by Bobby Brown
“I’m not talking about Landon,” Krissi said.
“Well, what brother are you talking about?”
“My brother Nick,” she said.
At this point I was really alarmed. She didn’t have a brother named Nick, so I thought she was hallucinating.
“Baby, you don’t have a brother named Nick,” I said. “You all right?”
Maybe I should take her temperature or something?
“Nick stays with us,” she said.
This was the first time I ever heard his name. Apparently he had been there for a couple of years at this point, but I had no clue that a young man was staying there with them and I was pretty sure Bobby didn’t either because he would have told me. I was blown away by this news. But a part of me was still thinking that she had taken something and was in the throes of some kind of drug-induced hallucination. She was drifting off, like she was in a haze. I called Bobby and handed her the phone, thinking that maybe her father’s voice would pull her out of it. But she was barely lucid when he was trying to talk to her. She was still focused on seeing Nick.
“Okay, we’ll find out where Nick is,” I told her.
I had kicked everybody out of the room, so I wasn’t sure if this Nick character was one of the people who had just left. But I started asking around and didn’t find anybody named Nick on the floor.
After a little while Nick showed up.
“Uncle, I just want to talk to him,” she said.
“Okay, baby, I’ll give you five minutes,” I said.
I was really uncomfortable because I didn’t know this kid. I told her I would be right outside in the living room area of the suite. Krissi came out of the suite with Nick, who quickly slipped away. She was acting extremely lackadaisical; I was immediately alarmed.
“Krissi!” I said. But she wasn’t responding.
“Baby, come on, you gotta respond!”
She was still not responding to me, despite the volume of my voice. I saw her eyes roll back into her head and nearly lost it. I decided to call 911.
“I need you now!” I yelled into my phone.
I don’t tend to push the button too soon, but it was clear to me that she needed some medical assistance. I don’t know if this guy gave her something, but I later found an empty Xanax bottle in the room. There was also a bottle of wine.
When we got to the hospital, I explained to the doctors why we were there. They started checking her out. I was expecting somebody from the Houston family to show up, but instead I was greeted by this white guy who turned out to be Whitney’s rehab treatment counselor. His name was Warren Boyd and apparently he’s the treatment counselor to the stars. The doctor told me Krissi had been evaluated and seemed to be fine. Krissi was telling me she wanted to go back to the hotel, but that was the last place I wanted to take her. I had to keep her safe until Bobby arrived; I didn’t think that chaotic hotel was the right place to do that. But then I thought about the fact that she had just lost her mother in that hotel, so maybe I should let her stay there as long as she wanted.
As soon we got back to the hotel I regretted the decision. There were a bunch of music industry celebs, including Ray J, in the suite popping bottles and drinking like they were turned up at the party—all while Whitney’s body was still nearby, with that area of the hallway cut off by police tape. It looked crazy to me. I wanted Krissi to get some sleep, so I cleared the room out once again. I told them that they were serving no purpose upstairs—they needed to go downstairs and continue their party. I had Krissi lie down on the bed.
“Even if you don’t go to sleep, just relax,” I told her.
I called Warren Boyd back and told him that I needed to get her out of the hotel. He said he would come and bring her to one of his facilities in Huntington Beach.
While I was in the hall waiting for him, I saw Whitney’s longtime agent, Nicole David.
“What’s going on here? This is crazy,” I said. “No one is attending to her.”
Nicole shook her head. “I know, I know. It’s unbelievable.”
“I’m getting her out of here,” I said.
“That’s what you need to do, get her somewhere away from here,” Nicole responded.
As I headed back to Krissi’s room to check on her, I saw Nick leave the room. When did he go in there?
When I walked back in the room, Krissi was even more lethargic than before. I panicked again.
“Krissi! What did you take?” But there was no response from her. So I called 911 yet again. I told them, “Get here now!”
I shook Krissi again, trying to wake her up.
“Krissi, don’t play no games with me,” I said.
