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tv   Nightline  ABC  October 3, 2013 12:35am-1:05am EDT

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to the oklahoma plains ♪ ♪ know that when the sun goes down it will come back 'round again ♪ ♪ land that i love america ♪ ♪ ooh ooh ooh whoa-oh land that i love ♪ ♪ america mmm hmm ooh ♪
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tonight on "nightline" -- who is your daddy? look at those baby blues. mia farrow says her only biological son with woody allen could belong to frank sinatra, we have the tumultuous relationships of major league star crossed loverlovers. who was responsible for michael jackson's death, a blow to the family as the verdict is in and jurors speak out. we take you inside their decision. >> flying high. they're not just shaking pom-poms, the cheerleaders are bending the laws of physics and blowing our minds. bringing the side lines to the headlines. >> announcer: keep it right headlines. >> announcer: keep it right here, america, "i'm terry mcauliffe, candidate for governor, and sponsored this ad." these e birth control pills.
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good evening. thank you for joining us. tonight, new questions about one of hollywood's most famous and famously fractured families. is the young man that oscar winning director woody allen believed for 25 years to be his son really the biological child of frank sinatra. maybe according to his mother, actress mia farrow is an explosive vanity fair interview out today. is this handsome 25-year-old frank sinatra's love child, the paternity guessing game that has everyone doing a double take. rowan farrow looks like his mother, mia farrow. >> very much mia, porcelain skin, blond hair. >> reporter: not the spitting image of woody allen the man
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they thought was his father until today. with one word in a bombshell van team fair interview, farrow unleashed a tidal wave of speculation. >> i asked mia point blank is rowan frank sinatra's son. >> reporter: what was her answer, face to face? >> possibly. >> reporter: heap does bear more than a passing resemblance to old blue eyes, frank sinatra and goes beyond his looks. >> he was singing a song, it was just, the way he moved, the way he sort of was at ease and the way he sort of threw the phrases out there. i thought, wow. you know, this is pretty professional sounding and it -- it isn't that far away. >> reporter: like a naturally gifted, genetically gifted singer. sinatra, the man farrow calls the love of her life was one of the glamorous stars of his day, behind some of the most iconic songs of his generation. ♪ ♪ i did it my way ♪
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>> reporter: when they melt, mia was the 19-year-old star of peyton place. >> you make it sound so casual. >> reporter: and he was 30 years her elder. after a year and a half of marriage, sinatra served farrow divorce papers while she was shooting "rosemary's baby." but the love affair report lead didn't end there. >> she and frank had never completely broken up. they had remained close throughout the years on and off. and that i asked her, is he the great love of your life? she said, yes. >> reporter: they were so close that rowan was treated like family by the sinatras. >> i also did e-mail nancy sinatra jr. and she was very forthcoming in how much they love rowan and kid himconsider member of the family. he told me that nancy sinatra sr. cooked for him and fussed over him they really do kid him a member of their family. >> reporter: woody allen the
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other legendary man in miaa love life. over 12 years they raised a brood of children together. only one rowan was thought to be his biological child. she was his artistic muse in a dozen films including "hannah and her sisters." that collaboration came crashing down during the filming of "husbands and wives." >> i thought it was a good idea to have a baby. >> i don't think it is such a good idea. >> reporter: when mia discovered lewd polaroids of her adopted daughter on allen's mantle. it became a prolonged tabloid obsession. in the midst of the storm, mia went on the set of "husbands and wives" to film the final scene. >> you were so beautiful in the black dress, really. >> didn't do that. >> reporter: the breakup hit the entire family hard. farrow had raised nine biological and adopted children. many with severe disabilities,
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who according to orth were affected. >> the soon-yi revelations were devastating, not a single one said it was anything less than utterly shocking. here he was the de facto dad in the family for a long, long time. the fact that suddenly their sister was sort of betrayed the mother and rand off with woody and he didn't act like anything had gone wrong. >> reporter: rowan was 4 years old at the time and always had a difficult relationship with his father. >> rowan and woody were oil and water. >> reporter: a highly gifted prodigy. >> rowan went to college at 11 years old. mia drove him every day, 90 minutes each way. and she told me that she herself got a college education because he was so excited about going to school that he would tell her the whole everything that he had
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learned during the day on the way home. >> reporter: he went on to graduate yale law school at 21. and won ape prestigious rhode scholarship. 20 years after mia discovered woody's relationship with soon-yi, rowan is estranged from woody who married his sister. last year, rowan tweeted happy father's day, or in my family, happy brother-in-law's day. and mia retweeted with a simple word, boom. orth interviewed another of their children, adopted daughter dylan. now 28, dylan speaks about allegations that woody allen sexually abused her in their attic when she was 7. allegations that led to a heated custody battle and allen's strong denial. >> this is totally false and out rain just allegations have sickened me so that i felt that for sake of all three children, i must try to remove
