Michael Jackson death was homocide says LA coroner
The Los Angeles coroner has described Michael Jackson's death as homicide and confirmed he had lethal levels of the powerful anesthetic propofol in his body.
After weeks of leaks and speculation, the conclusion of the Los Angeles chief medical examiner was announced on Monday by law enforcement officials.
Jackson's doctor, Conrad Murray, has already admitted administering the drug propofol to the "King of Pop".
Details of his treatment were revealed separately on Monday in documents unsealed by a court in Houston, Texas, where Dr Murray practises.
Court documents showed that Jackson consumed a cocktail of drugs in the hours before he died, the Los Angeles Times reported. According to a newly unsealed affidavit accompanying a search warrant used in the investigation of Jackson's death, Dr Murray told detectives he gave the "King of Pop" propofol to treat insomnia.
Jackson suffered cardiac arrest and died on June 25 aged 50. Since then, police have investigated his death with a focus on prescription drugs and the role of doctors who treated him, including Dr Murray.
An autopsy report in to Jackons' death remains sealed while police complete their investigation into the role prescription drugs may have played in his death and the actions of his doctors.
According to court records, Dr Murray told detectives he had been giving Jackson 50 mg of propofol every night for six weeks using an intravenous drip.
Dr Murray told detectives he feared Jackson was forming an addiction and began trying to wean the pop star off the drugs. He lowered the dosage to 25 mg and mixed it with two other sedatives, lorazepam and midazolam. On June 23, two days before Jackson's death, he administered those two medications and withheld the propofol.
On the morning Jackson died, Dr Murray said, he tried to induce sleep without using propofol, according to the affidavit. He said he gave Jackson valium at 1.30 a.m. When that did not work, he said, he injected lorazepam intravenously at 2 am.
At 3 am, when Jackson was still awake, Murray administered yet another drug, midazolam.
Over the next few hours, Murray said he gave Jackson various drugs. Then at 10:40 am Murray administered 25 mg of propofol after Jackson repeatedly demanded the drug, according to the court records, the Los Angeles Times reported.
At least two doctors gave Jackson propofol in Germany. Dr Murray said Jackson had declined to tell him about what treatment he had received from other doctors.
He said he had seen injection marks on Jackson's feet and hands. When he asked Jackson about them, the pop star told him he had been given a "cocktail" to help him. In addition to Dr Murray, authorities subpoenaed medical records from several other American doctors.
Dr Murray has already acknowledged obtaining and administering propofol to Jackson the morning that he died. Dr Murray told police he left Jackson alone under the influence of the medication to make telephone calls to his office and family.
He returned to find Jackson was not breathing and performed CPR.
Jackson was declared dead in hospital.
UPDATE: AUG 2009
King of Pop’ lives on another planet.
Michael Jackson’s outlandish life is being overshadowed in his death by events so preposterous they seem to come from a fiction writer’s overactive imagination.
They include a petition to award him a Nobel peace prize; a growing list of people who claim to be the real parents of Jackson’s children; a lawsuit from an alleged ex-wife; and a sect that believes the ‘King of Pop’ lives on, albeit on another planet.
Jackson died in Los Angeles on June 25 at age 50 from an apparent cardiac arrest. His son Prince Michael, 12; his daughter Paris, 11, and seven-year-old son Prince Michael II — known as ‘Blanket’ — are the immediate heirs to the late singer’s music empire. Their legal guardian is Katherine Jackson, the children’s paternal grandmother.
According to a case filed recently in Los Angeles, a woman named Claire Elisabeth Fields Cruise claims to be the children’s sole biological mother.
Documents filed by Fields Cruise, and posted on celebrity website TMZ.com, also claim Prince Michael I was fathered by a man who lives in France, while Paris Jackson’s father was Fields Cruise’s ‘unofficial college sweetheart.’
Fields Cruise told a judge she gave birth to the children without being pregnant with them.
‘There is technology that is in existence,’ she told reporters after she filed the case,’to remove the conceived children from her body and insert them into the bodies of the surrogates who gave birth to them.’
Fields Cruise also claimed that Jackson ‘always knew’ he was the biological father of Connor Cruise, the 14 year-old black child that actors Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman adopted in 1995, when they were still married.
One day before Fields Cruise filed her case, British ex-child star Mark Lester said that he might be Paris Jackson’s father.
‘I gave Michael my sperm so that he could have kids — and I believe Paris is my daughter,’ Lester, who played Oliver Twist in the 1968 film musical ‘Oliver!,’ told the British tabloid News of the World.
