Author claims he saw a ‘worrying’ Michael Jackson home video

The author of a new book about Michael Jackson claims he saw a ‘worrying’ video of the singer playing bizarre games with children – in which one of the youngsters allegedly had his arms wrapped around a beam ‘like a martyr on a cross’.

Dylan Howard claims to have seen the home video in which Jackson allegedly stares at the boy standing on his four-poster bed before grabbing him by a T-shirt as the child spits at him. 

Howard, the former National Enquirer editor involved in the newspaper’s ‘Peckergate’ feud with Jeff Bezos, told the Mirror that ‘the scene was worrying and baffling’, saying the video was full of ‘foul language’ and ‘over-the-top theatrics’ which made it ‘age-inappropriate’. 

The author’s new book – Bad: An Unprecedented Investigation into the Michael Jackson Cover-Up – claims to have ‘never-before-revealed evidence and police files’ documenting the child abuse claims against the singer. 

The claims were reignited by last year’s documentary Leaving Neverland in which two men alleged that Jackson abused them as children, but the singer always denied wrongdoing in his lifetime and his estate has continued to deny the allegations. 

The author of a new book about Michael Jackson (pictured) claims he saw a ‘worrying’ video of the singer playing bizarre games with children

Howard describes the supposed home video as ‘some kind of intense-bordering-on-disgusting role play scene’. 

It allegedly shows two boys in the singer’s bedroom, one of them standing on a four-poster bed with his arms around a beam as though affixed to a cross.

The scene is alleged to have involved ‘panting’ and the child hurling abuse at Jackson before pretending to spit at the King of Pop. 

Dylan Howard's new book Bad: An Unprecedented Investigation into the Michael Jackson Cover-Up

Dylan Howard’s new book Bad: An Unprecedented Investigation into the Michael Jackson Cover-Up

‘The scene was worrying and baffling… the level of foul language and simulated abuse cannot be ignored,’ Howard says. 

‘Although Michael and the kids were engaging in what was clearly over-the-top theatrics, their preferred subject matter was without a doubt age-inappropriate.’ 

Two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, alleged in last year’s Leaving Neverland documentary that Jackson abused them as children. 

Jackson’s family has compared the allegations to a ‘public lynching’ against the singer now that he is not able to defend himself. 

Jackson was acquitted at his criminal trial in 2005, in a case involving another young man.

Mr Robson testified at that trial, saying he had slept in Jackson’s room many times, but that Jackson had never molested him.

Mr Safechuck made similar statements to investigators as a boy. Jackson died in 2009.

Both men filed lawsuits in 2013 saying stress and trauma had forced them to face the truth and admit they were sexually abused.  

Howard’s book is billed as ‘the revelatory untold true story’ of the allegations against Jackson. 

Publishers say that the book is based on ‘dozens of interviews’ and extracts from Jackson’s own personal journal, boasting of ‘testimony that will leave you shaken’. 

Author Dylan Howard is the former National Enquirer editor involved in the newspaper's 'Peckergate' feud with Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos

Author Dylan Howard (pictured left) is the former National Enquirer editor involved in the newspaper’s ‘Peckergate’ feud with Amazon supremo Jeff Bezos 

Howard, 38, is the former National Enquirer editor involved in numerous controversies at the paper including its sensational feud with Amazon supremo and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos. 

Bezos claimed last year that Howard had sent an email threatening to publish intimate pictures of him in a row which became known as ‘Peckergate’ after the company’s president and longtime Donald Trump ally David Pecker.

The Enquirer had initially disclosed Bezos’s relationship with Lauren Sanchez, citing steamy texts between the two.  

Bezos, the world’s richest man, subsequently hired a private investigator to find out how the Enquirer had obtained the texts.  

In 2018, the Enquirer admitted it had paid $150,000 to Playboy model Karen McDougal to buy – and then suppress – her story about an alleged affair with Donald Trump. The president denies the affair. 

The Enquirer’s publisher American Media Inc (AMI) later made a deal to avoid prosecution over what authorities regarded as an illegal campaign contribution.  

Howard has previously written books about Jeffrey Epstein, Charles Manson and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle among others.