Michael now kept volumes of photographs of child actors and models in his room, and he pored through them in search of children—usually boys aged nine to thirteen—to "audition" for future projects.

Over the next several years Michael's bodyguards were instructed, according to court papers filed in Los Angeles in 1993, to smuggle many of these boys into the house at all hours of the day or night. In some instances Michael telephoned in advance to find out if either Katherine or Joewas home or away. If they were home, he asked if they had gone to bed.

"If the parents were gone or had retired for the night," the guards recalled, "he would then arrive alone with a young boy typically appearing to be between nine and fourteen years of age. Upon arrival at the grounds, he would drive to an area near his suite in the compound."They would then enter by a spiral staircase that led directly to Michael's room. From that point, the bodyguards continued, Michael would "disappear with the young boy into his suite sometimes for several hours, sometimes for the entire night." Or longer, in some cases.

"All the boys would sleep in bed with him," DeBarge said—a fact later confirmed not only by Michael's own lawyers, but by the boys themselves.

At least once, according to the bodyguards, Michael had them hide"a young Asian boy believed to be somewhere between nine and four-teen years of age in the guard shack until Michael called to say his parents had left the estate."