Charles Thomson and the Dubious Sodium Amytal Story
Dec 8, 2019
Square One, directed by Danny Wu, revisits the 1993 Jordan Chandler allegations. The documentary features fanatics devoted to glorifying Michael Jackson, rather than impartial adults. Its cast includes a legal secretary who claims to be a witness to an "extortion plot," a college student who took a keen interest in Jordan’s clothing, Taj Jackson who reminds us that he was once in a pop group, and the self-described "award-winning" journalist Charles Thomson, who acts as the main narrator.
Unsurprisingly, the documentary does not address the dangers of adults luring unrelated children into private spaces. Instead, it directs intense criticism at Jordan and his father, Evan.
Within the Michael Jackson fan community, Jordan is often considered the initiator of the "false" allegations. Square One maintains that "if the first allegation crumbles, so do the rest."
But, how does Square One explain how a 13-year-old Jordan Chandler detailed allegations of sexual abuse spanning several months to law enforcement if they weren't true? The simple answer is to accuse his father of drugging and brainwashing him with the potentially lethal Sodium Amytal.
Yes, really!!!
Watch the segment below.
Square One fails to mention that the original Sodium Amytal story originated from TMZ's Harvey Levin during his time at KCBS-TV, and was embellished and weaponized by Mary Fischer in a GQ Magazine article from October 1994.
One might expect that such a sensational story, presented as factual truth in Square One, would have caused a major stir in the 90s. However, the story was largely disregarded, and neither the police nor child protection services hurried to aid Jordan.
I believed it was only fair to reach out to Charles Thomson with a series of questions via email, just to ensure I covered all bases. My sole purpose was to establish some fundamental facts, but it wasn't long before I found myself caught in the whirlwind of the Michael Jackson misinformation machine.
Among other claims, Thomson asserted that the authorities involved in the 1993/1994 case were inclined to unquestioningly accept Jordan’s allegation and had even coerced and threatened other children who had individual contact with Jackson into falsely confessing that he had molested them. He even alleges that they were threatened with the release of photographic evidence of their actual abuse if they did not comply. As if that weren't outrageous enough, Charles Thomson also posited that Jordan's allegation was a product of "Satanic Panic," a series of false accusations that swept through the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s, which according to him, was induced by Sodium Amytal.
Below is the complete email(s) that I sent to his address ([email protected]) on 4 December 2019. The text highlighted in grey with a blue line represents my emails, and Charles Thomson’s response is highlighted with a red line.
It's quite a lengthy read, but undoubtedly worth the time.
Good day,
I have a question about your recent appearance in a YouTube video titled: “Square One: New Witness in Michael Jackson Case”.
At around 26:27 on the video you start talking about sodium Amytal and how it was used on Jordan Chandler by his father Evan to implant false memories of child molestation.
This is a direct quote from yourself:
“Evan sedated him with a drug called sodium Amytal. Supposedly did a dental procedure, although, its a very dubious story that he’s telling there because there’s no reason to use sodium Amytal if you’re doing a dental procedure. But, he gives him this drug which has a reputation in the 80s as a truth serum. Problem is that sodium Amytal just in 1993… the evidence was just coming out that sodium Amytal had been wrongly used as a truth serum for years. If you look at journals today like ‘Psychology Today’, they say its completely false that anybody ever considered it a truth serum. It just wasn’t, what it did was it made people massively suggestible. You could administer somebody with sodium amytal, and then plant an idea in their head and when they woke up, they would believe that it was true.”
I have a hard time believing this story for a number of reasons. Firstly, the original story comes from Mary Fischer in a GQ Magazine from October 94, where she alleges that Evan and his assistant Mark Torbiner during a dental procedure used this powerful and potentially life-threatening drug to implant months and months of false sex abuse details, presumably within the space of a couple of hours.
However, there is no evidence that such a drug was ever used, or that it could be successfully used by somebody that you describe as a below-average dentist who had no specialities in brainwashing, or even knew that sodium Amytal could even be used for such purposes until 1993, the same year he puts his alleged plan into action.
