Singer-turned-reality TV regular La Toya Jackson's violent ex-husband and manager once told the media his in-laws had hired thugs to beat up his wife to cover up an Italian hotel fight between the couple.
La Toya details her former husband Jack Gordon's awful behaviour in her new book Starting Over, revealing she left him after her beat her with a Coca-Cola bottle.
But that wasn't the worst fight she had with Gordon - he once slapped her black and blue during a promotional trip to Italy, and then told reporters her family had arranged the beating.
Appearing on U.S. news show Access Hollywood on Thursday (07Jun12), she recalled, "The worst beating was in Italy; my eyes were just black and blue... and he lied and said that my parents hired room service guys to come in and kill me... He did it.
"The other beating, of course, was in New York... He thought he had killed me. I was on the ground and blood was everywhere and I was coming to, and as I was coming to I heard him on the phone, saying, 'Oh my God, I think I killed her this time'.
"The cops came and they looked at me and said, 'Who did this?' He said, 'I did,' and they said, 'You're under arrest!' They tried to make me go to the hospital and I didn't want to because I knew that if I said anything was hurting that he would kill me after he got free. But they said, 'You don't have a choice; you have to go to the hospital or you are gonna die.'"
Jackson admits she has come to feel sorry for her ex - after realising what made him the monster he was.
She added, "I was never really angry or upset because I learned very early when I left him... I became very analytical with everything... in the sense of asking myself, 'What made him do the things that he did to me? Why would he do these things to me? Why would he take control and advantage and beat me...? What happened in his childhood to make this person the person that he was?'
"I found out that, as a child, he was born in a brothel and he would tap-dance on the piano for all the prostitutes and strippers.... That's all he knew."
Jackson finally left Gordon after he attempted to force her to star in a porn film.