Jackson buried with glove, pearls and shades
A hat, a pair of glasses and a glove sit on a chair on a stage at the Michael Jackson public memorial at the Apollo Theater in New York June 30, 2009.[Agencies] |
LOS ANGELES - Michael Jackson was buried with one of his iconic white gloves, sunglasses and dressed with pearl beads and a large gold belt, his sister, La Toya, said in a television interview to air on Friday.
"He was dressed in all white pearl beads going across, draped across (and) a beautiful big gold belt ... like a belt that you win being a boxer," La Toya Jackson told journalist Barbara Walters in a "20/20" interview to air on ABC on Friday night.
Jackson, 50, died on June 25 of a prescription drug overdose and was buried eight days ago in a Los Angeles suburb.
Aside from full make-up, Michael Jackson also was buried with one of his iconic white gloves, La Toya Jackson said.
She described him as a man with a great heart.
"He wasn't God, but he was certainly God-like," she told Walters. "He was the closest thing to a god that I knew."
La Toya Jackson dismissed questions about the parentage of her brother's three children, Prince Michael, 12, Paris, 11, and Prince Michael II, 7, also known as Blanket.
"It doesn't really matter, those are Michael's kids," she said in the interview. "He raised those kids. They were in his arms when they were born."
Media reports have suggested that Jackson's dermatologist, Dr Arnold Klein, was the sperm donor for Jackson's two oldest children with ex-wife Debbie Rowe. The biological parents of Blanket have never been revealed.
In other developments, the private company with an ownership stake in Michael Jackson's famed central California estate, Neverland Ranch, this week withdrew official applications made in August to trademark various names for the property.
The applications were filed in the event that the Neverland owners and Jackson's estate decided to transform it into a tourist attraction with a museum. A spokesman for the company, Colony Capital, declined to comment.