Michael Jackson’s grieving relatives rolled up to the singer’s rented mansion hours after his death in a chaotic search for garbage bags full of cash, a new report states.
Within hours of Jackson’s June 25 death from an overdose of the anesthetic propofol, sister La Toya Jackson and her boyfriend, Jeffre Phillips, arrived at the house demanding to be admitted, Vanity Fair reports.
“We’re family, and we should have access to the house,” one of two said, according to the story, an adaptation from Randall Sullivan’s forthcoming Jackson epic, “Untouchable.”
Sullivan’s book says matriarch Katherine Jackson arrived that night and called her dead son’s nanny, Grace Rwaramba, also to inquire about the stashed cash.
“Grace, you remember Michael used to hide cash at the house? Where can it be?” she asked.
Rwaramba described Michael’s standard practice of hiding his cash in black plastic garbage bags and under the carpets, Sullivan reports.
La Toya and her boyfriend later loaded black plastic garbage bags into duffel bags and placed them in the garage, a security staffer reportedly told Sullivan.
The next morning, Janet Jackson arrived with a moving van that eventually exited through the front gate with Phillips at the wheel, the security source claimed.
Representatives for La Toya and Janet did not respond for comment.
Sullivan also revealed that the King of Pop’s star-studded burial was delayed nearly three months — with the singer’s body kept on ice — because Janet demanded to get her funeral deposit back, a new report claims.h.
“The “Control” singer put up the original $40,000 deposit at Forest Lawn cemetery in Glendale, Calif., to secure her brother’s eternal resting place, but refused to let the funeral happen until the money was repaid.
The “wrangling” between Janet and the managers of her brother’s estate meant Jackson’s remains languished in refrigerated storage between his June 2009 death and his early September burial.
A lawyer for the estate said the claim was news to him.
“The estate was not involved in those events. I have no idea what took place,” lawyer Howard Weitzman told the Daily News Thursday.
Sullivan also confirms prior reports that Michael’s siblings duped Katherine into taking a plane to a Tucson, Ariz., resort last summer for a controversial trip described by some as a kidnapping.
Katherine’s reps now believe the siblings whisked her away and kept her incommunicado in an attempt to gain a conservatorship over her, which would give them control over her share of Michael’s multimillion-dollar estate, Sullivan’s new book says.
ndillon@nydailynews.com
