson.

Ann Marie Kite, who was hired by an ex-boyfriend to help rehabilitate Jackson’s public image after the airing of Martin Bashir’s damaging documentary, testified that his associates arranged a smear campaign that was to include portraying the accuser’s mother as a “crack whore.”

Jackson, 46, is accused of molesting 13-year-old cancer survivor Gavin Arvizo at Neverland in 2003, giving him alcohol and conspiring to hold the boy’s family captive after the TV programme aired.

The prosecution in Santa Maria, California, has alleged that Jackson’s team wanted the family’s help with a public rebuttal to the British documentary, in which Jackson said he allowed young boys to sleep in his bed.

Prosecutors called Ms Kite to support allegations that Jackson and associates held the family against their will at Neverland and other locations throughout February 2003.

But in an aggressive cross-examination by defence lawyer Thomas Mesereau, Ms Kite said she was concerned during her six days of employment that Jackson was a victim of people in his inner circle.