LOS ANGELES, Calif. — The former personal chef for Michael Jackson and his three children testified today that 15-year-old Paris is “devastated” due to her father’s death and is “trying to find out who she is,” but did not mention the teen’s recent suicide attempt and ongoing recovery.
Kai Chase, who said she has prepared food for luminaries ranging from President Barack Obama to actress Pamela Anderson, told a Los Angeles Superior Court jury that she now works for the pop star’s 83-year-old mother, Katherine Jackson, as well as Paris and her two siblings.
Paris was rushed to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center from the family’s Calabasas home on June 5 and remains hospitalized.
Chase’s testimony came in trial of the negligence/wrongful death lawsuit filed by Katherine Jackson in September 2010 on behalf of herself and her late son’s offspring, alleging that “This Is It” tour promoter AEG Live hired Dr. Conrad Murray to care for the singer and failed to supervise him properly.
AEG Live attorneys maintain that Jackson hired Murray in 2006 as his personal physician and chose him to be his doctor during 50 sold-out concert dates at London’s O2 Arena as part of an independent contractor arrangement.
Murray was convicted in 2011 of involuntary manslaughter in Jackson’s June 25, 2009, drug overdose death and sentenced to four years in jail. The doctor intravenously administered the powerful anesthetic propofol as a sleep aid to the singer, who was living in a rented Holmby Hills home while rehearsing for the sold-out tour.
Chase was asked under direct examination to describe the current emotional state of Jackson’s three children nearly four years after his death.
“Paris is devastated, devastated and lost,” Chase said. “She’s sad and she’s a young girl. She’s trying to find out who she is. It’s taking a lot of care and understanding to keep her together.”
Regarding Prince, Paris’ 16-year-old brother, Chase said he has “the weight of the world is on his shoulders.”
Meanwhile, Jackson’s youngest son, 11-year-old Blanket, copes as best as he can under the circumstances while being home-schooled, Chase said.
Chase — who also testified during Murray’s criminal case trial in September 2011 — said that on the day of Jackson’s death, she was in the middle of preparing the singer’s lunch when Murray hurriedly entered the kitchen after descending from his patient’s upstairs bedroom.
“He came down in a panic,” Chase said. “He said, ‘Go get help, get security, get Prince.”’
She said Murray never told her to call 911. She said she later heard Paris’ “blood-curdling screaming, just out of her mind.”
She said she gathered the children and held hands with them, hoping for the best, as the singer was transported to Ronald Reagan-UCLA. But she said she later heard on the radio that Jackson was dead.
“I didn’t want to believe it, I thought they were lying,” she said.
Chase said she had been unexpectedly fired in early May 2009 by Jackson’s personal representative, Michael Amir Williams, but brought back in early June 2009 at Jackson’s request.
She said Jackson appeared much thinner and less healthy than when she was hired three months earlier.
“He didn’t look as well as I’d seen him,” she said. “It concerned me greatly.”
She said she also found it puzzling that Murray kept oxygen tanks in the home and in a guard shack, and that he never consulted with her about the singer’s diet.
“You can fix him anything,” Murray once told her, according to Chase.
Chase said Jackson had wanted her to accompany him to London for the concert tour. She said he wanted his children to eat only healthy food and that he himself also avoided pork and beef. He liked Mexican food so much that she prepared him vegan tacos that the singer thought contained beef because they tasted so good, Chase said.
She said Jackson was intimately involved with the activities of his children whenever he was home.
“These children meant everything to him,” she said.
Chase also said the singer was a “practical jokester” who enjoyed playing pranks on her and his offspring.
Jackson gave an elaborate birthday celebration for daughter Paris’ 11th birthday on April 3, 2009, that ended up being the last she would have with her father alive, Chase said. The teen, now 15, has declined to celebrate her birthday since that occasion, Chase said.
She said that in her current job working for Katherine Jackson, the music family’s matriarch talks about her late son daily.
“This was her son, this was her child, she gave birth to him,” Chase said.
