Joe Jackson: Michael Jackson’s father, family patriarch dies at 89

Joe Jackson, the manager and patriarch of the Jackson 5, reportedly died Wednesday in Los Angeles at age 89.

A source told People that Joe was in his final stages of terminal pancreatic cancer. Days before his death, singer son Jermaine Jackson, 63, issued a statement confirming his father’s ill health and claiming that relatives weren’t being allowed to see him. Subsequent reports indicated that family members were allowed to see Joe before he died.

“We shouldn’t have to beg, plead, and argue to see our own father, especially at a time like this,” he said, according to Vanity Fair.

TMZ reported that Joe has had several health issues over the years. He was briefly hospitalized in 2016 for a high fever. He also had a pacemaker implanted in 2015 after suffering three heart attacks and a stroke in the same year.

While credited with launching his children’s musical careers, Joe has caught flack over the years for management practices that allegedly entailed emotional and physical abuse. In a 2010 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Joe admitted to beating his children but claimed it “kept them out of jail and kept them right.”

People reported that Joe’s relationship with son Michael was strained to the point that Michael left him out of his will prior to his death from an apparent cardiac arrest in 2009. However, mother Katherine reportedly continues to bring in $1 million a month from the King of Pop’s estate.

The father of 11 was also estranged from daughter La Toya Jackson, 62. In her 1991 memoir, La Toya claimed that Joe would beat them and sexually molested her and her sister Rebbie. Joe denied the sexual abuse allegations, according to Page Six.

Despite his controversies, Joe said he had no regrets about how he lived his life.

“Not at all,” he told The Post in 2014. “I don’t live that way.”

[Featured image: Joe Jackson/Evan Agostini/Invision/AP]