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The Jackson family war
Grief may have bonded the Jackson family in the days after superstar Michael's death three years ago but a bitter feud now threatens to tear them apart. The central figures include his strong-willed daughter Paris, his mother Katherine and some of his siblings. At the heart of it all is a huge fortune. Donal Lynch reports
Three years after their brother's untimely death, the Jackson Five are back on the road. They're calling it the Unity Tour -- nobody can figure out if the title is meant cynically, ironically, or both. Either way, the public hasn't been overly impressed -- more than a third of the North American dates have been cancelled due to lack of demand for tickets.
But perhaps in an attempt to give meaning to the title, perhaps to lend the tour a publicity fillip, Paris Jackson, Michael Jackson's jewel-eyed daughter, along with her brothers Prince and Blanket were in the audience in Saratoga, Florida, watching rapt as their uncles dusted off their old hits. Sitting alongside the children was their 82-year-old grandmother, Katherine, who, according to reports, looked "less than enthused" to be there. One could hardly blame her. A quick glance at the news cuttings of the past few months makes a lie of the onstage pageant of familial tenderness.
It was naive, perhaps, to think that order could grow from the surreal chaos of Michael's last days, but, even by Jackson family standards, the past few months have been tumultuous. A bitter and tawdry feud, largely played out in social media, threatens to tear the family apart once and for all. The cast seems to grow by the day. There is Jackson's articulate and strong-willed daughter Paris, 14, and his sons Prince, 15, and Blanket, 10, fighting for their young voices to be heard and grappling with family divisions drawn up before they were even born. There is Katherine Jackson, 82, the matriarch, simultaneously the heart of the Jackson clan and its most fragile component. And there are the Jackson siblings, still mourning their celebrated brother and perhaps smarting from the way he treated them in death. There are unlikely name checks for Diana Ross and Kim Kardashian. There is a generation clash, and an old guard horrified and enthralled by the immediacy of social media. And at the heart of it all, of course, is money.
As far as the public were concerned, Jackson died almost a pauper, with his planned This Is It! tour a last-ditch effort to shore up his many debts. But, in fact, these problems were instantly solved by his passing -- nobody shifts records and merchandise like a dead star. The pop icon's debts have long since been paid off -- thanks largely to a posthumous multi-million record deal -- and his will divided an almost $500m fortune between his mother, his children, and a handful of charities. His father Joe, whom Michael accused of beating him when he was growing up, was left nothing and Michael's siblings too were left out in the cold. Their central claim is that they do not believe that their brother could have signed the will in California, as is claimed, when there is "irrefutable evidence" -- their phrase -- that he was in New York at the time. They instigated two quieter and unsuccessful attempts to have the will overturned, but in the past few weeks launched a new and more public offensive against the estate's executors, music industry bigwigs John McClain and John Branca, whom they accuse of manipulating Katherine in order to increase their fees and making her sick with stress.
The letter in which these claims were made was immediately leaked and posted on the internet. The executors have countered by pointing out that this has been through the courts before. Representatives for Branca and McClain released a statement saying: "Any doubts about the validity of Michael's will and his selection of executors were thoroughly and completely debunked two years ago when a challenge was rejected by the Los Angeles County Superior Court, the California Court of Appeals and, finally, the California Supreme Court."
Legally speaking, you would imagine that would be that. But at a moral level, Katherine is the key to the whole dispute, with both sides trying to claim her to their cause. While Joe, her husband and Michael's father, would push their sons to great heights, it was Katherine who loved Michael unconditionally. After she and Joe married in 1949, she sang as she did housework around the house, a small detached home on the shores of Lake Michigan. When the kids were born she encouraged them to follow suit. "I discovered then, that they had perfect harmony," she recalled. She had to persuade her husband to listen and eventually he, too, was amazed.
When Michael came along, he seemed to have the most drive inside him,[http://michaelkorsstore2013.com/ michael kors bags store]. They would witness him as a boy jump out of his bed in the middle of the night and run to write music and lyrics. In his 1988 autobiography, Michael recalled her as the person who had first introduced him to music. "My first memories are of her holding me and singing songs like You Are My Sunshine," he wrote. He never forgot her support and dedicated every album to her, even naming a mountain in the land around Neverland after her. She in turn always stood by him publicly, particularly as he fought accusations that he had sexually molested children. "I don't believe any of the stuff they're saying about him because I raised him," she said at the time of his second child abuse trial.
