It was with this man, in June 1993, that Evan Chandler began carrying out the "certain plan" to which he referred in his taped conversation with Dave Schwartz. At a graduation that month, Chandler confronted his ex-wife with his suspicions. "She thought the whole thing was baloney," says her ex-attorney, Michael Freeman. She told Chandler that she planned to take their son out of school in the fall so they could accompany Jackson on his "Dangerous" world tour. Chandler became irate and, say several sources, threatened to go public with the evidence he claimed he had on Jackson. "What parent in his right mind would want to drag his child into the public spotlight?" asks Freeman. "If something like this actually occurred, you'd want to protect your child."

Jackson asked his then-lawyer, Bert Fields, to intervene. One of the most prominent attorneys in the entertainment industry, Fields has been representing Jackson since 1990 and had negotiated for him, with Sony, the biggest music deal ever -- with possible earnings of $700 million. Fields brought in investigator Anthony Pellicano to help sort things out. Pellicano does things Sicilian-style, being fiercely loyal to those he likes but a ruthless hardball player when it comes to his enemies.

On July 9, 1993, Dave Schwartz and June Chandler Schwartz played the taped conversation for Pellicano. "After listening to the tape for ten minutes, I knew it was about extortion," says Pellicano. That same day, he drove to Jackson's Century City condominium, where Chandler's son and the boy's half-sister were visiting. Without Jackson there, Pellicano "made eye contact" with the boy and asked him, he says, "very pointed questions": "Has Michael ever touched you? Have you ever seen him naked in bed?" The answer to all the questions was no. The boy repeatedly denied that anything bad had happened. On July 11, after Jackson had declined to meet with Chandler, the boy's father and Rothman went ahead with another part of the plan -- they needed to get custody of the boy. Chandler asked his ex-wife to let the youth stay with him for a "one-week visitation period." As Bert Fields later said in an affidavit to the court, June Chandler Schwartz allowed the boy to go based on Rothman's assurance to Fields that her son would come back to her after the specified time, never guessing that Rothman's word would be worthless and that Chandler would not return their son.

Wylie Aitken, Rothman's attorney, claims that "at the time [Rothman] gave his word, it was his intention to have the boy returned." However, once "he learned that the boy would be whisked out of the country [to go on tour with Jackson], I don't think Mr. Rothman had any other choice." But the chronology clearly indicates that Chandler had learned in June, at the graduation, that the boy's mother planned to take her son on the tour. The taped telephone conversation made in early July, before Chandler took custody of his son, also seems to verify that Chandler and Rothman had no intention of abiding by the visitation agreement. "They [the boy and his mother] don't know it yet," Chandler told Schwartz, "but they aren't going anywhere."

On July 12, one day after Chandler took control of his son, he had his ex-wife sign a document prepared by Rothman that prevented her from taking the youth out of Los Angeles County. This meant the boy would be unable to accompany Jackson on the tour. His mother told the court she signed the document under duress. Chandler, she said in an affidavit, had threatened that"I would not have [the boy] returned to me." A bitter custody battle ensued, making even murkier any charges Chandler made about wrong-doing on Jackson's part. (As of this August [1994], the boy was still living with Chandler.) It was during the first few weeks after Chandler took control of his son -- who was now isolated from his friends, mother and stepfather -- that the boy's allegations began to take shape.

At the same time, Rothman, seeking an expert's opinion to help establish the allegations against Jackson, called Dr. Mathis Abrams, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist. Over the telephone, Rothman presented Abrams with a hypothetical situation. In reply and without having met either Chandler or his son, Abrams on July 15 sent Rothman a two-page letter in which he stated that "reasonable suspicion would exist that sexual abuse may have occurred." Importantly, he also stated that if this were a real and not a hypothetical case, he would be required by law to report the matter to the Los Angeles County Department of Children's Services (DCS).

