Gladys Knight's son Shanga Hankerson has accused the 82-year-old soul legend's husband and manager, William McDowell, of working her to the point of exhaustion, claiming she "should not have been working for years now."
Hankerson, 50, told the Daily Mail his mother's disoriented behavior on stage this summer, and her subsequent decision to cut back on touring, proves what he has been saying for over a year: that the seven-time Grammy winner is suffering from serious cognitive decline. "I worry about her all the time," he said. "I can't watch videos or what people send me. I have to block all that out."
McDowell, 68, who has been married to Knight since 2001 and is her fourth husband, did not respond to requests for comment. Knight's spokeswoman, Laura Herlovich, also declined to answer questions about the singer's health and well-being.
Knight, known as the "Empress of Soul," rose to fame with hits including "Midnight Train to Georgia" and fronted Gladys Knight and the Pips for decades before the group split. She has continued to tour into her eighties.
A decade of decline, son claims
Hankerson said he first noticed changes in his mother about ten years ago, when she began repeating herself and "talking in circles." "It has gotten progressively worse over time," he said, adding that she now sometimes fails to recognize him.
He claimed McDowell has spent the past eight to ten years cutting Knight off from relatives, leaving him and his half-sister, Kenya Newman, largely estranged from her. Knight's third child, Jimmy Newman, died in 1999. Kenya Newman did not return calls from the Daily Mail. "Mr McDowell has really been successful in sequestering her from her entire family," Hankerson said, claiming he is now "totally cut off" from his mother.
Elder abuse complaint filed in North Carolina
Hankerson said his concerns grew serious enough last year that he filed a complaint with Adult Protective Services in Buncombe County, North Carolina, where Knight lives, accusing McDowell of mental and financial elder abuse. In the August 2025 complaint, obtained by the Daily Mail, he wrote that his mother was in the "later stages of dementia" and had once wandered away from a hotel while on tour, ending up at another hotel across town unable to tell staff where she was staying.
"My mom is in such an aggressive cognitive decline that she often does not know where she is at any given time," he wrote, while acknowledging her voice remained "trademark strong." He said she now relies on teleprompters for lyrics and to remind her which song comes next.
Hankerson said social workers carried out a wellness visit at Knight's Asheville home, but he never received a report or follow-up. Buncombe County Services would not confirm or deny that a complaint had been filed. At the time, Knight's publicist called the allegations "unfounded" and "defamatory," and Knight said in a statement: "I'm sorry that my health and performances have been misrepresented," adding she was "doing very well, healthy and happy." McDowell declined to comment, saying his wife's statement would suffice.
Disorientation on stage over the summer
Concerns resurfaced over the summer after fans and industry observers flagged several shows in which Knight appeared visibly disoriented. Video from a June 26 performance in Rochester, New York, showed her turning her back to the audience and appearing to take cues from her backup singers. The Los Angeles Times reported similar concerns a month later at the Hollywood Bowl, where Knight appeared to lose her place in a song and was assisted by her backup singers.
After the headlines mounted, McDowell told TMZ that Knight has "good days and bad," and that while she had not been diagnosed with dementia, he planned to take her to a doctor. That same day, Knight posted a statement announcing she was slowing down. "After much soul searching I've decided that I will be easing into fewer performances while focusing on transitioning into the next stage of my career and life moving forward," she wrote on August 27. "I'll be spending more time on projects with my husband and visiting with my grandbabies and am looking forward to this new era."
'I don't want her money,' son says
Hankerson insisted his campaign is not about his mother's fortune. "I don't want her money," he said. "I want her to make sure she has access to all of her resources. This is something she has worked since she was eight years old to get to this point, to get to this level."
He said he does not know the state of Knight's finances but accused McDowell of maintaining an extravagant lifestyle with her money, including building a large entertainment complex at their North Carolina home.
A history of legal disputes
This is not the first family battle Hankerson, who was sentenced to two years in prison in 2021 for federal payroll-tax offenses, has waged with his mother. In 2017, Knight won a legal order requiring him to stop using her name, image and memorabilia in connection with Gladys Knight's Chicken and Waffles restaurants he had launched in Atlanta and Washington, D.C.
Hankerson had argued at the time that his mother lacked the "mental capacity" to end the agreement, but Knight accused him in court of trying to "extort" and "blackmail" her by threatening to publicly claim she had dementia or Alzheimer's.
Family mostly stays silent
Other relatives have been far more guarded than Hankerson. Knight's older brother, Merald "Bubba" Knight, who performed alongside her in Gladys Knight and the Pips for about 37 years until the group broke up in 1989, said little when reached at his Las Vegas home. "The family has shut down on commenting on what my sister's going through right now," he said. "My phone has been blowing up but we hope if we stay out of it, things might get resolved. What I want to say to all her supporters and the people who are concerned: keep praying, because we all need prayer, and so does she."
Barry Hankerson, Knight's second husband and Shanga's father, said he too has been kept in the dark. "I haven't been to any of her shows in years," he said. "I've been totally detached from her and her life and career for decades. My kids don't get much information about her either. She's been kept very isolated. But I wish her well."
