© Charles Dharapak/AP

Katherine Jackson

More on Wonderwall: Photos of Jackson's final days
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Judge backs Michael Jackson lawyer and friend

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LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Michael Jackson's longtime attorney and a family friend should take over the pop singer's estate, a judge said Monday.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff issued his ruling after a court hearing Monday morning. Attorney John Branca and music executive John McClain had been designated in Jackson's 2002 will as the people he wanted to administer his estate.

Jackson died June 25, deeply in debt. But a court filing estimates that his estate will be worth more than $500 million.

The singer's mother, Katherine Jackson, had applied to oversee her son's estate, but that was before the will surfaced. Her attorney, Burt Levitch, expressed concerns about McClain and Branca's financial leadership.

Levitch told Beckloff that Branca had previously been removed from financial positions of authority by Jackson. Branca's attorney says he was rehired by Jackson on June 17, days before Jackson's death.

Katherine Jackson did not appear at Monday's hearing. Branca did attend.

Related: Jackson and mother Katherine had unbreakable bond

Branca and McClain will have to post a $1 million bond on the estate, Beckloff ruled.

Michael Jackson, 1958-2009

Latest on Jackson tragedy:News, photos, videos & more WonderWall: 10 ways we want to remember Jackson Tribute: Celebrate his art, learn from his life Photos: Fans remember Michael Jackson Video: Looking back at 'Thriller'

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Police may have killed suspect in S.C. slayings

Similar vehicle links series of five deaths to man shot overnight in N.C.

AP This is an updated drawing of the suspected serial killer in Cherokee County, S.C., made available on Friday.

http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/career-experts-10_boilerplate_phrases_that_kill_resumes-97

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15-year-old girl latest victim of suspected serial killer

GAFFNEY, S.C. - A teenage girl shot while helping her father in their family's small furniture and appliance store died Saturday, becoming the fifth victim of a suspected serial killer terrorizing a small South Carolina community, authorities said.

Abby Tyler, 15, died about 11:15 a.m. at a Spartanburg hospital after fighting for her life for two days, Cherokee County Coroner Dennis Fowler said.
Tyler was wounded and her father was killed Thursday as they worked to close the Tyler Home Center near downtown Gaffney.
County Sheriff Bill Blanton said investigators believe the killings are linked and the search is on for a suspected male serial killer. An 83-year-old mother and her daughter were shot to death Wednesday, and a 63-year-old peach farmer was found dead at his home a week ago.
Blanton said all the victims were shot, but he would not say how the deaths were linked. The shootings all occurred within about 10 miles of each other in Cherokee County, a rural community of 54,000 people set amid peach orchards and farms some 50 miles west of Charlotte, N.C.

Killings have terrorized community
The spree had alarmed residents canceling Independence Day holiday plans and arming themselves. The sheriff has warned door-to-door salesmen to stop knocking and anyone who breaks down on the county's rural roads to wait instead of walking to a house for help because he worries "people are going to start shooting at shadows."
The killings began a week ago Saturday when the wife of 63-year-old peach farmer Kline Cash found him dead in their home. Then last Wednesday, relatives found 83-year-old Hazel Linder and her 50-year-old daughter, Gena Linder Parker, bound and shot to death in a separate shooting at Linder's home.
Dozens of local, state and federal investigators were assigned to the case when the killings were linked. But a day later, the killer struck again, less than a half-mile from the sheriff's office serving as the headquarters for the investigation, killing 48-year-old Stephen Tyler and his daughter.
"We're knee-deep in the investigation," Blanton said Sunday. "There's fear and concern here and there should be concern."
Investigators have released a sketch of the suspect, saying he is in his 40s, with salt and pepper hair, about 6-foot-2, and roughly 200 pounds. They think he is driving a silver 1991-1994 Ford Explorer. 
The last time the town was this threatened like this was 1968, when the "Gaffney Strangler" killed four women over 10 days and vowed to kill more. The town banded together, despite racial prejudice, to find the man who was killing white and black women.
The strangler, Lee Roy Martin, called the editor of a local newspaper on Feb. 8, 1968, and told him where to find the bodies of two women he'd dumped in the woods. He threatened to kill even more women until he was "shot down like the dog I am."
People started to comb the community for clues, which led to Martin's arrest. He was convicted of four murders and sentenced to four life terms. In 1972, he was stabbed to death in his cell.

