1) Someone leaked to the L.A. Times that Arnold had fathered a child with a member of his household staff.

2) A list of his female employees was created.

3) Background checks were run on the female employees to identify those with children of ages fitting the relevant timeline. This revealed that Mildred was currently divorced and her son was born on 10/7/1997. The journalist would’ve then dug deeper into Mildred’s background, pulling the boy’s birth certificate and Mildred’s divorce records.

4) The boy’s birth certificate listed the father as the man Mildred Baena was married to at the time. Ok, this seems in line.

5) However, the divorce records revealed that Mildred and her husband separated less than three weeks after her son was born and, contradicting the birth certificate, indicate that the couple had no children. This contradiction, as well as the timing of the separation (likely when Mildred confessed her affair), is a huge red flag and would’ve made Mildred suspect number one.

6) Property records indicate Baena purchased a home last June in Bakersfield, California, about 100 miles from the Schwarzenegger home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, for $268,000. Journalists then surely descended in droves on Baena’s house.

Rent control hijinks are infamous in NYC, and there are many stories of tenants who continued to send their monthly rent checks in on time, despite the fact they’d been dead for a decade or more. How does this happen, you might ask? Well the answer is simple: “Grandma Smith” began renting her Greenwich Village apartment in 1969, and has consequently been paying a rent controlled $500 for an apartment which is now worth $2,000 on the rental “free market”. Eventually the “Smith family” had to put “Grandma Smith” in a convalescent home when she began getting lost on her walk back to her apartment from Sunday mass. But the Smith’s realized that Grandma’s rent-controlled apartment was a goldmine, and that they could rent it out to someone else for $1,500 (still a bargain in the non rent-controlled world) and pocket $1,000 a month in the process.

While examples like “Grandma Smith” aren’t the rule, they are far less the exception than you might think. More popular are living tenants who due to a new job, the addition of a bouncing baby boy/girl, or some other urban flight inspiration, move to the suburbs, but want to keep their rent-controlled apartment. These people rent out the apartment to a relative, friend, friend of a friend, or often times unrelated 3rd party, while sometimes living in an entirely different state, but continue to pay the landlord as if they are still living there. Their motivation for doing the extra work of collecting the rent check from the new tenant and sending their rent check to the landlord: the often huge difference between their rent-controlled bargain and their tenant’s rent.

While an investigation into this kind of tenant fraud goes on in both good and bad economic times, the current economic crunch has inspired landlords to more actively monitor their rent-controlled properties. The reason being if they can prove that the tenant on their lease, and/or whose name is on the rent checks they receive, is dead or living in New Jersey, they can evict the actual tenant and the pseudo tenant sending in the rental payments. This is where private investigators enter the picture, as they are retained to prove who exactly is living in their rent controlled apartments. And this particular business has been booming for PI’s working in New York City, as it’s well worth the landlord’s money to pay for evidence of rent control fraud. Once the “rentee” who’s been fraudulently enjoying the benefits of rent control is evicted, the landlord can begin charging a MUCH increased rent from that point forward. These landlords often make up the money they spent on the PI’s they hired within just a few months of the “uncontrolled” rent.

This is an interesting perspective on the subject from The New York Times.

Myth #1: I wear a trench coat and fedora.
While on a surveillance case, a private investigator should dress to blend in with the location. So if I’m tailing a Wall Street type during the work week, I may wear a suit. Or if I’m tailing someone on a weekend, I may wear jeans and a baseball cap. Although I do own a trench coat, it is has yet to be part of my “disguise”. Since I’ve never had a case to follow someone to a costume party, I can’t imagine a scenario where dressing like Dick Tracy would help me blend in with a crowd.

Myth #2: My days are full of car chases, shootouts and other suspenseful activities.
I wish my days were as exciting as Magnum’s, although I’m pretty happy to skip the shootouts. The reality is that most of my time is spent running background reports and doing computer surveillance and forensics, which doesn’t exactly put me in the line of fire. But when I am doing surveillance, a typical case involves sitting in a car for at least 3-4 hours waiting for the suspect to emerge from a building door. This can get immensely boring. And unlike cop shows on TV, I don’t have a partner keeping me company, which brings me to the next assumption…

Myth #3: I have a sidekick.
Unlike Sherlock Holmes, I don’t have a loyal sidekick who goes with me everywhere, ready to help me get out of trouble or crack a case. Wouldn’t that be nice! I usually work alone, but on rare occasions may work with another private investigator for a particularly tricky moving surveillance case.

Myth #4: It’s easy to follow someone.
If you’ve ever followed a friend’s car to a restaurant or their house, you know how easily you can lose someone in a car. Maybe they blaze through a yellow light, and you get stuck as it turns red. Or maybe a minivan sneaks in between your cars so you miss seeing a turn your friend makes. So if it’s hard enough to follow someone who wants you to follow them, imagine how difficult it can be to follow someone when you don’t want them to notice you.

Myth #5: I have a tricked out car.
The last thing a private investigator wants is to get made, so driving a flashy, recognizable car like Kit from Knightrider would be an incredibly bad idea. For my moving surveillance cases, I drive a basic, nondescript sedan. If I conduct moving surveillance on the same subject multiple times, then I will use different cars on each day.

Katherine Jackson

Pros: By all accounts, Katherine has a close relationship with her grandchildren and was named their guardian in Michael’s will. She also was awarded temporary guardianship of her grandchildren by a California judge, so the children are currently living with her.

Cons: She is 79 years old, which some may consider too old to raise adolescents and a young child. Her husband, Joe, has long been described by Michael as being emotionally and physically abusive.

Debbie Rowe

Pros: She is the biological mother of the two oldest children, and biological parents usually win custody unless if it is considered “detrimental to the children”.

Cons: She has had minimal contact with her children for nearly a decade and has publicly said she considered them to be Michael’s children, not hers. She has no biological ties to Blanket.

Since the three children have always lived together, a judge is unlikely to split them apart. That eliminates a scenario where Debbie is awarded custody of her biological children and Katherine is awarded custody of Blanket, which would not be in the best interest of the children. Even though Debbie is the biological parent of Prince Michael and Paris, she is practically a stranger to them.

The only shot Debbie has of winning custody is if she is able to prove either that Katherine’s age prevents her from properly taking care of the children or that Joe is physically and/or emotionally abusive, putting the children at risk. She could hire a private investigator to gather this evidence through surveillance or background research. Barring that, I think Katherine will be awarded custody of all three children.