One year ago, Britney Spears was freed from a notorious conservatorship.
What possessed her father to seize control of her life?
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The baby had been buried below an oak tree in a small cemetery loud with the buzzing of cicadas.
Jamies mother was named Emma Jean Forbes, and everyone called her Jean.
She loaded it with 16-gauge shells, technically too small for the gun.
I have been very good, Jamies little sister, Jeanine, wrote to Santa Claus the following year.
just bring me a Lucky Locket kiddle doll.
Jo Ann Blackwell would be Junes second but not last wife.
Jo Ann Blackwellwas 28.
Her brother Arlan was married to Junes stepsister.
In high school, she had been named the Betty Crocker Future Homemaker of Tomorrow.
Jamie Spears had a Louisiana drawl so deep a documentary in which he later appeared would include subtitles.
It had been at Lexies house that the body of his mother was displayed after her death.
The people of Kentwood raised Jamie Spears, and he returned the favor by entertaining them.
It didnt matter what game he was playing, Jamie was beautiful to watch.
He was one of those special athletes, okay?
Theres some guys who have thishand-eye.Thats special.
Some people have that, some people dont.
He once scored 47 points in a single game.
Wherever they were, June Austin was in the stands, and you knew it.
A fireball, that he was, says Shaw.
Didnt know that he was the baddest son of a bitch in Louisiana.
It was challenging for people to mention Jamies talent without mentioning his size.
This Spears is a fine competitor, an entirely different coach had told the same paper a year before.
While hes a small boy, he can do it all.
A football team is a social unit in which everyone has a place.
Jamies was at the top.
In 1969, the schools finally integrated.
Collis played basically every other position.
The team took the state title before a crowd comprising both Black and white Kentwood.
Jamie and Collis were champions.
The people who established Valley Forge Academy offered Shaw more than double his salary.
He had four children to feed and was making nothing much at Kentwood High.
He then simply left, moved to North Carolina in search of work.
A patch of Jamies hair was, in the words of a teammate, skint off his head.
We called his daddy, says Shaw, and oh, his daddy just went ballistic.
Jamie started crying, Shaw says, so I called June Austin somewhere in North Carolina.
Jamie couldnt play in the next game, in part because he couldnt place his helmet over the wound.
Two weeks later, he was back in position.
The shock of this absolute command does not diminish with time.
Jamie Spears was, by this time, lost.
He broke his leg in the second game of the season.
He dropped out and never went back.
His life as a locus of admiration was permanently over.
He left town, got divorced, and moved back to Kentwood.
In 1976, he and Lynne Bridges were both living in the town where they had basically always been.
Jamie made her laugh and took her dancing.
But theconservatorship of Britney Spearsis not a conflict that accrues moral complexity under further investigation.
It is a matter of an extraordinary woman deprived of basic human rights over a period of 13 years.
Why are all my doings always blasted?
Britney Spears, now estranged from all of her family members, asked in an Instagram post in July.
How come not one person knows my sister is building a huge home in Louisiana???
How come their lives arent exposed?
I would thoroughly enjoy showing up at my families home to see what secrets theyre hiding.
Transparency has not been the way of Britneys family.
Where are all the lights?
She wept every night and over the next three decades made it back only once.
When she was 20, a piece of tractor equipment fell on her brother.
As I was rounding the curve, writes Lynne, an oncoming car was coming in the left lane …
I could see two young boys riding their bikes on the road … Another way to say this would be that Lynnes car slammed into a little boy.
He was, Yvonne told me, just a normal teenager.
He took them to New York in search of work, though he did not have permanent custody.
When he returned to Kentwood some years later, Jo Ann wanted her kids back.
June Austin would not give them back, and so they went to court.
The court interrogated Jo Ann as to her fitness as a mother.
I have never referred to it as a nervous disorder, Jo Ann said.
That was the term used in your petition.
Well that is a very broad term.
Could you be more specific.
The court awarded custody to June Austin, the man who had technically kidnapped them.
Leigh Ann, Jo Anns daughter, would later say June Austin sexually assaulted her multiple times.
Lynne was pregnant within a month of marrying Jamie.
In 1978, Lynnes father was crushed to death by his own milk truck.
Jamie disappeared for a week.
Lynne went back to school, and Jamie told her she was too stupid to graduate.
Jamie Spears promised to stop drinking, got drunk, and made more promises.
Lynne filed for divorce and a restraining order alleging he might become violent when he heard about the divorce.
June Austin showed up with his third wife and begged Lynne to give Jamie another chance.
