Readers of this column have known for days that Michael Jackson wrote a will in 2002. Now I can tell you that he assigned guardianship of his three kids to his mother, Katherine Jackson. He gave his 80-year-old mother the responsibility of raising his two sons and daughter but made no mention of his father.

In fact, Jackson’s will does not mention his father, Joseph, at all. It divides his estate among the children and his mother only, sources say. His brothers and sisters are also not included as major beneficiaries.

The will is to be executed by attorney John Branca, as I first reported several days ago.

The news that Mrs. Jackson was named by Michael means that it was entirely unnecessary for her to go to court yesterday to get a judge to make her temporary legal guardian. Doing that, and jumping the gun, may have been a costly mistake (see below item).

Jackson did not name Debbie Rowe, his ex-wife and biological mother of his two eldest children. Nevertheless, Rowe can exercise her parental rights and possibly overturn the will if she makes that decision.

For Jackson’s brothers and father, their omission from his estate—the will was drawn in 2002—may come as something of a blow. None of the brothers ever attained the success of Michael as an adult. But as one observer pointed out to me, “The brothers have the opportunity to make money now, touring in Michael’s memory.” Good point.

The will  should be officially available shortly, but if it stands as I’ve been told, many of Jackson’s friends are left out of it. Waiting to see if there are any bequests would be his long time aide Evvy Tavasci, friends like Miko Brando and Mark Lester, Macaulay Culkin, Elizabeth Taylor, the Dominic Cascio Family of New Jersey, ex and current manager Frank DiLeo, and a handful of loyal employees. Jackson’s trio of handlers from the 80s and 90s—Bob Jones, Bill Bray, and Lee Solters—all pre-deceased him.

Michael Jackson’s beloved 80-year-old mother, Katherine, made what could be a costly legal mistake yesterday in a Los Angeles court.

Katherine Jackson got temporary custody of Michael’s three children (you’ll notice she filed alone and not with her husband of 60 years).

She also filed a claim on Michael’s estate, saying he died intestate, or without a will. But anyone who reads this column knew days ago that Michael had executed a will with attorney John Branca, and that it was waiting to be opened on Monday.

While Mrs. Jackson was in court, Branca was indeed studying the will. I am told it will be presented to the court and filed in the next day or so.

But wait: if Mrs. Jackson gets her way, legal eagles assure me, and the court decides Michael had no will, then Mrs. J gets nothing. Michael’s direct heirs—his three kids—would be the sole beneficiaries.

Whoops!

Read the rest of this entry »

Debbie Rowe, mother of Michael Jackson’s two eldest children, is holed up at her ranch a couple of hours away from Los Angeles. She can’t leave because paparazzi have been staking out her house since Thursday. It doesn’t matter. She is, as I told you on Thursday—and then lifted from here by TMZ—”inconsolable.”

She told me during a brief conversation today: “I lost my best friend.”

Rowe was married to Jackson when she had Prince Michael I and Paris Katherine. But it was always understood that they’d part. Now, she is in tears missing her friend.

So far, Rowe has not addressed the issue of the kids or custody despite frantic reports. She wouldn’t do that, she says. “Michael hasn’t even been buried,” she says. Rowe has always had an excellent relationship with Michael’s mother, Katherine Jackson, and looks forward to talking to her soon, and possibly even seeing the children when the time is right.

For right now, though, she’s turned off her phones and Internet, and is trying to observe a period of mourning. How utterly sensible!

One thing I didn’t bring up with Rowe, but shouldn’t be forgotten: her friendship with Michael was the thing that saved him at his child molestation trial in 2005.  Rowe testified for him in court, clearing up for the jury all misconceptions about the pop icon. Her testimony is generally thought to have been the deciding factor in the jury’s deliberations, and kept Jackson out of jail.

Getty photo

Here’s a shock for the many bloggers and tabloid writers (like Ian Halperin of the Daily Mail in London) who claim that Michael Jackson was too ill to sing or dance, would never have performed his London shows, and was depressed about it.

