After the King of Pop died, among the first questions his mother Katherine asked his children ex-nanny where her son hid all his money.
Other allegations, forming an account of the star’s life and living conditions, include his bizarre nomadic life, days of living without any cash flow, how the children froze in his presence and “pumping out his stomach after he took too many drugs”.
The article describes her as “the woman who worked for Michael Jackson for 17 years, starting in his office, then looking after his three children and sharing his ramshackle life after his sexual abuse trial — though never being his wife.”
Recently sacked, Grace is quoted as saying, “Katherine just called me. She said, ‘Grace, the children are crying. They are asking about you. They can’t believe that their father died. Grace, you remember Michael used to hide cash at the house. I am here. Where can it be?’ I told her to look at the garbage bags and under the carpets.”
“I asked to speak to the children. She said they were sleeping. But she just said they were crying. She never let me speak to them. She said, ‘Grace, where are you? Come. I will pick you up from the airport.’ She sounded so strong. So strong!”
Banned from seeing the children at one point, she confided in the paper then, “I took these babies in my arm on the first day of their life,” she insisted. “They are my babies.”
She cried, “I don’t know what to do. He doesn’t let me see my babies. ... Nobody is cleaning the rooms, because he didn’t pay the housekeeper.”
And then, “I just got a phone call that Michael is in such a bad shape. He is not clean. He has not shaved ... His nails ... He is not eating well. I used to do all this for him. They are trying to lure me to go back. But each time it happened before, he got rid of me.”
The star apparently didn’t like her growing attachment to the children. “I miss my babies. I used to hug them and laugh with them. But when Michael was around, they froze. He didn’t like me hugging them. But they needed love. I was the only mother they knew.”
Prince was smart, she said, and Blanket, who made her laugh, even did a concert once for her, singing Billie Jean and his father’s other songs. She recalls, “I was laughing so hard. Prince and Paris were playing around. It was such a happy moment. Then suddenly Michael walked in. He surprised us. Usually, the security would alert me that he was about to come. Blanket immediately stopped. The kids looked frightened. Michael was so angry. I knew I would be fired. Whenever the children got too attached to me, he would send me away.”
And as the family travelled around the world — Bahrain, Ireland, Germany, New Jersey — there was sometimes no money. She confided in the paper: “When Paris had her birthday this April, I wanted to buy balloons, things, to make a happy birthday. There was no money in the house. I had to put everything on my personal credit card. I brought people to clean the house. The room of the kids needed to be cleaned. But they weren’t paid.”
The reporter remarks, “Revealed within her account of their love-hate relationship was Jackson’s everyday life as a father and drug addict. Grace told me of pumping out his stomach after he took too many drugs and of how dirty and unkempt he became towards the end.”
Grace said the children disliked the masks they had to wear in public and she tried to help them by often “losing” the accessories. Grace says, “I hated it as well. So whenever I had a chance, I misplaced the masks or forgot to pack them. Michael always got angry and asked, ‘How come we keep losing children’s masks?’ He didn’t notice that we were losing them only when I was around.”
He didn’t read his O2 contract either before signing and didn’t realise he had committed himself to 50 concerts. “Fifty performances! I told him, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘I signed only for 10.’ He didn’t know what he was signing. He never does!”
Jackson also seemed to have no understanding of money. “During the trial Jermaine (his older brother) suddenly connected him to Sheikh Abdullah. I was happy because he was so down. He was scared. Nobody else called. So Michael was spending hours on the phone with Abdullah. He is the one who is sending the money for the lawyers.”
Abdullah one day called and asked for her bank account and said he wanted to send “money to Michael through my account. He sent $1m. Then another $35,000. Katherine needed money too. So Michael told me to give her my ATM card. She was cashing out of the machine every day. I checked it.” She allegedly was even framed for taking the money when the singer denied ever having received any money after Abdullah sued Jackson for reneging on a music contract that would have paid back this and other loans.
Grace then pointed out to his mother, “I said, ‘You, Michael and I — we will all go to jail! You know that we didn’t report to the IRS about that gift.’ I told her I had all the documents. That worked.”
