Debbie Rowe, mother of Michael Jackson’s two eldest children, is holed up at her ranch a couple of hours away from Los Angeles. She can’t leave because paparazzi have been staking out her house since Thursday. It doesn’t matter. She is, as I told you on Thursday’and then lifted from here by TMZ’”inconsolable.”

She told me during a brief conversation today: “I lost my best friend.”

Rowe was married to Jackson when she had Prince Michael I and Paris Katherine. But it was always understood that they’d part. Now, she is in tears missing her friend.

So far, Rowe has’not addressed the issue of the kids or custody despite frantic reports. She wouldn’t do that, she says. “Michael hasn’t even been buried,” she says.’Rowe has always had an excellent relationship with Michael’s mother, Katherine’Jackson,’and looks forward to talking to her soon, and possibly even seeing the children when the time is right.

For right now, though, she’s turned off her phones and Internet, and is trying to observe a period of mourning. How utterly sensible!

One thing I didn’t bring up with Rowe, but shouldn’t be forgotten: her friendship with Michael was the thing that saved him at his child molestation trial in 2005.’ Rowe testified for him in court, clearing up for the jury all misconceptions about the pop icon. Her testimony is generally thought to have been the deciding factor in the jury’s deliberations, and kept Jackson out of jail.

Michael Jackson’s beloved 80-year-old mother,’Katherine, made what could be a costly legal mistake’yesterday in a Los Angeles court.

Katherine Jackson got temporary custody’of Michael’s three children (you’ll notice she filed alone and not with her husband of 60 years).

She also filed a claim on Michael’s estate, saying he died intestate, or without a will. But anyone who reads this column knew days ago that Michael had executed a will with attorney John Branca, and that it was waiting to be opened on Monday.

While Mrs. Jackson was in court, Branca was indeed studying the will. I am told it will be presented to the court and filed in the next day or so.

But wait: if Mrs. Jackson gets her way, legal eagles assure me, and the court decides Michael had no will, then Mrs. J gets nothing. Michael’s direct heirs’his three kids’would be the sole beneficiaries.

Whoops!

As it turns out, accepting Michael’s will with Branca is better for Mrs. Jackson. Insiders say that Michael took excellent care of her along with the children. Together they are the primary beneficiaries.

There is no information yet whether Michael left anything to anyone else. But the thinking is that Janet Jackson has her own money, LaToya already received money from Michael and that he’s probably left his brothers to fend for themselves. As for Joseph Jackson, who witnesses say used to lock Michael in a closet as a child when his Jackson 5 rehearsals didn’t go well, you can bet there’s no provision for him.

Indeed, even Mrs. Jackson’s inheritance will be parcelled out, they say, so she gets money “as needed.” Her husband’who brought a Michael Jackson imitator to the BET Awards on Sunday night’will not be’ able to share in it particularly.

Meantime, burial arrangements and funeral services remain undecided for Michael, who died four days ago. There are said to be two different factions within the Jackson family, plenty of disagreement, and lots of tension overall. It’s too bad. You’d think the family would come together and resolve this issue quickly with dignity for Michael’s sake. The easiest solution: a mausoleum at Forest Lawn, where other mega-celebrities have found their final rest. Michael would be very much at home with the likes of Lucille Ball, Lou Rawls, and Liberace.

Will Michael Jackson’s last will and testament be honored by his relatives?

That’s the question right now as the Jackson family and Michael’s team try to figure out what exactly is going on and who is in charge.

As it stands now, Jackson has left a signed will with former attorney and partner John Branca. Branca was the lawyer who helped Jackson buy ATV Music Publishing in the 1980s, then merge with Sony Music Publishing in the early 90s. The result was like giving Jackson a billion-dollar bank account, which he leveraged over and over to accomodate his huge financial needs.

But the plot thickens: never one to shy away from trying to get a piece of his son’s action, Joseph Jackson has now gone on People.com complaining that the family is being kept in the dark about Michael’s will. Of course, Jackson knows that anything he says right now will just be picked up by the press, whether it’s accurate or not.

The fact is, the Jackson family, according to my sources, hasn’t even contacted anyone from Michael’s legal team. And Joseph Jackson‘who is said to have instigated a lawsuit against Michael by All Good Productions over the promise of a family concert in New Jersey’can’t be too happy that he’s not the executor of his son’s estate.

As I’ve noted before, Joseph Jackson called this reporter with concert promoter Leonard Rowe shortly after Michael’s AEG Live deal was completed.’ He told me he needed my help because they were going to “fix” what was wrong with the deal and take it over. I told him I didn’t think that was possible, and he hung up after several minutes of bickering.

