An emergency call was made to the 911 distress center at 12:21:04 p.m. local time, claiming that a 50-year-old man was no longer breathing. Five minutes later, fire trucks and ambulance crews rushed into the mansion, only to realize it was Michael Jackson who was unconscious. After rendering ineffective on-scene assistance, paramedics immediately tried to pronounce Jackson dead, but personal physician Conrad Murray insisted that Michael be taken to the hospital, screaming, "He can't die!"
At 1:14 p.m., Jackson, in cardiac arrest, was rushed to the medical center. Doctors paced him for 42 minutes and even injected a shot of epinephrine directly into his heart. At 2:26 p.m., doctors declared Michael Jackson dead.
When the nurse told Michael's manager, Frank DiLeo, the latter nearly fainted at the sad news. When Michael's sister LaToya Jackson stumbled to the hospital, she saw her mother and Michael's three children crying in pain. "I screamed, 'Is this real?' She said, 'Yes, he's gone.' I started crying. I kept screaming and the kids were screaming. My mom was sitting there with three kids on her lap, all crying."
Shortly afterward, Jackson's daughter Paris asked to see her father one last time. LaToya grabbed all three children's hands and, along with Michael's brother Randy (Randy Jackson), walked from the emergency room to the small room. Michael lay inside, still seemingly warm to the touch.
"There was a towel over his face, and I lifted it up, and the kids saw him, and Paris said, 'Oh, Daddy, I love you.'
"We hugged and kissed him and the kids grabbed his hand. He really didn't look like he was gone. His eyes were half open, like he was sleeping. He wasn't cold at all. The kids had been screaming and crying before, but when they came into the room and saw Michael, they quieted down. We prayed for him. I asked them, 'What do you want to say to Daddy?' So they came up to his ear and whispered something to him," Latoya recalled. Then they sat around the bed until she signed the death certificate.
KING OF POP: DEATH BY MISERY
On Aug. 25, the Los Angeles coroner's office released its preliminary findings on the cause of Michael Jackson's death: the King of Pop died of an overdose of the powerful anesthetic propofol. According to Coroner Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, they reached this conclusion after reviewing reports of toxins in Jackson's blood.
It was that report that led the Los Angeles police to issue several search warrants against Jackson's personal physician, Connor Murray. A law enforcement official said the coroner's office determined that Jackson's death was due to manslaughter and is actively investigating. In 32 pages of court documents, Murray told detectives at the time that he had spent six weeks trying to cure Jackson's insomnia, and that every night he injected Jackson with 50 milligrams of propofol mixed with another local anesthetic, lidocaine.
Worrying that Jackson might be addicted to the drug, the Houston doctor said he tried to wean Jackson off it, reducing the dose to 25 milligrams and mixing it with a variety of other medications to help Jackson sleep, which he did two days before his death.
On June 25, however, the other drugs had stopped working. At about 1:30 a.m., Murray gave Jackson 10 milligrams of Valium; at 2 a.m., he gave Jackson 2 milligrams of the anti-anxiety drug Valium; at 3 a.m., he again gave Jackson 2 milligrams of midazolam; at 5 a.m., he again gave Jackson 2 milligrams of Valium; at 7:30 a.m., Murray continued to give Jackson 2 milligrams of midazolam and was in front of an instrument to monitor his At 10:40 a.m., he gave Jackson 25 milligrams of propofol after Jackson's "repeated requests and pleas.
"Jackson finally fell asleep," Murray said, and then he continued to monitor him for about 10 minutes before leaving Jackson to relax in the rest room. Murray claimed that when he went back to check on Jackson two minutes later at most, the singer had stopped breathing.
Conrad Murray, a Texas native, has clinics in Las Vegas and Houston and often makes house calls for celebrity clients. His friends and patients say his Zen-like practice, his holistic approach to medical care that analyzes problems holistically and his Chopra-like ability to connect with the heart made him a friend of Jackson's. It may have been this friendship, rather than his specialty, that led Jackson to choose him as his resident personal physician for his London shows. In May, he signed a contract and began receiving a monthly salary of $150,000 from AEG Live Entertainment, although his initial asking price was a staggering $1 million.
In June 2005, Jackson, who had been acquitted in a child-molestation case, left the U.S. and went into self-imposed exile in Bahrain and Ireland, where he was hosted by local royalty and celebrities.It was only at the end of 2006 that the pop superstar ended his exile and returned to Las Vegas, ready for a comeback. It was during this time that Connor Murray became acquainted: one day, when his daughter Paris fell ill, Jackson asked his bodyguard if he could get a doctor who would make house calls. His bodyguard said he knew someone who did, and that was Murray.
It was this large sum of money that made Morrie decide to follow Jackson on tour.
Floyd Williams, 80, is a friend of Morrie. According to him, Murray's career is booming, and the doctor can get on a plane and travel to New York and Washington to make house calls while practicing medicine in Las Vegas. Three years ago, Murray joined the mysterious organization **** Jezebel, a new social network that has doubled his business. The clinic he opened in Houston, however, often struggled to make ends meet because it was located in a low-to-moderate income neighborhood. He also took on a lot of debt to keep the clinic afloat. So, encouraged by his patients, Murray, who was desperate for money, decided to accept Jackson's offer.
According to lawyers, when Murray found the singer in a severe coma on the morning of June 25, he rushed to perform cardiac resuscitation on Jackson in his bed -- one of the reasons he was later criticized the most: As a cardiologist, he should have known to do the cardiac resuscitation on a hard floor rather than a soft bed. He should have known that he should have done the resuscitation on a hard floor, not a soft bed. In response, his lawyers first argued that the bed was hard, and then said that the doctor had placed one hand under Jackson and used the other to perform the resuscitation - whereas standard resuscitation involves applying pressure with both hands.