Jackson family spokespeople said the 51-year-old Briton was a friend of Jackson and is godfather to all three of his children, but denied Lester’s parenthood claim.
Jackson had his first two children, Prince Michael and Paris, when he was married to Debbie Rowe, an assistant to his dermatologist, between 1996 and 1999.
Rowe signed over parental rights to the children to Jackson, who later had a third child, Prince Michael II, by a surrogate.
Rowe’s boss Arnold Klein even weighed in with a cryptic statement on paternity. ‘To the best of my knowledge, I am not the father of these children,’ Klein told ABC News in early July.
Rowe and Jackson may have divorced, but one Nona Paris Lola Ankhesenamun Jackson claims to be the singer’s legitimate wife — and filed a case in Los Angeles court five days after the singer’s death asking ‘that all my husband’s properties, monies and assets must be transferred to me immediately.’
While there is no evidence linking the woman to Jackson, she also claims Jackson’s children are hers and that she did not authorize them to live with their grandmother.
Separately, a woman by the name of Billie Jean Jackson — like Jackson’s famous hit song ‘Bille Jean’ — showed up in court claiming an unspecified link to ‘Blanket’ Jackson.
Jean asked the judge to hire a handwriting expert to check Jackson’s will for forgeries; asked for the right to visit Blanket every Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 2 pm; and asked to not to be ‘arrested’ by Katherine Jackson or estate executor John Branca.
Meanwhile, gossip magazines allege that 25-year-old rapper Omer Bhatti is Jackson’s love child, conceived in a one-night stand with a Norwegian fan.
Bhatti lived at Neverland ranch for eight years and was with the Jackson family at the singer’s funeral. Friends told reporters however that he was a merely Jackson protege, and Bhatti has denied any biological link to the singer.
That hasn’t stopped the late singer’s estranged father Joe Jackson from claiming that Bhatti was Michael’s son.
‘Yes, I knew he had another son, yes I did,’ Joe Jackson told ABC News in a July 31 interview. Bhatti ‘looks like a Jackson, he can dance like a Jackson,’ he added, offering no further proof.
Soon after Jackson’s death, a website opened nominating the singer for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for having ‘given of himself completely and selflessly in a lifelong effort to help better global conditions for children, and all of humankind.’
As of Saturday more than 31,000 people had signed the petition — even though Nobel prizes are not awarded posthumously.
Some people say they see Jackson’s ghost in a CNN documentary filmed at the late star’s Neverland estate soon after his death.
Others may be consoled by the Raelian Movement, a group that says Jackson — named a Raelian Honorary Guide in 1992 — probably lives on.
‘Considering all the good things Michael did on Earth for peace and love, I’m sure he is alive today on the Elohim’s Eternal-Life Planet,’ group leader Rael said in a July 7 statement.
Raelians believe that all life on Earth was created by human scientists from another planet known as the Elohim, who ancient humans mistook for gods.
Jackson ‘is among the few humans from Earth to be so cloned, and will return to Earth with the Elohim’ when humans will welcome them back, the statement read.
UPDATE: 27 July 2009
MJ’s hair to be turned into diamonds
Since Michael Jackson’s sudden death on June 25, the rumor mill over details of his bizarre personal life has ground away nearly non-stop, and on Friday, one company said it was turning his hair into diamonds. That one is true.
The claims this week included a report in Rolling Stone magazine that a prosthetic nose he wore apparently went missing when he was taken to the morgue, and a British tabloid trumpeted a headline that he fathered a secret love-child.
In one by-product of the “Thriller” singer’s death, a Chicago company said on Friday it had obtained some of the hair Jackson burned while filming a 1984 Pepsi commercial and planned to create a limited edition of diamonds from it.
“Absolutely this is for real,” said Dean Vanden-Biesen, founder of LifeGem, which has a patent on a process that extracts carbon from hair, turns it into crystals and then into high-quality laboratory diamonds.
VandenBiesen told Reuters he thought the company could make about 10 diamonds. No sale price has been set but VandenBiesen said LifeGem created three diamonds from locks of Beethoven’s hair in 2007, and sold one of them for around $200,000.
Separately, the August 6 issue of Rolling Stone magazine reported that not only was the left arm of Jackson’s dead body “scored with needle marks” - claims that have arisen before - but he wore an artificial nose that was missing when he was taken to the Los Angeles county morgue.
“The prosthesis that he normally attached to his damaged nose was missing, revealing bits of cartilage surrounding a small dark hole,” the magazine said in an unsourced report.
