LOS ANGELES — Joe Jackson says the King of Pop would still be alive today had his wife, Katherine, listened to him.
In an interview with Britain’s News of the World, the family patriarch says he was worried about Michael’s prescription drug addiction but his concerns fell on deaf ears.
"In Michael’s final months alive I said to her many times that I couldn’t get through to him – and that she needed to help her son," Joe claims. "I had begged her to go over and stay with him, but she insisted he needed his privacy and gave him the slack she thought he needed. A child will listen to his mother more than his father – and Michael was a mummy’s boy. He listened to her."
"I still haven’t been able to talk about it to her as she doesn’t want to hear what I have to say," he adds.
Joe also recalls a heated exchange with his wife when Michael’s body sat on a mortuary table after he died on June 25 last year.
"Katherine was weeping uncontrollably and highly upset. But I didn’t give her a hug because I was MAD at her crying," he remembers. "I said, ‘If you had listened to me Michael would be living now!’ I kept thinking about the times I had stood in front of her saying something was wrong."
"I couldn’t bottle up my feelings," Joe continues. "Katherine didn’t say a word – I had to get away from her. If she’d done what I asked, Michael would be here today. I am incensed with her. She could have made a difference."
Joe also assumes some of the blame for his son’s death, telling the paper he "could have been more aggressive in getting access to him." He also regrets not doing more when concert promoter AEG increased the number of Michael’s London comeback shows.
Says Joe: "I wish I had made him walk away from those shows. I knew he would never make them, but I never thought he’d die."
Who do you blame for Michael Jackson’s death? Click here to vote in our watercooler poll.
