José Joel wasn’t getting answers about the death of his world-famous father, so he got off the plane and went straight to the funeral home. Flanked by cameras and microphones on Sunday, he faced off with yet another person who would not tell him where in Miami he might find his dad’s body, or when and how he had died.
“You can’t tell me what’s happening? My dad isn’t here with you?” he asked a funeral director, her frame buried in a throng of reporters gathered inside a building in the Westchester neighborhood.
“In this moment, he’s not,” she repeated. “I have no information.”
As music fans around the globe grieve the death of the iconic Mexican singer José José, known to many as “el Príncipe de la Canción” — “the Prince of Song” — his death on Saturday at 71, as reported by the artists’ association ANDI, has also inflamed a bitter family feud that might as well have been pulled straight from a telenovela.
Sarita Sosa, his youngest daughter and the only child of his third marriage, spent her Sunday breaking down into tears on television as she recounted the final days spent with the influential crooner. All the while, her two older half-siblings, Joel and Marysol Sosa, flew in from Mexico City and shuttled around Miami, trailed by a swarm of reporters, as they tried to locate the body of their father and figure out what might happen to his remains — or at least, they said, figure out why Sarita refuses to tell them.
“No one knows anything about what’s happened. His children are absolutely devastated, to the point where they wonder if it’s even true that he died,” Brenda Ocaña, Joel’s manager, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “She wouldn’t answer any of our calls, but then she’s on TV all pretty, with makeup, and hair, saying a bunch of lies. … It’s so easy to pick up the phone and say, ‘Come see my dad. Come see your dad.’ ”
Sarita’s manager did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Monday, and there was no new comment from ANDI. Police, the coroner’s office and the funeral home, Caballero Rivero Westchester, have not answered questions in local news reports about the death. (None of those offices immediately answered requests for comment from The Post late on Sunday.)
As the Internet swirled with conspiracy theories, the dispute also raised inquiries about where — in Miami or Mexico — the singer’s body will end up, and which one of his children, all of whom are in the entertainment industry, might inherit his estate.
It’s a messy coda for the rocky life of José José, a legendary crooner who gained fame throughout Latin America for his wide vocal register, elegant suits and power ballads in a career spanning over five decades.
The singer was born into a musical family as José Rómulo Sosa Ortiz, later taking on the double name to honor his late father, an opera singer whose name was also José Sosa. He rose to fame in 1970 with a rendition of the song “El Triste,” according to the Associated Press, and went on to record 30 albums and 20 Hot Latin Songs hits — many of the most successful about love and loneliness.
“My history has been one of ups and downs,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1996. “But thanks to God, I keep working, drawing from my life experiences songs that I can sing.”
That also made him one of the most successful singers in Latin America: He was one of a handful of Mexican artists who managed to surpass 1 million album sales annually for 20 consecutive years, Forbes Mexico reported.
But José was also overtaken by health problems, due to years of alcoholism and a habit of taking cortisone shots before his performances. As early as 2001, he started experiencing vocal issues that left him unable to sing — and often unable to speak, too. His finances also reportedly went up and down, and the AP reported that at one point he was found to be living out of a taxi outside Mexico City.
Then, in 2017, he announced he had pancreatic cancer.
Sarita flew him to live with her in Miami, according to the Argentine news site Infobae.com, as Marysol and Joel accused her in interviews with TV Azteca of effectively cutting him off from the family and trying to profit off his legacy. (To those charges, she would later say, “People can say what they want, but it’s very personal.”) Since his move, the two elder siblings said on various TV news outlets they had not been able to visit their ailing father.
A few minutes after he died on Saturday, Sarita called Joel and Marysol, she would later tell Univision. But communication between the siblings appears to have ended then.
On Sunday morning, the two eldest children arrived at Miami International Airport, wearing sunglasses and surrounded by their entourages, attracting an almost immediate swarm of cameras and reporters slamming microphones into their faces.
They went to the police, and the Mexican Consulate, and the Homestead, Fla., hospital where their father had reportedly died. None of them seemed to be able to confirm anything at all about his deaths, according to news reporters following the scene. A spokesperson for Homestead Hospital told The Post he did not appear in their records.
In the meantime, Sarita appeared in an exclusive sit-down interview with Univision’s “Primer Impacto,” saying that José had not died from pancreatic cancer, but rather passed away in his sleep, having suffered from a poor physical state.
“He left in peace,” she said. “Thank God, he left very calm.”
And while she had not been in touch with her siblings directly, Sarita refuted their claims that she was somehow trying to profit off their father’s death.
“Actually, I don’t like doing interviews,” she said in the interview. “I don’t like fame, that’s why I’ve always been so private, but I know my dad would have wanted me to do this for him,” she said.
She also called for peace with her siblings.
“Despite all our differences, we must be united in these moments,” she said. “My responsibility as a daughter and as a sister is to tell them what happened with their dad, and that we have to stick together."
Outside the Homestead hospital as television cameras filmed on Sunday night, though, Marysol called on her half sister’s cellphone, seeking an explanation.
“We have every right to see my dad,” Marysol told TV Azteca. “My half sister has a lot to explain to me and to all of Mexico.”
In front of the cameras, she called her sister on speakerphone. She didn’t answer.
“Please, wherever you are, get in touch with us. I’ve been talking to you all day and I’m here, and I’ve been telling you since yesterday: I see my dad’s body, or I don’t believe anything,” she snapped.