AEG Live, the company producing Jackson’s shows, filmed all the rehearsals. They have 100 hours of film on Jackson and his shows, including last Wednesday’s rehearsal at the Staples Center the night before Michael died.

The film will be used at some point as a staggering rebuttal to Jackson’s naysayers like Halperin who painted a grim picture of the singer as he prepared for his comeback.

Not only that: I’m told that there’s enough audio to fill not one but two live albums worth of material, now sitting in the AEG vaults. Since Jackson never released a live album during his career, these recordings could turn out to be a gold mine.

I’ve also heard that the cast and crew of Jackson’s shows — called “This Is It” — had a big dinner over the weekend to toast Jackson and discuss the show’s future. An argument has been made to stage the show somewhere or take it on tour sometime in the near future as a tribute to Jackson.

“AEG spent $30 million putting this together,” says a source. “The video, the lighting, the staging— it’s all extraordinary. They’re the first to use a new 3D projection that will blow people’s minds.”

The producer is considering this seriously, they say, and may bring in some big stars to perform Jackson’s music, if not members of his performing family.

The BET Awards at the Shrine Auditorium last night were notable for one reason: the attendance of Joseph Jackson, Michael’s father. His son died literally 72 hours earlier. He’ s not even buried yet. But everyone mourns in different ways. Joe Jackson’s decision was to go to an awards show.

He walked the red carpet, did the press room, and gave an interview to CNN in which he plugged a new project. He laughed and joked about his 60th anniversary party in Las Vegas recently — 60 years since he and Katherine were married.

“It was the first anniversary party we ever had,” he said.

That’s probably true. Twice in their marriage Katherine Jackson had divorce papers drawn up but was ultimately convinced not to go through with leaving her husband. One reason for their marital problems: Joseph has an illegitimate daughter, Jovanni, who was only recently acknowledged.

Mr. Jackson was accompanied to the show by his publicist, a Michael Jackson lookalike named Ernesto, and Marshall Thompson of the veteran R&B group The Chi Lites. He sat up front in the theater and eventually invited Rev. Al Sharpton to sit with him.

At the end of the show, Janet Jackson appeared on stage. She’d arrived moments earlier. She and her father didn’t get to exchange a word because he and his group left right before she arrived. There is said to be little love lost between father and daughter.

Meanwhile, the Jackson family has a new live-in visitor: Grace Rwaramba, the ex nanny whom Michael fired last year. According to sources, Rwaramba showed up yesterday and decided to make a staycation of it. Only one thing: so far, no one’s had the nerve to show the Jacksons the story Grace sold to a British newspaper about Michael, in which she claimed to have pumped his drug-addicted stomach.

“The minute they see that story, Grace should be gone,” an insider says. If the Jacksons need the link, it is here.

Michael Jackson gave a deposition on July 25, 2007, that fully addressed his drug use. The testimony came about because of a lawsuit with former manager Dieter Wiesner.

This is what it looked like in the actual transcript, obtained exclusively by this reporter and written about in 2007. Here it is again:

Q Were you impaired by the taking of prescription medications or something else at the time you signed these two documents?
A I could have been.
Q Is that best of recollection, that you signed these while impaired, not knowing what they meant?
A I could maybe say so, but I’m not — I don’t remember them.

It’s not like Jackson misunderstood the questioning, either. In the same line of examination, the attorney for Wiesner managed to get this in as well:

Q How long in 2003 were you impaired because of the taking of prescription medication?
A I don’t know.
Q Was it most of 2003?
A I’m not sure.
Q Did Dr. Farshchian prescribe that medication for you?
A No, it wasn’t Farshchian. I think it was a local.

And then there’s also this exchange:

Q As of March 31, 2003, were you still impaired because of the taking of prescription medication?
A I could have been.
Q During the period of time you were impaired by the taking of prescription medication, was this an impairment that lasted like all your waking hours, or did it come and go?
A It comes and goes, not all of the waking hours, of course not. Yes.
Q Now, during the period of time you were taking this medication when you weren’t impaired, did you ever tell one of your advisors that you were [concerned] about your impairment and they better watch what you were signing during this period of time?
A Not that I recall.

Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Jackson was spending $48,000 a month in prescriptions, according to my sources. The print-outs of the bills are said to come in eye-opening stacks.

The prescriptions were written mostly by his dermatologist, Dr. Arnold Klein of Beverly Hills. They were mostly filled at his local drug store, Mickey Fine Pharmacy, also of Beverly Hills.

The list of drugs, which was read to me in part, was staggering. Many of the prescriptions were not made out to Jackson but to aides, nurses, other people who worked for him, and, primarily, to a person called Omar Adams. I’ve learned from another source that “Omar Adams” was a name that Jackson made up for a fictitious alter ego.

None of this should come as a surprise. Back in July 2002, I published a story about Jackson’s monthly spending that rocked his world. Included in legal papers for a lawsuit filed against him by an ex-manager was Jackson’s monthly budget for the fall of 2001. The story can be found here.

At the time, Jackson owed Dr.Klein $25,000 and Mickey Fine Pharmacy $10,000. A few years later, the pharmacy sued Jackson for arrears on his account. They said they’d been making his skin-whitening cream and he wasn’t paying for it.

Sources say that the police have now in their possession many vials of various drugs prescribed by Dr. Klein. That should be good news for Jackson’s recent personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, the doctor who was on the scene when Jackson died.

In a story yesterday I quoted a Jackson insider as saying, by the way, that they thought Dr. Murray was introduced to Jackson by his manager of 2008-2009, Tohme R. Tohme. However, Mr. Tohme’s friends insist that he not only didn’t introduce the two, but that he never even met Dr. Murray or had heard of him. So there.

Other doctors may be involved. Back in 2002, another doctor, a lupus specialist named Dr. Allan Metzger was owed $20,000. Jackson suffered from lupus, a chronic inflammatory disease, although he denied it.

More to come, as they say.

Al Malnik, Michael Jackson’s friend and mentor from Florida, is not happy this morning with TMZ.

The pay-for-play website has published personal photographs belonging to Malnik and his wife, Nancy, of Michael, his three kids, the Malniks and friends that were taken about five or six years ago.

Nancy Malnik tells me she posted the photographs to friends only, with all the restrictions necessary, on her Facebook page. One of her 200 or so Facebook “friends” evidently copied 20 of the pictures and sold them to TMZ without permission.

“I can’t believe it,” Nancy Malnik told me this morning. “I’ve looked through the list and can’t figure out who would do such a thing.”

Meantime, Al Malnik cleared up for me a confusion that’s been out in the media. He does not have a 2004 will from Michael Jackson and was never appointed his executor. Michael simply asked him if he’d be the executor of his will. “But I never heard anything about it again,” Malnik told me. Malnik did sign a notarized agreement making him godfather to Michael’s third child, Prince Michael II aka Blanket.

As far as TMZ is concerned, they’re on notice for publishing purloined photos.

A security guard by the name of Alberto who worked at Michael Jackson’s rented Bel Air estate–his last name still unknown– made the famous 911 call to police on Thursday. It was not someone named “Tippy,” as reported by the New York Post.

Further, Jackson’s manager, Frank DiLeo, was not at the house when Jackson collapsed. DiLeo was at his hotel in Los Angeles, received a call about Jackson, and rushed to the hospital. The Post has that wrong, too.

None of Jackson’s kids were present when he collapsed, I am told. They were in the house but not in the room with Jackson and Dr. Conrad Murray.

Dr. Murray’s attorney, Matt Alford, tells TMZ that Dr. Murray met Jackson in 2006. That’s unlikely. Jackson was living in Bahrain from January to June 2006, when he then moved to Ireland. He stayed in Ireland through the end of that year.

More likely, insiders say, Murray was introduced to Jackson in the last year by Tohme Tohme, representative of Colony Capital LLC and Jackson’s manager for the last year.

The New York Post also made two more mistakes today: Janet Jackson is not the executor of Michael’s estate. Attorney John Branca is, so far. Janet Jackson has no “papers,” as alluded to in the Post.

But in a two-line story today, the Post also lifted this column’s Neverland-as-Graceland story as filler, without credit.