Comedian Jay Leno took the witness stand in Michael Jackson's child molestation trial today and told of "suspicious" telephone calls from the singer's accuser.
The host of "The Tonight Show," the top-rated US late night TV show, said he received the calls on his answering machine in 2000.
Leno said he found them to be excessively flattering coming from a young boy suffering from cancer, adding that they seemed to be scripted. "The voicemails were, 'Oh I'm a big fan, you're the greatest.' They were overly effusive for a 10-year-old," Leno said.
"It seemed a little bit unusual. I'm a comedian in my mid-fifties. I'm not Batman."
Leno's testimony came as Jackson's lawyers prepared to rest their case after weeks of testimony intended to portray the mother of Jackson's accuser as a grifter who routinely flattered celebrities, targeted them for money and coached her son to lie about 2003 molestation charges.
"It sounded suspicious just when you have a young person who is so effusive," Leno said. Leno said he phoned children in hospital seven or eight times a week, the calls being arranged by charities such as Make a Wish. He recalled the one conversation he had with Jackson's accuser, a recovering cancer patient, saying, "I believe I spoke to (the boy). I think I spoke possibly to his brother, and I think I spoke to his mother."
Jackson is charged with molesting the boy, then 13, at Neverland Valley Ranch in February or March of 2003, plying him with alcohol and conspiring to commit child abduction, false imprisonment and extortion. He faces more than two decades in prison if convicted.