Michael Jackson: A Mother's Story

Jackson's mother, Katherine, speaks out in her only television interview about her son's death and who is responsible; how her grandchildren are coping and her relationship with them; and how the family will be marking the first anniversary of his death.

This report airs Dateline Friday, June 25, 9 p.m./8 C. The full hour will not be available online.

One year ago tonight, fans across the globe were in mourning for a star who had risen so high and then fallen so far. Michael Jackson was gone at the age of only 50, dead from a drug overdose. His death made as many headlines as his life.

A parade of show business royalty turned out for the funeral services that followed. His brothers and sisters stood together in a rare display of family unity. Even rarer were the public words from Jackson’s daughter Paris.

Through it all, one woman at the center of Michael Jackson’s life has kept her grief largely to herself. Katherine Jackson, the mother who raised nine kids, and who is now parent to Michael’s three children, is breaking her silence in a candid – and at times surprising – interview done just last week.

KATHERINE JACKSON: I wanted to shed some light on who Michael really was.

She talks about the last painful year...

KATHERINE JACKSON: There’s not a day go by that I don’t think about my son.

About how she’s now raising the daughter and two sons he left behind...

KATHERINE JACKSON: I never did like the fact that he put, um, scarfs or veils over their faces...

And about Debbie Rowe, the biological mother to Michael Jackson’s two older children….

KATHERINE JACKSON: I hadn’t met her before Michael died.

In this interview, Katherine Jackson also reveals how she believes her superstar son predicted his own death.

KATHERINE JACKSON: He told me several times that he felt that people wanted him gone, wanted him dead.

And she also has her own opinion of who’s to blame for her son’s death.

KATHERINE JACKSON: I want justice done.  

Mrs. Jackson sat down for this interview with Sonia Lowe, an occasional journalist with whom she’s in the process of publishing this coffee-table book of personal memories, entitled “Never Can Say Goodbye.”

KATHERINE JACKSON: It brought back a lot of memories and then it brought back a lot of tears, but all in all, I had fun writing it.

NBC News purchased the rights to the interview from the production company that made it. Mrs. Jackson says she gave the interview not just to promote her book, but because she hoped that sitting down for only one interview would provide a little privacy for herself and her family, as the one year anniversary passes of the worst day in all their lives.

KATHERINE JACKSON: My family and I are not planning, haven’t talk or planned anything about this first anniversary—first year anniversary of Michael’s passing. And one reason why I’m doing this interview is I think that—I hope that the paparazzis and everyone would just respect our privacy during this difficult time and would leave us alone. 

The book – which is being sold only online – includes hundreds of photos from the family’s collection, as well as personal reminiscences from Katherine, like this one: The day she realized young Michael had musical talent.

KATHERINE JACKSON: We had a Maytag washing machine, and it was rickety when the agitators would go, you know how they go [imitates sound]. This one was so rickety that it had a [imitates sound] kinda like that, and Michael was there on the floor wearing his diaper and his little bottle, and he just was dancing to the rhythm of what the washing machine made.

It’s memories like that of her remarkable boy that keep Katherine Jackson smiling. It’s been a difficult twelve months. 

KATHERINE JACKSON: It’s been hard. It really has been hard. But with the friends and loved ones and family around me, I’m doing ok, especially with prayer. So, it helped me cope.

At 80, Katherine Jackson has lived both a charmed life, and a difficult one. She survived childhood polio and the death of a son, Brandon, shortly after he was born.

But the woman who sewed the suits the Jackson 5 wore to perform also saw her children excel in show business, and watched as one of them reached its zenith in concerts around the world.

Today, that son is gone, and Katherine Jackson is left with a question for the boy she loved and lost.

KATHERINE JACKSON: It would be so many things I’d like to say to him but I would really would wanna know what happened?

Part 2

Unlike so much of her clan, Katherine Jackson has shunned the spotlight even as she supported Michael and his siblings singing, dancing and even moon-walking to greater and greater fame.

In this exclusive interview, she says her favorite songs are “Man of War” by the Jackson 5…

KATHERINE JACKSON: I love the message. Says, ‘Don’t go to war no more. Steady peace because peace is all we need.’

And “Man in the Mirror” from Michael Jackson’s solo act.

Katherine went to every concert she could.

KATHERINE JACKSON: I’d have to say my favorite concerts of Michael’S—all of ‘em. I never got tired of seeing it over and over and over again. Because I thought that they were just that great.

Her favorite tour, she says now, was the brothers’ Victory Tour in 1984.