But she never really came around. So when the emergency technicians arrived, they put her back on the cart and we took the ambulance back to the hospital. She was barely conscious the whole time. At the hospital, I was prepared to sign whatever forms I needed to in order to have her stay there and be observed. The doctors determined that she hadn’t overdosed. Warren arrived, along with several members of Whitney’s security detail. They convinced me that Krissi would be safe if we brought her to Huntington Beach, the place where Whitney and Krissi had been staying. I called my niece LaPrincia, Krissi’s big sister, who happened to be in LA, and told her to meet us there.
When we got to Huntington Beach, I felt confident that Krissi was in good hands because she was with her big sister. LaPrincia would take good care of her. In addition to LaPrincia, my niece Mimi was also there. She’s the daughter of my late sister, Bethy, and she was also very close to Krissi. Warren put me up in a room nearby in the same facility. I talked to Bobby and updated him on the situation before he got on the plane to fly to LA. I had a hard time sleeping that night because my brain was still in overdrive from all the craziness. I couldn’t believe Whitney was gone. But our priority now was to make sure her daughter made it through.
The next morning Bobby and Alicia picked me up and I showed them where Krissi, LaPrincia and Mimi were staying. We walked into the suite and saw LaPrincia crying. We asked her where her sister was and she told us Krissi was “gone.” She was hysterical now, saying Krissi had been taken away. Apparently when LaPrincia thought her sister was in the shower, somebody had entered the room where Krissi was staying, which had a door leading outside, and whisked her away.
There was pandemonium as we realized what had happened. Clearly it was the work of the Houstons, probably assisted by Warren Boyd, the rehab guy. Bobby was incredibly outraged. When I went into Krissi’s bathroom, I saw that the rug leading to the bathroom was soaking wet. I wondered what the hell had happened there. When I found out, I was seriously shaken. Nicole David told me that the night before Whitney was found dead in the bathtub, Krissi had almost drowned in the bathtub. She had been submerged under the water and had to be pulled out. And then the next day her mother died the same way? And then ultimately the same thing happened to Krissi again? I was told that Whitney and Krissi had had some type of fight the night before and that Krissi was mad at her mother.
It’s all too much for me to comprehend. How could this all be a massive coincidence?
Bobby turned his anger on me, saying he had told me to not let her out of my sight and now she had been taken away. I felt like it was unfair to blame me, but I also understood why my brother was angry. I was so upset, I had to get away from there, my mind still reeling from the sadness of the whole scene.
A FEW WORDS FROM LAPRINCIA BROWN
There was this guy named Warren who was supposed to be helping Krissi the day her mother died, but he kept telling her, “If you don’t want to see your dad, you don’t have to.” I was so upset when I heard that. Who are you to know what she needs right now, to tell her she doesn’t have to see her father? That seemed to me to be the opposite of what somebody should really say in that situation. But I thought they were building a suspicion of our father in Krissi’s mind. I felt like it was really controlling. When I heard her saying, “I don’t want to
see my dad,” I didn’t take it as her being mad at Dad, I took it as her saying it was going to hurt to see him. She didn’t want to have to deal with the hurt.
I think if I were to tell my boyfriend or my best friend after my mother had passed away that I didn’t want to see my dad, they’d be like, “Okay,” but still make sure my dad got to me. They would tell me that I needed to see my father, not take it upon themselves to make the decision for me.
When we were waiting for my dad the morning after her mom died, Krissi was supposed to be taking a shower. I asked my cousin Mimi, “Where’s Krissi?” But she sat there ignoring me, looking off into space. At this point my dad pulled up and I started freaking out. There was a door connected to the outside in her room and someone had taken her away. I started crying hysterically because I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t believe they had taken her away.
