By Daily Mail Reporter Updated:

Michael Jackson’s family – including his three children – viewed the singer’s body in an open casket at his memorial ceremony.

David Fossett, 50, who attended the ceremony at Forest Lawn Cemetery, in Hollywood, said the singer had looked ‘peaceful’ at the Jehova’s Witness service.

‘He looked like he just was laying there sleeping.’

Mr Fossett, who grew up with Jackson and still lives in his hometown of Gary, Indiana – where more than 6,000 people attended an upbeat memorial event yesterday – told the New York Post: ‘He looked like himself.

Now, as it awaits burial, the casket containing the pop star is temporarily being kept in a Forest Lawn crypt belonging to Motown founder Berry Gordy, according to reports.

About 70 relatives gathered at Forest Lawn, where Jackson’s cousin Wendell Hawkins conducted the service.

‘It was a sombre mood,’ Fossett said. ‘Even though he’s this big entertainer, he’s still our family.’

He revealed that Jackson’s three children, Paris, 11, Prince Michael I, 12, and Prince Michael II, 7, had cried during the service and had comforted each other.

‘They lost their father,’ he said. ‘They were sad.’

Fossett said he had recalled for the group when Jackson, family and friends descended on Disneyland for the grand opening of the Captain EO movie, which starred Jackson.

He also talked about when Michael and the rest of Jackson 5 returned to Gary in 1972 to perform at a high school.

Fossett said Hawkins told mourners that ‘he was glad that [Michael’s] life was connected with Jehovah’ and during the service John 3:16 from Bible was read, a passage that speaks of God being so loving he gave his only son to the world.

The whereabouts of Jackson’s body after it was taken in a gold-plated casket to a public memorial service at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles on Tuesday remained unclear until now.

But it is now believed to be in an above ground tomb Gordy bought for his family.

It’s understood his family are divided over Jackson’s final resting place.

Some, including his father Joseph and brother Jermaine, reportedly want Michael to be buried at the Neverland Ranch, which will likely be transformed into a Graceland-like tourist attraction.

However his mother Katherine and the other siblings are said to be pushing for a more private burial ground because Jackson had pledged to never to return to Neverland after sherriffs raided the property during an investigation into the child-molestation case against him.

Meanwhile, more than 6,000 people showed up for an upbeat memorial event yesterday, which included performers singing and dancing to his hits, video montages of Jackson and comments from the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a civil rights leader; Gary’s mayor, and people who knew Michael Jackson when his family lived in the city located 30 miles southeast of Chicago.

People in the crowd said the celebration was fitting for the King of Pop.

“It brought back a lot of memories,” said Betty Nicholson, 52, of Gary, who said she used to perform at some of the same talent shows as Jackson and his brothers. “The show was fantastic.”

Some of the biggest applause came before the three-plus-hour event started, when Jackson’s hits were playing over the public address system at the Steel Yard, Gary’s minor league baseball park, and young children and teenagers went out to the dugout and mimicked his moves.

Two Gary natives – Chester Gregory, who has appeared on Broadway, and Deniece Williams, known for her pop hit “Let’s Hear It For the Boy” from the movie “Footloose” – sang music that wasn’t Jackson’s. Gregory sang Jackie Wilson’s “(Your Love Keeps Liftin’ Me) Higher and Higher” because Wilson was a singer Jackson tried to emulate.

Williams sang “Black Butterfly,” a song about a caterpillar’s struggles to change that she recorded in the early 1990s. She said it fit Jackson.

“Because that’s what he did. It was a struggle through the pain, through everything. At the end of the day he still was a beautiful, beautiful creature with wings that flew and touched not only the United States but the world and will continue to touch the world forever,” Williams said before her performance.

Jackson spent the first 11 years of his life in Gary, until the Jackson 5 struck it big in 1969. By that time, the steel industry, in which Jackson’s father had worked, had started to decline. Over the following decades, the city’s unemployment and poverty rate soared, crime increased and the population dwindled.

Yet to rest in peace: Jackson’s body has been been temporarily placed in a crypt at Forest Lawn belonging to Motown record founder Berry Gordy while the family decides on a final burial place

Jackson came back to Gary just once, in 2003. A speech he gave then was featured in one of the memorial’s video montages. In it, Jackson finished by saying: “Gary, you are family, you always will be, I love you.”

Mayor Rudy Clay said Jackson made the city known worldwide.

“He’s going to put on those golden slippers and he’s going to dance all over God’s heaven,” Clay said.

He later unveiled a 7-foot-high granite slab with an etching of Jackson standing on his tiptoes with the words “King of Pop” and his birth date and death date. Clay said it would be the first item in a Jackson museum he hopes to see the city build.

Organisers said more than 30 members of Jackson’s family attended the event, including his father, Joe Jackson, who arrived surrounded by security just as Jesse Jackson was finishing speaking.

In his remarks, Jesse Jackson praised the pop icon’s parents for the job they did raising their family while living in a small two-bedroom house in a working-class neighborhood.

“Today we thank and praise God for Michael and we praise God for the Jackson family,” he said.