“Billie Jean Wasn’t His Lover—But She Wouldn’t Go Away”: Inside the Bizarre Paternity Claims and Stalking Case That Followed Michael Jackson for Decades
Few songs in pop history have inspired as much speculation as Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” Its story of a woman insisting that a superstar fathered her child sounded so specific that listeners naturally wondered whether Billie Jean really existed. Decades later, one woman became publicly associated with that nightmare in an extraordinary series of lawsuits, trespassing cases and paternity claims. Her name was Lavon Powlis, also reported as Lavon A. Muhammad and later Gabriella Jamilla Jackson; she repeatedly called herself “Billie Jean Jackson.”
One important fact must come first: there is no reliable evidence that Powlis was literally the woman who inspired the 1983 song. Jackson wrote in his 1988 autobiography Moonwalk that there was no single “real Billie Jean”; he described the character as a composite inspired by women who made paternity claims involving his brothers. A Los Angeles prosecutor likewise said in 1988 that Jackson had never met Muhammad and that she was not the song’s inspiration. Biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli later described a separate, unidentified female fan who allegedly sent Jackson disturbing letters and claimed he fathered one of her twins, but that woman has never been conclusively established as Powlis.
What is documented is strange enough. In August 1987, Powlis filed a staggering $150 million paternity lawsuit in Cook County, Illinois, alleging Jackson fathered her three children—an 11-year-old boy and 5-year-old twins. She demanded what amounted to $50 million per child. She claimed she and Jackson had sexual encounters in 1975 and 1981 and even alleged that the children had been conceived in a blue Rolls-Royce outside Jackson’s Los Angeles-area home. Jackson’s publicist called the accusations “ridiculous and preposterous.”
The children’s circumstances made the story considerably darker. The Associated Press reported through The Washington Post that the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services had custody of the children after two had allegedly been left alone at a Chicago mosque. A department spokesman also said Powlis had previously identified other well-known men as possible fathers. The $150 million case was eventually dismissed.
Meanwhile, the conflict had already moved beyond lawsuits. Powlis/Muhammad had been convicted of trespassing on the Jackson family’s Encino property in 1986. In February 1988 she returned despite court restrictions and was discovered in Jackson’s backyard at approximately 3 a.m. carrying a bottle of champagne. She subsequently received a 303-day jail sentence for violating probation. Her public defender told the Los Angeles Times that she sincerely believed she was Jackson’s fiancée; both her lawyer and prosecutors described her beliefs regarding Jackson as delusional.
The behavior persisted. In December 1988, prosecutors said she had spent years loitering near Jackson’s residence, representing herself as his wife and attempting to have purchases at expensive boutiques billed to him. In January 1989, after convictions on eight misdemeanor counts, including trespassing and violating a court order, she was sentenced to roughly 2½ years in county jail. Years later, in 1996, authorities described her as a convicted stalker and imposed another probation order keeping her at least 500 yards from Jackson’s residences and business.
The claims remarkably continued into the next generation. In 2008, a woman identifying herself as Billie Jean Jackson sought visitation with Jackson’s youngest son, Prince Michael II, commonly known as Blanket, and demanded $1 billion in support. After Jackson’s death, she pursued custody, but a judge found that she had not established a biological connection to the child.
In 2026, Powlis’ daughter La Nej Garrison publicly discussed the family’s experience in an extensive interview. Garrison said she spent portions of childhood in foster care beginning at age three and entered it permanently at seven. She also said she knew the biological father of the twins and that it was not Michael Jackson. Most significantly, Garrison described her mother as having struggled seriously with mental illness and recalled visiting her in psychiatric institutions. Those statements are Garrison’s firsthand recollections rather than an independently published medical diagnosis, but they provide a profoundly human dimension to a story once treated largely as celebrity tabloid spectacle.
Ultimately, Lavon Powlis was not proven to be the mysterious woman who inspired “Billie Jean.” But the documented court cases surrounding the woman who called herself Billie Jean Jackson created a real-life saga every bit as unsettling as the song: disputed paternity, repeated trespassing, restraining orders, enormous lawsuits and children caught in the middle.