It was so crazy that Krissi had just had an incident in the bathtub before her mom died. They said she had fallen asleep in the tub and somebody had to pull her up. I never got a chance to ask Krissi about this. She kept changing her phone number and I could never get through to her. The few times I did talk to her, I could tell she wasn’t really talking to me. It was like she was just telling me whatever I wanted to hear. I think Nick convinced her we couldn’t be trusted—her siblings, her father—that we were terrible people. But he didn’t even know us. My dad didn’t even know who he was.
I think there’s this idea out there that my dad is a bad father, and that somehow what happened to Krissi is partly his fault. But once your child turns eighteen and you have no say over what they’re doing, you can’t make them see you, you can’t make them tell you where they are. You can’t call the police because they won’t talk to you. There’s only so much you can do. When you have everyone else covering for you, when you can change your number every two seconds, when you have all this power to make somebody leave you alone, then what are your parents supposed to do? I want to know. What do all these other parents do when their kids run away and never talk to them again?
Reaching Krissi
After Whitney died, Alicia and I stayed in a hotel in Huntington Beach for four days, dodging paparazzi, trying to connect with Krissi. The Houstons and Whitney’s team kept blaming it on Krissi, telling me she didn’t want to see me. But I wasn’t buying that—suddenly we’re acting like Krissi is making wise choices? They knew damn well she needed to be with her father. My other kids were on the verge of breakdowns because they couldn’t reach her either. I was drifting between fear and outrage, worrying about my daughter’s emotional and mental state while being exceedingly upset about what I saw as a concerted effort to keep my child away from her dad in this time of extreme need. Who did these people think they were, to keep a daughter from her father? And from the things Tommy was telling me about the inattention he witnessed the night Whitney died, it’s not like I could believe she was in the best of hands with them.
I often worried about the kind of care Krissi was getting in her mother’s household after I left, based on the things I saw with my own eyes and the things I was hearing from other people, such as my daughter LaPrincia. But at least I knew her mother loved her and wanted the best for her, even if she was sometimes in too altered a state to know how to provide that for her. But I had no assurances that the rest of the Houston family was putting the care of Krissi at the top of their priority list. I mean, on the day her mother died, my brother saw her dealing with her grief alone in the midst of a roomful of clowns like Ray J partying and popping bottles.
Their lack of concern for my child was confirmed when I heard about a reality show they were producing called The Houstons: On Our Own. Not long after Whitney was put in the ground, Pat Houston started making plans to parade Krissi’s grief on-screen for the whole world to see in a reality show. How do you do that to a baby who just lost her mother? Are you kidding me? Nobody ever came to me to ask my opinion about whether this was a good idea—because they knew I would have said, “Hell no!” I was incredulous when I heard. And might I point out that Krissi wasn’t a Houston, she was a Brown. (Ironically, Pat Houston wasn’t really a Houston either. Her husband, Gary’s, last name was actually Garland, not Houston, because he and Whitney had different fathers. Gary’s father was Freddie Garland, to whom Cissy was married in the mid-1950s. When Gary played in the NBA, his name was Gary Garland. That was still his name when he married Pat. They were Gary and Pat Garland. But somewhere along the way they became Gary and Pat Houston.)
With Krissi, I saw the family repeating some of the same patterns that I had seen with Whitney: making her feel inadequate as a means of controlling her. That’s exactly what they did to my ex-wife. They couldn’t let Whitney live the life she wanted to live; they insisted that she be perfect, that she be someone she wasn’t. That’s why they wanted Robyn out of Whitney’s life. That’s why they never thought I was good enough for her. People want to attack me for my involvement with Whitney, but at least I gave her the space to be herself. Hell, if it would have made things better for Whitney, we could have been just friends and she could have kept Robyn in her life. In retrospect, I could have lived with that. But the people around her, like Clive Davis and her family, wouldn’t let that happen. And now they were orchestrating Krissi’s separation from her dad and, at the same time, broadcasting Krissi’s pain on a television reality show? I felt like it was a nasty, unconscionable form of child abuse.
My brother, Tommy, actually agreed to appear on the show as a way to see Krissi face-to-face, but at the last minute they told him Krissi wouldn’t be appearing on the set.
