There is a lot of invented rubbish online claiming to be Michael Jackson’s “final words.” Most of it is fabricated. But there is a real record of what he said to his children in his last weeks, and it exists for a sad reason: his son had to say it under oath in a courtroom.
In June 2013, four years after his father’s death, Prince Jackson — then 16 — took the witness stand in the family’s wrongful death case. He was asked what his father had been like in the run-up to the This Is It concerts. And what he described was a man confiding in a twelve-year-old boy because there was nobody else.
Prince Jackson Testimony in Michael Jackson Civil Suit: Dad’s Post-Rehearsal Words Reveal Concern
Prince testified that his father would come off the phone with the concert promoters in tears. “After he got off the phone, he would cry,” Prince said. And then, over and over, his father would say the same thing to him: “They’re going to kill me. They’re going to kill me.”
Think about the weight of that. Michael Jackson told his child he was frightened because his child was the person he trusted.
Prince also described the night before it happened. His father was out at the final rehearsal. A senior executive from the concert company turned up at the house, and Prince — a twelve-year-old — rang his father from the security guard’s hut to warn him somebody was there. His father’s response was not anger or panic. He asked Prince to offer the man food and drink. Even then, even that night, he was telling his son to be a good host.
Michael Jackson’s Daughter Speech on Michael Jackson’s Funeral
Then came the day itself. Prince described being called upstairs and finding his father half off the bed, with a doctor attempting CPR. Paris came up the stairs behind him, and they kept pulling her back down. “She was screaming the whole time, saying she wants her daddy.” At the hospital later, the doctor delivered the news to three children in five words: “Sorry kids, your dad’s dead.”
What Prince said about the years afterward is what stays with you. “I can’t sleep at night. I have a hard time sleeping.” He said the loss left him emotionally distant from people for a long time, and he listed the specific things he had missed sharing with his father — the first day of school, a first girlfriend, learning to drive.
He also spoke about his siblings with a care that is remarkable in a teenager. Of Paris, he said: “I think out of all of my siblings she was probably hit the hardest, because she was my dad’s princess.” Of his little brother, who was seven when it happened: “Right now, I don’t know if Blanket realizes what he lost. He was so young. He is still growing up just like I am and he doesn’t have a father to guide him.”
There is one more thing worth adding, because it explains why all three of them talk about him the way they do. His longtime associate recalled the instruction Michael gave everyone around him, again and again: “Please make sure you help me to protect and take care of my children and my mother Katherine.”
That was the message. Not a farewell speech. Just a father asking people to look after his kids.