Michael Jackson trial memories from Netflix doc

I just watched “Michael Jackson: The Verdict,” detailing the late superstar’s 2005 child molestation trial in Santa Barbara County.

It brought back memories. Weird ones.

Think of the biggest, strangest, loudest, saddest, goofiest, public party you’ve ever attended … or imagined, because no one ever saw a scene like this.

Certainly not me. And I spent a Mardi Gras in New Orleans after living through the Rodney King riots in a Hollywood house where crazy inebriated guys occasionally beat on our door at 2 a.m., looking for Madame SomeoneOrAnother to whip them.

I was pretty sure she didn’t live there anymore.

Watch the Netflix documentary while imagining the scenes and sounds outside the courthouse in Santa Maria spilling out of your screen and surrounding you. Loudly.

Like Jackson, his die-hard fans were … eccentric. Which is like saying a nuclear weapon would make a fine alarm clock.

If that doesn’t ring a bell 21 years later, I can explain. Though his star was fading, Jackson was still the biggest star on the planet for about a quarter-century at that point. He was a big deal for more than a decade before then, growing up in front of the world with his brothers in the Jackson 5.

Everyone knew he had a terrible childhood driven by an abusive father. Everybody also knew he was an explosive performer, but allegedly a gentle soul away from the stage who was trying to create the childhood he never had. That certainly made him a hero to millions of similarly broken people.

I was the music writer at a Bay Area newspaper that ran daily AP stories about Jackson’s nearly four-month trial in 2005.

I also wrote a column making fun of the daily celebrity news, which frequently included Jackson when he was just an incredibly talented weirdo who hung around a chimp.

I don’t remember whether we still made fun of him as an accused child molester. I hope not, because of course the accusations weren’t funny (more than a few readers didn’t think I was either).

When the jury went out for deliberations on a Friday in June 2005, without a quick decision, the boss decided to send a photographer and me four hours south to report on the circus surrounding the trial.

We drove down Sunday afternoon and went straight to the entrance of Neverland just after sundown, where we found multiple German citizens.

That very true sentence alone should tell you something.

There were still a few people standing at the outside gate, which was less spectacular than I envisioned. The one visible in documentaries and made of fairy dust while guarded by flying monkeys was apparently inside the compound.

I interviewed a few people before they left. At least one sheriff’s car was nearby, likely to keep people from staying overnight on the side of the road.

Over the next 72 hours, I stopped asking questions like “Why would any human functional enough to operate a motor vehicle need armed authorities to remind them they can’t sleep by a big fence on a Sunday night?”

Because that’s the kind of crazy that surrounded Michael Jackson.

At least a couple of the fans were from Germany. They’d come to the U.S. specifically for the trial they couldn’t get into and to sit by the gate no one would let them through.

Go ahead and make your own immigration in 2026 joke.

I don’t remember exactly what they said, other than he was innocent, he was amazing, his chimp was innocent, his chimp was amazing, that sort of thing.

The first thing I remember about that week is how many fans I encountered from Germany and Japan. It was strange. If only there was an obvious connection between those two countries … I’m just glad my grandparents weren’t there to connect dots and offer their own theories.

The next morning (we decided not to spend the night at the gate) we hit the courthouse bright and early - but not earlier than Jackson’s fans.

Most of the loud and frenzied sidewalk conversation related to black SUV sightings, which meant Jackson and/or his family members were arriving.

Jackson’s father Joe appeared one morning and, instead of going to the entrance, he sort of fast-walked through the sidewalk hysterics with a couple beefy guys in suits. He was smiling slightly, perhaps enjoying the chaos, and ended up by the media tent in the parking lot. This obnoxious fan in his early 20s (he appeared 3-4 times in the documentary) jumped in, shoving people out of the way and screaming for people to “leave Joe alone.”

Like I said, it was weird.

I spoke with a group of Japanese girls on their second trip to Santa Maria during the 14-week trial. One said they used vacation time at work during the first adventure, but her boss wouldn’t give her time off just weeks later for a second trip. So she quit her job.

She said it with a smile, like it was the easiest decision she ever made.

I’d make fun, but I once couldn’t fit inside the car meant to take my crew to see Black Sabbath at the Cow Palace. So my buddy and I devised an amazing plan to travel 40 miles squeezed into the trunk of a Camaro.

Good decision-making wasn’t really my thing at 14.

People around the courthouse held signs, sang, cried, chanted … there was no shortage of entertainment. Celebrity worship is always sort of fascinating until it reaches the stalking phase. People decide their heroes are infallible, which is odd, but usually pretty harmless.

This felt different. People seemed desperate. There were mothers there with children, screaming in support of Jackson, which I didn’t expect, since Jackson was accused of molesting boys - and not just this one accusation. There was the one from 1993, which the documentary showed was likely credible. Jackson paid that family and the story went away.

It was creepy watching adults put children into a storm of hysterics caused by people three times their size and being recorded by TV cameras from all over the planet.

I saw a group make a dramatic afternoon entrance into the chaos, led by someone made up like a glammed up leader of a church choir. She brought young children, all singing in support of Jackson, as she opined about injustice. It felt like a strange audition. Watching the documentary and discovering more about parents letting their children sleep with Jackson gave me the same feeling.

It was like a carnival for a reporter. Jackson’s siblings appeared and there were people and media from all over the world. A few counter-protesters traded loud insults with the Jacksonians. At one point I stood in front of Jesse Jackson at an impromptu news conference and later, like everyone else, waited in anticipation when anyone who looked official walked through the parking lot, like the big news was coming.

That big news of his acquittal came two days after I left, so I missed the party. Which was fine - I saw enough.

The documentary is a fascinating and thorough inside look at the case from those involved. The trial itself was high theater and would’ve rivaled O.J. Simpson’s trial hype a decade earlier if the judge allowed cameras in the courtroom.

Did Jackson do it? I wrote so many stories about Jackson, before and after his death, I’m not exactly objective. I know his lawyer earned his money, the prosecution made mistakes, and there was more than enough reasonable doubt in 2005 to acquit.

Did he ever do it? This documentary alone doesn’t provide enough information. But what they do cover makes it pretty clear there was a reason Jackson gave the boy’s family $23 million in 1994. And that’s without covering all the evidence that came out later.

Jackson died four years later. The whole mess just ended up being sad for so many people. It’s not as funny as it used to be.

My daughters have a dad to feed, so please consider paying $8 a month to read these columns. Find more nonsense in Tony’s book “Lying Drunk,” available from Barnes & Noble at https://bit.ly/46xoaJJ or Amazon at https://a.co/d/cYNCUPp).