Jackson family procession belatedly leaves for funeral; Liz Taylor, other celebs kept waiting

Jackson family belatedly leaves for funeral

GLENDALE, Calif. — A funeral procession including about 20 cars from the Jackson family compound is belatedly en route to the service for Michael Jackson at a Glendale cemetery.

The family motorcade departed from Encino more than a half-hour after the 7 p.m. Thursday service at Forest Lawn Glendale was scheduled to begin. The journey is about 20 minutes, even with a police escort.

The likely hourlong delay meant that celebrities — including 77-year-old Elizabeth Taylor — were kept waiting on a muggy night at which temperatures hovered at 90 just before sunset.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

GLENDALE, Calif. (AP) — Elizabeth Taylor, Barry Bonds and Macaulay Culkin and other celebrities were among the mourners gathered on a hot, muggy Thursday night for Michael Jackson’s funeral, slowly filling rows of white chairs placed outside the mausoleum where the King of Pop will be entombed.

Jackson’s family, including parents Joe and Katherine and the singer’s three children, had yet to arrive as the planned 7 p.m. start of the service came and went. With temperatures hovering at an oppressive 90 degrees, black-garbed mourners used programs for the service at Forest Lawn Glendale to fan themselves as they sat and waited.

A large, inflated light, the type used in film and television production, and a boom camera hovered over the seating area placed in front of the elaborate marble mausoleum. The equipment raised the possibility that the footage would be used for the Jackson concert documentary “This Is It.”

About 250 seats were arranged for mourners over a green surface. Nearly double the number of media credentials, 435, were issued to reporters and film crews who remained at a distance from the service and behind barricades.

Maria Martinez, 25, a fan from Riverside, Calif., who was joined by a dozen other Jackson admirers at a gas station near the security perimeter, gave a handful of pink flowers to a man with an invitation driving into the funeral.

“Can you please put these flowers on his grave?” she told him. Martinez said she picked them from a nearby park. “They were small and ugly, but I did that with my heart. I’m not going to be able to get close, so this is as close as I could get to him.”

The man consented, adding, “God bless.”

Glendale police said all was going smoothly early in the evening and there were no arrests.

Michael Jackson will share eternity at Forest Lawn with the likes of Clark Gable, Jean Harlow and W.C. Fields, entombed alongside them in the mausoleum that will be all but off-limits to adoring fans who might otherwise turn the pop star’s grave into a shrine.

After the burial, the closest the public will be able to get to Jackson’s vault is a portion of the mausoleum that displays “The Last Supper Window,” a life-size stained-glass re-creation of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece. Several 10-minute presentations about the window are held regularly 365 days a year, but most of the building is restricted.

Lisa Burk, who blogs about celebrity graves at www.gravehunting.com, said the Jackson family chose well for his final resting place if it was privacy they were after.

“It’s impossible to get in there,” Burk said. “It was before, and it will be worse now.”

By late afternoon Thursday, media tents had cropped up all along the boulevard across from the wrought-iron gates that serve as the main entrance to Forest Lawn. That vantage point offered no view of any mausoleum — just a fountain and a building containing the gift shop.

The Jackson family had booked an Italian restaurant in Pasadena for a gathering Thursday night, said Alex Carr, assistant operations manager at Villa Sorriso, in the city’s Old Town district. She wouldn’t specify the menu or number of people, but said the entire restaurant, which can accommodate 200 guests, had been reserved for the event and that security would be present.

The ceremony ends months of speculation that the singer’s body would be buried at Neverland Ranch, in part to make the property a Graceland-style attraction. An amended copy of Jackson’s death certificate was filed Thursday in Los Angeles County to reflect Forest Lawn as his final resting place.

In court on Wednesday, it was disclosed that 12 burial spaces were being purchased by Jackson’s estate at Forest Lawn Glendale, about eight miles north of downtown Los Angeles, but no details were offered on how they would be used.

The King of Pop died a drug-induced death June 25 at age 50 as he was about to embark on a comeback attempt. The coroner’s office has labeled the death a homicide, and Jackson’s death certificate lists “injection by another” as the cause.

Dr. Conrad Murray, Jackson’s personal physician, told detectives he gave the singer a series of sedatives and the powerful anesthetic propofol to help him sleep. But prosecutors are still investigating, and no charges have been filed.

AP writers Derrik J. Lang, Anthony McCartney, Sue Manning and Sandy Cohen, and AP Special Correspondent Linda Deutsch contributed to this report.