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CNN: Many of his fans had hoped they’d get a chance to pay last respects at Neverland Ranch, which Jackson purchased in 1987, filled with animals and amusement rides, and named after the fictional world in J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan.” Gregory Son, a 31-year-old musician, was among many fans who had planned to ride to the ranch to say goodbye to Jackson. “I think he was a modern-day prophet,” Son said outside Grauman’s. “We kind of lost our father.” Next to him, 26-year-old Sean Vezina, wearing sunglasses and a fedora like Jackson’s, stood silently. Vezina said he made his living as a Jackson impersonator, but was mourning too much to display any moves. MORE
ZIMBIO: Michael Jackson has turned the deed to his financially plagued Neverland Ranch over to a company that he has a partial stake in, effectively ending his reign as the King of the House That Pop Built. Then again, one could wonder what took so long. Jackson hasn’t spent any time at the Los Olivos, Calif., estate he bought in 1988 since being acquitted of child-molestation charges in 2005-crimes he was accused of committing on his 2,500-acre property, which in its heyday featured a working petting zoo, amusement park and various other kid-friendly attractions. Jackson nearly lost the whole kit and caboodle to foreclosure in May, but an eleventh-hour reprieve from L.A.-based real estate company Colony Capital, which bought a $23.5 million loan that the Thriller artist had been unable to pay back, saved Neverland from the auction block. MORE
LA TIMES: For his part, Jackson seemed to consider Rowe, whom he married in 1996, little more than a baby machine. When their daughter, Paris Michael Katherine, now 11, was born, he snatched her and “just went home with her with all the placenta all over her,” leaving Rowe behind in the hospital, Jackson told ABC News in 2003. When their son, Prince Michael Jr., now 12, told the interviewer, “I haven’t got a mother,” Jackson assented: “That’s right.” Jackson said the children would not benefit from contact with Rowe because “she can’t handle it.” She also appeared to love Jackson, even though their marriage was established for the sole purpose of bearing him children. Jackson rewarded Rowe with large sums of money for forsaking the children, and money appeared to be a concern when she later tried to obtain custody of them after the singer was accused of child molestation in 2003. MORE
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