GLENDALE, Calif. — Michael Jackson’s family arrived more than hour late for the pop singer’s funeral Thursday evening, keeping 77-year-old Elizabeth Taylor and other celebrities waiting on a hot summer evening.
A police escort ushered the motorcade of 31 cars to Forest Lawn Glendale. The planned start of the service came and went as the crowd of about 200 awaited the arrival of Jackson’s parents, Joe and Katherine, and the singer’s children. The motorcade from their Encino compound departed more than a half-hour after the funeral was to begin.
Temperatures hovered at 90 just before sunset, with some mourners fanning themselves with programs for the service. Other mourners included Barry Bonds, Macaulay Culkin and the Rev. Al Sharpton.
After mourners slowly filled rows of white chairs placed outside the mausoleum where the King of Pop was to be entombed, the five front rows of chairs remained empty, awaiting the family’s arrival.
The air was scented with smoke from a devastating wildfire that was about 10 miles from the cemetery.
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 asked 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.”
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.
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 “The Last Supper.”
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.
The ceremony ended months of speculation that the singer’s body would be buried at Neverland Ranch, in part to make the property a Graceland-style attraction.
Jackson 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 an anesthetic to help him sleep.