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Video

Police fight Florida pill mills  April 30: Florida police face drug addicts and dealers from other states seeking painkillers. Watch more of Mark Potter's report. Nightly News

Video

Prescription drugs 'killing our young' July 5: In their own words, parents, community leaders and advocates discuss the "epidemic" of prescription drug abuse. Nightly News

Interactives and quizzes

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NBC News/Voince Genova
Lynn and Sam Kissick discuss the tragic death of their Daughter as a result of a

prescription drug overdose

NBC News / Vince Genova Sarah Shay seen before her tragic drug overdose.

Prescription drug abuse ravages state's youth

Prescription drug abuse is  a fast-growing problem that exists across the country,
 but officials say the problem is particularly acute
 in the cities and rural areas of Eastern Kentucky. NBC News' Mark Potter reports.

Kentucky officials see an ‘epidemic’; officials say drugs coming from Florida

By Mark Potter

Correspondent

NBC News

updated 8:17 a.m. ET July 6, 2009

MOREHEAD, Ky. — Late in the morning last New Year's Day, Sam and Lynn Kissick received a devastating phone call that would tear their lives apart.
The caller informed them their 22-year-old daughter, Savannah, was being rushed by ambulance to the St. Claire Regional Medical Center in Morehead, Ky. She had long battled drug addiction, but it looked like this time, Savannah had overdosed on a combination of painkillers and sedatives while celebrating New Year's Eve. 
After racing to the emergency room to be by Savannah's side, her parents were met by a physician with grim news. "I'm sorry, Mr. And Mrs. Kissick, but she didn't make it," he said.
Savannah had just become the latest fatality linked to prescription drug abuse, a fast-growing problem that killed more than 8,500 Americans in 2005, according to the latest available statistics from the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says nearly 7 million Americans currently abuse prescription drugs, noting that is "more than the number who are abusing cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, ecstasy and inhalants combined." The DEA also reports that "opioid painkillers now cause more overdose deaths than cocaine and heroin combined."
"Something needs to be done, because it's killing our kids every day." said Lynn Kissick.  "People need to stand up and take notice. Our kids are dying. They're dying because of these drugs."

 A regional ‘epidemic’ 
While the problem exists in every state in the country, Kentucky led the nation in the use ofprescription drugs for non-medical purposes during the last year, according to the state'sOffice of Drug Control Policy. Officials said prescription drug abuse is particularly acute in the cities and rural areas of Eastern Kentucky.
Last year alone, at least 485 people died in Kentucky from prescription drug overdoses,
according to the state's Cabinet for Health and Family Services. Medical Examiners' records indicate the drugs most commonly found in those death cases were methadone, the painkillers oxycodone and hydrocodone, alprazolam (Xanax), morphine, diazepam (Valium) and fentanyl.
"It's an epidemic and I'm afraid we're losing a whole generation," said Beth Lewis Maze, the Chief Circuit Judge for the 21st Judicial Circuit in Kentucky. "These pain medications are so highly addictive that these young people are digging themselves a very deep hole."
In the region's newly formed drug court, Maze sees the ravages of prescription drug abuse at all levels of society. "I see good kids from good families, doctors, lawyers, teachers," she said.
Greenup County Coroner Neil Wright calls prescription drug abuse "public enemy number one."  Half of the 50 deaths he logged last year were drug related, and "85 to 90 percent" of those calls involved prescription pill overdoses. "It affects everybody. I don't care, rich, poor, educated or non-educated, it affects everybody."
Down the street, Greenup County Sheriff Keith Cooper dug through the many evidence bags his deputies have filled with prescription pill bottles and cash seized during drug arrests.
"We are drowning in a sea of prescription medication," said Cooper, who complained about the skyrocketing number of crimes committed by addicts searching for money to buy painkillers.
"It affects, quite literally, every kind, every type of crime that we have, the burglaries, the thefts, the accidents, the domestic disputes between families. It's breaking families up."
In neighboring Rowan County, where Savannah Kissick died, Chief Deputy Sheriff Roger Holbrook was arrested recently on federal charges that he had conspired to distribute oxycodone. 

Crowded rehabilitation clinics 
Pastor Wayne Ross runs the Shepherd’s Shelter adult drug and alcohol treatment center in Mount Sterling, Ky. His 50 available beds are filled with residents struggling to recover from drug addiction, almost all of them from prescription pill habits. 

