Michael Jackson may be quietly laid to rest tomorrow to avoid a media circus, although some relatives are pushing everyone to wait to see if the King of Pop can be buried at his beloved Neverland Ranch.
THE POST’S ONGOING JACKO COVERAGE
“It looks like Monday morning right now,” a Jackson family member said. “We have a lot to do but we have to make sure the children get to say goodbye properly. That’s our concern — nothing else.”
That would mean Jackson’s body would not be laid out for fans to see at a public memorial scheduled for Tuesday.
But another relative said family members initially wanted to put off burying the pop star for at least a week to see if it was possible to cut through the red tape that had blocked his interment at Neverland, the carnival-like estate he formerly owned north of Los Angeles. It’s now in the hands of a real-estate speculator.
Zoning regulations forbid the burial of human remains outside a cemetery unless a variance is granted by the county.
For now, the family appears resigned to burying him at Forest Lawn Cemetery in LA.
“It’s unanimous that he’s going to be interred at Forest Lawn,” a close family friend said. “If Neverland can be developed, then that can be done later.”
In addition to how best to lay Jackson to rest, his family has been at odds over almost every other detail since the star died on June 25 at the age 50.
“The only thing we can agree on is that he has to go into the ground,” one relative said.
As the shock subsides, however, most relatives have begun deferring to his mom, family matriarch Katherine Jackson.
A spokesman for the Jackson family declined comment.
Meanwhile, details of the public memorial for Jackson at LA’s Staples Center remained unclear yesterday.
Event organizers said more than 1.2 million people had registered online in a bid to attend the ceremony.
Additional reporting by David K. Li in Los Angeles