In what is definitely the most haunted real-estate transaction since Katy Perry and those nuns, Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch has been sold for $78 million below original asking to billionaire Ron Burkle. The Associated Press reports that Burkle, who owns the controlling share of the private club Soho House, bought the late singer’s sprawling Sonoma Valley estate after he “saw the property from the air.” Neverland Ranch has been inexorably tied in the public imagination to Jackson’s alleged sexual abuse of minors since the People v. Jackson trial of 2003. The 2019 HBO documentary Leaving Neverland dove further into the alleged victims’ claims of molestations occurring at the property, which featured an arcade, zoo, and amusement-park rides. A spokesperson said Burkle was considering the surrounding Zaca Lake area for a new Soho House location before deeming it “too remote and expensive for a club,” but purchased it anyway. This news would be like finding out The Wing was opening a new location on Little Saint James.