When Murray realized there was nothing he could do, he thought to call for help. For safety reasons, the landline outside the room had been cut off. And he was convinced he couldn't use the phone because he said he "didn't know the exact address" of the mansion. Eventually, he rushed downstairs and screamed for help. He found the cook, who in turn went to find security guard Alberto Alvarez, which led to the famous 911 call. By the time Murray returned to Jackson's room to continue cardiac resuscitation, 30 minutes had passed.
As with the deaths of Elvis Presley, Monroe, John F. Kennedy, Bruce Lee and all the other celebrities who have become legends, the cause of Michael Jackson's death is still shrouded in mystery, even with an official account.
On the day of the king's death, police discovered a grisly fact in his rented Bel-Air mansion: Inside his room were drugs of all names, notably the powerful anesthetic propofol, which can only be used in hospitals. Jackson, who suffered from frequent insomnia amidst years of stress, relied on the drug to help him sleep, according to the report. In court filings, Murray made no secret of the fact that he was not the first doctor to inject Jackson with propofol.
Five other doctors and a nurse are listed in the court filings as having prescribed or injected Michael Jackson with sedative or narcotic drugs, including Jackson's dermatologist, Arnold Klein.
"Agents believe that assorted prescription drugs from multiple doctors ...... caused his death." The court filing said.
Murray, a cardiologist, was immediately questioned by numerous medical experts -, did a lay anesthesiologist have the appropriate monitoring and resuscitation equipment in place to prevent accidents when he administered propofol to Jackson?
Propofol is so potent that even the slightest error in dosage calculations can lead to asphyxiation or even a sudden drop in the patient's heart rate, or even death. John Dombrowski, a board member of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, explains. As a result, it can only be injected into a patient by a specialized anesthesiologist in a medically-equipped facility. Thus, the discovery of the drug in Jackson's home was a big deal.
"I can't imagine a situation where it's not a home drug," said Dr. David Zvara, president of the Society of Anesthesiologists at the University of North Carolina. Guidelines issued in 2004 by the American Society of Anesthesiologists specify that physicians who use propofol must have "specialized educational background and training," that the patient must be supervised "without interruption," and that emergency facilities "must be immediately available" if there are signs of danger. "must be immediately available."
General practitioners without specialized training are not allowed to use the drug, Zewara said.
Instead of death by negligence, however, the Jackson family and a number of fans prefer to believe in conspiracy theories in a larger sense. In their theory, Murray was nothing more than a pawn used to kill people. Michael Jackson's father, Joe Jackson, and his sister, LaToya, have claimed on several occasions that Michael definitely died of "murder" and have performed a second autopsy on Jackson's body. None of the interest groups around Jackson have escaped suspicion.
Just after Jackson's death, Connor Murray disappeared without a trace. He didn't appear by chance until police needed to question him. In fact, an investigation found that Murray's 10-year internal medicine credentials expired last December, that he was not licensed to practice medicine in California, and that he had never been certified as a cardiologist.
"It's very suspicious," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a black civil rights activist, "that he fled the scene at that time."
Initially, he was described by police as a "cooperative witness" and was not listed as a suspect. But on July 22, police, working with DEA agents, raided Murray's Houston office and seized a computer, two hard drives and contact lists, among other things, and on July 27, an anonymous law enforcement informant revealed that it was Murray who had injected Jackson with the anesthetic propofol 24 hours before his death. And his attorney had previously claimed that Murray had not injected or prescribed any dangerous drugs to Jackson. The next day, police searched Murray's Las Vegas home and office, and on Aug. 11, Murray's pharmacy was searched again. But his lawyers refused to respond to "rumors, innuendo and anonymous revelations" and asked for patience as they waited for the autopsy report. However, the release of Jackson's autopsy report has been delayed due to the lack of closure of the police criminal investigation. According to sources on August 22, investigators had wanted to charge Murray with second-degree murder, but the evidence they had found was only enough to prove "manslaughter." On August 18, he posted a YouTube video thanking those who cared about him, while saying in an interview that he feared he would become a "scapegoat. "scapegoat," without elaborating.
AEG Live Entertainment, on the other hand, was suspected of pushing Jackson to death for commercial gain because "Michael initially only agreed to do ten concerts in London, but then woke up and was forced to do fifty," Joe Jackson rebuked on his CNN television program. In preparation for the show, Michael Jackson allegedly plummeted from 150 to 120 pounds and had trouble sleeping at night. Some fans even claimed to have heard Jackson complaining in tears in the rehearsal hall that he "wondered if he was physically capable of performing". But according to a leaked contract from RadarOnline.com, Jackson guaranteed that he had no "health problems or injuries or illnesses" that could affect the London shows, and explicitly agreed to perform at least 31 shows, not just 10, as had been rumored. ". In addition, the contract stipulates that he must not perform less than an average of 3.5 shows per seven-day period, and that each show must be at least 80 minutes long.
Ratoa, however, claims that a combination of greedy advisers and employees with ulterior motives around Michael Jackson killed him. She says Jackson was drugged and vowed to file lawsuits against all those responsible. Meanwhile, June Gatlin, Jackson's spiritual advisor, appeared on NBC television on August 24 and used recordings of Jackson's final phone calls to prove that Jackson was afraid of the financial advisor called Dr. Tohme Tohme while he was alive. The mysterious figure, who was introduced to Jackson by his third brother Jermaine, suddenly appeared in Jackson's life and took over all of the singer's affairs during the final stages of Jackson's life.