Michael Jackson portrayed himself as an amimal lover - but his zoo was like something out of a horror movie.
The King of Pop was infactuated with animals, famously singing a song about his pet rat Ben as a child, and would take a 6ft boa constrictor called Muscles into the music studio.
But this fascination with nature spiralled out of control as the pop sensation started buying exotic creatures to house in his Neverland ranch in California.
Jackson had over 50 different species in his collection of at least 130 animals, including six giraffes, eight alligators, a bear, 20 exotic birds, three elephants, seven apes, four tigers, monkeys, snakes and lizards.
He spent millions of dollars acquiring them, but has been described as a "consumer of animals" who "treated them like toys that were easily replacable and often disposable".
In tonight's documentary, Ross Kemp is determined to find out how the animals were treated and discovers the fate of some of Jackson’s former pets is shrouded in mystery, scandal or tragedy.
One of his parrots was eaten by a boa constrictor who found a gap in the bird cage, while a llama named Snow White died after being viciously attacked by dogs.
Ross says: "For a man who spent much of his career accusing anyone who criticised him as ignorant, perhaps Jackson was at best ignorant of his animals best interests or at worse knew how to care for them properly, but in the end chose not to."
Bear in bumper car
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Ross take viewers on a journey across America in search of these exotic species and uncovers the truth behind what happened to these much beloved animals who called Neverland home for years.
He says: "A rich star's plaything and status symbol, Michael Jackson’s Zoo inspired a worldwide boom in the private ownership of exotic animals.
"This is a journey that will take me into the strange world of America’s private zoos and menageries and the often-cruel trade that supplies them."
With no official record of where the animals went and staff signing non-disclosure agreements banning them from speaking out, it proves a tough task.
He manages to speak to a former zoo trainer at the famous Californian ranch, including Mark Biancaniello, who was forced to retire while sustaining near fatal injuries in a car crash with two tiger cubs in the vehicle with him.
Mark describes his former boss as an exemplary owner of animals who would never abandon his pets, but Jackson left Neverland and all his animals behind four years before he died after being acquitted of child molestation charges.
"I think for the people that really knew Michael on a deeper level and saw his connection to the animals and everything there's no doubt the compassion and the care and the sensitivity that he had towards his animals," he says.
"I think that's the biggest legacy in my mind. I know that all the animals got great homes."
The Estate of Michael Jackson declined to comment, but it has previously been reported that a source close to the family believed the animals were cared for perfectly well.
Mark's favourite animal was a bear called Balloo, who he bottle fed as an infant and shared a bed with, before he grew to almost 7ft tall while weighing 650 pounds.
Named after the bear from The Jungle Book, Mark describes Balloo as "a fully grown bear who acted like a dog".
"He used to drive round in the golf cart with me. We’d drive by the theatre and get him an ice cream cone. We were in the bumper cars together," he explains.
"Picture this, a big bumper car room with fog machines going, Michael Jackson music blasting and Balloo sat right next to me in the bumper car."
Mark says Baloo would lick the icre cream cone while putting an arm around his shoulder - and it's been reported that Jackson wanted the bear to perform bizarre tricks that were unnatural and cruel.
Primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall, who visited Neverland when Jackson was living there, described the horrors she saw.
"There was a poor little bear in a sort of circular cage crying. It shouldn't have left its mother," she says. "People were bending over to stroke it. It was the most pathetic little thing. The whole situation was horrendous."
Tortured elephants
On the trail of the Thriller star's missing animals, Ross discovers that two of Jackson's elephants were initially acquired from a man in South Africa who was convicted of animal cruelty.
After getting his first elephant, Gypsy, as a gift from actress Elizabeth Taylor, the singer bought two infant elephants from the Kruger National Park called Ali and Baba.
The baby elephants were survivors of a cull in South Africa's biggest national park in the mid-1990s and they were bought by drug trafficker and convicted animal torturer, Riccardo Ghiazza, who
He absconded to South Africa from Italy where he was due to face time in prison on drugs offences, was convicted of animal abuse in 2003.
Marcelle Meredith, the head of South Africa’s NSPCA, told Ross: "He [Ghiazza] was a despicable person because of what he did to the animals he had. He was ruthless. Absolutely ruthless."
Amongst the techniques he employed to tame the animals was his use of the bullhook, a pole with a sharp hook on the end. Bull hooks are now banned in several American states.
