My family say I’m crazy, Whitney’s tormented daughter told me... so they can get hold of MY money
Interviewer Daphne Barak, one of Bobbi Kristina Brown’s closest confidantes, on the tortured last days of ‘a little girl lost’
TODAY, Bobbi Kristina Brown lies unresponsive, hooked up to life support equipment in an Atlanta hospital. Nothing yet is certain about this young woman’s fate but, like most others, I fear the very worst. And I know that a tragedy of this kind has been coming for some time.
Bobbi Kristina was delightful, but she was also a young lady who carried a heavy load. For the past 15 months, I have been working with her to make a film about Whitney Houston, her late mother. As we got to know each other, she confided more and more about her turbulent life and many insecurities.
Since Whitney died three years ago, Bobbi Kristina has felt increasingly lost. Barely more than a child today, she was 18 at the time and emotionally shattered.
She turned to drugs and alcohol – I saw the evidence with my own eyes – and, in the process, became alienated from the family members who might have supported her. Found unconscious in a bath tub last Saturday, with evidence of drugs nearby, her fate seems heartbreakingly similar to that of her mother, who was found dead in the bath of her Los Angeles hotel suite.
I first contacted Bobbi Kristina after seeing private footage of Whitney’s wedding to Bobby Brown. The elegance and glamour of the occasion persuaded me to start a film of her life, with her daughter as narrator. Bobbi Kristina was delighted to be approached.
We started to speak regularly – the last time was a few weeks ago – and eventually she came to stay. What she had to tell me was sad. How, for example, she feared some relatives wanted to cash in on the inheritance left for her by her mother. How she witnessed Whitney’s drug abuse. How, in January last year, she married long-time boyfriend Nick Gordon, despite recent assertions to the contrary by her father Bobby. And how she longed to be a mother and a wife.
This was a girl badly in need of a family. More than anything else, it was the loss of her mother that struck home and there were times when I found myself almost in that role.
She said: ‘I miss her like hell. When Mom passed, I was lost. She had taught me everything up until I was 18. How to be a woman. Now I am working on that alone. For me, she wasn’t Whitney Houston the star. She was my mom.’
Bobbi Kristina lived a rather naive, child-like existence. She seemed to believe she was as famous as her mother, saying: ‘She taught me how to sing gospel and a cappella because it would make my voice stronger.’ But the talent, of course, was no means the same.
Missing her mother, she began to distance herself from her father, as I found when she and Nick came to visit in California last year.
I encouraged her to see Bobby. But she was a troubled young woman. She seemed angry with his wife, Alicia, calling her a ‘bitch’, claiming she ‘has put him on weird stuff like yoga’.
Alicia was not the only target of her anger. At that time she was under the wing of her mother’s half-brother, Gary, and his wife Pat. But when she returned home to Atlanta, I received another frantic phone call. She said: ‘I have nothing to do with my Aunt Pat now. Can we fly to you? Can you fly us out to be with you?’
An every day thing such as booking a flight wasn’t something Bobbi had ever had to do. At the age of 21, she didn’t know how.
As her family face the dreadful decision of whether to switch off her life support, a disturbing conversation I had with Bobbi leaves me feeling uneasy.
Last March she said that, as she had turned 21, she had started to get money from her mother’s estate. Then she blurted out that she felt some family members were trying to portray her as unstable, so they could handle the money. Who knows if the claim is true, but certainly the fight over the money began just hours after Bobbi was found unconscious.
While her father rushed out a statement insisting Bobbi was not married – the union would mean Nick was her nearest relative and so would inherit – Bobbi had always insisted to me that they were. Stina, as Whitney affectionately called her daughter, told me: ‘ We went in front of a judge because we wanted it done.’
Last summer, in a bid to construct a family of her own, she confided that she was hoping for a baby. She also said she was planning a religious ceremony, ‘the most special wedding’, as she put it. ‘ On Nick’s birthday in May. He is everything to me,’ she said.
It has been claimed that Bobbi Kristina and Nick were brought up as half-brother and sister, and as such the relationship is inappropriate. Both referred to Whitney as ‘our mother’. But Nick’s family told me it was untrue that he lived with Whitney’s family from the age of 12, as is said. Instead, he lived with his mother, Maxine, until he was 16, before moving in with his grandparents who insisted he either study or work. His response was to move in with Whitney and Bobbi Kristina. Drug abuse is the other shadow darkening the tragedy. Bobbi Kristina said living with Whitney could be traumatic. She and Nick saw her passing out from drugs – sometimes for days on end. At times, they feared she would die. Bobbi Kristina herself took prescription drugs. It was all too clear when she and Nick came to visit. They complained they had ‘flu’, Nick in particular. ‘We are very sick. We need a doctor,’ Bobbi Kristina insisted. When I said my husband would drive them, she replied: ‘No, Nick will go. I am too famous to go.’
They tried many pharmacies and once they had the pills, they ran off to their hotel. We phoned and phoned, but they didn’t pick up. They called us – three days later.
My husband later found a prescription made out to Nick in our Jeep. It was for Oxycodone, a highly addictive and powerful drug used to relieve cancer pain.
I wasn’t sure what to do. In the end I told Nick’s grandmother. Although Bobbi and Nick denied it, she knew better, saying she didn’t want to see them until they were clean. Both insisted they weren’t taking anything. Nick called me, pleading: ‘You know it’s not true, Daphne. Say it’s not true.’ But there could be no doubt about it.
To me, Bobbi Kristina was sweet, intelligent and compassionate. But she was a little girl lost without the mother she adored – and probably copied. How could you blame her?
She wasn’t Whitney the star. She was my mom