During an appearance on Jane Velez-Mitchell's HLN show Wednesday night, Katherine Jackson's lawyer told Velez-Mitchell and me that his client was en route back to California, after taking some time off in Arizona with the intention of lowering her blood pressure.
“This is one gigantic misunderstanding,” Katherine’s lawyer, Perry Sanders, told us, referring to the bizarre series of events this week. The 82-year-old Jackson matriarch was reported missing, found the next day at a resort in Arizona and then lost her guardianship over her three grandchildren. “If this wasn’t the Jackson family, we wouldn’t be talking about it,” Sanders said.
But it is the Jackson family, and since Michael’s daughter, Paris told her 600,000-plus Twitter followers that she didn’t know where her grandmother was when Katherine disappeared for nine days, it's likely that the topic won't be put to rest anytime soon.
“They have a public relations nightmare on their hands that isn’t going to go away anytime soon," one high-profile attorney told me. It doesn’t matter how many sweet tweets Paris now sends or how many lawyers say everything is fine. Until Katherine herself sits down and tells her side of the story, and answers difficult questions, like why she left without talking to the children, and why not relax in her mansion that she calls home rather than leaving the state, this isn’t going anywhere.”
As for her side, Katherine told ABC News Wednesday, "One reason I didn't call is I just gave up my phone and I didn't want to have any phone calls while I was here."
Sanders says that he flew to Tucson and met with Katherine's children Jermaine and Janet Jackson, although he didn’t see Katherine. He did say he spoke with the Jackson matriarch via phone and she sounded fine.
“She [Katherine Jackson] did know who would care for them [the children]. The same person that always cares for them,” said Sanders. So why hadn’t Paris heard from Granny in more than nine days? “This was an unusual situation of her, being in a spa.”
When I called the Miraval Spa in Tucson, Ariz., where her lawyer said she was staying, the hotel staff said that there are phones in every room and cellphone use is allowed.