According to a July 27 entry in the diary kept by Rothman's former colleague, it's clear that Rothman was guiding Chandler in the plan. "Rothman wrote letter to Chandler advising him how to report child abuse without liability to parent," the entry reads. At this point, there still had been made no demands or formal accusations, only veiled assertions that had become intertwined with a fierce custody battle. On August 4, 1993, however, things became very clear. Chandler and his son met with Jackson and Pellicano in a suite at the Westwood Marquis Hotel. On seeing Jackson, says Pellicano, Chandler gave the singer an affectionate hug (a gesture, some say, that would seem to belie the dentist's suspicions that Jackson had molested his son), then reached into his pocket, pulled out Abrams's letter and began reading passages from it. When Chandler got to the parts about child molestation, the boy, says Pellicano, put his head down and then looked up at Jackson with a surprised expression, as if to say "I didn't say that." As the meeting broke up, Chandler pointed his finger at Jackson, says Pellicano, and warned "I'm going to ruin you."

At a meeting with Pellicano in Rothman's office later that evening, Chandler and Rothman made their demand - $20 million.

On August 13, there was another meeting in Rothman's office. Pellicano came back with a counteroffer -- a $350,000 screenwriting deal. Pellicano says he made the offer as a way to resolve the custody dispute and give Chandler an opportunity to spend more time with his son by working on a screenplay together. Chandler rejected the offer. Rothman made a counterdemand -- a deal for three screenplays or nothing -- which was spurned. In the diary of Rothman's ex-colleague, an August 24 entry reveals Chandler's disappointment: "I almost had a $20 million deal," he was overhear telling Rothman.

Before Chandler took control of his son, the only one making allegations against Jackson was Chandler himself -- the boy had never accused the singer of any wrongdoing. That changed one day in Chandler's Beverly Hills dental office.

In the presence of Chandler and Mark Torbiner, a dental anesthesiologist, the boy was administered the controversial drug sodium Amytal -- which some mistakenly believe is a truth serum. And it was after this session that the boy first made his charges against Jackson. A newsman at KCBS-TV, in L.A., reported on May 3 of this year that Chandler had used the drug on his son, but the dentist claimed he did so only to pull his son's tooth and that while under the drug's influence, the boy came out with allegations. Asked for this article about his use of the drug on the boy, Torbiner replied: "If I used it, it was for dental purposes."

Given the facts about sodium Amytal and a recent landmark case that involved the drug, the boy's allegations, say several medical experts, must be viewed as unreliable, if not highly questionable.

"It's a psychiatric medication that cannot be relied on to produce fact," says Dr. Resnick, the Cleveland psychiatrist. "People are very suggestible under it. People will say things under sodium Amytal that are blatantly untrue." Sodium Amytal is a barbiturate, an invasive drug that puts people in a hypnotic state when it's injected intravenously.

Primarily administered for the treatment of amnesia, it first came into use during World War II, on soldiers traumatized -- some into catatonic states -- by the horrors of war. Scientific studies done in 1952 debunked the drug as a truth serum and instead demonstrated its risks: False memories can be easily implanted in those under its influence. "It is quite possible to implant an idea through the mere asking of a question," says Resnick. But its effects are apparently even more insidious: "The idea can become their memory, and studies have shown that even when you tell them the truth, they will swear on a stack of Bibles that it happened," says Resnick.

Recently, the reliability of the drug became an issue in a high-profile trial in Napa County, California. After undergoing numerous therapy sessions, at least one of which included the use of sodium Amytal, 20-year-old Holly Ramona accused her father of molesting her as a child. Gary Ramona vehemently denied the charge and sued his daughter's therapist and the psychiatrist who had administered the drug. This past May, jurors sided with Gary Ramona, believing that the therapist and the psychiatrist may have reinforced memories that were false. Gary Ramona's was the first successful legal challenge to the so-called "repressed memory phenomenon" that has produced thousands of sexual-abuse allegations over the past decade.