Lynne retracted her filing and had a child the next year.
Jamie promised to quit drinking.
He rededicated himself to God.
Britney worried about having her grandmothers name; she thought perhaps it was cursed.
Jamie was fitfully employed as a boilermaker and a builder and a cook.
She was, her teachers said, internally motivated, a perfectionist, a workhorse.
Jamie told anyone who would listen that his daughter was going to be a star.
Jamie and Lynne paid their taxes irregularly.
They missed car payments.
They spent all their money on their children; they believed utterly in Britneys future stardom.
They lived in a solid home with long front windows and a big yard.
Lynne owned a day-care center, and Jamie started a gym that went out of business.
Jamie promised he wasnt drunk as Lynne watched him stumble in front of a mirror.
They were dressed up, on their way to Jeans mothers birthday party.
Jamie got a vasectomy but did not appear for his follow-up appointment.
Jamie and Lynne had another daughter, whom they namedJamie Lynn.
Lynne began teaching Britney how to drive with Jamie Lynn in the car.
No one wore seat belts back then, Jamie Lynn writes; this would have been 1997.
Britney swerved over the midline, nearly hit a car, and drove into a ditch.
Lynne switched places with Britney in the car so her husband wouldnt know she was letting Britney drive.
Momma always cared more about Daddys feelings than doing the right thing, Jamie Lynn writes.
Momma often put us in a difficult position rather than confronting the situation head-on.
While she was shopping with Jamie Lynn, Lynnes card was declined at the Limited Too.
Jamie and Lynne defaulted on a mortgage; the land was seized and auctioned off.
Three years later, a sheriff took their Ford Probe from the body shop; they owed $10,000.
Jamie and Lynne filed for bankruptcy in July 1998.
… Baby One More Time was released three months later, when Britney Jean Spears was 16 years old.
Britney Spearsis a 40-year-old woman who has enjoyed a total of nine years of independence from her parents control.
The years went like this:… Baby One More Timesold 11 million records,Oops!
I Did It Again9 million.Britneydebuted at No.
Lynne divorced him, moved into the Kentwood mansion Britney built her, and let Jamie come over.
Jamie emerged, loosed four dogs, and pulled a gun on them.
Britney Jean Spears lived in a 9,000-square-foot house cut into the Hollywood Hills.
She starred in a road movie written with the purpose of her starring in it.
When he was in L.A., Jamie seemed to become only more determinedly Kentwood.
Sometimes he found work as a cook.
He cooked venison sausage and crawfish and pulled pork and quail breast with bacon.
There was no secret, he said.
It was simple southern food, like the kind Jeans mother would cook with him.
Jamie went to rehab in 2004 and was sober for a while and found God again.
The pastors wife owned a business-management firm; she became Jamie Lynns business manager.
She loaned Jamie money, and he paid her back.
She shaved her head.
She spent a month in rehab.
She performed lethargically at theVMAs, a step behind, as if thinking about something else.
The press often quoted people from Kentwood saying that Britney Spears needed to come home.
But Britney Spears did not go home to Kentwood.
Kentwood came to her.
(Sam Lutfis lawyer denied these allegations.)
Giving him back was like losing a child every single time.
The press referred to this as ameltdown,the modern term fornervous disorder.
His daughter had in some sense lost her children, a tragedy that could drive a mother into darkness.
Now we are worried the same will happen to her.
He was talking, at the time, to the pastors wife.
(Her attorney says she did not push for the creation of the conservatorship.)
Jamie was praying and fasting.
It was in times of sickness, Lynne said, that he made his presence known.
He was going to beat the hell out of him.
The manager, Britney, and Lynne went to Rite Aid, where Britney bought a lipstick.
The next morning, Jamie showed up and punched the manager in the solar plexus.
Three days later, Britney was again hospitalized against her will.
June Austin, 78 and a widower three times over, said he was worried about her.
She shouldnt go in the nut house, he said.
Sometimes you come out worse than you go in.
She had become, late in life, highly medicated, vacant.
Her daughter had her grave inscribed THY TRIALS ARE OVER, THY REST IS WON.
The document suggested Britney suffered from dementia; the accuracy of this diagnosis would be contested.
On theTodayshow the pastors wife instructed everyone to pray to God to intercede for the Spears family.
Britney was no longer in control of herself or her money.
In January 2008, Jamie had to sneak into Britneys home.
Shortly thereafter, Britneys conservator walked freely into her large, dark, Italianate kitchen.
