Jackson’s manager: ‘Kidnapping’ could have saved Michael

Ron Weisner — who managed Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney and Madonna — desperately tried to “kidnap” the King of Pop to save him from drug addiction while the star was being plied with cash and drugs by Bahraini royalty.
Jackson became hopelessly hooked on painkillers after his infamous accident filming a Pepsi ad, and “there were other people in Michael’s life who attempted interventions, none of whom came close to helping,” Weisner recalls in his revealing book, “Listen Out Loud,” out June 3.
The showbiz vet, who spoke to Jackson 20 times a day while managing his career through the highs of “Off the Wall” and “Thriller,” finally advised La Toya Jackson, “I’d snatch him. I’d get some people to grab him, take him to some rehab facility in the middle of nowhere.”
By 2006, Jackson’s addiction and spending had escalated “so badly that he escaped to Bahrain,” where he was provided with all the cash and drugs he needed by two princes, Weisner writes.
After discussing the extreme intervention plan more than 10 times over the years, La Toya gave Weisner the go-ahead.
Desperate to save his friend and former client’s life, Weinser writes, “That’s exactly what this was, a kidnapping” on “the other side of the world” that involved a plane, rehab facility, a team and “more money than I’d care to admit.”
But La Toya pleaded with him at the last minute to pull the plug on the plan.
“In retrospect, it was probably for the best . . .  as one of my attorneys pointed out,” Weisner muses. “There was little question that [the law] would view this as a kidnapping rather than an attempt to help a colleague.”
By that time, he’d been cut from Jackson’s career by father Joe Jackson, after shepherding Michael’s most productive years.
Days before Jackson died in 2009, Weisner met him at the Staples Center.
“He hadn’t looked really healthy for a good long while, but this was a whole other level,” he writes. “I thought . . . ‘He looks like a goddamn prisoner of war’ . . . He had that look in his eyes . . . a look of resignation, a look that said, ‘It’s over,’ and it broke my heart.”