Savannah Kissick was one of his clients, and she had graduated from the recovery program. Her return to drug abuse and her death from an overdose shook Ross and the clinic staff members who had worked hard for her success. 
"I cried, it breaks my heart," said Ross, who officiated at Savannah's funeral. "She's not the only one. We've been directly involved with five different people who have OD'd. Three of the funerals I did, myself, as a minister. It just breaks my heart."
Kay Fultz, 36, is also from Morehead, Ky. and is currently a resident of the Shepherd’s Shelter who said that at the height of her addiction, she was taking as many as 50 oxycodone pain pills a day and was dealing drugs to support her own habit.
"It just starts out as a party drug, you know, every now and then," Fultz said.  "Once you start doing it every day, I mean it just takes compete control of your life."
Finding a prescription drug supply was easy for Fultz. "It's very simple to get. It's everywhere," she said. But once addicted, the costs are severe. "I've lost everything. I've lost everything and it's so easy to do."

Florida connection 
During a recent classroom session at his clinic, Ross asked the residents where they bought their prescription drugs. Every person in the room had either traveled to Florida to obtain the medications, or had purchased drugs from someone else who had bought prescription painkillers there. 
Florida has become notorious as a destination for addicts and drug dealers from around the southeastern United States.  They are drawn to the many pain clinics in Florida, some of which dispense hundreds of painkillers at a time after only a cursory medical exam.
"You can go down there and within 24 hours have everything you need," said Fultz, who added that the medical exam she was given at a Florida pain clinic, where she pretended to suffer from pain, was not at all professional.
"I mean, they look at your MRI, ask you how you are feeling — ‘I'm feeling pretty bad’ — and you leave there with pills."
Sam Kissick, Savannah’s father, believes the drugs that killed his daughter came from Florida.
"From where I'm sitting, it looks like they're handing it out like candy on Halloween," he said. "Anybody that goes down there can come back with carloads of pills, and then they're dumped out on our streets."
To addicts in Kentucky, Florida is “like the promised land,” said Cooper, the Greenup County sheriff.
Local police, federal agents and medical officials in Florida are targeting illicit prescription drug sales. The state legislature recently passed, and Gov. Charlie Crist signed, a law to regulate and monitor pain clinics, although the procedure won't be fully implemented until late next year. 
Kentucky and most other states already have such monitoring laws in place, making it much more difficult for addicts and dealers to buy large amounts of prescription medication by going from clinic to clinic – a common practice in Florida.

Families left behind 
Karen Shay, a dentist in Morehead, Ky., also knows too well the cost and pain of prescription drug abuse. Two years ago, her 19-year-old daughter, Sarah, died from an overdose after partying with friends, who dropped her body off at a hospital and drove away. 
Sarah Shay and Savannah Kissick had been childhood friends.
"We have two young ladies that were beautiful, talented and intelligent, had the world by the tail, could have done anything and they're gone,” Shay said. “They're gone."
In her work, Shay also sees the desperation of drug addicts, some of whom have visited her office seeking pain medication for fake dental problems. Because of Kentucky's prescription monitoring law, Shay is able to run computer checks on patients she suspects of doctor-shopping for painkillers and turns many of them away.
"If [the painkillers are] taken the way they're supposed to be, it's a very powerful, helpful drug.  But when they're not taken the way they're supposed to, then it becomes a killer," she said. "It's amazing when you look in the paper, how many people have died from drug abuse. "

During a recent visit to the cemetery where Sarah is interred, Shay cleared away the dying flower petals and placed a colorful pinwheel below her daughter's crypt. Looking upward to the plaque showing Sarah's name and picture, she quietly spoke the words, "Hi, Baby," then bowed her head. 
"When you lose somebody like that, it puts a hole in your heart that nothing else will ever fill," she said.
For the Kissicks, whose loss is more recent and raw, anger mingles with grief.
"It's time that people were held accountable for what's happening. I think it's time that someone was held responsible,” Lynn Kissick said.
The parents want to raise awareness about the problem so that others don’t have to endure their pain.
"The drugs, they don't discriminate and it can happen to anybody," said Sam Kissick. "You may never have any idea that your child is exploring or fooling with prescription drugs at all, until they've already gone too far with it."

Sitting at their dining room table recently, Savannah's parents sorted through colorful photographs of their daughter. 

"She had a beautiful smile," said Lynn. In a quiet voice, Sam agreed, "That she did."
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Relative: Police say woman with McNair bought gun

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)—Steve McNair’s(notes) 20-year-old girlfriend bought a gun a couple of days before she was found dead alongside the slain former NFL quarterback, her relative said Monday.