In public, she frequently appeared dazed by her family's great success. It's possible that now, in old age, she is once again taking a back seat to the family's stronger personalities. Last month, some of the siblings -- Janet, Rebbie, Jermaine, and Randy -- spirited Katherine from the family compound to a spa in Arizona, without telling Prince or Paris, who were frantic when they discovered their grandmother had left the home. In another time, another place, this problem might have been resolved without the world learning what had happened. But in the era of social media and with two entitled teens involved, there was no hope of that. As police were called in to look for her, Paris took to Twitter, telling her half a million followers: "My grandmother is missing. I haven't spoken to her in a week. I want her home now. Paris Jackson's distress was genuine but she and her brother Prince knew which buttons to press. The loss of innocence, abandonment, abuse -- these are all well known themes in the Jackson narrative. That the popstar's own children may have been left without their guardian was unthinkable. One American analyst compared it to what it would be like watching William and Harry being stalked through a Paris tunnel by paparazzi. Little wonder the teenagers felt emboldened to take on the older members of the clan.
As the tweets continued to go online, Good Morning America broadcast images of Janet Jackson having what looked like a confrontation with Paris outside the family compound. According to reports, she called the girl a "spoiled little b***h". Paris at that point was reported to have yelled, "This is our house, not the Jackson family house. Get the f**k out!" According to police reports, "two adult males" also became violent at the house. Sandra Ribera, a lawyer for Katherine Jackson, described the siblings "running up to Michael's children as they yelled and aggressively grabbed at the cell phones in their hands". At that point, Ribera also claimed that there was a plan afoot to remove Katherine from her role as the children's guardian. Days later, the 82-year-old was tracked down to the home of her eldest daughter, Rebbie, and a picture of her happily playing cards was tweeted.
In a bizarre twist, Diana Ross, the children's "spiritual godmother", was understood to have visited the Jackson home after the altercation between Paris and Janet. The Motown legend was reported to have hugged the children and to have later asked Katherine outright if the family had made it too difficult for her to continue with her guardianship. Katherine replied that she could still handle it. The singer promised to check in on the children again. Many of the Jacksons are understood to be in favour of Ross taking over guardianship should the family not be able to agree on one of their own to take that role.
Katherine now claims she was not told the full truth about the kids looking for her. In court papers, she said that once she reached the spa in Arizona, she was unable to contact her grandchildren since she had no access to her phone and iPad. "While there was a telephone in my room, the telephone was not functioning and I could not dial out," she said in the documents. "In addition, there was no picture on the television in my room." Prince seems to have accepted his grandmother's explanation. "Although I am happy my grandma was returned, after speaking with her I realised how misguided she was and how badly she was lied to," he wrote in a bitter series of tweets attacking his aunts and uncles. "I'm really angry and hurt."
Katherine's absence has had grave consequences for the care of the three children. Two weeks ago, a judge ruled that Michael's nephew Tito would take over guardianship of Paris, Prince and Blanket. The court noted that Katherine had left the children's family home voluntarily and had failed to tell her three wards where she was going. In a public statement, Katherine seemed confused however, at one point calling Prince her "nephew". In his court testimony, Tito also corroborated the idea that Katherine was not quite all there around the time of the 'disappearance'. "She wasn't sharp," he tearfully told the court. "The pauses, the choice of vocabulary. She hasn't spoken like that before." Tito will now share custody with Katherine until August 22, when a court will decide if that arrangement will be made permanent.
Debbie Rowe, the two older children's biological mother, has said in the past that Michael was not the father of the children -- they were born by artificial insemination using an anonymous donor. For almost a decade, she had little or no contact with the children. It had been reported in the US media that she was merely a surrogate, that her eggs were not used. If this is the case, it might explain her ambivalence. Nonetheless, she was said to be concerned with developments in the past few weeks. The judge in the guardianship proceedings noted that in his estate documents, Michael Jackson had said he wanted Rowe or Diana Ross to be the children's guardian if Katherine was not available. After hearing from Tito's lawyer, however, the judge decided to appoint him on a temporary basis. The identity of Blanket's mother has never been made public.
