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| Emotional Katherine Jackson addresses jurors for first time |
The matriarch of the Jackson family testifies in the wrongful-death case against AEG Live that she 'lost everything' when her son Michael died in 2009.An emotional Katherine Jackson spoke to jurors about her pop star son for the first time Friday, smiling as she described the way he danced as a baby and later weeping as she recalled his death, saying she "lost everything."
The 83-year-old matriarch held attorney Brian Panish's hand as she walked to the stand, one of the most anticipated witnesses in the wrongful-death case between her family and entertainment giant AEG Live over Michael Jackson's death.
Jackson and three of her grandchildren — Prince, Paris and Blanket — are suing the company, alleging AEG Live negligently hired and controlled the physician who gave the singer a fatal dose of the anesthetic propofol as he was preparing for his "This Is It" comeback tour in 2009. AEG contends it was Michael Jackson who hired Dr. Conrad Murray.
Jackson has watched much of the months-long trial from the downtown L.A. courtroom's front row, and said she has struggled to remain composed as she listened to testimony about her seventh child.
"My son was sick and nobody tried to help him," she told AEG Live attorney Marvin Putnam. "I want to know the truth of what happened to him."
The civil trial has cast a harsh spotlight on some of the most private details of Michael Jackson's life — his erratic behavior, his drug use, his dramatic weight loss and his overwhelming fear of failure. Katherine Jackson defended her son against AEG executives, who called Jackson "lazy" and "the freak" in emails.
"The most difficult thing is to sit here in this court and listen to all the bad things they say about my son," Jackson said, later adding: "A lot of the things that have been said here are not the truth. And he's not here to speak for himself."
When Panish asked how she had been affected by her son's death, Katherine Jackson broke down.
"When a mother loses a child," she said, crying. "No one knows until it happens to them. That's the worst thing that could happen to a person, losing a child.
"I lost my mother, my father and my sister … but when I lost Michael, I lost everything," she said.
Jackson described Michael as a shy, sensitive person who cared deeply for others and loved music from the time he was a baby. She and her husband, Joe, raised nine children in a four-room home in Gary, Ind.
"When all the kids were dancing around, he was in my arms and he couldn't be still. He was dancing to the music," she said. "And when he started to walk, he would still dance."
Though her son always sang around the house, Jackson said, it wasn't until 5-year-old Michael sang "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" at a school program that she realized just how talented he was.
When Michael was about 6, she said, he joined his older brothers in singing competitions at local high schools — losing only once because people "were sick of seeing the Jacksons win." The boys wore suits made by their mother and rehearsed at home, pushing the living room furniture back to the walls and dancing in the middle of the floor.
The Jackson 5's fame grew, and the brothers signed a record deal with Motown in 1968. But it was his solo career that catapulted Michael Jackson to stardom.
Katherine Jackson smiled as she described her son's generosity, saying he provided for her financially and the two were always "very close." She said he even named the train at his Neverland Ranch "Katherine."
Jackson, a Jehovah's witness, said she was doing "field service" — going door to door to share her faith — and returned home to a message from her husband the day their son died. One of the fans camped outside their son's home had called Joe Jackson, saying someone had left on a gurney "completely covered up," she testified.
When she got to the hospital, she said, she found her son's staff and a man she later learned was Murray "pacing back and forth." It was the singer's manager who finally broke the news, she said.
"I just started screaming," she said.
Paris, now 15, was especially distraught, her grandmother said. "She was screaming, looking up at the sky and said, 'Daddy, I want to go with you,'" Katherine Jackson recalled. "'I can't live without you. I'm going with you.'"
In the days after her son's death, Jackson said she went with Paris to find a "broken heart" necklace. The girl went to the morgue, "hung one heart around her father's neck" and kept the other half, her grandmother said.
Jackson now shares guardianship of the three children. Paris has "had the hardest time" coping with her father's death, she said, acknowledging the teen has received medical help and been hospitalized.
Katherine Jackson watched as a video was played for jurors, showing footage of her grandchildren set to a recording of her son singing "Speechless." He wrote the song about being a father, she said.
"Mrs. Jackson, do you miss your son?" Panish asked when the video ended.
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