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them from an atmosphere so unhealthy it can surely leave irreparable scars. >> according to what dylan told me she is terrified of woody allen to this day and can't bear to look at one of his pictures in a magazine. >> reporter: did she tell you she was molested in the atattic. >> she told me she remembers what happened in the attic, what she was wearing when she got there and what wasn't on when she left. she told me my advice to the 7-year-old dylan today would be, be brave, testify. >> reporter: she told you explicitly she had been mope le -- molested, not just to feel uncomfortable. >> told me, very uncomfortable. >> he continues to categorically deny the charges and point out at the time, the doctors at sexual abuse clinic at yale, conducted an investigation, interviewing dylan, parents and nannies and concluded in their
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opinion, dylan was not sexually abused. >> is there a chance that dylan was a confused child? >> two people know what happened in the attic. woody allen and dylan, the only two. i don't know. i wasn't there. >> reporter: criminal charges were never filed against woody allen. the state's attorney issued a statement saying he did not want to risk exposing dylan who he called the child victim to the process. allen did lose his custody battle. and was allowed supervised visits with his kids. >> woody went through four legal proceedings to get visitation rights. and more visitation rights with both rowan and dylan. rowan did not want to have anything to do with it. >> reporter: we may never know of what happened between woody allen and his kids. what we do know they are seemingly devoted to their mother. >> mia did a very unusual thing. she took four biological children and 10 adopted children some with very severe physical
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and emotional difficulties and she was able to meld them into a whole family. of at eight that i talked to, they all said that they were very proud to be part of that family. that they considered themselves cool and unique. >> rowan and mia are in fact extremely close and travel the globe to crusade for humanitarian causes together. as to the identity of his father. rowan responded to the van team fair article today with a wink. listen, he wrote, we are all possibly frank sinatra's son. >> the intrigue continues via tweet. coming up next for us, the michael jackson wrongful death trial against aeg live, did the final decision bring peace and money to his family? >> announcer: abc news "nightline," brought to you by macy's. ♪
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years have passed, but the questions remained, after michael jackson died of an overdose just before he began a massive and massively lucrative world tour his family and the concert promoters want to war. were jackson's personal demons responsible for keeping him hooked on powerful drugs, or was it the company looking to profit off of him? here is abc's david wright. >> the clerk to read the verdict. >> reporter: a verdict five months in the making. ♪ >> reporter: over what happened behind the scenes during these rehearsals. ♪ king of pop getting set for what was to have been his comeback
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tour, 2009. ♪ why i ♪ >> reporter: michael jackson's last dance. he died days after this. >> katherine jackson vs. aeg live. >> reporter: the question, did concert promoter aeg live bear any responsibility for michael jackson's death? >> did aeg live hire dr. conrad murray? answer, yes. >> my name is greg. juror six. >> reporter: the jury ruled in favor of aeg. >> as far as the case, this was a difficult decision for us to make. >> reporter: the foreman acknowledging it might not go down well with the king of pop's fans. >> we reached a verdict that we understand not everybody is going to agree with. it has been an exhausting five months and an extremely stressful last three or four days. >> reporter: this civil case, a wrongful death lawsuit following up on the criminal case. >> we, the jury find the
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defendant, conrad robert murray guilty. >> reporter: in 2011, a different jury found jackson's doctor guilty of involuntary manslaughter. he is now behind bars. it was conrad murray who administered the fatal dose of hospital grade anesthetic propofol killing the pop star. the question in this case who was murray working for? jackson or aeg live? [ indiscernible ] >> reporter: attorneys for katherine jackson, mike cam a-- mike cam's mother and three children. they argue that they agreed to pay murray's salary and murray secretly in debt was under pressure to perform to get jackson ready for the tour. >> we got to get him. if heave do doesn't perform i d get paid. a con flflict of interest. >> reporter: the jackson family lawyer said this e-mail proved otherwise in it an aeg producer
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expressed frustration with murray allowing jacks on to miss rehearsals. >> remind dr. murray, aeg, not mj -- >> reporter: top aeg executives back pedalled furiously. >> i don't remember. >> i don't remember. >> i don't remember. >> all they would say, truthfully is i don't remember the e-mail. he said he was getting hundreds of e-mails a day. >> reporter: aeg any lawyer argued murray was jackson any private doctor. only murray and his famous patient had any idea about the nature of his treatment behind closed doors. >> aeg live never would have agreed to finance this tour if it knew mr. jackson was playing russian roulette every night in his bedroom. >> reporter: aeg argued michael jackson alone is to blame for what happened. >> a grown man, he is response bum for his own health. certainly his own health care. and he is response bum for his own choices.