The next time Michael received some money, Grace can’t remember how, instead of investing in a small house, he chose to send her to buy antiques worth £1m. “I flew on my credit card. When I arrived in Florence and saw these antiques, I called him and said, ‘This is not worth anything.’ Michael never listened to me. He said, ‘Buy it. Buy it.’ We didn’t even have a home to live in so we had to put the antiques in some storage.”
Jackson reportedly even demanded that the sheikh build him a house in a Bahrain. After moving to Ireland and then New Jersey and Japan, they were back in California, where Jackson rented a house from the Nation of Islam, who “grossly overcharged”.
According to the paper, Grace hasn’t been paid her salary and expenses since 2008 and medical insurance since she was with him and the children in Bahrain. Once, when she had been in hospital for chemotherapy, he had accused her of abandoning him and the children, she said.
Says Grace, who the daily claims suffers from a life-threatening form of the auto-immune disease lupus, “To Michael, to go to a hospital was never about being ill. It was all about avoiding a court appearance or a performance or some other commitment he didn’t want to respect. You know, during the trial, the only peaceful place we could escape to and sleep was a hospital room. We used to go to the hospital and relax.”
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The coroner may have concluded that there was no foul play in legendary singer Michael Jackson's death, but his family is not satisfied. It wants an independent autopsy to determine the cause of the pop singer's death.
The Jackson family is understood to have requested a second independent post-mortem examination of the body.
According to reports, Coroner's investigator said that on Saturday Jackson family told his office, that they wanted a second autopsy carried out, as they still have unanswered questions about MJ's death.
Veteran politician and a friend of MJ's, Reverend Jesse Jackson said the Jacksons were upset because the official cause of death might not be known for weeks.
He said the family wanted answers from the star's personal doctor, Conrad Murray, who was with him when he died.
Jesse Jackson told a news daily "When did the doctor come? What did he do? Did they inject him, if so with what?"
He went missing immediately following the death, which raise questions of substance that will not go away until they are answered.
And while the details of his death are a mystery, so are the details of his funeral.
Jackson's body was handed over to his family on Saturday afternoon, which was taken by them to an undisclosed mortuary. The family is still pondering plans for the King of Pop's funeral and there is no news of when and where will it take place.
Los Angeles Fire Department Capt. Steve Ruda told The Times that paramedics responded to a 911 call from the home. When they arrived, Jackson was not breathing.
The paramedics performed CPR and took Jackson to UCLA Medical Center, Ruda said. Hundreds of reporters gathered at the hospital awaiting word on his condition. The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said family members rushed to Jackson’s bedside, where he was in a deep coma.
The circumstances of Jackson’s death remain unclear. Law enforcement sources said that Los Angeles Police Department robbery-homicide detectives have opened an investigation into the death, though they stressed that there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
The detectives plan to interview relatives, friends and Jackson’s doctors to try to figure out what happened. The L.A. County coroner’s office will determine a cause of death. A Los Angeles Fire Department source told The Times that Jackson was in full cardiac arrest when rescue units arrived.
A doctor was in the house performing CPR on Jackson, said the source who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Paramedics were called to a home in the 100 block of Carolwood Drive off Sunset Boulevard.
Jackson rented the Bel-Air home -- described as a French chateau built in 2002 with seven bedrooms, 13 bathrooms, 12 fireplaces and a theater -- for $100,000 a month. The home is about a six-minute drive from UCLA Medical Center. Jackson has three children -- sons Prince Michael 7, and Michael Joseph Jackson Jr., 12, and daughter Paris Michael Katherine, 11.
Jackson, 50, died as he was attempting a comeback after years of tabloid headlines, most notably his trial and acquittal on child molestation charges.
In May, The Times reported that Jackson had rented the Bel-Air residence and was in London's O2 Arena. Jackson had won the backing of two billionaires to get the so-called "King of Pop" back on stage.
His backers envisioned the shows at AEG's O2 as an audition for a career rebirth that could have ultimately encompassed a three-year world tour, a new album, movies, a Graceland-like museum, musical revues in Las Vegas and Macau, and even a "Thriller" casino. Such a rebound could have wiped out Jackson's massive debt.
