Britney Spears' family has dark history of locking women up

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KENTWOOD, La. — The local museum that properties a digital shrine to town’s most renowned resident, mega popstar Britney Spears, was once a funeral home. It’s one of the few puts nonetheless open some of the abandoned and ruined constructions in the tiny town heart.

The vibe is still funereal regardless of the best efforts of Fay Gehringer, curator of the Kentwood Historic and Cultural Museum, a chum of both Britney’s parents. She said she used to make the hair bows Britney wore “when she performed in the whole lot she could when she was a little bit girl.”

Gehringer, who seems to be more youthful than her eighty years, gamely displays off artifacts like the angel wings Britney wore all through the Femme Fatale excursion of 2011 and the glassed-in copy of Britney’s complete teenage bedroom, made famous when the then 17-year-old posed seductively subsequent to her dolls and teddy bears in a famous 1999 Rolling Stone cover story.

But it’s as though she’s describing a useless icon, now not the one-time golden girl from this rough slice of northern Louisiana, only a few miles from the Mississippi border, who is still handiest 39 and very much alive.

Gehringer likes to point out the facial resemblance between Britney’s grandmother, Emma Jean Spears, who killed herself at age 31 with a shotgun on the grave of her infant son in May 1966, via gesturing first at a framed picture of a fresh-faced younger “Jean,” as they referred to as her, and a blown-up poster of Britney at the opposite wall.

“That death had a large have an effect on in that family,” Gehringer mentioned of Emma Jean’s suicide and Britney’s father, Jamie. “It took a big toll on Jamie.”

Gehringer, like many in this tiny, rural town (pop. 2,120), is shell-shocked by way of the recent revelations and fast-moving tendencies within the tortuous saga of Britney’s 13-year conservatorship.

But locals hate talking about it, particularly to outsiders. Over the previous 20 years, visitors have reported being threatened with weapons or through the native sheriff. The author of a 2009 biography of Britney informed The Post that he had been warned no longer to enter the native VFW bar, the “Dub,” or he would find himself “eating gravel” within the car parking zone. This Post reporter used to be advised to depart by the manager who came out once I pulled into the driveway.

“I know what they’re saying about Jamie, however he’s no longer a bad guy,” Gehringer informed The Post. “[Britney’s mother and Jamie’s ex-wife,] Lynne is a great individual, too. They aren’t monsters. This is a small the town. We’re good, truthful country folks. They got swallowed up by the Hollywood system, via individuals who aren’t like us. None of them have been supplied to deal with it, not Jamie, Lynne or Britney.”

Two weeks in the past Britney received a big victory in court docket when a judge declared that her dad’s control over her life used to be “toxic” and granted her request to oust him as conservator of her property.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny agreed that it used to be in Britney’s “easiest pastime” to droop Jamie from the felony arrangement that has managed the singer’s lifestyles and money for the closing Thirteen years.

The ruling got here after Britney’s legal professional Mathew Rosengart petitioned the court to “immediately” suspend Jamie Spears from the position, arguing his persisted involvement has achieved nothing however lengthen “the Kafkaesque nightmare” that has been Britney’s life for the reason that conservatorship was once established in 2008, after her very public meltdown.
Jamie mostly lives in Kentwood, even if he sold Britney’s childhood home, behind Greenlaw Baptist Church, for $275,000 in February.

The Spears’ next-door-neighbor of many years nonetheless lives in the same home and advised The Post that she used to babysit for a “candy and vigorous Britney.” The lady, who didn't want her identify used, was quick to shield Jamie, as many here are.

Several local women in Kentwood and Osyka, Miss., which lies on the state border just 5 miles north, take into account Jamie Spears again when he was the recent basketball and soccer superstar at Kentwood High School.

“Every woman wanted Jamie,” a Kentwood High classmate three years his junior advised The Post. The 64-year-old girl asked that her title be withheld because she’s afraid of repercussions, although what she says in regards to the Spears family is positive. “He could really have gone puts. He was once so good-looking and so proficient.”

The woman’s pal, 63, mentioned the criticism of Jamie is arbitrary.

“That man labored so arduous for years,” she mentioned. “He had a industry development steel sheds out within the hot sun and he did that for years. He’s no longer some bloodsucker. I believe Britney is spoiled, for those who ask me.”

Some individuals of Jamie’s immediate family say it’s conventional for folks in the the town to shield Jamie.

John Mark Spears, 52, who's Jamie’s half-brother, said that their father, June Austin Spears, who died in 2012, was a terrible man who was once abusive to maximum of the 10 children he had with his three other halves.

Some of the 10 are useless, like 62-year-old Austin who died previous this yr of cirrhosis and liver most cancers after years of drinking and homelessness.

“These Spears men are one thing terrible,” John Mark, Britney’s uncle, said. “They’ve gotten away with such a lot, especially to their women, for years.”

John Mark said the entire family’s toxicity can be traced to his and Jamie’s dad.

