How Michael Jackson's Family Preyed on his Wealth and took it by the Vanload after his Death

Afrik Update

Entertainment

By Randall Sullivan

         

                 

Michael wanted his family in New York as well; his brothers to perform a medley of hits from their days as the Jackson 5, while his parents sat in special box seats. The Jacksons insisted that they should receive appearance fees and it was agreed that family members would get honorariums of $250,000, even those who would just be there to watch the show.

Just days before the first concert, though, Jermaine Jackson read an article that said his brother would be making as much as $10 million from the two shows and convinced his parents that Michael should pay the three of them another $500,000 apiece.

Jermaine and his father Joe drew  up a contract and, with mother Katherine in tow, chased Michael around California to try to get him to sign.

Michael took refuge for several days at the house of his friend Marc Schaffel, co-producer of the event, then made a dash north to Neverland Ranch. He and his two young children, four-year-old Prince and three-year-old Paris, had barely set foot inside  the house when Joe, Katherine and Jermaine appeared at the gate.Michael told the security guards to tell his family he wasn’t there. Joe Jackson, though, refused to budge. ‘I’m his father,’ Joe told the guards. ‘I need to use the bathroom. His mother needs to use the bathroom. Let us in.’

                                  

Frantic, Michael phoned Schaffel. If they got through the gate, his family would hound him to sign this contract, he explained. But he couldn’t keep his mother locked outside when she was pleading just to use the bathroom.

He told Schaffel he would instruct the guards to tell his family again that Mr Jackson was not on the premises, but to admit them so that they could use the facilities.

But as soon as Joe and Jermaine were through the gate, they drove to the main house and pushed their way inside. ‘They literally ransacked the place,’ Schaffel remembered.

Michael retreated with Prince and Paris to a hiding place concealed behind a secret door at the back of his bedroom closet and phoned Schaffel from there. He was in tears, literally whimpering into the phone.‘You see what they do to me? Do you understand now why I don’t want anything to do with my brothers, why I hide from them and refuse to answer their phone calls?

‘I’ve supported my brothers, supported them all,’ Michael cried. ‘I’ve put their kids through school. But they still come after me, still wanting more. It never ends. And my father’s worse than they are.’

Michael choked up, Schaffel recalled, and then sobbed: ‘The worst part, the part that kills me, is that I have to lie to my own mother. Do you understand, Marc?’ Michael asked. ‘Do you understand now why I am the way I am? How else could I be?

For someone who so often professed his loneliness, Michael Jackson spent a remarkable amount of time avoiding people. He wore disguises, broke off relationships, and changed telephone numbers, but still paparazzi, delusional women, and desperate men pursued him. The saddest part, though, was that the people Michael took the greatest pains to elude were the members of his own family.Over the next two years, the clamour among Katherine’s children to collect their mother’s share of the estate grew ever more threatening. For some time, almost nothing was left over for Katherine’s children; according to the executors, Michael had made it clear that he did not intend to provide for his siblings.

Even when Katherine’s monthly stipend was increased to $8,000, several of her children demanded that she challenge the estate’s administration.

            

The opening act of the craziest Jackson family drama since Michael’s death began on July 14, when Katherine, 82, was flown to a spa resort in Tucson, Arizona, without the knowledge of her grandchildren, but accompanied by a group of her children.

Within a few days, the media were reporting on a letter that had been signed by five of Michael’s siblings – Randy, Janet, Jermaine, Rebbie, and Tito – demanding that the executors of Michael’s will resign and stating that the will itself was ‘fake, flawed, and fraudulent’.

[The American courts have upheld the will. Yet the allegations, dismissed by the executors as wrong and defamatory,  surfaced again last month when David Gest, a longtime friend of Michael, spoke out in support of the siblings’ claim.]

The adults responsible for Michael’s children, including his nephew TJ Jackson, became convinced that Michael’s brothers and sisters intended to gain a conservatorship [a legal form of control in America] over Katherine, possibly by demonstrating her incompetence to serve as the guardian of the children. The money, as everyone knew, would follow those three children.

Still more outlandish, though, were the events of Monday, July 23. Shortly after 1pm, Prince and Paris were in an SUV returning home to the Calabasas estate through the double gates when another SUV, loaded with passengers, pulled right up to  its bumper.

Randy Jackson was at the wheel of the tailing vehicle, which made it to the inner gate just as the barrier was coming down.‘He just drove through and broke the arm off,’ recalled Sandra Ribera, an associate of Katherine’s lawyer, who was watching from the pool house. ‘All of a sudden the doors open and there’s this swarm of people pointing cameras all around.’

Ribera said the people in the driveway were Randy Jackson, Janet Jackson, Jermaine Jackson, and several of Prince, Paris, and Blanket’s cousins. It was friendly at first, with hugs all round.

But Katherine’s security team, who were guarding the house, quickly realised that the other Jacksons were there to take Michael’s children. Janet went for her niece Paris, while Randy approached Prince and Jermaine engaged the guards, all three of them still using their cell phones as video cameras. When Janet and Randy told Paris and Prince they were coming with them, both teenagers flatly refused to go.

Prince turned his back on Randy, but Jermaine pulled the boy aside and told him this was something that had been in the planning for three years and that it was important for him to join in with the rest of the family.

Prince shrugged off Jermaine and continued walking toward the house. Paris, meanwhile, made it clear to Janet that she wouldn’t be leaving.

The TMZ entertainment website would initially report, based on anonymous sources, that Janet told Paris she was a ‘spoiled little bitch’ and that Paris answered: ‘This is our house, not the Jackson family house. Get the f*** out!’

When security guards blocked his way, Randy, who had been smiling up until then, began to snarl warnings about not interfering in a family matter.One of the guards suggested perhaps he should leave the property and Randy became enraged, cursing in the man’s face, which was when Trent Jackson, a cousin and a member of the security team, grabbed him. The two grappled, then the bull-strong Trent put Randy in a headlock.

The scuffle ended when Trent withdrew with Prince and Paris into the house. Those who were staying at Calabasas would say later that the saddest thing about the entire scene was the way  Jermaine had used his sons.

‘Jermaine is cursing as bad as you can curse in front of these kids and fighting and doing all this stuff, and he’s telling his kids to videotape it,’ Ribera recalled. ‘And Jermajesty [Jermaine’s son] . . . is just sobbing. His face is covered in tears. He’s taping, but he’s sobbing.’

A sheriff’s car answering an emergency call arrived at the front gate and everyone froze. The sheriff’s deputies persuaded Randy, Janet, and Jermaine and their group to leave.

‘Gotta love fam,’ Paris tweeted to her followers shortly after they were gone.

On July 26, Katherine was finally brought home. That series of clumsily plotted scenes left her brood more divided than ever. But it was a comfort to her to know that, in the end, they would all be together again.

Katherine’s deal with Forest Lawn Cemetery to acquire Michael’s crypt in the Sanctuary of Ascension had included the purchase of 11 other burial spots. In death, Michael Jackson would be surrounded by the family he had tried to keep at a distance for most of his life.