Farzin Abdi said police told him about the gun purchase by his aunt Sahel Kazemi, who was raised with him like a sister. Kazemi and McNair were found dead on Saturday in a Nashville condominium leased by the former Titans star.

Abdi said police told him they are almost sure Kazemi was the shooter, but the 27-year-old nephew said he doesn’t believe she would do it. Abdi didn’t know what day of the week the gun was purchased or what type of gun it was.

“There was no way she was depressed and wanting to do this,” he said. “She was so happy. … She just had it made, you know, (with) this guy taking care of everything.”

Nashville police didn’t immediately have a response to Abdi’s comments.

Abdi said Kazemi believed McNair was divorcing his wife and she was preparing to sell her furniture to move in with him.

Nashville courts had no record of a McNair divorce case, but a 14,000-square-foot home he owned in Nashville is on the market for $3 million.

Mechelle McNair has been described as very distraught about her husband’s death and has not commented on it.

Before their deaths, the public knew nothing of Kazemi’s relationship with McNair, a star who had earned the respect of his fellow NFL players for shaking off defenders and injuries and the love of fans amazed at how the quarterback kept showing up for work—and winning.

He endeared himself further with his charity work. Not just from the checks he handed out, but for throwing himself into the efforts, like he did when loading boxes onto tractor-trailers bound for Hurricane Katrina victims.

Publicly, McNair was a happily married man and proud father of four sons who split his time between his Mississippi farm and a home in Music City, where celebrities are cherished, not hassled.

His death, however, thrust a darker side of his private life into the spotlight.

“People have certain things that they do in life,” said McNair’s longtime friend Robert Gaddy, who called 911. “We don’t need to look on the situation at this time (but) on the fact we just lost a great member of society.”

Even McNair’s longtime agent said he didn’t know about the former quarterback’s relationship with Kazemi.

“As good as he was on the football field, that couldn’t touch the person,” agent Bus Cook said Sunday, still shaken by McNair’s death. “I mean it just couldn’t.”

Hints of a problem with alcohol surfaced in May 2003 when a Nashville police officer pulled McNair over on suspicion of drunk driving. Police said the quarterback’s blood alcohol content was 0.18 percent—well over Tennessee’s legal limit. He also was charged with having a 9mm weapon with him, but all the charges were later dropped.

McNair was charged with drunken driving in 2007 because he let his brother-in-law drive his pickup truck. Those charges were later dropped when the DUI charge against the brother-in-law was reduced to reckless driving.

And McNair could have been charged again Thursday night when the same officer who arrested him in 2003 stopped a 2007 Cadillac Escalade driven by Kazemi and registered to both her and McNair. Kazemi was arrested on a DUI charge, and he was allowed to leave in a taxi.

Police labeled his death a homicide Sunday, revealing McNair had been shot four times—twice in the head, twice in the chest—when found in a rented condominium he shared with a longtime friend, Wayne Neeley. Police found a semiautomatic pistol under Kazemi’s body.

But police spokesman Don Aaron said they were reviewing every possibility, interviewing friends of both and an ex-boyfriend before labeling Kazemi’s death.

On the football field, he simply was “Air McNair,” a winner.

McNair still holds the NCAA’s Football Championship Series (formerly Division I-AA) records for career yards passing (14,496) and total offense (16,823) from his days at tiny Alcorn State in Mississippi.

He played 13 NFL seasons, starting with the then-Houston Oilers, and led Tennessee to its famous last-second 2000 Super Bowl loss to the St. Louis Rams. He ended his career in Baltimore last season, after being traded away by the Titans after they drafted Vince Young(notes) as a replacement to the aching and expensive veteran.

McNair’s friends want the quarterback to be remembered for his generosity. He gave away turkeys and checks in Tennessee, toys in Baltimore and paid for three football camps himself this year. Cook talked to someone Saturday who saw McNair cleaning up the field after one camp at Southern Mississippi.

“That was Steve McNair. That’s who he is. And who he was,” an emotional Cook recalled.

A viewing will be held Thursday at a Nashville funeral home, followed by another viewing at Mount Zion Baptist Church with a memorial service Thursday night. A funeral service will be held Saturday in Mississippi, but final details were not set.

McNair met Kazemi at the Dave & Buster’s restaurant where she worked as a server and where his family ate often. The two began dating a few months ago in a relationship that included a vacation with parasailing. Photos posted on TMZ.com showed McNair gazing and smiling at the young Kazemi.

Associated Press writers Travis Loller, Lucas L. Johnson II and Joe Edwards contributed to this story.

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