Gruppe: Administrator
Rang: ghost
Beiträge: 973
Mitglied seit: 01.09.2005
IP-Adresse: gespeichert
|
Jacko Loses "Surrogate" Father
Bill Bray, the retired Los Angeles Police Department officer who Michael Jackson considered his surrogate father, died yesterday at Centinela Hospital. He was 80 years old and hadn’t seen Jackson in about ten years.
I told you about Bray in October 2004 when I visited him in Los Angeles. He was bedridden and death-bound but somehow held on for a year. Maybe he hoped Michael or someone in the Jackson family would come see him after that piece ran. But no one did. Instead they left him on the payroll and sent a basket of fruit and crackers.
I’m told that upon getting the news, Michael became “hysterical.” “There’s a lot of guilt there,” my source said. That’s an understatement. Bray’s financial situation at the end of his life was dire no matter how much money he made legitimately—or otherwise—with Jackson. Luckily he was tended to by his long time “wife” and friend, Gail; a plucky, sensible woman, she got him back and forth to the hospital and to doctor’s appointments on wit alone.
It was Bill Bray who knew all of Michael’s secrets once Michael’s real father, Joe Jackson, hired him in the early 70s. He was constantly at Michael’s side on tour during the late Jackson 5 days, and he was there again through all the solo tours, too. Gail could recall Bill literally carrying Michael in his arms to get him away from fans when he was a child performer. Later, it was Bill who formed what witnesses referred to as the “Office of Special Services,” a private security force at Neverland that was devoted to keeping Jackson out of trouble with his young guests.
But the side to Michael Jackson that his fans don’t really understand is one marked by disloyalty and fickleness. Once Bray had been cut out of the Neverland picture by others whom Jackson came to trust, he was gone for good. Considering the legions of stories I’d heard over the years about Bill Bray—cunning, manipulative, protective—I was shocked when I walked into his bedroom last year. He was now a little old man, confined to a hospital bed in a tiny room. He couldn’t speak or move. His eyes followed the flicker of light from an old TV pushed up against the bed playing a John Wayne movie. It was a sorrowful end to such a stunning saga. The llamas at Neverland were living better.
More tomorrow on Jacko doings…
FOX411
|
Suchen 
Kalender 
Galerie
Auktionen
Mitglieder 
Stats
Chat (0) new 
User-Map
Passwort zusenden 
Registrieren