Now, I’m not going to dispute the plausibility on whether you can drug somebody and at least temporarily convince them they been a victim of a crime, in exactly the same way you could comfortably convince somebody who’s just had 10 pints of lager that they’ve won the lottery, until the effects of alcohol wear off.
We know that Jordan and Jackson spent many months together, and at least 70 one-on-one nights in the same bed. If I’m to believe you, all of Jordan Chandler’s memories during those months had been turned from innocent into sinister, during a single dental procedure where sodium Amytal was allegedly use.
The reality is that Jordan didn’t just accuse Jackson of child molestation in August 93 (or earlier), and then disappear into thin air. He was interviewed by experienced physicians, detectives, social workers, lawyers and district attorneys, all of whom, believed he was credible.
If we fast forward to October 6, 1993, around six weeks (or more) after Evan and his assistant allegedly drugged Jordan, he was still able to sit down face-to-face with Dr. Richard Gardner, who at the time was considered one of the nations leading authorities on false claims of child sex abuse. Jordan, somehow was able to exchange thousands of words with an experienced expert, and not once did this expert believe that this boy was under the influence of any mind altering drug, or that he had been brainwashed into saying he had been sexually molested.
Then, of course, we have the fact that both during and after the allegation Jordan was able to interact with family members, friends, neighbours, and even be schooled, where nobody noticed anything abnormal about his behaviour.
If you truly believe this sodium Amytal story, is only right to question why you yourself feel comfortable in using it in favour of a grown man who had an unhealthy obsession for one-on-one sleepovers with unrelated boys, but you don’t want to use your investigative journalistic skills to expose the police, social services, or even the FBI who all ignored Mary Fisher’s story in 1994.
You credit yourself with helping to expose historic child sex abuse cases in the south-east of England, and even making freedom of information requests to the FBI concerning Jackson’s “innocence”, yet, to my knowledge, you’ve made no attempt to expose the LA, Santa Barbara or FBI departments concerning Jordan Chandler, who according to you, wasn’t just being used in a multi-million dollar extortion plot, but was also being drugged with a drug so powerful that it could have easily killed him.
In my book, that’s child abuse and you appear to be ignoring it.
Looking forward to your reply.
Many thanks.
Hello David,
Thanks for your email.
The story of the sodium amytal does not originate with Mary Fischer. It originates with Evan Chandler, who confirmed he had administered the drug in a statement to a Los Angeles television station. Mary Fischer mentions that statement in her article, which was published in GQ and Esquire after undergoing several rounds of editing and fact-checking.
I am aware that a few years ago some people researching the case managed to establish that the pertinent news report was available in a television archive, but they could not afford the fee to purchase a copy.
There is no question that sodium amytal is capable of producing extremely detailed and voluminous allegations of childhood sexual abuse. There have been many cases in which it has done so, destroying families after adults in therapy falsely remembered years of childhood sexual abuse that in fact had never happened.
It is not correct to suggest that Evan would have had to specifically implant all of the memories. Rather, patients under sodium amytal tend produce their own false memories under prompting from their questioners.
None of this is my own deduction. It’s a matter of scientific fact.
As Square One makes clear, sodium amytal was only part of the story. At the same time, Jordy was being taken to what Geraldine Hughes felt looked and sounded like coaching sessions in his lawyer’s office.
While you suggest nobody noticed anything strange about Jordy’s behaviour, this is not really true. His mother and her partner – and their lawyer – firmly believed the allegations were false and that Jordy was lying and being ‘controlled’ by Evan. June Chandler only changed her position when she was warned that if there was a judgement against Jackson, Evan could then sue her for letting it happen. When June switched positions, her lawyer was so disgusted with her that he quit.
It is noteworthy that Evan and his lawyer had Jordan examined by a psychologist called Richard Gardner, as you mention, with a view to him to producing an expert report they could rely on as part of their case. After Gardner produced his report, they decided not to use it and sought a second opinion from a man called Stanley Katz, who was linked to hundreds of false allegations in the famous McMartin pre-school debacle.
One cannot help but wonder why Gardner’s report was binned and whether June, her partner and her lawyer weren’t alone in thinking the allegations were iffy. Another extremely significant figure in the case also privately expressed their belief that Jordy was lying, but that is newly uncovered information which has yet to be made public.
