But Schaffel, I am told, is nervous that the Santa Barbara County district attorney has other plans for him, like possibly an indictment for violating the rights of the family involved in the case.

The mother in the family has told the D.A. that Jackson — through Schaffel and his intermediaries — held them hostage and kept them from leaving Neverland.

In the last week, Schaffel also received some kind of mysterious visit, he has told friends, from the Internal Revenue Service.

But District Attorney Tom Sneddon‘s efforts to prove this part of his case may bear no fruit. Schaffel has witnesses — including actor Chris Tucker and a woman identified as Tucker’s girlfriend — that the family was free to come and go and do whatever they wanted.

Schaffel will also be able to count on testimony from two Jackson aides, Frank Tyson(Cascio) and Vinnie Amen, who will recount in detail their activities concerning the “minding” of the family for Schaffel.

Both Tyson and Amen are said to have taken copious notes and kept lots of detailed records to prove that the mother of Jackson’s 13-year-old accuser was an opportunist who didn’t want to leave Jackson’s world, rather than the other way around.

So far, subpoenas have not reached Schaffel, Tyson or Amen.

Yet another witness in this part of the case would be Jackson’s former manager, Dieter Wiesner, who dealt with the family at Neverland before Schaffel, Tyson and Amen took over.

Wiesner, who is German and can’t be compelled to answer a subpoena, had a contentious relationship with the mother for about 10 days after she and her family were exposed to the world on the TV special “Living with Michael Jackson.” The details of their conflict — during which time Jackson was absent — could be more interesting than the rest of the case.

Meantime, one person who would testify if called is the mother of the now 23-year-old young man who was Jackson’s first accuser. She, her husband and her former husband all received part of the $20 million settlement Jackson reached with her son in 1994.

Sadly, according to insiders, the mother has been denied access to her son for the last 10 years and has had no communication with him. She is said to blame her ex-husband, who’s benefited the most since the settlement, with luxury homes in Manhattan and in the Hamptons.

A family friend told me: “The father has brain-washed him. Can you imagine a son not seeing his mother all this time?”

The boy, I can verify, goes to college and takes classes, ironically, in the music business. He lives a couple of blocks from his father, a former dentist and aspiring screenwriter who instigated the case a decade ago.

But even 10 years later, the question remains: What kind of witness would the young man make?

“He has everything to lose,” said one source close to the case.

Grand juries have no lawyers present for cross-examination, but regular trials do.

In court, the boy and his family members could be grilled about Mary Fischer‘s 1994 article in GQ called “Who Framed Michael Jackson?”

In it Fischer suggests that the boy’s father and stepfather conspired to shake Jackson down and concocted the accusation. Fischer wrote of the boy being drugged to elicit his complaint against Jackson, and of tape recordings between the two men in which they discussed their plans. Fischer, I suppose, could be called to testify as well.