The Truth About Anthony Pellicano’s “Extortion” Tape
Oct 30, 2020
After the strange introduction of Josephine Zohny, who claimed to possess intimate knowledge of Jordan Chandler’s private thoughts during his education at a New York University, along with some questionable assertions about the FBI files and other matters, the documentary transitions to Anthony Pellicano and the recorded conversation between Evan Chandler and Jordan’s stepfather, David Schwartz.
I was surprised upon hearing the name Anthony Pellicano in what is clearly a heavily biased pro-Jackson documentary. However, I entertained the idea that Square One might actually shed light on Jackson's association with not just a dubious individual, but also a convicted criminal.
However, that never came to fruition. After a significant 20 minutes, neither Danny Wu nor Charles Thomson have anything negative to say about Anthony Pellicano. According to them, he not only extracted a confession from Jordan Chandler that Jackson did not abuse him (despite not recording it), but also successfully presented a telephone conversation between Evan and Jordan’s stepfather, which purportedly proved Jackson was being extorted.
To the untrained ear, the audio tape indeed sounds very incriminating, with Evan Chandler making statements such as:
"I will get everything I want, and they will be totally — they will be destroyed forever" and "This man is gonna be humiliated beyond belief. You’ll not believe it. He will not believe what’s going to happen to him."
Watch the clip below.
Throughout Square One, there is no mention of the fact that the audiotape you hear was recorded by Jordan’s stepfather David Schwartz, at the request of Pellicano himself. The "extortion" tape is part of a conversation that contained over 35,000 words and lasted several hours. What Pellicano released to CBS News was nothing more than a 60-second or so recording that he had stitched together from a very lengthy and heated conversation where Evan is furious with both Jackson and Jordan’s mother, June.
Initially, CBS News made no mention of where the audiotape came from, or that it had been recorded in July, a whole month before any police investigation into Jackson. This was pointed out by the LA Times, which forced CBS News, on August 31, 1993, to admit their explosive story of “extortion” was in fact false, and nowhere on the tape is money ever mentioned.
Watch the clip below.
Throughout his own film, Danny Wu appears notably uninformed, yet he places great emphasis on Charles Thomson as an "award-winning" investigative journalist with extensive knowledge of Jackson, and even praising his role in helping to expose a historic paedophile ring in his home county.
However, it becomes evident that this in-depth "knowledge" is highly selective. Charles Thomson and Danny Wu portray Anthony Pellicano as an impeccable private investigator who uncovered the "truth," without delving into his history or character. In reality, he is not known for being particularly pleasant. He referred to himself as a detective to the stars, essentially a fixer who made problems disappear for the rich and famous by any means necessary.
Moreover, Charles Thomson fails to mention that Anthony Pellicano only completed a 30-month stint in a federal prison for illegal possession of explosives, firearms, and homemade grenades in the spring of 2019.
Even more astonishingly, Charles Thomson neglects to acknowledge that Anthony Pellicano made the following statement from his prison cell:
"I quit because I found out some truths … He did something far worse to young boys than molest them.”
The question of whether Anthony Pellicano was aware of activities by Jackson that were even more egregious than the sexual abuse of young boys is subject to debate. Nevertheless, it’s quite astonishing that neither the filmmaker nor the "award-winning" journalist addressed this aspect.
The irony lies in Square One's emphasis on the sentencing of Victor Gutierrez, a key figure in the documentary and a critic of Jackson. Gutierrez was sentenced to 61 days in jail and ordered to pay a $46,000 fine for spreading slanderous stories about former Miss Universe Cecilia Bolocco in his native Chile, a country known for stifling freedom of speech. However, Danny Wu failed to note that it was a suspended jail sentence, and Gutierrez never actually served any time behind bars, a notable contrast to Anthony Pellicano's experience.
Just a five-minute search on YouTube reveals a CBS News video openly acknowledging that there was no extortion attempt, and that Anthony Pellicano merely released a highly edited audiotape in a conspiracy style to discredit Evan. Moreover, any reasonably intelligent person would recognize that extortion is a criminal offense. Despite the insistence from Jackson's camp, including Anthony Pellicano, there was simply no evidence to substantiate their claims.
Shortly before the multi-million dollar settlement in January 1994, one of the lead prosecutors affirmed:
“We’ve declined to file today criminal charges of attempted extortion,” said Michael J. Montagna, a deputy Los Angeles County district attorney who heads that office’s organized crime unit. “The evidence does not show that any crime has been committed.”
Square One, which aimed to uncover the true "truth" about Jackson's extortion in 1993, presented a highly distorted and misleading version from the very beginning. This raises the question of whether Charles Thomson and Danny Wu negligently failed to thoroughly research their own material before incorporating it into an amateurish documentary, or if their intention was always to deceive viewers.