Indeed, the only known existing will sits in a safe at attorney John Branca’s office in Century City. So far, Branca has been out of town. It may not be until Monday before he returns and offers the will for probate, sources say.

Branca, as I’ve noted before, is’Michael Jackson’s children’s best possible advocate at the moment, and the only assurance they have of not being ripped off in the long run.

How long has Michael Jackson been dead? Two minutes? The woman who worked for him for 14 years, who served as nanny to his kids and protector of his privacy, has already sold him out.

Grace Rwaramba has sold an interview to blood-sucking-celebrity vampire Daphne Barak. The story appears in today’s Times of London.

Rwaramba, who was given a four-star life by Jackson, now reveals he was a drug-addled nut whose stomach she personally pumped. Many times, no less.

Rwaramba has nothing nice to say about Jackson. She does say he was broke all the time, took advantage of everyone, and was a bad father to boot.

Jackson eventually fired Grace, a woman who was universally despised by his family and professional associates. But his reward for giving her a lavish lifestyle is this:’ no good turn goes unpunished.

Interestingly, it was Barak who paid Michael’s parents for a TV interview in 2005 while he was on trial. Now Rwaramba has done the exact same thing.

She tells Barak that Michael fended off an “intervention” that she was part of while he lived in Las Vegas.

But I can tell you that during that time, Jackson’s family tried to see him. It was Rwaramba who wouldn’t let them in.

The nanny’s testimony is a sellout, a cash-in, and pathetic. Whatever value she had is gone. Let’s ignore her, and hope she goes away.

A security guard by the name of Alberto who worked at Michael Jackson’s rented Bel Air estate’his last name still unknown”made the famous 911 call to police on Thursday. It was not someone named “Tippy,” as reported by the New York Post.

Further, Jackson’s manager, Frank DiLeo, was not at the house when Jackson collapsed. DiLeo was at his hotel in Los Angeles, received a call about Jackson, and rushed to the hospital. The Post has that wrong, too.

None of Jackson’s kids were present when he collapsed, I am told. They were in the house but not in the room with Jackson and Dr. Conrad Murray.

Dr. Murray’s attorney, Matt Alford, tells TMZ that Dr. Murray met Jackson in 2006. That’s unlikely. Jackson was living in Bahrain from January to June 2006, when he then moved to Ireland. He stayed in Ireland through the end of that year.

More likely, insiders say, Murray was introduced to Jackson in the last year by Tohme Tohme, representative of Colony Capital LLC and Jackson’s manager for the last year.

The New York Post also made two more mistakes today: Janet Jackson is not the executor of Michael’s estate. Attorney John Branca is, so far. Janet Jackson has no “papers,” as alluded to in the Post.

But in a two-line story today, the Post also lifted this column’s Neverland-as-Graceland story as filler, without credit.

Al Malnik, Michael Jackson’s friend and mentor from Florida, is not happy this morning with TMZ.

The pay-for-play website has published personal photographs belonging to Malnik and’his wife, Nancy, of Michael,’his three kids, the Malniks and friends that were taken about five or six years ago.

Nancy’Malnik tells me’she posted the photographs to friends only, with all the’restrictions necessary, on her Facebook page. One of her 200 or so Facebook “friends” evidently copied 20 of the pictures and sold them to TMZ without permission.

“I can’t’believe it,” Nancy Malnik told me this’morning. “I’ve looked through the list’and can’t figure out who would’do such a thing.”

Meantime, Al Malnik cleared up for me a confusion that’s been out in the media. He does not have a 2004 will from Michael’Jackson and was never appointed his executor. Michael simply asked him if he’d be the executor of his will. “But I never heard anything about it again,” Malnik told me. Malnik did sign a notarized agreement making him godfather to Michael’s third child, Prince Michael II aka Blanket.

As far as TMZ is concerned, they’re on notice for publishing purloined photos.

Jackson manager Frank DiLeo raced to UCLA Medical Center when he got the news, and he was with the family when they had to face the awful truth about Michael’s condition. Luckily, he’s been close to both of Jackson’s parents for years, and is considered one of the family. They’ll need his counsel now.

What the Jacksons won’t need is the conga line of family “friends” and experts who are lining up to do every TV show and interview program. The weekend looks like it will be jam-packed with these people, from Brian Oxman‘and Shmuley Boteach to Uri Geller and Diane Dimond. This morning on the “Today” show, child-actor-turned-reality-TV-star (and rehabbed druggie) Corey Feldman conceded to Meredith Vieira that he hadn’t even seen or spoken to Michael in seven years.