“He was once a monster however nobody would say a foul word about him out of doors the family,” John Mark mentioned. “Just like nobody will say a nasty word about Jamie around right here.”

John Mark, who talked to The Post at his home in Osyka, where he has been a boilermaker, like his father, for 22 years, said June Austin beat his youngsters violently and brought about each of his first two better halves to go off the rails.

“He ruined Emma Jean and he ruined my mama [Jo Ann, deceased,” John Mark said. “He shipped them each off to Mandeville [the state’s former infamous psychological sanatorium] every now and then. So I’m no longer too shocked about what Jamie’s accomplished to Britney. It’s all about keep watch over with the Spears men.”

Jamie’s half-sister and Britney’s aunt, Leigh Ann Spears Wrather, 54, who now lives in Springfield, Tenn., said she left house at Sixteen after being sexually abused by way of their father from the age of 11. After he raped her in the future, she asked a pal to assist her get away. The pal’s mother arranged to fulfill Leigh Ann at a local mall.

“I by no means went again with the exception of to visit a couple of occasions,” Wrather, who retired after 26 years in the Navy, told The Post. “I’ve been dealing with it my entire existence. He used to line us youngsters up and whip us. We’d cross to church the place my daddy was once the deacon and on the means house he’d make me beat him off. I hope he’s burning in hell.”

Wrather, who began a blog in August about her childhood, said her father pressured her mother, Jamie’s stepmother, on the drug lithium for a while.

“My mother was like a debutante, she got here from a just right family and used to be considered a catch,” Leigh Ann mentioned. “But Daddy — I hate even calling him that — drove her loopy. He institutionalized her at Mandeville a couple of times and put her on lithium. When I heard that Britney was put on lithium for a while I virtually couldn’t consider it nevertheless it made sense. Typical for this family and how they deal with their women.”

Both John Mark and Leigh Ann mentioned they have some doubts about whether or not Emma Jean Spears’ demise was really a suicide. The loss of life were given an odd amount of attention, even operating on the front page of the Kentwood local paper. It was additionally slightly detailed for a suicide.

“The shotgun had been pressed against the lady’s chest and she it sounds as if pulled the cause with a toe of the right foot from which a shoe have been got rid of,” the newspaper stated on the time. The account additionally mentioned that Emma Jean “ splayed out her left leg around the grave” prior to checking that the 12-bore shotgun was ready and loaded with a single shell.

A Kentwood High classmate of Jamie’s recalled to The Post how, in May 1966, she was 8 years outdated in and “pushing cows” around the pastures close to Osyka, Ms. when she and her parents spotted a “vehicle” at Roberts cemetery and nobody round.

“Then we came upon who it was and the way it happened,” stated the classmate, who didn't need to give her name however took a reporter out to Emma Jean’s grave, right next to her child son Austin Wayne, which lies in a cemetery surrounded by bucolic fields and pastures.

But John Mark and Leigh Ann question how any person really knows how it took place. The native newspaper reported that Emma Jean’s husband, June Austin, advised the coroner his spouse had attempted to commit suicide several times sooner than and was once nonetheless depressed over the death of her son, who died when he was three days outdated.

“No one is aware of what took place because no person was once there,” Leigh Ann stated. “But you'll bet my daddy pulled the trigger one way or the other even supposing he wasn’t there.”

Leigh Ann mentioned she was once stationed in San Diego for the Navy and after a couple of years of remedy, referred to as her brothers and sisters and their spouses to inform them their father had raped her.

“You know who believed me?” she said. “Only Lynne Spears. I were given not anything bad to say about Lynne.”

“The Spears males wish to be held accountable,” Leigh Ann stated. “Thank goodness Britney got a good attorney. Jamie did to her what my daddy did to my mom and Emma Jean. They are mean and they'll ruin you if they are able to’t keep watch over you. But I think Britney will live to tell the tale. She’s a ravishing particular person with a stupendous soul.”

Jamie Spears did not reply to voice and text messages so this reporter went out to a gate, leading to a small concrete storage unit, on an infinite spread at the edge of Kentwood.

He’s been residing in an RV at the back of the unit off and on for about two years. Some locals say he has finished it to show he isn’t residing huge on Britney’s money.

After this reporter called Jamie to look if he wanted to come out and give his facet of the story, a person wearing a baseball cap and using a golfing cart — accompanied by way of a furiously barking canine — pulled out from behind the storage unit and drove to the gate.

He identified himself because the “head of security” but seemed very much like Jamie Spears, who has lost so much weight recently that John Mark mentioned he didn’t even recognize him when he ran into him downtown recently.

“I referred to as the law and so they’s coming!” he yelled. “You got one caution. Where is your car? Go get for your car and get out of here now. Bye! Go! Now. BYE!”

“That feels like Jamie,” said John Mark. “He doesn’t care about what the outside global thinks. He doesn’t care about his recognition. He’s a cussed son of a complain and I’ll most definitely get a visit from him after this story.”

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