As for Chandler's story about using the drug to sedate his son during a tooth extraction, that too seems dubious, in light of the drug's customary use. "It's absolutely a psychiatric drug," says Dr. Kenneth Gottlieb, a San Francisco psychiatrist who has administered sodium Amytal to amnesia patients. Dr. John Yagiela, the coordinator of the anesthesia and pain control department of UCLA's school of dentistry, adds, "It's unusual for it to be used [for pulling a tooth]. It makes no sense when better, safer alternatives are available. It would not be my choice."

Because of sodium Amytal's potential side effects, some doctors will administer it only in a hospital. "I would never want to use a drug that tampers with a person's unconscious unless there was no other drug available," says Gottlieb. "And I would not use it without resuscitating equipment, in case of allergic reaction, and only with an M.D. anesthesiologist present."

Chandler, it seems, did not follow these guidelines. He had the procedure performed on his son in his office, and he relied on the dental anesthesiologist Mark Torbiner for expertise. (It was Torbiner who'd introduced Chandler and Rothman in 1991, when Rothman needed dental work.)

The nature of Torbiner's practice appears to have made it highly successful. "He boasts that he has $100 a month overhead and $40,000 a month income," says Nylla Jones, a former patient of his. Torbiner doesn't have an office for seeing patients; rather, he travels to various dental offices around the city, where he administers anesthesia during procedures.

This magazine has learned that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is probing another aspect of Torbiner's business practices: He makes housecalls to administer drugs -- mostly morphine and Demerol -- not only postoperatively to his dental patients but also, it seems, to those suffering pain whose source has nothing to do with dental work. He arrives at the homes of his clients -- some of them celebrities -- carrying a kind of fishing-tackle box that contains drugs and syringes. At one time, the license plate on his Jaguar read "SLPYDOC." According to Jones, Torbiner charges $350 for a basic ten-to-twenty-minute visit. In what Jones describes as standard practice, when it's unclear how long Torbiner will need to stay, the client, anticipating the stupor that will soon set in, leaves a blank check for Torbiner to fill in with the appropriate amount.

Torbiner wasn't always successful. In 1989, he got caught in a lie and was asked to resign from UCLA, where he was an assistant professor at the school of dentistry. Torbiner had asked to take a half-day off so he could observe a religious holiday but was later found to have worked at a dental office instead.

A check of Torbiner's credentials with the Board of Dental Examiners indicates that he is restricted by law to administering drugs solely for dental-related procedures. But there is clear evidence that he has not abided by those restrictions. In fact, on at least eight occasions, Torbiner has given a general anesthetic to Barry Rothman, during hair-transplant procedures. Though normally a local anesthetic would be injected into the scalp, "Barry is so afraid of the pain," says Dr. James De Yarman, the San Diego physician who performed Rothman's transplants, "that [he] wanted to be put out completely." De Yarman said he was "amazed" to learn that Torbiner is a dentist, having assumed all along that he was an M.D.

In another instance, Torbiner came to the home of Nylla Jones, she says, and injected her with Demerol to help dull the pain that followed her appendectomy.

On August 16, three days after Chandler and Rothman rejected the $350,000 script deal, the situation came to a head. On behalf of June Chandler Schwartz, Michael Freeman notified Rothman that he would be filing papersituation came to a head. On behalf of June Chandler Schwartz, Michael Freeman notified Rothman that he would be filing papers early the next morning that would force Chandler to turn over the boy. Reacting quickly, Chandler took his son to Mathis Abrams, the psychiatrist who'd provided Rothman with his assessment of the hypothetical child-abuse situation. During a three-hour session, the boy alleged that Jackson had engaged in a sexual relationship with him. He talked of masturbation, kissing, fondling of nipples and oral sex.

The next step was inevitable. Abrams, who is required by law to report any such accusation to authorities, called a social worker at the Department of Children's Services, who in turn contacted the police. The full-scale investigation of Michael Jackson was about to begin.