Meredith continued: "While they were there, they would have been beaten with a bullhook. They would have been water deprived, they would have been food deprived. That way, they would have landed in order to tame them down, to send them to the States."
Two years before he bought the elephants, Jackson released 1995 hit Earth Song which included shots of dead elephants with tusks removed.
Exclusive footage taken inside Neverland shows Ali and Baba being trained with the use of bullhooks, rods with a sharp hook at the end. The bull hook, or ankus, has been banned in several American states, including California.
The elephant trainer, Josh, who asked to remain anonymous to protect his identity, used the instrument in the footage taken in Neverland - and now owns one of the pair, Baba, now aged 31.
He says the bull hook is supposed to be used as tool to guide rather than a weapon and is open over his regrets of elephant training practises in past.
"Back in those days, that was the way I was trained," he says. "But I was also trained that it's not supposed to be a weapon. Nothing makes anything OK, but this is stuff from years and years and years ago."
Jackson got rid of his other elepaht, Ali, because he was told the the cost of upkeep was going to be too great because he was a big bull.
Now aged 31, Ali is living in a zoo in Jacksonville, Florida, where he gets rewarded for everything he does but no behaviour if forced.
Dead giraffes
Jackson had a number of giraffes over the years, but they all met rather grisly fates.
The law intervened when the animal welfare standards were not up to scratch, as one of the giraffes was illegally imported and their pen was found to be far too small.
Jackson got a bigger enclosure for Jabbar the giraffe, but his inexperience in caring for wild animals casued danger as two of them almost burnt to death in a barn fire.
The singer's friend and personal portrait artist, David Nordahl, says: "Jabbar was killed in an accident. That was really really really sad the doors that came into the giraffe barn came loose and the door came round and I think broke his neck."
Four more were auctioned off before Jackson died to a woman named Freddie Hancock and her husband Tommy, who had no previous experience with wild animals.
Annie Sue, Princess, JJ and Rambo were originally housed in boat storage facility in the nothern Arizona desert - and a former employee claims Tommy hit the giraffes with a steel shovel.
The Hancocks eventually moved them to a piece of land on the outskirts of town, but JJ and Rambo both died in quick succession.
The owners insisted it was foul play, but former police officer Ben Jennett says there was no real shelter so the cold wind would whip through and freeze the animals.
"They just wanted to put the blame wherever they could rather than the fact they weren’t looking after the giraffes," he tells Ross.
Tommy Hancock has since passed away. Freddie was contacted for response to allegations but didn’t reply. She previously disputed claims the giraffes they were mistreated.
The remaining two giraffes were taken to Cher Anderson's ranch, which was purpose built with heaters and custom made barns to care specifically for the animals.
Cher says they arrived malnourished and Annie Sue died after five years at the age of around 28, while Princess stayed around a lot longer but passed away from West Nile Virus.
Until that point it was believed giraffes couldn’t catch it, so Cher sent messages out to zoos and in a way Princess' death saved lives of hundreds of giraffes.
Beaten Bubbles
The most famous of all of Jackson's animals was definitely Bubbles the chimpanzee.
After buying Bubbles from an animal trainer for $65,000 in the 1980s, the pair became almost inseparable as Jackson took Bubbles on his Bad world tour.
Initially staying in the Jackson family home in LA, Bubbles was then moved to live side-by-side with his famous owner at Neverland.
Bubbles lived a remarkably different life to any other chimp, sleeping in a crib in his owner's room, eating sweets in the cinema and reportedly throwing his poo around the mansion.
Primatologist Jane Goodall claims Bubbles 'was hit across the room' in order to discipline him - and says Jackson had a smile on his face when she showed him videos of primates in lab cages and circuses.
Telling Ross how she reprimanded Jackson about his treatment of animals, Goodall says: "He looked at me and [asked] ‘you wouldn't approve of a chimp being hit over the head, would you?’ I said, ‘No, Michael, you know I wouldn't.’
"Bubbles was hit when he did something wrong. Michael said that once he was hit across the room. I said, ‘Well, Michael, did you think that was all right?’ And he said, ‘No, not really.’"
Gooddall says her advice can't have been listened too and Bubbles was moved to a sanctuary in Florida before Jackson died and replaced with an infant chimp, also called Bubbles.
The chimpanzee, who is now 39 and has been living at the Centre for Great Apes in Florida since 2004, has drastically changed in appearance with his facial features becoming flatter and his size increasing greatly.
Searching for Michael Jackson’s Zoo with Ross Kemp airs tonight on ITV at 9pm
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