Michael Jackson’s mega hit, ‘Billie Jean’, recounts the tale of a woman who insists the singer fathered her new-born son, a claim he emphatically denies throughout the track.

Released in 1983, the musical juggernaut propelled his ‘Thriller’ album to the top of the charts and spearheaded a sequence of commercial successes that ultimately resulted in Jackson’s 1982 album becoming the highest selling record of all time. Ironically, little did he know that the single’s remarkable success would also arouse a whole host of crazed fans and their fanatical behaviour continued to torment him. Life imitated art as Michael was subsequently pursued, with several making sexual assault and paternity claims against him in court.

However, the most persistent claims were those made by Lavon Powlis, or Lavon Muhammad, or Gabriella Jamilla, or as she would prefer to be called ‘Billie Jean Jackson’. A well-documented stalker of the King of Pop, who made several bombshell claims against the artist, including that they had a 6 yearlong affair, were secretly engaged and named him in a 150 million dollar triple paternity lawsuit.

As he pleaded in his tormented track, ‘Billie Jean’, “be careful of what you do, because the lie becomes the truth”, this is the tale of Michael Jackson’s real-life ‘Billie Jean’ nightmare, that continued to haunt him even beyond his death.

It was August 14th, 1987, and Michael Jackson was just about to release his much anticipated follow up to his ‘Thriller’ album, ‘Bad’, when Lavon Powlis first came to public attention. Filing a 150-million-dollar paternity lawsuit against the pop singer, Powlis declared Michael Jackson as the father of her three children, and he was required to pay child support as well as tens of millions to support her as the mother.

The then-39-year-old Lavon Powlis, who demanded that the court call her “Billie Jean Jackson” after legally changing her name, claimed that she had been in a relationship with the entertainer, and they even got engaged after having their three children.

She said she first met Jackson in 1975, when she was living in New York city, after writing him letters and telling him: “I have always been in love with him… and I wanted to meet him”. The unemployed legal secretary said he then invited her out to LA and their children were conceived in a blue Rolls Royce parked in front of the singers suburban Los Angeles home. “Michael asked me to marry him on September 13th, 1985. I said yes, of course.” Since then, Powlis said “family feuds” have delayed the wedding.

Asserting that she was in fact the inspiration for Jackson’s hit song, ‘Billie Jean’, Michael’s alleged fiancée sought legal action after the musician failed to pay support for the three children she said he admitted fathering, which included then five-year-old twins — a girl and a boy — and a 11-year-old son. She said she waited to file the lawsuit “because Michael and I were going to get married and take care of it quietly.” But later stated, “Michael got me pregnant and I want Michael to pay for it”.

The claims were called “ridiculous and preposterous,” by Jacksons publicist, Lee Solters, with several newspapers reporting that a spokesman for a state welfare agency revealed that Powlis has at least twice named other notable people as the children’s father but never filed a paternity lawsuit. The agency took custody of the children after the mother left two of them alone at a Black Muslim mosque in Chicago and the children were at the time living with relatives in New York City.

However, this wasn’t Jackson’s first legal run in with the “Billie Jean” imitator. As during the paternity lawsuit, it was made known in court that Powlis had been harassing Jackson for over four years now. Suffering from delusions and believing she was engaged to marry Jackson, Powlis represented herself as his fiancée and instructed clerks at fashionable Ventura Boulevard boutiques to bill him for clothing she intended to purchase. She would also persistently loiter near Jackson’s secluded estate in Encino. The situation grew so bad in May, 1986, Powlis was sentenced to 36 months’ probation after being convicted of two misdemeanour counts of trespassing and at the same time, Michael Jackson also obtained a restraining order barring her from coming within 100 yards of his Los Angeles home.

However, in September 1986, she was sentenced to 52 days in jail and two years’ probation after she was convicted of trespassing Jackson’s estate yet again.

In January 1988, 5 months after filing her bombshell 150-million-dollar paternity lawsuit against Michael Jackson, Lavon Powlis’s case was swiftly dismissed by the judge due to a lack of evidence. However, a 41-year-old Powlis, now cited as Lavon Muhammed, found herself back in court again later that year, when she violated the terms of her 1986 restraining order. In August, Powlis tried unsuccessfully to purchase a wedding gown by having it billed to Jackson, and in December billed $145 in medical expenses to the singer. She pleaded innocent to eight misdemeanour charges, which, yet again, included trespassing after she was arrested at 3 am with a bottle of champagne in Jackson’s Encino back yard having just scaled a 5-foot wall.

Powlis’s lawyer predicted that the jail sentence would not deter Powlis from returning to Jackson’s property after she is released. “She feels like Michael wants her on the property, that she’s supposed to be there,” the lawyer said. Therefore, the judge offered to send Powlis for a mental evaluation in exchange for a lighter sentence, but she refused. “I don’t require mental health care sir” she said declining any treatment. Therefore, she was found to be guilty and was sentenced to 2 and a half years in prison.

To drive home his point, the Los Angeles Municipal Court Judge quoted lyrics from a Jackson song while sentencing Powlis. Referring to the song ‘Leave Me Alone’, with the chorus saying, ‘so just leave me alone girl, just stop dogging me girl’. “You listen to the chorus of that song and you listen to those words” the judge said.

However, this wouldn’t be the last of Michael Jackson’s ordeal, as Lavon Powlis, or Gabriella Jamilla Jackson as she was referred to in court papers from 1995, was sentenced to 99 days in jail after she pleaded no contest to trespassing at the King of Pop’s Encino home on three separate occasions, each time claiming to be Michael Jackson’s wife. The now Santa Barbara resident was also ordered as part of the sentence to not telephone, follow, threaten, strike or make any physical contact with the singer or his family members.

As late as 2008, the then 60-year-old Lavon Powlis was now making claims in court papers that she was the mother of Michael Jackson’s 6-year-old son, “Blanket”, and was suing the singer for partial custody and child support to the tune of one billion dollars, a sum capitalized in the court documents. In addition to one billion dollars, Powlis was also asking for visits with Blanket on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, as well as a say in his education. In court, it was revealed that Powlis was yet again arrested for attempting to scale the fence at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch after she demanded to be let in, claiming to be Jackson’s wife.

In November 2009, several months after Michael Jackson’s untimely death, Lavon Powlis went to court for this claim. “What proof can you show me you’re the mother?” said the judge. “I was pregnant, and Michael took him,” Powlis said. “If we took DNA tests, that would prove it.” “I’m the mother,” she said. “I’m Michael’s wife. There was a marriage … on May 5, 1986… I don’t want to tell you in open court about it because it sounds like a miracle. Michael sings to me on his album.” In tears Powlis stated in court, “they stalked me. The police would threaten me. Michael’s family threatened me and had me arrested.”

The judge declared she hadn’t shown him a “biological connection” to Blanket, denied her petition the court and subsequently suggested she seek psychiatric help. Powlis reportedly stood silently for a moment, absorbing the news that her moment in the sun was over. The light in her eyes went out. She had lost more than a billion dollars.