KATHERINE JACKSON: Especially the Victory Tour. I love that one because it had all of my sons in it. All six.

She says she never played favorites among those children, but she also knew that Michael was exceptionally talented and, at the same time, committed to his talent. The remarkable choreography he showed in “Thriller” required hours of practice at home.

KATHERINE JACKSON: Every Sunday he would go upstairs in our—we have another room up over the garage, and he made it into a little studio for dancing and exercising, and he would go up there and dance for two hours straight without stopping. So he wanted to be ready for his 2 hour concert. And so it paid off. 

All of that preparation may have paid off the most at the 25th anniversary Motown Special. Katherine was in the audience when her second-youngest son changed the world of music with a new dance move.

KATHERINE JACKSON: Mike was on the show with his brothers and he did some songs with his brothers, and all the brothers left the stage, and I was surprised they were leaving him up there alone. And I was thinking, ‘Now what is he going to do?’

And then ...

KATHERINE JACKSON: That’s the first time I saw him do the moon-walk. And the theater went crazy. They just went wild.

She also tells a story of a famous son who didn’t always do what his mother wanted. Remember Bubbles? Michael was in his early twenties and still living in the family home when he adopted the pet chimp.

KATHERINE JACKSON: I didn’t know he was gonna bring him home because he had talked about getting a chimpanzee, and so I told one of the trainers I don’t want a monkey here. About a week or two later, Michael brought him home and I was shocked to find out that they act so much like humans. He would go and stand in front of you and hold his little hands up for you to pick him up. Just adorable and everybody fell in love with him.

Under the terms of their religion, Jehovah’s Witnesses like Katherine aren’t supposed to celebrate birthdays or holidays, but she says Michael always made sure she was well taken care of.

KATHERINE JACKSON: They gave me a party and invited my favorite pianist, and then, there was a long ribbon all the way to where I was sitting, and they had me follow the ribbon like follow the yellow brick road. Follow the ribbon – there was a Rolls Royce with a big ribbon on top of it. They had told Janet to shop for a car of my favorite color.  She had bought a big red Rolls Royce.

Michael’s generosity and his desire to “heal the world,” she says, were apparent from a very early age.

KATHERINE JACKSON: You remember when they used to show the little African kids starving to death, flies all around their mouth? We, Michael and I, would lay there on the floor watching TV…

Michael would look up at me and said, ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘one day’ – he was only a kid then – ‘I’m going to do something about this.’

Katherine says he kept his promise, sending boxes and boxes of food to people who needed it, paying tuition for those who couldn’t afford it.

After he got old enough to manage his own money and do things, everything he did was for the children.

KATHERINE JACKSON: I was very proud of him because he remembered and he gave, up until his last day. 

Katherine says she knows her children made sacrifices in the name of professional success, and she also says Michael in particular lamented the boyhood years he spent onstage.

More than once during his life, Michael Jackson talked about how he blamed his father Joe for that lost childhood—he even said his father physically abused him, which Joe Jackson denies. In this interview, Katherine Jackson didn’t talk about the relationship she witnessed between father and son. But, over the years, that bitterness Michael Jackson had expressed over his childhood never seemed to extend to his mother... And from her point of view, her son seemed to have few, if any, regrets about the price he paid for fame.

KATHERINE JACKSON: He talked about he missed his childhood, which he did, but then, he also said he loved what he’s doing now and he wouldn’t have had it any other way…I imagine he must have liked it a lot because he could have stopped performing anytime he wanted to, and he kept on doing it. He loved what he was doing. Since he was young.

Part 3

For the last year, Katherine Jackson has shouldered a painful burden. There are few things more sad than a mother burying her own child. She’s dealt not only with that, but now with a double role as both grandmother and mother to three young children.

With the death of Michael Jackson, his children – 13-year-old Michael Jackson, Jr. (known as Prince Michael), 12-year-old daughter Paris, and 8-year-old son Prince Michael II (known as Blanket) – were suddenly without the father who had raised them and protected them.  

PARIS JACKSON, AT THE MEMORIAL: Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine. And I just wanted to say I love him so much.

Heartbroken and stunned, the Jackson family stood by the children at the televised memorial. But Michael named only one family member as their guardian in his will: His mother.

MARC SCHAFFEL: She went through something that no parent should ever have to go through. And she’s raising Michael’s children.

Marc Schaffel was a business partner and cameraman for Michael Jackson. When Katherine wanted to do this interview, Schaffel says she sought him out to produce it.

