Pop star Michael Jackson’s defence team are reportedly ready to adopt a high-risk strategy to try and nullify child molestation charges against the forty-six year old performer. “Apparently they are preparing to argue that Jackson wasn’t inviting young children to his ranch to sexually abuse them, rather than to steal their organs as part of his quest for eternal youth,” reveals Jacob Duff, legal correspondent for the Global Free News (distributed free to over a thousand Kansas gas stations and drugstores). “Their reasoning is that a jury will be more sympathetic to a deranged serial killer than it would be to a peadophile. Hell, nobody likes those kiddie-fiddling bastards, but there’s something kinda sympathetic about mass murderers – they always have some sort of tragic back story to explain their motivations.” To this end, claims Duff, lawyers acting for Jackson have planted a series of lurid stories about the singer in the popular press. “At the very least, they can always get him off of a murder charge on grounds of insanity,” he opines. “They’d never get away with that on a child molestation charge.”

However, according to Deke Spiggott, veteran owner-editor of the highly influential Weekly World Shopper (available at all good supermarket checkouts), which has carried these stories about Jackson, the allegations are all true. “Hell, we don’t make stories up for nobody – our Jacko stories are based upon eyewitness testimonies,” insists Spiggott, whose newspaper asserts that Jackson’s ‘Neverland’ ranch is deliberately designed as a ‘honey pot’ to lure innocent children to their doom. “It’s obvious – he’s got a whole funfair in there, for God’s sake! Not to mention amusement arcades, guys dressed as giant teddy bears, and an entire candy factory! What other reason would a grown man have for all that shit, other than to lure kiddies in?” According to the Shopper, children from all over California, and even further afield, flock to the ranch and try to sneak in to try out the rides. “I have it on very good authority that quite a few have gone up his Ghost Train tunnel and never been seen again!” declares Spiggott. “Look, it’s quite obvious what that sicko is up to – how else to you explain that prepubescent high voice, ever changing nose and skin tone? He’s stealing them all from little kiddies!”

Indeed, Spiggott even claims that the Shopper has identified the child whose voice was most recently stolen. Now eleven years old, Frankie Wood speaks with the deep tones of a middle-aged man. His parents claim that he had his vocal chords stolen and swapped with Jackson’s four years ago. “He and some of his friends managed to get into ‘Neverland’ one afternoon,” explains his mother. “When he came home late that night speaking in a baritone, we just thought his voice had broken early! When he started telling us this story about having his voice stolen, we thought it was just some story he’d made up, and we sent him to his room!” The Woods only began to believe their son after seeing a televised interview with Jackson. “We recognised our boy’s voice immediately,” says his father. “That weirdo stole it, and we want it back! Or failing that, compensation in at least seven figures!” Spiggott believes that Jackson is forced to obtain a new set of vocal chords at regular intervals. “Every few years he has to steal a new set, as his current ones start reverting to his normal voice,” he explains. “At least the kids involved get away with their lives – others aren’t so lucky!” Amongst the unlucky ones are Johnny Wentworth, aged ten, whose skin now allegedly adorns Jacko’s face, and Timmy Bow, eleven, whose heart now supposedly beats in the singer’s chest. Both children have been missing from their LA homes for five years and Spiggott claims that the Shopper has an eyewitness – a former Jackson employee – who says that he saw both children at the singer’s ranch around the time of their disappearance. “Jimmy Kanakas, a former chauffeur and bodyguard to Jacko has given us the goods on what’s been going on at that ranch,” asserts Spiggott. “He saw everything! The place is equipped with a full operating theatre where wholesale organ transplants go on, and there’s a huge underground cold store where he has hundreds of livers, kidneys and hearts stashed away!”

Amongst Kanakas’ more outlandish claims are that when children stopped visiting the ranch after the first child molestation accusations became public, he drove Jackson around the backstreets of LA in a limousine, attempting to lure street-kids to their doom instead. “Jacko would try and entice them into the back with a bag of sweets,” explains Spiggott. “Trouble was, most of these kids were druggies and child prostitutes suffering from horrendous diseases! They were just no good for Jacko’s purposes – he could only use good wholesome kids from decent homes!” Perhaps the most bizarre of Kanakas’ claims is that Jackson’s three children were constructed from parts left over from his organ transplants. “There’s no way he could sire children normally,” Spiggott contends. “Thanks to the extensive hormone and drug therapy he has to have as part of his rejuvenation treatment, he now has the sexual organs of a six year old! That’s also why there’s no way he could be guilty of child molestation – it’s just physically impossible!”

Despite these witness testimonies, the Free News‘ Duff (who also writes the gardening column), maintains that the stories are a plant. “The kid with a deep voice – he’s a thirty-two year old dwarf! He and his ‘parents’ have made a living out of selling this kind of stuff to the tabloids,” he explains. “As for Kanakas – he was fired by Jackson for trying to steal his nose!” For their part, the Jackson defence team have dismissed both Duff and Spiggott’s claims as ‘ludicrous’ and ‘tasteless’. “Clearly, this is just an attempt to use our client’s plight as ammunition in a supermarket tabloid circulation war,” says junior defence counsel Zack Sollicker. “Mind you, there’s no denying it could be a viable strategy – society attaches far more stigma to child molesters than it does to psychopaths.”

Spiggott remains unrepentant, promising still more exclusives on the subject. “According to my sources, some of Jacko’s showbiz pals have been so impressed by the results of his extreme rejuvenation treatment, they’re planning to try it themselves,” he says. “Apparently Liz Taylor is planning to lure young children into a gingerbread house she’s had especially built on her estate, before slaughtering them, bathing in their blood and baking them in pies! Remember, you heard it first in the Weekly World Shopper!”