My role in Square One was that of an unpaid interviewee. Danny Wu telephoned me and asked me questions and I answered them. I was not an investigator for the documentary and so see no reason why I would be under any expectation to investigate the FBI or anybody else.
Charles Thomson.
Hi,
So, you’re telling me that Evan Chandler openly admitted to a unnamed/anonymous television station that he used a unnecessary and life-threatening drug on his 13-year-old child to extract a tooth, but neither you nor myself can verify this story because it’s hidden behind a paid firewall, which nobody can afford to access? That doesn’t sound very convincing.
Again, if Mary Fisher had proof in 94 that Evan openly admitted that he had used a potentially lethal drug on his son to implant false memories, why weren’t the police or social services contacted immediately and presented with the “facts”? Jordan was still a child under the age of 16 at the time. Was she and this anonymous TV station more interested in a sensational story that exonerated Jackson, yet left a minor in the clutches of an unstable and dangerous man?
I’m pretty certain that sodium Amytal cannot be purchased over the pharmacist counter, so in terms of solid proof can you confirm or deny whether forms, receipts or delivery notes were ever discovered, showing that Evan and his assistant were in possession of this drug during that time period?
Concerning the use of any powerful mind altering drug, I’m not going to dispute the plausibility as to whether you can temporarily implant false memories. But the fact remains that Jordan and Jackson spent months and months together, and your alleging within a single dental procedure which presumably lasted no more than a couple of hours, Evan was able to perfectly implant balanced memories that didn’t just involve acts of a sexual nature, but also acts of kindness and generosity on Jackson’s part. And between August 93 and January 94, when Jordan was questioned, those “false” memories outfoxed multiple law enforcement professionals who were trained to spot the signs that a child had been coerced or brainwashed into saying so? It sounds too good to be true.
You also have to question exactly when the effects of sodium Amytal allegedly wore off? How did Jordan go through his teens in 94, 95, 96 and beyond, and never have a mental breakdown, and realise he had been drugged, brainwashed and used in a elaborate and successful extortion plot? I don’t believe he was a hermit who remain locked in a cellar.
I would love to read factual reports on sodium Amytal and how it has been used in similar cases to that concerning Jordan Chandler and the 93 case, but I can’t find any. Feel free to post any sources.
I also recently discovered, that Mary Fischer in 2012 while rebranding her original GQ Magazine article actually quotes that Jordan Chandler publicly admitted in 2009 that he had lied about the allegations and was deeply sorry. This, as I’m sure you will agree is totally untrue, and no such confession exists. If she is prepared to lie about that, then her sodium Amytal and brainwashing story is looking more and more like pure fiction.
Thanks again for any future replies.
Hi David,
The television station is not anonymous. Fischer names it in her story and says when it aired.
I have no idea why the authorities did not investigate, but I would hazard a guess that it was because 1) nobody filed a criminal complaint and 2) a dentist administering sodium amytal, whilst highly unorthodox, is not illegal.
Sadly, you give the authorities too much credit. The training of child abuse officers at that time – where they even existed at all – was rudimentary compared to today’s standards. In the Jackson case, the detectives accepted the story at face value and then began visiting the homes of other children who’d met Jackson, where they aggressively interrogated the children for hours on end and refused to leave and accused the children of lying when they insisted nothing had occurred. They also made up lies, such as telling the children they had photographs of Jackson molesting them, and that they would get in trouble if they kept lying, to try to trick them into saying Jackson had abused them. This outrageous behaviour prompted complaints from several of the children’s parents.
One of the lead officers in the case was called Bill Dworin. Dworin was involved in the McMartin case, a total debacle in which similarly unprofessional investigative techniques had produced hundreds of abuse allegations against the owners of a pre school, all of which turned out to be false.
Dworin refused to accept that he had been wrong in the McMartin case and actually commented to people, immediately after the allegations came in from the DCFS, that he wasn’t going to let Jackson get away with it like the McMartins did.
Officers like Mr Dworin didn’t take much convincing.
