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Mom painted as welfare cheat

BY TINA SUSMAN | STAFF CORRESPONDENT

May 24, 2005

Michael Jackson arrives at the Santa Barbara Courthouse for defense testimony in his child molestation trial Monday in Santa Maria, Calif. (AP Photo / May 23, 2005)

SANTA MARIA, Calif. - With talk-show host Jay Leno expected on the witness stand today, Michael Jackson's defense team entered the final phase of its case by hammering away at his chief accuser's credibility with evidence that she was a welfare cheat.

Two witnesses testified yesterday to documents appearing to show that days after receiving a $32,300 court settlement, the woman who accuses Jackson of molesting her son told welfare officials she was destitute and was deemed eligible for monthly welfare checks of $769 and food stamps.

The $32,300 was not mentioned on her application, nor was the fact that the woman held a bank account and had a boyfriend who was helping support her, said Mercy Dee Manrriquez, who handled the Nov. 15, 2001, application filed with the Los Angeles County Department of Social Services.

Earlier, accountant Mike Radakovich reviewed a bank statement held in the woman's name that included a Nov. 5, 2001, deposit of the $32,300 check. Four days later, $29,000 was withdrawn from the account and turned into a cashier's check payable to a car dealership, Radakovich said.

The defense maintains that the 37-year-old woman is an experienced con artist who, along with her son, set out to extort Jackson by falsely accusing him of child molestation and of false imprisonment of her family in February and March 2003. Leno is one of several entertainers she encountered before that, in what the defense says was an orchestrated attempt to use her teenage son's cancer to bilk the rich and famous.

He and comedian Chris Tucker are expected to testify to having received phone calls requesting financial assistance from the woman and her son.

The high-profile witnesses will be among the last called by defense lawyers, an abrupt change from their initial predictions that they would need anywhere from six to 10 weeks to present Jackson's side.

Instead, the defense has taken less than a month and has called fewer than 40 witnesses, compared with prosecutors, who took two months and called more than 80 witnesses.

At this stage, though, legal experts say the defense has severely undermined the accusers and risks irritating the jurors if it allows its case to become too repetitive.

"There is the risk of over-attacking the mom. The jury may feel at this point like she's being beaten up," said lawyer Jim Moret, who is attending the trial. "It's a very tricky problem - how much evidence is too much? When do you stop?"

Certainly not yesterday, as Radakovich and Manrriquez were followed to the stand by the woman's former sister-in-law, who had tried to organize a blood drive for the cancer-stricken boy. Recalling a phone call she had with the boy's mother, she testified that the woman told her "she didn't need my -- blood ... she needed money."

The day's last witness was Connie Keenan, an editor at a small weekly newspaper called the Mid-Valley News, which in 2000 ran a story about the boy's battle with cancer and the family's apparent financial struggle. Keenan said she normally did not run such stories but did so because the mother continually called asking for a reporter to interview her.

After one story appeared, Keenan said the woman "wanted a second article, because she didn't raise enough money from the first article."

Keenan refused, saying, "I had already established the fact I had been duped."