LOS ANGELES: Michael Jackson denied abusing drugs despite at least one family “intervention” before his 2009 death, his mother said yesterday as lawyers for promoters of his doomed last tour grilled her in court.
Eighty-three year-old Katherine Jackson also rebuffed a question about the amount of money she is seeking in damages from AEG Live, saying: “You can talk to my lawyers about that.”
She recalled the only time she asked her son about widespread rumours that he was abusing drugs.
“Well I’m his mother and quite natually he denied because he wouldn’t want me to think that .. .. he’s not going to admit that,” she said, adding that she knew he was taking prescription painkillers.
“I knew he was taking them. I didn’t think he might have been abusing them,” she added, recounting the exchange with her son at his Las Vegas home, some time after he returned from living abroad following his 2005 child molestation trial. The Jackson family matriarch accuses AEG Live of pushing her son too hard as he rehearsed in Los Angeles for a series of “This is It” comeback concerts in London, and of negligently hiring doctor Conrad Murray to look after him. AFP