It’s worth remembering that the Jackson allegations came amid what was known as the ‘Satanic Panic’, a ludicrous moral panic which had swept across America and seen police officers all over the country waste millions of dollars investigating crackpot allegations – many of them induced by sodium amytal. There was a huge hysteria about child abuse at the time.
Charles
Hi,
Oh, I presumed that you meant that Evan walked into an unnamed TV station, and confessed in front of multiple witnesses to using a potentially lethal drug just to extract a tooth on his then 13-year-old son. I’m fully aware that according to Mary Fisher and Harvey Levin (the guy behind gossip website TMZ) had revealed on KCBS-TV that Evan had used the drug, but refused to reveal his source.
In fact, Harvey Levin never claims to have had personal communication with Evan, and considering the explosive nature of the story, not to mention obvious child abuse, you would expect independent and unbiased sources to validate the claim, but there isn’t any.
Again, in terms of hard physical evidence, did Mary Fisher or Harvey Levin have any to support that Evan was ordering one or more samples of sodium Amytal around the time that Jordan was allegedly drugged? The appropriate forms, receipts, delivery notes, et cetera?
In terms of policing child sex abuse, yes, things are very different compared to what they were 25+ years ago. But you mention that detectives visited the homes of boys who denied sexual abuse by Jackson, yet today the world is much more familiar with the grooming and seduction process that child sex abusers subject their victims to, and the fact that many do defend their abusers, something which is more commonly known as the offender–victim bond.
Umm, I’m trying to correctly process your claim that the authorities were interrogating children that Jackson had one-on-one contact with and calling them liars for denying abuse, and even claiming to hold photographic evidence of their abuse? Is this what you’re claiming?
Bill Dworin if I’m right, has a wealth of experience that involves over 4000 sex abuse cases, and even stated multiple times that Jordan Chandler was able to correctly identify discolouration on Jackson’s genitalia. Whether or not you want to dispute that, I would always question why Jackson was so relaxed and never took legal action, if it wasn’t at least partially true.
But if, as you claim, Bill Dworin worked on one or two duff cases, where he openly got it wrong, that doesn’t diminish his career or his hard work in its entirety.
If we focus on the reality, in that you claim via Square One, that Jordan Chandler was drugged with sodium Amytal just once, how would you explain as an investigative journalist how so many detailed false memories, both good and bad, could have been implanted into his head, and remained consistent from at least August 93 to January 94, while being interviewed not by just law enforcement, but also social workers. As I’ve explained in my first post, these weren’t brief chitchats, some of these interviews contained hundreds if not thousands of questions.
Have you as a investigative journalist ever witnessed or reported on any similar cases. What’s your general experience with sodium Amytal and its use as a mind controlling drug? If you have any reliable links on hand, I would love to read them.
Thanks in advance.
After 5 December, I did not receive any further replies from Charles Thomson, but I did send one more email on 8 December inquiring about his startling allegation that the authorities were coercing and blackmailing children into making false confessions.
Hi,
I’m probably guessing you don’t want to talk about the plausibility of the dubious sodium Amytal story any more. Fair enough, but I’m still scratching my head over your allegation that the local authorities were so desperate in their search for a conviction of Jackson, that they actually started bullying and blackmailing children that he had one-on-one contact with into making a false statement that they had been molested, or photographs of their abuse would be used against them.
When exactly did this allegedly happen, and by whom? I’ve searched high and low, and I can’t find any complaints which were made to the Santa Barbara or LA police departments concerning crooked detectives behaving in such an appalling and illegal manner.
Also, concerning “Satanic Panic”, how many cases were related to adult men or women who had spent hundreds of one-on-one nights in bed with unrelated children?
Thanks.
Hi David,
I decided to stop interacting with you because you kept misstating the facts and I felt you were just deliberately trying to waste my time.
A formal complaint was made to the Los Angeles chief of police about the officers’ outrageous behaviour towards children who had known Jackson. The chief was called something funny like Willie Williams, but I’d have to look it up to check it. The complaint was reported contemporaneously. It was a collective complaint made by Bert Fields, at the request of numerous parents who had contacted him, dismayed at the officers’ behaviour. The chief defended the officers’ behaviour, rather than denying it.