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no matter how bad those choices might ultimately prove to be. >> reporter: not many cases come with a top 40 sound track. the jury in this one watching performances from the jackson five on down to thriller. ♪ ♪ thriller night ♪ >> reporter: a remindeder to th jury of the huge legacy at stake, the damages sought by the jackson family, $1.5 billion, representing their estimate of what jackson might have earned had he survived. the jury also watched touching home videos of michael jackson, the family man. an obvious tug at the heart strings, the children whom michael jackson protected, whom the world really only met at his funeral. >> and i just want to say i love him so much. >> reporter: those children were among the plaintiffs here. in fact the pressure of the trial so much on young paris jackson sheep had to be rushed
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to the hospital earlier this year after taking 20 motrin and slashing her arm with a kitchen knife. tonight the jurors acknowledged it was not an easy verdict. >> when i first entered the jury room after five months of being around each other and not being able to talk about it at all, we just felt look we had to let off some steam. so we spent the first several hours just letting off steam, talking about things. and i think that was important for us to do. and we took a vote on question number one. then weep started discussing it. question one took us a long time. >> reporter: question one on the jury form, did aeg hire dr. conrad murray? on that question alone, yes. unanimous for the jackson family. a no vote would have thrown the case out. the second question -- equally important -- was murray fit for the job? in other word should aeg have known he would screw up? >> votes changed. i would say, three, four times
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before we were finally able to come to the tally, tally of the volt was 10-2. 10-2 in favor of aeg. >> okay. you are discharged. >> reporter: which meant the jacksons get nothing, not a dime from aeg live. >> of course, they're not happy with the result as the it stand now. we will be exploring all options legally. >> reporter: its this a one off type of case or larger implications for the entertainment industry, medical industry, whatever? >> i think this is a one off case in the civil. in the criminal case, the prosecution of murray, i think that had large implications. >> will there be more michael jackson trials to come. >> a day doesn't go by, e-mails, people claiming to be mike cam's wife, lover, baby mama. this, he's, literally larger than life. even in death. and that spurs litigation. >> reporter: barring an appeal, the fact that the jury ended up
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tlek o throwing out this lawsuit may help dampen down future litigati litigation. after five months michael jackson's legacy may be ready to move out of the courtroom. the king of pop's fans more forgiving than any jury. i'm david wright, "nightline," los angeles. >> thanks to david. coming up next, bring it on. could you focus on a game while these cheerleaders are doing this?
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and now, it's time for the "feed frenzy" so pay attention to where you are going. so you don't get run over by a train like this woman almost did north of london this past month. in a video released by british transport, avoiding a disaster. signals and barricades. police are seeking her identity. you might want to pay attention to whom you are texting. in new jersey, police say a man
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accidentally sent a text to a detective about the potential purchase of four ounces of marijuana. which set about a chain of event that led to his arrest. he has been released but now faces several charges in court next week. >> if you are heading to a football game, you might have a hard time paying attention to the players. with stunts like these from the cheerleaders on the sidelines. it's called stuntfest. an unofficial event after the college nationals where women and men defy gravity and danger. appearing more like extreme athletes than adoring sideline fans. next time you are out for a hike, pay attention to your surroundings. you might run into big foot. yep, you are looking at what eriksson project is the latest video evidce of the furry 8-foot-tall and some stubbornly believe fictitious animal. ser s one could be up to 4,000 sasquatches in north america. >> that explains a lot.

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