I’ve always felt a big part of a father’s job is to protect his children, particularly his daughters. But the people around Krissi were denying me the chance to protect and care for my little girl and it was driving me crazy. Of course Krissi wasn’t making it easy for me either. She was still mad at me for my relationship with Alicia, thinking it somehow meant a rejection of her and her mother. When Alicia and I had Cassius, she wanted to hold that against me as well. I had another child with somebody else and I was happy, so she took it personally. And I was not given the chance to make it right, to get her to look at the situation with mature, grown-up eyes. She was still seeing the situation as a child would—the same way she saw it when her mother was around to tell her I didn’t love them because I had moved on. But I needed her to develop the mind-set of the young woman that she was. And I wanted to help her.
Whitney’s funeral was yet another nightmare for me, stage-directed by the Houston family. Tommy and my lawyer Chris Brown (no relation) had several days of discussions about my attending, when I was arriving, who was coming with me. They were well aware that I planned on coming to New Jersey with my family in tow—my three children who had also been Whitney’s stepchildren. She had helped to raise them, had been a key, loving figure in the lives of Landon, LaPrincia and Bobby Jr. Of course they would be there right alongside me as we said good-bye to this woman they loved and who loved them. Chris was given the instructions on when we should arrive, where our car should drop us off, etc.
The morning was busy with tense activity as we all got dressed. Alicia was a big help in making sure things ran smoothly. My old friends from New Edition all wanted to come to the funeral with me. In a major coincidence, the group was performing the next day on our tour in Newark, where the funeral was being held. But I told them that while they were free to attend, I just wanted to roll with my family.
We arrived on time to New Hope Baptist Church in Newark. Alicia and Cashy were back at the hotel; she thought it would be best if she stayed away. The crowd was teeming with celebrities, many of them old friends of mine. But I wasn’t in the mind-set to be social. I felt like I had been to an endless parade of funerals by this point. I was tired of the black suits, the tears, the emotional turmoil. And most of all, I wanted to see Krissi. This was the one place where I was certain we would be together.
From the moment we walked into the ch
urch, things went bad quickly. We were escorted to the second row of pews, behind where Krissi would be sitting in the first row, in front of Whitney’s casket. We sat for a short while, waiting for the services to start, watching the celebrities stream into the church. While we were waiting, one of the security guys came up to us and told us we had to move.
“Excuse me? I don’t understand,” I said to him.
“Sir, you have to move,” he repeated in the even, hushed tone that ushers take at funeral services.
“But we’re supposed to be sitting here,” I said, growing angrier. “We’re not moving.”
The guy paused, then he said, “You can stay, but your kids have to move to the back.”
“Sir, we’re not moving from this spot,” I said. “You’re gonna have to move us.”
But then I glanced at my kids, who looked like they were in shock, and I knew instantly that getting into some type of loud scene with these people was not the right move. I saw Brandy and Ray J sitting in the row behind me, watching. So they’re trying to move my family behind Ray J?
I leaned over to my kids.
“Let’s go,” I said.
But before I left the church, I had one thing I needed to do: I walked up to the casket, kissed it, and said good-bye to my ex-wife. Then I turned around and led my children out of the church. Since the primary purpose of my attendance at the service was to pay my last respects to this woman whom I had loved for all of my adult life, my mission there had been accomplished. I know many have tried to criticize me for leaving Whitney’s funeral under those circumstances. But I’m fine with my decision that day. It was about bringing my family to the church and saying good-bye to Whitney. That was all. I was not going to stay there and let us once again become pawns in a game being orchestrated by the Houston family. They had days to figure out where to seat us and to acknowledge that my children, once a big part of Whitney’s life, should be sitting with their little sister. Anything else would be cruel and callous treatment. And now suddenly there was confusion about where the Browns would be sitting? As a long line of celebrities breezed into the church and were led to their seats up front? No, I wasn’t there for that—and wouldn’t subject my children to it.