MORE UPDATE
It had been believed that Michael Jackson — who passed away June 25 — had only three children; 12-year-old Prince Michael, Paris Michael Katherine, 11, and 7-year-old "Blanket."
But that's all changing now.
This combo photo shows Bhatti (L) and Michael Jackson. Bhatti, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jackson's young son Blanket, lived at the singer's Neverland Ranch for several years in the late '90s and sat on the front row of the singer's memorial along with The Jackson Family.
Bhatti, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jackson's young son Blanket, lived at the singer's Neverland Ranch for several years in the late '90s and sat on the front row of the singer's memorial along with The Jackson Family.
Omer Bhatti first met Michael in Tunisia in 1996. The then-12-year-old impressed the pop legend with his dance moves. Omer has since performed with the singer and worked as a Michael tribute act across the globe. The dancer's stepfather Riz once worked as a driver for MJ while his mother is thought to have been a nanny.
UPDATE: 3 July 2009
New photos have emerged of Michael Jackson's final rehearsals for his big comeback just two days before his death.
The pictures were released by AEG, the promoters of his 'This Is It' tour which was to have taken in 50 dates at the O2 Arena in London.
In the images, the name of the tour is spelt out in huge letters at the back of the stage.
According to AEG the photos were taken on June 23 at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles - two days before Jacko died from a suspected cardiac arrest.
Michael Jackson looks thin and tired from his strenuous work out routine.
After not performing for years, the star intended to take to the stage for the mega concerts in London. In one of the pictures his face looks like a mask.
UPDATE: 3 July 2009
A sensational video has emerged of Michael Jackson rehearsing for his planned tour just two days before his death.
The footage was released by AEG, the promoter of Jacko’s ‘This Is It’ residency at the O2 Arena in London.
And the King of Pop proved he still had it in the clip as he showed off some moves to his 1996 hit ‘Don’t Care About Us’ together with eight male dancers.
As his guitarist played a solo, Jacko raised a finger just like in his heyday.
The video, which lasts one minute 40 seconds, ends with a dance section.
It was shot on June 23 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, where the King of Pop had also rehearsed the night before his sudden death.
Jacko appears in the video to be slightly emaciated - perhaps exhausted from his ambitious plan to return to the stage after many years for 50 mega-concerts.
He had planned to perform his biggest hits on the tour, including ‘Thriller’, ‘Billie Jean’ and ‘Bad’.
Magician Ed Alonzo, who had been part of Britney Spears’ ‘Circus’ show, watched Michael’s last rehearsal before his death on the Wednesday.
He told ‘USA Today’: “”It was an amazing show. The thing was just days away from being perfected. It was incredible.
“Even though it was just a walk-through with the dancers, his moves were dead-on — the same Michael Jackson we [saw] through the years in music videos.”
A leaked copy of the autopsy report on former King of Pop Michael Jackson paints a disturbing picture of the dead singers health leading up to his death.According to the British tabloid The Sun, the dead entertainer weighed just 51kg (112lb), was bald, emaciated and the bridge to his nose had vanished and its right side had partially collapsed.
The newspaper said the autopsy report details the 80s pop icon was wearing a wig which covered just “peach fuzz” on his head, while the singers body was riddled with needle holes, scarred by at least 13 cosmetic surgery operations.
The tabloid reports that Jackson’s body was “severely emaciated” from eating just one meal a day and pathologists only found partially dissolved pills in his stomach – which have been sent for toxicology tests.
The autopsy also found unexplained bruising on Jackson’s knees and on the fronts of both shins and there were cuts on his back, indicating a recent fall.
The report also said four needle puncture marks were found above Jackson’s heart, apparently the result of trying to inject adrenaline in an attempt to revive him.
Three of the injections had penetrated the heart wall — causing damage — but a fourth missed and hit one of the 50-year-old star’s ribs – several of which had been broken in the attempts to revive him
Quoting an unnamed source it says is close to the Jackson family, The Sun said: “Michael’s family and fans will be horrified when they realize the appalling state he was in.
According to the reports of the British daily The Sun, Micheal Jackson’s autopsy results are supposedly leaked to the media. However, the news was reported to be false by E! Online. Also, there are certainly no pictures of the superstar after the autopsy; if there were, they certainly have not made their way to the media. The supposed, ‘exclusive’ last photo of MJ was published by “The Insider” that shows him receiving medical treatment, taken through the ambulance door or window. TMZ.com, the website that had first reported that the king of pop was taken to a hospital after suffering a cardiac arrest, also confirmed that the autopsy results have not been leaked.