Im ready to go.
Im making my baby some cheesy grits, he told a documentarian.
Grits is a old southern tradition.
Shes been eating them since she was born, she loves them.
He wasnt sure there was enough butter and cheese, but she said there was.
She called him Daddy; he called her Baby.
He could be brought to tears just looking at her, how beautiful she was.
she said of his tears.
I dont understand how he can be such an asshole and then so nice!
She and the team yelled at each other.
He called her fat, she mocked him to his face, he cried.
Gimme that phone, he said.
There did not seem to be anything in Jamie that craved opulence.
He did his own laundry when the others sent theirs out.
He sought something else.
He exerted what Lynne called absolutely microscopic control over every detail of Britneys life.
Britney wanted sushi for dinner; she was told sushi was expensive, she had had sushi yesterday.
She wanted a pair of Skechers; she was told there wasnt the budget for it.
Close friends were removed from her life.
But it was Jamie to whom the team would turn when Britney was disobedient.
It was his name on the paperwork that stripped her of autonomy.
It was Jamie, drunk on power, who said, I am Britney Spears.
Britney returned to work immediately.
She released an album.
Because she had lost weight and begun working, many people said Jamie had saved her.
Britney repeated this to the press; her father had saved her.
Britney went on tour to 20 cities.
I dont know, can she rehearse on her birthday?
someone asked an executive who worked for the pastors wife.
Shes gonna rehearse was the response.
When Britneys trailer was too hot, he duct-taped an air conditioner to a cylinder and piped it in.
A redneck air conditioner, he called it.
Dont go nowhere without duct tape.
For Jamie, there were threats everywhere.
Who wouldnt want what his daughter had?
She was too easily influenced, subject to predators, to men playing mind games.
His daughter wasnt well versed in the ways of the world.
Much like him, she was inarticulate, trapped within her extraordinary physicality.
She couldnt see through people trying to take what she had.
The best thing for her is what shes doing right now, Jamie told the documentarian.
Shes in her element.
Shes in her world.
I like to go fishing.
She likes to sing and dance.
Jamie told Lynne their daughter was best treated like a racehorse.
The estate paid her brother; it is unclear for what.
Jamie decided, around 2015, that he ought to have a cooking show.
There was never any show.
According to Britney, he was drinking again.
Years stretched to a decade of Britney having to barter for dinner.
All the youthful delicacy was gone from Jamies face; he looked thick-jowled and ragged.
A hole appeared in his large intestine, and he spent a month in the hospital.
June Austin passed away.
Banana, thriving, grew to be 15 feet long.
Over time, hundreds of thousands of people became committed to the cause of freeing Britney Spears.
The world dont have a clue, Jamie told a journalist.
These people were conspiracy theorists.
Jamie allegedly busted through a door and got into a fight with Britneys 13-year-old son.
The boys father was granted a restraining order from the man in control of the boys mother.
She thought he and her entire family belonged in prison.
Her family seemed puzzled, bewildered by the suggestion that it might have gone any other way.
Oh, so are you gonna call and make reservations for yourself today?
She is the worst driver in the world.
The interviewer gently suggested Uber and an executive assistant.
Typical for this family and how they treat their women, Leigh Ann told a journalist.
Jamie did to her what my daddy did to my mom and Emma Jean.
They are mean and they will destroy you if they cant control you.
These Spears men are something awful, John Mark told the same journalist.
He ruined Emma Jean and he ruined my mama.
He shipped them both off to Mandeville from time to time.
So Im not too surprised about what Jamies done to Britney.
Its all about control with the Spears men.
A judge declared the conservatorship ended, and fans popped pink confetti outside the courthouse.
A lawyer for Jamie Spears failed to respond to a detailed set of questions fromNew YorkMagazine.
A princess freed from a tower is meant to go back to being a princess.
Britney, restored to herself, did not do interviews.
But it was not the release for which many of them had hoped.
She posted endless Reels of herself twirling wildly in yellow ruffles and dark eyeliner.
The connection had been ruptured.
Carpenter crews arrived to build coffins and place the bodies in a mass grave.
June Austin pulled the trigger one way or another is Leigh Anns description of Jeans death.
Drove her to her death?
No, she said.
A year has passed since Britney Spears was freed from the control of her father.
Lynne, estranged from Britney Jean, lives in the mansion Britney built for her.
There is no answer to the question of why Jamie Spears effectively imprisoned his daughter for 13 years.
The opposite of seeking total control over another person is not the establishment of healthy boundaries.
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