Thaindian News

Los Angeles, Sep 4 (DPA) Ten weeks after his drug-induced death, the late pop superstar Michael Jackson was buried Thursday in a private ceremony for family and friends at a cemetery for the stars in Los Angeles.
Stars such as Elizabeth Taylor, Macauley Culkin and Chris Tucker were among the 200 mourners at the tightly protected event at the Grand Mausoleum of the historic Forest Lawn Memorial Park.

The Jackson family arrived more than an hour late in a convoy of 31 limousines followed by Jackson’s hearse. Jackson’s brothers wheeled the casket to the service — each wearing a black suit and Jackson’s trademark single white glove.

Hundreds of police kept the media and public far from the rolling lawn where the funeral started and the massive hall where Jackson’s body will lie close to the crypts of other showbiz legends like Walt Disney, Humphrey Bogart, Jean Harlow, Errol Flynn, Carole Lombard and Clark Gable.

The closely-guarded building features copies of the Michelangelo statues of David and Moses, and a stained glass rendition of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper.

Glendale police said they expected to bill the cost to Jackson’s estate, which was ordered Wednesday by a probate judge to bear the “extraordinary” costs of his funeral. Preliminary estimates put the cost of the policing operation at $150,000, and the entire cost of the funeral at $800,000.

Probate Judge Mitchell Beckloff approved the payment at a hearing Wednesday in downtown Los Angeles after an attorney for the estate’s administrators, John Branca and John McClain, assured him that the estate had enough cash to cover the expenses and that paying for the funeral will not affect its solvency.

“The expenses are extraordinary; however, Michael Jackson is extraordinary,” said attorney Jeryll S. Cohen, who told the judge the administrators did not object to the expenses.

“They may not be appropriate for an ordinary person, but Michael Jackson was not ordinary.”