The personal computer of Michael Jackson’s late manager, Frank DiLeo, will be handed over today by his daughter in the hope of finding a “smoking gun” about the star’s death, sources tell Page Six. Lawyers for Katherine Jackson and her three grandchildren hope the hard drive contains evidence that will prove that executives for concert company AEG Live were responsible for Jacko’s 2009 death by hiring Dr. Conrad Murray, who gave him a fatal dose of medication.
The Post’s Richard Johnson reports that Katherine’s lawyers subpoenaed the computer before the wrongful-death civil trial started in April, but were stymied until an Ohio judge found Frank’s daughter, Belinda DiLeo, in contempt of court last week and vowed to jail her if she didn’t produce the computer by today.
“First she said she didn’t have it, but then she miraculously found it, and she’s handing it in on Monday,” a source told The Post.
The cigar-smoking, bullet-headed DiLeo was so convincing as a gangster, Martin Scorsese cast the Pittsburgh native in “Goodfellas.” The jury is already familiar with him from testimony of Michael Jackson’s hair and makeup person, Karen Faye, who said she overheard DiLeo dealing with the artist’s severe weight loss by telling a handler, “Get him a bucket of chicken!”
AEG Live boss Randy Phillips testified that he and DiLeo were standing in the emergency room at Cedars-Sinai when they were told Jackson was dead. “Frank collapsed,” Phillips said. DiLeo died two years later, following heart surgery at the same hospital, but he didn’t take his secrets to the grave. DiLeo left a manuscript of the tell-all he was writing. “The truth has to be told,” he said at the time. “I’m going to set the record straight once and for all.” It is in the hands of Mark Lamica, who worked with DiLeo for nine years.
“Frank knew where all the bodies were buried,” said an insider. “If there are new e-mails on his computer, or a copy of his book, it could rip the trial wide open.”
But AEG lawyer Marvin Putnam told The Post, “Unfortunately, this is yet another attempt by plaintiffs to distract the press with a sideshow.”
Putnam said he and his clients “look forward to the production of Frank DiLeo’s computer. Mr. DiLeo’s documents will only confirm what the defendants have said all along — that the defendants were never aware that Dr. Conrad Murray was administering powerful anesthetics to Michael Jackson in Michael Jackson’s private bedroom at night behind locked doors.”