[Jackson] Witness Could Have Helped
Michael Jackson trial watchers are wondering what happened to several defense witnesses, including one named Carol Lamere.
See if you can follow this: Lamere became the girlfriend of David Arvizo, the father of Jackson's accuser, after meeting him through a dance academy where the boy and his two siblings wound up getting free lessons.
Not only that: Lamere then became a host to Arvizo's daughter, then 16, who lived with her for long stretches because the girl no long wanted to stay with her mother, the now-infamous Janet Arvizo.
According to papers just released in the Jackson case, defense investigator Scott Ross interviewed Lamere last November. The interview states that Lamere tried to warn Jackson about the Arvizo family, but his secretary, Evvy Tavasci, didn't pass along the message. She told Ross that Janet Arvizo was quite skilled at manipulating her kids to say anything she wanted, and that she was gifted at playing poor to get money out of strangers.
Lamere recounts several nutty episodes with the Arvizos, including making them a Thanksgiving dinner because they claimed to have no food, and that Janet once had a fit and broke all the glasses in her house.
She said it was common for David to be awakened in the middle of the night by Janet, beaten with electrical cords and made to go outside. Lamere told Ross that when it came to Janet, David was weak. She also apparently had the missing piece of the puzzle in one of Arvizo's many stories about raising funds for her son's cancer and pocketing the money.
Ross's report states: "Carol's closing opinion of Janet is that she should be in a mental institution."
Why defense attorney Thomas Mesereau didn't call Lamere is a mystery that I suppose will be answered shortly. But as Mesereau said in the first part of his closing argument, you have to believe the Arvizo family beyond a reasonable doubt in order to convict Jackson.
source:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,158484,00.html
What do you think?