WWW- What if they put Michael Jackson on trial, and a former child star reunion broke out?
The world may soon find out. Goonies alum Corey Feldman has been subpoenaed to testify at Jackson's upcoming child-molestation trial, ABC News reported Thursday.
Feldman joins a growing cast of potential prosecution witnesses with ties to the young Hollywood scene of the 1980s and 1990s. Macaulay Culkin (Home Alone) and Emmanuel Lewis (Webster) also reportedly may be called to court.
Like Culkin and Lewis, Feldman hung out with Jackson when he was a young teenager, and the pop star was not.
Feldman, now 33 and possessed of recent credits such as Serial Killing 4 Dummys, is the first ex-child actor reported to have received a subpoena.
Jackson, 46, faces 10 counts of molesting a child, believed to be a recovered cancer patient now 15, conspiracy and plying the child with wine. He has pleaded innocent to all charges.
If prosecutors are looking for Feldman to lead them to the smoking gun, as it were, it seems doubtful he'll be the guide. But he could be used as a linking device to reputed evidence.
In an interview to air Friday on ABC's 20/20, Feldman tells famed Jackson journalist Martin Bashir that Jackson never molested him. (Bashir himself has been subpoenaed to testify at the singer's currently on-hold trial.)
While Feldman has no tales of wrongdoing to share, the Stand by Me star tells 20/20 that, in hindsight, he considers some of Jackson's actions with him "inappropriate."
Once, while stopping at Jackson's apartment on the way to Disneyland, Feldman said he found a book on the singer's coffee table.
"The book contained pictures of grown men and women naked," Feldman tells 20/20. "And the book focused on venereal diseases and the genitalia."
Feldman, who was then about 13, said Jackson sat down and leafed through the book with him.
"I was kind of grossed out by it. I didn't think of it as a big deal. And for all these years, I probably never thought twice about it," Feldman says on the ABC newsmagazine. "But in light of recent evidence...I have to say that if my son was 14 years old, 13 years old, and went to a man's apartment that was 35, and I knew that they were sitting down together talking about this, I would probably beat his ass."
Investigators seized adult magazines, books and DVDs from Jackson's Neverland Ranch. It is believed the prosecution will argue Jackson tried to tempt children into sexual acts by showing them the explicit materials.
Feldman tells 20/20, "I hope and pray" the allegations against Jackson are unfounded.
"But if they did happen, then there's a lot of sickness with one person," Feldman says. "And that person needs to be punished."
Feldman, who publicly and privately stuck up for his famous friend in 1993 when authorities probed an unproved molestation claim made by another boy, had a falling out with Jackson over an escape from New York City on 9/11. Jackson, who was in the Big Apple during the 2001 terror strikes, helped get Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor and Liza Minnelli out of town, but not Feldman.
Feldman retaliated with the song, "Megalo Man," off his 2002 album, Former Child Actor, featuring the lyrics: "I believed in your words/I believed in your lies/But in September in New York/You left me to die/I love you, Megalo Man."
A call to Jackson's publicist seeking comment on Feldman's 20/20 interview was not returned late Thursday. ABC News says Feldman himself is now restricted from talking about Jackson because of the gag order in the case.
Celebrity Justice posts: "CJ" has obtained an audio interview between actor Corey Feldman and Santa Barbara sheriffs. Recorded in December 1993, the interview includes Corey stating -- not once but numerous times -- that his friend Michael Jackson, whom he hung out with, didn't do anything improper with him.
"Nothing ever happened with Michael and me," Corey is heard saying. "Believe me, If there was something that I'd been hiding for all these years, then I would want nothing more than to bring it out right now, to make sure that Michael got the help that he needed."
Feldman gained fame as a child star in the 1980s with "The Goonies" and "Stand By Me." At the time of the interview he was 22 and was just wrapping up "National Lampoon's Last Resort." Sgt. Deborah Linden and Detective Russ Birchim, who were looking to bolster their molestation case against Jackson involving another boy, conducted the grilling.
On the tape, the investigators are heard hammering in on Corey's deep friendship with the superstar. "What concerns me about it is, if something did happen that you're not telling us, is that you wouldn't because of that," one says, to which Feldman responds, "I can't put myself in the position of thinking 'Would I or wouldn't I,' because nothing happened!"
Corey tells investigators that, as a young teen, he did two sleepovers with Jackson. Once, after a trip to Disneyland when Corey was about 14, he says they checked into a hotel near the amusement park. "There was one bed in the room and he asked for a cot to be brought up," Feldman relates. "He got the cot up there and we talked for a little while until we got tired. But he insisted that I slept on the bed and he took the cot because he didn't feel it was polite for him to take the bed."
Feldman repeatedly insists to the skeptical cops that nothing happened, not then and not the time he slept over at Jackson's Encino home: "We stayed up all night and talked and did stuff and we prayed together before we went to sleep and he was wearing his pajamas. And I was wearing my pajamas!"
Corey also relates how, "We took a Jacuzzi, we talked, nothing happened."
When investigators ask, "What were you guys wearing? Bathing suits?" Feldman replies, "Yeah, he had an extra pair of trunks that he threw me and he was wearing his bathing suit."
But Sgt. Linden doesn't seem to buy Corey's story, noting, "You looked a little funny when I asked you about the Jacuzzi."
Corey again insists, "He never did anything out of line. I mean, the closest he ever came to touching me was maybe slapping me on the leg once to talk about that I had lost weight."
Shockingly, Corey does claim he had been molested -- but not by Jackson: "I myself was molested so I know what it's like to go through those feelings, and believe me, the person who molested me, if this was him that did that to me, this would be a different story because I would be out there, up front, doing something immediately to have this man given what was due to him."
Even more shockingly, Feldman actually named his alleged abuser but the detectives seemed to express no interest investigating the man, seeming to only have eyes for Jackson.
