No signs of captivity

Jackson is accused of 10 counts, including conspiring to falsely imprison the 13-year-old cancer survivor and his family at Neverland, giving the child alcohol to weaken his defenses, and repeatedly molesting him in February and March 2003.

Pryor's testimony, at one point, appeared to distance Jackson from the boy during the period that he is accused of molesting him. The mother, according to Pryor, complained to her in a March 2003 phone conversation that Jackson's aides would not let them near the singer, "because the children tugged at his heartstrings."

The mother previously testified that she tried to slip Pryor clues that she was being held captive at Neverland, but she believed her phone conversations were being monitored by Jackson and his alleged co-conspirators.

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"Did [she] ever tell you that Michael Jackson falsely imprisoned her family?" Mesereau asked Pryor.

"No," Pryor said.

"Did she ever tell you that Michael Jackson was involved in a conspiracy to commit crimes against her family?" Mesereau asked the witness.

"Absolutely not."

Pryor also testified that the mother never mentioned that while she was allegedly in captivity, she had been ferried to shopping trips, salon visits, a dental appointment for her children, and that she left Neverland on occasion to stay with her boyfriend in Los Angeles, leaving her children behind.

Pryor said her final phone conversation with the mother was in March 2003, shortly before the family's leaving Neverland for good.

When asked by the defense if the mother ever mentioned in that conversation that she was trying to escape Neverland, Pryor laughed and then apologized as she said, "No."

"Why are you smiling?" Mesereau asked the witness.

"I mean, it's Neverland," Pryor said. "I don't know who would try to escape."

Jurors see Neverland

Pryor testified that she "turned into a child" whenever she visited Jackson's sprawling 2,700-acre ranch, featuring an amusement park, full-size theater, video arcade, candy shop, water fort, and zoo.

And although the judge previously denied a defense request to take jurors on a viewing of the alleged crime scene, he did allow them to watch a 19-minute videotape Thursday, which gave them a virtual tour of Jackson's palatial home.

Prosecutor Sneddon unsuccessfully argued that the professionally produced video was simply a "fluff piece," featuring "propaganda" such as love notes from Jackson's son, Prince, scribbled on a chalkboard, and boxes of fan mail sitting in an office.

The film began with a shot of the stone-and-wood gates of Neverland opening up.

Jackson's Santa Ynez Valley property resembled a Disneyland-style theme park, with a red train that circled the well-manicured topiary-filled estate, a giant zoo with elephants and giraffes, and a main square area, lit up at night with sparkling white lights.

As the camera approached the main house, a line of maids in pressed black-and-white uniforms smiled in unison at the front steps.

In Jackson's state-of-the-art kitchen, chefs in toques were busy preparing meals. A library was filled with hundreds of books on a variety of topics — film, music, art, history, child rearing.

Oil portraits of Jackson among smiling children in Biblical-like scenes were hanging in several rooms. Over the dining room table was a bright, idealized portrait of the singer, in his signature red blouse and black cigarette pants, holding hands with a multicultural parade of boys and girls who appeared to be following him down a verdant path, like the flock to the Pied Piper.

Over Jackson's bed, jurors may have caught a brief glimpse of an artist's re-imagining of the Last Supper, in which Jesus fairly resembles the Gloved One.

The accuser's mother testified that there were no clocks at Neverland, making her alleged false imprisonment all the more stressful and confusing to her.

The heart of the film's evidentiary value appeared to be the images of about two dozen clocks in all shapes and sizes, present in guest rooms, main rooms, and affixed throughout the grounds of Jackson's childlike fantasyland.