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By ANA Reporter 
12h ago
PRETORIA – Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch was sold to billionaire businessman Ron Burkle for $ 22 million.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Burkle, co-founder of the investment firm Yucaipa Companies, was a partner of the late pop star.
WSLS News writes that the property’s initial sales price was $ 100 million in 2016, then dropped to $ 67 million a year later.
The property in Los Olivos, California, was the home of the late King of Pop from 1987 until the time of his death in June 2009.
Jackson bought the ranch for almost $ 19.5 million and named it Neverland, a fictional place where Peter Pan, Tinker Bell, Captain Hook, and some other mythical beings and creatures live.
He converted the ranch into an entertainment complex, built a zoo, railroad, and theme park rides, and regularly used the property to entertain the children.
According to the BBC, in the 1990s and 2000s, Neverland became the focus of various investigations into allegations of child sexual assault against Jackson.
In 1993, Los Angeles dentist and screenwriter Evan Chandler publicly accused Jackson of sexually abusing his 13-year-old son at the ranch.
But in court, Jackson denied allegations that he had used Neverland as a fantasy world to groom young children, the BBC reports, and in 2005 he was acquitted.
The BBC reports that Jackson never returned to Neverland. After four years, in June 2009, he died in another Los Angeles home after suffering cardiac arrest induced by a drug overdose.
In 2011, Jackson’s personal physician, Conrad Murray, was charged with giving the pop singer the fatal dose and was found guilty of manslaughter.
The doctor was sentenced to four years in prison, but was released after two years in October 2013.
BBC reports that Neverland has been renamed Sycamore Valley Ranch and has undergone extensive remodeling since Jackson’s death.
– African News Agency (ANA); Edited by Yaron Blecher
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