Jackson's siblings seemed keen to portray the intervention as coming out of concern for their mother. However, it's thought that part of the reason the feud has become so heated is that both Jermaine and Randy are very short of money. Before Michael's death, Randy, a struggling musician, was doing odd jobs and changing tyres in a garage in an attempt to support himself. He owes the mother of his child $500,000 in child-support payments. Last year, Jermaine settled a child-support dispute with his former wife Alejandra after falling $35,000 behind in the payments for the support of their two children, Jaafar and Jermajesty. A slowness to cough up for school books is not the only thing the Jackson brothers shared. Jermaine and Randy have also had children with the same woman. Both say they had a good relationship with Michael and were understood to have expected more than nothing in his will. But others have contradicted this account. Jackson's long-term friend Mike Seropian recalled him having a poor relationship with Jermaine, with some "weird situations" occurring.
Most observers realise Jackson had a good relationship with his sisters, and money can hardly have been Janet Jackson's motivation -- she is independently wealthy thanks to her glittering pop career. Through her lawyer, she, Randy and Rebbie released a statement saying that "they stand to gain nothing financially by a finding that the will is invalid." Randy Jackson tweeted that the executor's of his brother's estate were using "spin and lies" to destroy his family. Tensions in the family have also increased because of the refusal of Katherine's other children -- LaToya, 56, Marlon, 55, and 61-year-old Jackie -- to become involved in the attempt to have the will declared null and void.
"Money always brings out the worst in everyone," Bradley Jacobs, an editor with US Weekly wrote last week. "Michael was a hot mess in life and things are still really messy in death." Jacobs also noted that one of Jackson's overriding concerns during his lifetime was that the privacy of his children be respected. He went to great lengths to make sure their faces were not seen, even covering them with blankets when going though airports. He knew first-hand the damage fame could cause and sought to shield them from the type of publicity in which this feud has now immersed them.
The family have become a type of reality show, played out on Twitter and angry letters back and forth between their lawyers. There may come a time when they harness this attention. And it doesn't seem as though the teenage Jackson children are exactly publicity shy themselves. It's believed that Paris has ambitions to become an actress. Her stunning looks and family name will take her far in that field but her ability to keep the public hanging on her every word won't go amiss either. Piers Morgan, among others, has suggested that she is much too young to be calling the shots in the family and has been given too free a rein to express herself. "She needs to be taken into a side room and given a firm talking to," the chat show host said. "I would trust Michael's mother more than anyone else with those kids. She has already raised a lot of kids very successfully,[http://michaelkorsstore2013.com/ michael kors handbags]."
That's debatable, but what seems apparent now is that there may be an end in sight to this dispute. In the last few days the siblings also lost the support of one of their own. Jermaine Jackson publicly called for a cessation of hostilities. "After much soul-searching, it is clearly time for us to live by Michael's words about love not war," wrote Jermaine in a statement. He also withdrew his support for the leaked letter, which called on executors of the estate to resign and went on to say he intended his words to be "an olive branch". "Mistakes have been made and irrational things have been said on both sides in a highly charged emotional environment," Jermaine wrote. "It is time for us all to draw a line in the sand and move towards peace, co-operation, love and healing."
That seems a tall order for the Jacksons. Conrad Murray, the doctor convicted of Michael's involuntary manslaughter, recently invited Katherine to visit him in jail "to answer any questions she might have",[http://michaelkorsstore2013.com/ michael kors bags outlet]. He claimed that she had, through intermediaries, expressed a desire to speak to him "before she departs this world".
In an appeal, which is going through the courts, he resuscitates one of his defence theories at trial -- that Jackson himself administered the fatal dose of Propofol, a powerful sleep medication.
The appeal comes not long after the third anniversary of Jackson's death and is a sobering reminder that even without the family bickering, the King of Pop was not exactly resting in peace. And yet maybe Murray and his showboating may provide some ironic relief. For while ostensibly another headache for Katherine and her family, Murray might be just thing the Jackson's need right now: an enemy against whom they can unite.Related articles:
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