Earlier, reports had made their way online that Jackson’s body was mutilated by needle and knives scars, had lost all the hair etc, which might or might not be true; it has not been confirmed yet.
A statement released by the Los Angeles County coroner states that “The report that is being published did not come from this office. I don’t know where the information came from, or who that information came from. It is not accurate. Some of it is totally false.”
The Jackson family is said to be unsatisfied with the results of the first autopsy and have ordered for a second, private one in the upcoming days.
As for the autopsy photos, it is a remote possibility that they will ever see the light of the day, as the whole affair was a closely guarded and watched. His body is now locked in a special vault from where it will be transferred to his family.
“He was skin and bone, his hair had fallen out and had been eating nothing but pills when he died. Injection marks all over his body and the disfigurement caused by years of plastic surgery show he’d been in terminal decline for years.
“His doctors and the hangers-on stood by as he self-destructed. Somebody is going to have to pay.”
The same unnamed sources claim the family were preparing a multi-million-dollar lawsuit against Jackson’s private doctor, cardiologist Dr Conrad Murray, who was hired just 11 days ago by AEG Live — the firm masterminding Jacko’s 50-date residency at London’s O2 Arena, which was due to start next month.
Jackson's Drug Use
Michael Jackson's former nanny Grace Rwaramba, who worked for the King of Pop for 17 years before being fired recently, tells The Times of London how bad his drug abuse was.
"I had to pump his stomach many times. He always mixed so much of it," she said.
"There was one period that it was so bad that I didn't let the children see him. He always ate too little and mixed too much," Rwaramba added.
At one point, she teamed with Jackson's mother Katherine and sister Janet for an intervention, which angered him.
"We tried to do an intervention. It was me, Janet, his mother. I coordinated it. He was so angry with me," she explained.
Rwaramba is expected to be interviewed by the police as part of the ongoing investigation into Michael's death.
Michael Jackson might die from the effects of plastic surgeries
According to the maxillofacial surgeon, Candidate of Medical Sciences, Tamara Chkadu, a famous singer may die from hypoxia, caused by plastic surgery on nose
The cause of the death of Michael Jackson could become a chronic hypoxia - oxygen deficiency caused by the decrease in nasal moves because of the numerous plastic surgeries, told renowned maxillofacial surgeon, Candidate of Medical Sciences, Tamara Chkadu.
King of pop Michael Jackson has died in the night on Friday at a hospital in Los Angeles. Cause of death has not yet been established.
«It was clear that the singer was plastic nose - all the small tip of the nose, breathing passages greatly reduced. This could lead to chronic hypoxia, which in turn often leads to even sudden cardiac arrest - said the doctor.
Interlocutrix agency explained that hypoxia typically occurs at night during sleep when a person has no control over his breathing.
In doing so, the surgeon pointed out that many plastic surgery alone can not be the direct cause of death, but severely undermine the health of their effects - often stay under general anesthesia, administration of drugs in the postoperative period.
«In addition, we see that Michael Jackson had complications after plastic surgeries, perhaps even necrosis - tissue dying off. Singer obviously did not just plastic nose, and chin implant inserted, changed the form of school
UPDATE:8 July 2009
Quotes from Michael Jackson's memorial service
Michael Jackson’s daughter joined his loved ones in paying tribute to the late star as the world bid its final farewell to the 'King of Pop'.
Paris, 11, was surrounded by the singer’s siblings on stage at Los Angeles’ Staples Centre on Tuesday (07.07.09) as she broke down trying to tell the audience at his memorial service how much he meant to her and her brothers, Prince Michael I, 12, and Prince Michael II, seven.
Jackson’s 11-year-old daughter Paris Katherine Jackson: "Ever since I was born, daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine, and I just wanted to say I love him so much."
Jackson’s brother, Jermaine Jackson: "As you know I’m lost for words, I was his voice and his backbone, I had his back and so did the family. We thank you. Thats all I can say, we thank you very much."
Jackson’s brother, Marlon Jackson: "Maybe now, Michael, they will leave you alone."
Singer-songwriter Smokey Robinson: "I never thought I’d be here today. This is my little brother over there (in the casket) and you just don’t think that you’re going to ... live to see him gone. But he will never really be gone. He is going to live forever and ever and ever and ever." "The world will never, ever forget Michael Jackson. I love you my brother. I celebrate your life. I’m proud I had the chance to know you."
