Dispute between auction house and heirs leaves future of 12 previously unreleased Michael Jackson tracks unclear
Cassette tapes found in December will likely go for upwards of $100,000 — but their buyer won’t be able to play them in public
Just like a B-grade TV detective show, it all began with a retired cop opening the door of an abandoned storage room. It happened in December, when 56-year-old former highway patrol officer Gregg Musgrove visited a storage space that his business associate had just bought in Van Nuys, a northern Los Angeles neighborhood. He had gone to check out its contents, to see if it held some hidden treasure. And oh, but it did. Musgrove came face to face with a thrifter’s fantasy: objects that had belonged to Michael Jackson himself. The icing on the cake was a handful of cassette tapes with a dozen unreleased songs by the singer, who died in 2009. The retired law enforcement agent told industry press about his trip to the storage room, which had belonged to music producer Bryan Loren, and word of the tapes, which date from between 1989 and 1991, made the news. Now the plot has thickened, with a dispute over the tracks that could end up in court.
