Michael Jackson’s Burial Was Delayed Because Janet Wanted Her Burial-Plot Deposit Back

Michael Jackson’s Burial Was Delayed Because Janet Wanted Her Burial-Plot Deposit Back

Michael Jackson’s burial was delayed for nearly three months due to wrangling between Janet Jackson and her brother’s estate, a detail revealed in a November Vanity Fair–exclusive excerpt of Untouchable, Randall Sullivan’s Michael Jackson biography, which will be published next month. According to Sullivan, Janet put up the $40,000 deposit at Forest Lawn to secure a spot for Michael but refused to let the funeral take place until the money was repaid.

Ronald Williams, of Talon Executive Services—a private-security company that dispatched a team to Michael Jackson’s rented château in Holmby Hills on the night of his death—tells Sullivan that hours after Jackson died, La Toya and her boyfriend, Jeffre Phillips, arrived at the house demanding to be admitted. “We’re family and we should have access to the house,” they reportedly said.

Sullivan reports that mother Katherine Jackson also arrived that night and entered the house, where she telephoned Grace Rwaramba, the recently terminated longtime nanny to Michael’s children. According to Rwaramba, Katherine 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’m here. Where can it be?” Rwaramba described Michael’s standard practice of hiding his cash in black plastic garbage bags and under the carpets. Talon describes seeing La Toya and her boyfriend loading black plastic garbage bags into duffel bags and placing them in the garage. (La Toya insists that nearly all of Michael’s money was gone by the time she arrived at the Holmby Hills house.)

The next morning, Janet Jackson arrived with a moving van and demanded to be admitted. A few hours later, the truck exited through the front gate with Jeffre Phillips at the wheel. Katherine Jackson and her daughters made it clear that they wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon. “They camped out for most of a week,” Williams tells Sullivan, leaving and returning “whenever they felt like it.”

Katherine Jackson’s representatives shared details of her recent “abduction” with Sullivan, who describes what happened from her perspective for the first time. One of Katherine Jackson’s representatives tells Sullivan that it was Janet Jackson who on July 14, 2012, arranged for Dr. Allen Metzger to go to the Calabasas mansion, where her mother had been living with Michael’s three children. Metzger was introduced as an associate of Mrs. Jackson’s longtime Beverly Hills physician and told that her doctor wanted her to have a physical before she went to Albuquerque for her sons’ Unity Tour. After a brief examination, Metzger told Katherine Jackson that her blood pressure was elevated and that it would be best for her not to make the trip to New Mexico by car as she had planned. Katherine left the next morning with her daughter Rebbie and her granddaughter Stacee Brown and Mrs. Jackson’s personal assistant. It wasn’t until they arrived at the airport that Katherine realized they weren’t headed to Albuquerque but rather to Tucson, where she was booked at the Miraval Resort & Spa. Janet Jackson was there when she arrived.

The representative tells Sullivan that Dr. Metzger had no association with Mrs. Jackson’s physician and that she had not sent him to see Mrs. Jackson. Dr. Metzger was, in fact, the same doctor who had been called as a defense witness at the trial of Conrad Murray, the physician convicted of providing the drugs that killed Michael Jackson. He had also been reprimanded by the state medical board for writing prescriptions for Janet Jackson under false or fictitious names.

Katherine’s grandson T. J. Jackson, and others who were looking after Michael’s children at his Calabasas home, soon deduced that the five Jackson siblings—who that same week had sent a letter to Michael’s executors asking them to resign and claiming that their mother had suffered a mini-stroke—now reportedly with Katherine in their custody were, in the view of Mrs. Jackson’s representatives, attempting to gain a conservatorship over her, possibly by demonstrating her incompetence to serve as guardian of Michael’s children. They hoped to gain control of their brother’s fortune, which would follow Prince, Paris, and Blanket wherever they went.

Sullivan explores the question of how John Branca, a lawyer who was fired by Michael Jackson in 2003—and is now earning tens of millions of dollars as an executor of the Michael Jackson estate—managed to retain possession of a will he should have handed over with all of Jackson’s papers to a new attorney, David LeGrand. “I had access to every file and I had to go through them,” LeGrand tells Sullivan. “And I did. There was no will. There was no trust. It just showed up after he died.” (Branca, though his attorney, declined to comment.)

