Monday, May 13, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
LaToya Jackson's marriage to agent Jack Gordon has gone from a tabloid melodrama over abuse allegations to the granting of a temporary protective order.
On Friday, Jackson filed for divorce from the man she married in Reno in 1991.
The divorce papers, filed in Clark County District Court, offer the standard "incompatability" as the grounds and list only the couple's houses in New York and Las Vegas as the community property to be divided.
Court papers only hint at other valuables, which could include proceeds from Jackson's marginal singing and acting careers and from psychic infomercials and her cable pay-per-view topless club tour.
Jackson's affidavit in support of the temporary protective order portrays Gordon as an abusive spouse who beat her with a bottle on May 2 in New York.
Several weeks before, she stated, "he beat me because I refused to perform" in a European concert.
Jackson, who turns 40 on May 29, complained that he then left her alone in New York for three weeks with no money before concluding she had been "punished enough."
She said he summoned her to Florida and again asked her to perform the European engagement but again she refused.
"I said, 'No, I'm not working for you any longer,'" she recalled in court documents. "So he beat me again."
"This has occurred many times (and) he repeatedly tells me he's going to kill me," Jackson swore in the affidavit that went to protective order commissioner Jack Fields on May 7.
An attachment to the application for a protective order contends Gordon threatened to kill her "and if I don't get you, my friends will."
On May 6, she gave a voluntary statement to Metro Police about the same incident, stating that Gordon also was mad at her over an "insurance matter."
The protective order was granted May 7 and is in effect until May 28 when a hearing is scheduled that will give Gordon an opportunity to present his side of the story.
"We were both sitting on the bed and Jack just stared at me for a long time," she said of the May 2 incident. "You could tell by his stare he was angry with me and wanted to hurt me.
"He threw the bed spread over my head. When I went to take it off, he grabbed my left arm and twisted it real hard. It felt like he was going to twist my arm off or out of joint.
"He then let go and started hitting me with a Diet Coke bottle. When he stopped hitting me, I asked him if he was done. He laid down on the bed and went to sleep."
In seeking the protective order, Jackson said Gordon also beat her and pulled her hair in April.
She indicated that in the summer of 1994, Gordon was arrested in New York City on domestic violence charges.
In recounting the incident, Jackson said: "He beat me with a chair, kicked me in the stomach repeatedly. I was knocked out and he thought he had killed me. I was lying in a puddle of blood larger than I was."
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