HEARTBREAK: Katherine Jackson (above, and top left, with her beloved Michael in the 1970s) yesterday recounted the good times as well as his death. (
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Katherine Jackson covered the arc of Michael Jackson’s life on the witness stand yesterday, where she beamed with pride remembering his early success and then broke down into tears recalling the final day of his life, when her granddaughter, Paris, exclaimed that she wanted to die, too.
“I just started screaming,” said Katherine, who learned from concert manager Frank DiLeo in the hospital that Michael had died.
“I saw Paris later, she was screaming at the sky, ‘Daddy I want to go with you! I can’t live without you!’ ”
Paris was hospitalized last month after attempting suicide and was unable to testify in the billion-dollar wrongful-death case waged by Katherine against concert promoter AEG Live.
This is the first time the 83-year-old Jackson-family matriarch has taken the stand on behalf of the King of Pop, who once stood trial for child molestation.
She began her testimony with a smile as she softly told the jury about Michael’s humble beginnings, describing his secondhand clothing, his pet rat and the bed he shared with his siblings.
Like a proud mother, she showed the jury home videos, his first appearances with The Jackson 5 on TV and his performance at the Academy Awards. She beamed when recalling how Michael used his baby bottle as a microphone.
“He was born that way, dancing around. He wouldn’t be still,’’ she said.
Katherine claims AEG Live negligently hired Dr. Conrad Murray, the feel-good physician who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for administering the drug that killed Michael in 2009.
AEG claims Michael secretly hired Murray during Jacko’s doomed “This Is It” tour and demanded the powerful anesthetic that killed him.
Wearing a floral blazer and glasses, Katherine said the lawsuit has been “the most difficult thing” she has experienced in her life, and recounted the pain she has felt for the past 12 weeks hearing lies about her son.
“It hurts to hear that my son is a freak. Listening to people say he was a freak, he was lazy,” she cried.
“I had to listen to that. It hurts to sit here. It hurts to hear how sick my son was and no one was trying to help him.”
She said she filed the lawsuit because she wants to know the truth about her son’s death.
Katherine’s lawyer, Brian Panish, said later she was confused from the cross-examination.
“She hadn’t slept last night and she was very nervous and besides asking very fast questions [the opposing attorney] seemed to be mocking her,” Panish said.
Meanwhile, Murray’s lawyer, Valerie Waas, suggested that the doctor might take the stand, which would cause seismic waves to both sides by revealing who hired him.