Friday 11 November 2022 11:11 PM Did Britney Spears's grandfather MURDER his WIFE? trends now
On a humid spring day in 1966, in the Deep South of the United States, a desperate woman walked to the grave of her infant son carrying a 12-gauge shotgun.
Angling the butt of the gun in the dirt with the barrel pointed upwards towards her, she reportedly removed her shoe and pressed the trigger with her toe and fell to the ground, where she remained until she was discovered the next morning.
Her husband, June Austin, told coroners that she’d already attempted suicide three times. A court decided that this was a final successful attempt.
This, apparently, was the tragic fate of Emma Jean Spears, commonly referred to as simply Jean — the grandmother of pop superstar Britney Jean Spears, after whom she is named and to whom she bears a striking resemblance.
Emma Jean Spears, commonly referred to as simply Jean — the grandmother of pop superstar Britney Jean Spear
The popstar's grandfather, June Austin, told coroners that his wife already attempted suicide three times
But explosive revelations this week allege that Jean might not have killed herself at all. Rather, the suggestion is that she was murdered — by none other than husband June, Britney’s grandfather.
An investigation by the New York Magazine quotes members of Britney’s family saying they question whether Jean killed herself. As we shall see, when a reporter asks one of them whether it was June Austin who pulled the trigger, the reply suggested that he did.
The investigation paints a dark portrait of the Spears family tree — and seems to shed a chilling light on the way women have been treated in the family.
It also implies that the tyranny with which its patriarch June Austin treated his family has been passed on to his son Jamie who, in turn, is accused in court of tyrannising his daughter Britney.
As the world now knows, for 13 years, Jamie Spears, 70, held Britney in a ‘conservatorship’, effectively imprisoning her in one of the most severe and unusual legal guardianships in the U.S.
Britney Spears pictured with her grandfather, June, and Aretha Franklin
In 2007, aged just 25, Britney suffered one of the most tragic and public mental breakdowns in showbusiness history, shaving her head and attacking a photographer’s car with an umbrella.
The following year, with police and TV helicopters overhead, the troubled star was wheeled out of her Los Angeles home strapped to a stretcher, having been locked with her year-old son in her bathroom, ‘under the influence of an unknown substance’.
It was shortly after these alarming episodes that her father Jamie became her legal guardian in what was known as an emergency ‘temporary conservatorship’.
That supposedly temporary arrangement lasted more than a decade, giving Britney no control over her finances or personal life until a court decision last year overturned this.
In 2007, aged just 25, Britney suffered one of the most tragic and public mental breakdowns in showbusiness history, shaving her head and attacking a photographer’s car with an umbrella
Throughout this time the princess of pop was unable to choose her own meals, receive visitors, drive or even use contraception without her father’s permission.
She told the court she could not do so much as ‘buy a stick of gum’ without disclosing it. The idea that the father of this sweet-natured all-American girl had held her captive was deeply sinister. With the New York Magazine investigation, we have perhaps received an explanation of why Jamie Spears exerted such dictatorial control over his daughter.
To understand the background, we have to go back to 1930 when June Austin — Britney’s grandfather — was born near Kentwood deep in the redneck country of Louisiana. It was there he met Britney’s grandmother and they married when she was just 16.
According to the magazine, he had ‘a mean streak’.
He did not meet his son Jamie until the little boy was one because June was in the air force. When he was around he ruled his family with an iron fist. Jamie was 13 when his mother Jean died in such violent circumstances.
The troubled star was wheeled out of her Los Angeles home strapped to a stretcher, having been locked with her year-old son in her bathroom
It also implies that the tyranny with which its patriarch June Austin treated his family has been passed on to his son Jamie(pictured) who, in turn, is accused in court of tyrannising his daughter Britney
According to her family, she had been bullied relentlessly by June and was mourning the death of her three-day-old baby, Jamie’s younger brother, on the day of her death. Little Jamie was a formidable sportsman, excelling particularly in American football, the game closest to his old man’s heart. Soon he became the Louisiana quarterback of the year.
But June was a relentless coach, pushing his son to ‘exhaustion’ in training and making his presence keenly felt in the stands at home games. (Years later Jamie would come to regard his own daughter, during her Las Vegas residencies, as ‘a racehorse’.)
When, as a teenager, Jamie was badly injured in a car accident in which his best friend died, his father’s response was to berate him. A month later Jamie was back on the field, where he won that year’s championship.
Just eight months after Jean’s death, June married Jo Ann Blackwell, who came from a well-respected Kentwood family. She later claimed he had beaten her and ‘committed numerous acts of cruelty’ towards her.
According to her children, June even had Jo Ann locked up against her will at psychiatric hospital Mandeville, the kind of place he referred to as a ‘nut house’. Like Britney, decades later, Jo Ann was interrogated by the court as to her fitness as a mother. Citing her ‘nervous breakdown’, the court awarded custody to June. ‘These Spears men are something awful’, John Mark Spears, Britney’s uncle and the son of Jo Ann, told the New York Post.
‘He ruined Emma Jean and he ruined my mama. He shipped them both off to Mandeville from time to time. So I’m not too surprised about what Jamie’s done to Britney.’
Britney was born in 1981, five