MARC SCHAFFEL: She is just really, really an incredible person. I mean, she’s a role model …what Michael saw in her all along. I mean, she is supportive. She’s there. She’s protective. You know, she’s been around. She knows the world. And that’s the type of person Michael—entrusted her.

Katherine has helped the children get through some hard times. It’s been obvious how much they miss their dad.

To the world, he was the pop star who made “Bad” so good, but to his kids, he was just dad.

Katherine tells the story of now-12-year-old Paris decorating her bedroom. She only wanted one image on her walls.

KATHERINE JACKSON: She went into her closet and she brought five pictures out of Michael. She wanted one over each bed. She wanted over the desk, she wants nothing but Daddy’s pictures, she said, in her room. So I guess she goes to bed looking at him and she gets up looking at him.

And she’s seen them become closer to the rest of the Jackson kids—their cousins—who have kept them company.

KATHERINE JACKSON: Yes, well, they have lots of cousins and uncles. They’ve been in their life since day one after, and also, after Michael passed, they even been closer. One or two of them are there every day

Like a proud grandma, she brags a bit.

KATHERINE JACKSON: Kids are doing fabulous. They’re doing good and they’re straight A students.

All three are being home-schooled, and, though there have been reports that the children will attend a traditional school in the L.A. area, Katherine says that decision hasn’t been made. 

KATHERINE JACKSON: If we continue to give them home schooling or if we take them to private school…we’re thinking about looking at private school for them. Blanket’s not ready yet. Paris had said she’s not ready either. They went to check out some schools with their cousin Tito’s boys. They she liked it, so she said she wants to go, so we’ll see what happens in September.

She says all three are discovering their own talents.

KATHERINE JACKSON: Prince loves the camera, and they were doing this with Michael before Michael passed because he wanted to be behind scenes and doing movies and things like that, so Prince was working with him. [Paris] loves the piano and she also… I’m thinking about, well, have been looking for a piano teacher for him, her. And she can pick out any song that she wants to, especially her daddy’s songs. [Blanket], he loves to sing and he plays with his toys most of the time. He’s very young yet.

Paris//wants to be an actress and she is already [laughs], but she wants to play the piano and she still plays it but um she plays by ear. And Blanket, he can carry a tune very well and he has rhythm. And he can dance.

And this may surprise you: Katherine says that for some time, Prince Michael, Paris and Blanket had no idea that their daddy was a musical superstar, wowing audiences from Bangkok to Bucharest. 

KATHERINE JACKSON: No. At one time they didn’t even know. Cause he never did let them know what he was doing, never did show them any videos of himself or anything – or DVDs, as you call them now.

But now they know. Their father changed the face of music ... And dance...

There have been some glitches... Marc Schaffel says 80-year-old Katherine didn’t realize that the internet can be an issue when parenting young children. That’s perhaps how Paris’s personal videos showed up briefly on youtube.

Michael hadn’t let the kids watch regular TV or go on the Internet. Apparently, they took a little advantage of Grandma until she caught on.      

She’s tried to give the children a calmer, maybe more normal life than the one their father gave them. They now live in one place, they’re no longer a family on the move from country to country, and gone are the masks that Michael Jackson made his kids wear in public.

KATHERINE JACKSON: Uh no. I never did like the fact that he put, um, scarfs or veils over their faces. I didn’t, so that’s why I didn’t do it. Because as long as we have them protected with security guards, I think that’ll—that’s fine. And I know sooner or later the children, after they got older, which they are now, they wouldn’t want that, so I stopped it. I didn’t do it.

But Katherine knows she has a special duty to ensure that Blanket, Paris and Prince Michael are taken care of the best she can.

KATHERINE JACKSON: Out of all the people in Michael’s life, I think Michael adored his children more than anything else. And they adored him.

And you might be surprised to whom she’s turning for help.

Part 4

The world first came to know him as a kid, but Michael Jackson grew up to be the world’s most famous bachelor.

Then came a marriage made in tabloid heaven to Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of a legend approximately the same wattage as her new husband. They said it would never last—and they were right.

After the two were divorced, Michael Jackson had started to worry that he would never become a father. Hearing that, Debbie Rowe, a nurse working for Jackson’s dermatologist, came forward with an unusual offer.

DEBBIE ROWE: I said, if you want to be a daddy, I want to do it.

In 1996, she became pregnant with Jackson’s first child.  It raised eyebrows across the world, in part because it didn’t seem to be a romance. Even by the standards of what constituted typical behavior from the eccentric superstar, it was a surprise.

DEBBIE ROWE: I would never do this for money. I did this because I love him. That’s the only reason I did this.