Under cross-examination by AEG Live's attorney, Katherine Jackson was confronted about her contradicting interview with Oprah Winfrey.
- Jul 23, 2013
AceShowbiz - Michael Jackson's mother was back to the witness stand in the wrongful death lawsuit against promoter giant AEG Live. Katherine Jackson said she was aware of rumors suggesting her son was addicted to painkillers. According to her, Jacko denied it when she confronted him. She also insisted she never saw him under the influence of the prescription drugs.
The Jackson matriarch, 83, said she and some family members once staged an intervention at the Neverland Ranch in 2002 but "there were no deep discussion or anything like that." "When we got there, he was okay, he was upset," she remembered. "It was kind of embarrassing."
When AEG's attorney Marvin Putnam asked her about an open letter she signed in 2007 that denied Michael's rumored drug problem and dismissed report of any family intervention, Katherine said that she just "wanted (to stop) things that weren't true."
During the trial, Katherine was also shown a clip of her contradicting interview with Oprah Winfrey back in 2010 during which she said that she wasn't buying her son's claims he was completely clean. "I didn't know what to believe," she explained.
She admitted that Dr. Conrad Murray, who is convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Jacko's death, was partly to blame for her son's passing. However, she was still adamant that AEG was also responsible for negligently hiring the disgraced doctor and failing to reach out to her family about her son's ill condition.
"They could have called me. He was asking for his father. My grandson told me that (Michael) was scared; he was asking for Joseph," she cried. "(AEG executives) watched him waste away, from what I can hear." She added when asked why she filed the lawsuit, "I wanted to hear what happened to my son."
While Katherine believes Murray was hired by AEG and Michael only gave the doctor money because he "felt bad for Dr. Murray because he didn't have no money," AEG insists that's not the case. The company's team won't call Murray to testify but will seek "many, many, many doctors" Jacko saw over the years.
Outside the court, Putnam said, "As Katherine Jackson has now testified, she was in the dark about her son Michael Jackson's decades of drug use and 'closes her ears' whenever someone discloses anything negative about him. She doesn't want anyone or anything to disturb her idealized memory of the child she lost. Who can blame her?"