Motown Records founder Berry Gordy: "Michael Jackson went into orbit and never came down. Though it ended way too soon, Michael’s life was beautiful. Sure there was some sad times and maybe some questionable decisions on his part, but Michael Jackson accomplished everything he dreamed of." "The more I think about Michael and talk about Michael the more I think that ’King of Pop’ is not good enough. I think he is simply the greatest entertainer that ever lived."
Actress Brooke Shields, a longtime friend of Jackson: "Whenever we were out together and a picture was taken there would be caption of some kind, and the caption usually said something like, ’an odd couple’ or ’an unlikely pair.’ But but to us it was the most natural and easiest of friendships." "I was 13 when we met and from that day on our friendship grew. Michael always knew he could count on me to support him or be his date, and that we would have fun no matter where we were. We had a bond."
Martin Luther King III: "On June 25th, because he was the best, I believe heaven and earth did pause indeed to say of Michael Joseph Jackson, ’Here lived a great entertainer who who did his job well."
Rapper and actress Queen Latifah: "Somehow when Michael Jackson sang, when he danced, we never felt distant. Michael was the biggest star on Earth."
Civil rights activist Al Sharpton: "I want to say to Michael’s children, there wasn’t nothing strange about your daddy, it was strange what your daddy had to deal with. He dealt with it anyway. He dealt with it for us."
Singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder: "This is a moment I wished I wouldn’t live to see ... As much as we may feel that we need Michael here with us, God must have needed him far more."
Former basketball great Earvin "Magic" Johnson, who spoke alongside Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant: "I want to thank Michael for opening up so many doors for African Americans, to be on daytime shows, late night shows. He allowed Kobe and I to have our jerseys in peoples homes across world, because he was already there and he opened all those doors for us."
The world bid its final farewell to the 'King of Pop'.
Some 18,000 fans and friends will crowd into the Staples Center sports arena and a nearby, overflow theater for the two-hour ceremony memorializing Jackson, who died June 25 after suffering cardiac arrest in his Los Angeles mansion.
UPDATE: 10 AUG 2009
Oliver! star Mark Lester donated sperm to Michael Jackson
Mark Lester, famed for playing the title role in the hit 1960s musical Oliver!, has revealed he donated sperm to Michael Jackson and that he believes he may be Paris Jackson's biological father.
Mr Lester, 51, was a close friend of the late pop superstar. He is godfather to Paris, 11, and Jackson's two other children, 12-year-old Prince, and Prince Michael II, the seven-year-old nick-named Blanket.
Former child actor Mr Lester said he was willing to take a paternity test to find out the truth.
"It's a been a secret for so long," he told the News of the World. "I gave Michael my sperm so that he could have kids – and I believe Paris is my daughter.
"In 1996, Michael asked me if I would give him my sperm and I said yes. It was a gift to him, no money was paid, it was something I was honoured to do. He wanted children so badly.
"I do feel a definite bonding with Paris and I think there's a definite possibility that she's part of me.
"I want to have contact with her, Prince and Blanket regardless of whether any or all of them are mine. I think it's cruel that I've now been excluded from them."
The father of four said the resemblance between his 15-year-old daughter Harriet and Paris has been noted.
"Paris is very pale, with blue eyes. All my daughters, apart from my eldest, are fair with blue eyes. So many people have commented on how alike Harriet and Paris look," he said.
Mr Lester said that Jackson first revealed his desperation to be a father to him in January 1996. Both were aged 37 and Mr Lester already had three children.
"He realised having kids was a natural thing but that he just couldn't do it," Mr Lester said.
"I mentioned the fact there are alternative ways of going about it. I think he'd already tried using his own sperm but it hadn't worked for him, so I made an off-the-cuff comment saying, 'Try mine!"'
He said Jackson eventually agreed and the donation was arranged through a clinic in Harley Street, London, in February 1996.
Eight months later Jackson announced that he had married nurse Debbie Rowe and three months later the couple revealed the birth of their first child, Prince.
Paris was born just over a year later, in April 1998.
Mr Lester said he was speaking out because he feared being cut out of the lives of Jackson's children.
Up until the pop singer's memorial last month, he was in contact with them on a weekly basis, the former child star said.
But since Jackson's mother Katherine had been granted custody of the children, he said all his phone calls and emails had gone unanswered.
"This isn't what Michael would have wanted," Mr Lester said. "I feel I have to come forward, as my only way of saying, 'Please don't shut me out'."
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