John Branca, has said that the will he presented to the Jacksons in July 2009 was greeted by the family with applause, but Katherine Jackson remembers the meeting differently. “According to her, the atmosphere went from quiet to glum,” Sullivan reports. “She personally was offended that John Branca never once said how sorry he was for her loss. The man was cold, Mrs. Jackson thought, just as Michael had described him: ‘My son had told me and the kids that he never wanted Branca to be any part of his business ever again”

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VANITY FAIR REFUSES TO RETRACT "DEFAMATORY" ARTICLE ABOUT MICHAEL JACKSON'S FAMILY

Looks like Janet Jackson isn't going to be able to save her troubles for another day. The "Escapade" singer is piping mad over an article in the November issue of Vanity Fair that paints her as a miserly and selfish sister. So mad, she and her sister LaToya demanded the publication retract the story, titled "Estate Under Siege," but to no avail.

In it's latest issue, the high-end entertainment magazine plugs the new book Untouchable: The Strange Life and Tragic Death of Michael Jackson by Randall Sullivan with an excerpt from the book. In it, the author brings to light the awkward delay in burying Michael Jackson and claims Janet was responsible for the postponement, not allowing the funeral to take place until MJ's estate had reimbursed her for the $40,000 burial-plot deposit she gave to the California cemetery. The article also states that they used a moving truck to remove black plastic bags of cash and duffels full of the late pop icon's belongings from the estate in the hours after his death.

Janet and her lawyers, in a letter sent to Vanity Fair, alleged the story was "outrageous" and "untrue," as well as "replete with additional false and defamatory statements." Along with the retraction, they asked that Vanity Fair send a letter to publications like the New York Daily News and Huffington Post who picked up on the story stating the article was false. But, Vanity Fair had a different response in mind.

"Vanity Fair stands by Randall Sullivan's assertion that Janet Jackson's demand to be reimbursed for her deposit on her brother's burial plot was one of the reasons Michael Jackson's funeral was delayed," they told E! News. "Sullivan's sources told him that the amount of the deposit was $40,000, but records released last week indicate that the amount of the deposit was $49,000. Vanity Fair will make that correction on VF.com."

Ouch. Talk about pouring salt into an open wound.

LaToya's lawyers sent a similar letter. "In the absence of such a prompt retraction," they wrote, "our clients intend to commence legal proceedings to vindicate their reputation."

But the magazine still held their ground firmly, saying they saw "no basis to reconsider what was written."

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Vanity Fair Admits To Mistake In Bombshell Michael Jackson Funeral Story

Vanity Fair is admitting to making a mistake in a story in its October issue in which it claimed Janet Jackson delayed her brother Michael's funeral for several months in a dispute over money, but the magazine's admission will surely not satisfy the Nasty singer, RadarOnline.com is exclusively reporting.

As RadarOnline.com previously reported, Janet was accused of delaying her brother Michael's funeral three years ago because she wanted a hefty deposit of $40k returned that she had put down. According to Vanity Fair, which obtained an excerpt of a new biography on the King of Pop by Randall Sullivan, "Janet put up the $40,000 deposit at Forest Lawn to secure a spot for Michael, but refused to let the funeral take place until the money was repaid."

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Janet's lawyer demanded a full retraction of the story, and RadarOnline.com has confirmed through multiple sources that the Control singer did not delay Michael's funeral because she demanded repayment of 40k.

Despite that fact, in a surprising turn of events, the magazine told E! News that it stands by its story and asserted that new, just-released records indicate Janet's deposit was actually 49k. "Vanity Fair stands by Randall Sullivan's assertion that Janet Jackson's demand to be reimbursed for her deposit on her brother's burial plot was one of the reasons Michael Jackson's funeral was delayed," the mag told E! News. "Sullivan's sources told him that the amount of the deposit was $40,000, but records released last week indicate that the amount of the deposit was $49,000. Vanity Fair will make that correction on VF.com."

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According to an updated story on Vanity Fair's website says, "a previous version of this blog post reported that the amount of Janet's deposit was $40,000. Records released last week indicate that the actual amount was $49,000."

RadarOnline.com thoroughly reviewed court and public records in an attempt to locate the documents Vanity Fair referenced and couldn't find any. When asked to provide the "new documents," Vanity Fair spokesperson said: "I was mistaken. They were not new."

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"Janet never attempted to delay Michael's funeral for any reason relating money issues. In fact, Janet never tried to delay it for any reason and wanted the funeral to take place as soon as possible because of the ongoing stress and angst it was causing Katherine and Michael's children," a source close to the situation tells us.

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