And when the groove is dead and gone, you know that love survives, so we can rock forever.
02 Aug 2009
02 Aug 2009
02 Aug 2009
02 August 2009 02:22
In an interview with TV One, Joe Jackson asserts Omer Bhatti, a 25-year-old dancer and aspiring rapper from Oslo, Norway who once traveled the world with Michael Jackson, lived at the singer's Neverland ranch and was referred to by the Jackson family as "Michael J," is the pop icon's estranged fourth child.
Asked if he knew Bhatti was Jackson's son, Joe Jackson said, "Yes, I knew he had another son, yes I did."
He added: "He looks like a Jackson, he can dance like a Jackson. This boy is fantastic dancer -- matter of fact, he teaches dance."
Bhatti came under renewed scrutiny earlier this month, when the British newspaper The Sun reported Bhatti is seeking a DNA test to find out if he's really Jackson's child.
Bhatti has features similar to Jackson and shares an uncanny resemblance to his youngest son Prince II, known as Blanket.
Not everyone connected to the family is as certain as Joe Jackson that Bhatti is the pop icon's flesh and blood. But one thing is for sure: Bhatti, who was seated on the front row at Jackson's memorial service next to Jackson's children and siblings, occupies a special place in the Jackson family.
In Vienna earlier this month, Jackson's brother Jermaine Jackson said Bhatti would be welcomed into the family, if he's proven a Jackson.
"If Omer's his son, he's his son," Jermaine Jackson told Britain's the Daily Mail. "We won't deny it. We are going to give him the same love and care that we give Prince and Paris and Blanket. I can't clearly say if he is Michael's, but I saw this kid around him."
Jermaine Jackson said Jackson's eldest sister Rebbie seated Bhatti up front next to the family.
"My sister went and got him during the service and got him to sit closer to my mother," Jermaine Jackson said.
Since the memorial service, Bhatti has remained in Los Angeles and been seen playing at the Jackson family compound with Michael Jackson's three children -- Prince, Paris and Prince II -- according to the Daily Mail.
Stacy Brown, a Jackson biographer who once worked as a family spokesman, said he first began hearing about Bhatti in 1992, when he would have been 8.
Bhatti's mother, Pia, worked as Michael Jackson's first nanny, taking care of Prince, according to Brown. His father, Biz, reportedly worked as one of Jackson's drivers.
Following Jackson's death on June 25, Pia told a reporter: "He was the King of Pop. But for us he was so much more."
Since then, the parents, who returned to Oslo, have refused to answer reporters' questions about Bhatti's parentage.
"Michael took him [Bhatti] in and took his parents in, he would travel the world with him," Brown said. "He lived at Neverland for a long time and moved out when Michael left Neverland."
"Maybe Michael loved him like a son, treated him like a son, and maybe he [Bhatti] felt like Michael was really his father," said Stuart Backerman, a former family spokesman. "But I just don't buy that he's his son."
Backerman believes if Bhatti really were Jackson's son, Jackson long ago would have acknowledged it, especially in light of how close he was to his three children.
"Nobody called him Omer, they called him Michael J.," said Brown. "Ever since he was a little boy he would make himself up to look like Michael. They would wear the same -- hat, pants, shoes, even socks. Michael loved it."
Now he's an aspiring rapper who goes by the stage name O-Bee.
He also has remained a staunch defender of Jackson. Bhatti was living at Neverland when Los Angeles police raided the estate in 2003 looking for evidence of child molestation.
abc news / mjr