Charles
Hi,
Is it time wasting to question the plausibility of a dubious brainwashing story which you willingly chose to broadcast in a YouTube video, knowing that thousand/millions of people would eventually watch it? Is it time wasting to question whether Evan legally obtained the drug sodium Amytal, which obviously would leave a paper trail? Is it time wasting to question how a dentist with no prior experience in brainwashing techniques was able to perfectly implant months of “false” abuse stories into his son’s head within the space of a couple of hours? Is it time wasting to question why Mary Fisher nor any of her “fact checking” colleagues never informed the police of such a serious crime involving a minor?
These are not unreasonable questions, especially to a so-called investigative journalist. Instead, I’ve been encouraged to believe that the entire Californian police force was corrupt and wanted to put an innocent man behind bars.
Concerning the allegedly bullying and blackmailing of children, who was it? Brett Barnes? Wade Robson? Macaulay Culkin? James Safechuck? Jonathan Spence?
The only thing I can find is from latimes.com, where Jackson’s lawyers “in response to mounting legal pressure” launched an attack and accused police officers of: “any device to generate potential evidence” and “we have nude photos of you in order to push them into making accusations against Mr. Jackson.”
Source: latimes.com
Multi-million dollar lawyers, launching a vicious attack to protect their client isn’t exactly unheard of. There is no mention of police officers claiming they had photos of actual abuse as you claimed, and considering many of the same officers continued investigating Jackson up to 2005, and even formed part of the prosecution, it’s a mystery why none of this was mentioned let alone proved.
Then again, perhaps there is some truth to this. We know that a fully nude photograph of one of Jackson’s special friends, Jonathan Spence, was obtained during the 93 raid. There was also a photograph of a young boy holding an umbrella; wearing bikini bottoms, partly pulldown. Then, of course, there are books such as “Boys Will Be Boys”, “The Boy, A Photographic Essay” and “In Search of Young Beauty” which all contained fully or partly nude pictures of children.
Source: sbscpublicaccess.org
Weirdly, none of these items are mentioned by yourself within Square One.
Thanks.
No more replies were received after the 8th of December.
Read the original emails here.
The Sodium Amytal story has never particularly piqued my interest, but like most information originating from devoted Jackson enthusiasts, it lacks both credibility and plausibility. Charles Thomson fails to acknowledge its origins and essentially parrots Mary Fisher’s words verbatim for a fresh and receptive audience.
Even if Evan had administered every available mind-altering drug to his son, it still wouldn't explain:
In fact, one could question if the Sodium Amytal story was lifted from a science fiction movie. In 1990, the film Total Recall was released, in which a character called Douglas Quaid, portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, has false memories implanted in his mind, leading him to live a fabricated life until his real memories resurface.
Watch the clip here.
The biggest irony in Square One is Charles Thomson’s demonisation of Evan Chandler, by claiming that: “instead of going straight to the police as you would expect a parent to do if their child had said that they’d been sexually abused by a man, he instead goes directly to Michael Jackson and his legal team and starts demanding 20 million dollars.”
However, the same reasoning does not seem to apply to Mary Fisher, despite her purported possession of concrete evidence that a child was being abused and manipulated with a potent and potentially lethal drug. According to her story, which supposedly underwent extensive editing and fact-checking, nobody, particularly Mary Fisher herself, considered reporting it to the police.
Moreover, one is led to believe that a grown man successfully brainwashed his child into fabricating allegations within a few hours; yet, Michael Jackson, a man who evidently displayed an unhealthy interest in young boys and spent over 1000+ one-on-one days and nights with them, couldn't have manipulated and coerced them into sexual contact and prompted them to deny it, both in childhood and adulthood.
I have expressed this sentiment previously, and I reiterate it now: I not only consider Charles Thomson to be untruthful, but also someone who endeavours to manipulate and sway others through misinformation.
It is possible to entertain his assertions that the entire police force in California was so corrupt that they coerced and blackmailed children into fabricating confessions of sexual abuse, or that the "Satanic Panic" was truly the force behind the 1993 allegation, or that the truth is indeed out there, but concealed behind a paywall that no one can afford to breach. The issue is that this investigative journalist appears hesitant to share any credible links supporting these extraordinary claims.
Links of interest: