Trial: Michael Jackson fretted about fame, kids in last days

PureLove · November 2011

[size=14pt]Trial: Michael Jackson fretted about fame, kids in last days[/size] One Sunday in May 2009, Michael Jackson's personal physician used a smartphone application called iTalk to capture the slurred voice of the pop icon as he drifted toward sleep. The digital recording reflected Jackson's heavy use of intravenous sedatives, the kind of drug that killed him six weeks later. That was just one of countless hidden details of Jackson's last days that the world learned during the involuntary manslaughter trial of physician Conrad Murray. Jurors hear closing arguments today, after nearly six weeks and 49 witnesses. "We have to be phenomenal," Jackson says on the recording, between long pauses. "When people leave my show, I want them to say, 'We have never seen nothing like this in my life. … He's the greatest entertainer in the world.'" Like a lot of evidence at the trial, the recording shows Jackson as both talented and troubled. His music sales in the USA had peaked in the 1980s, and he had not toured since 1997, but the listener can tell he's ambitious for a comeback. Even through a daze, Jackson sounds focused on somehow driving his 50-year-old body to success in the "This Is It" series of 50 sold-out concerts in London that were to begin two months later. Six weeks after that recording, on June 25, 2009, Jackson was dead. His plans to be bigger than ever — breaking ticket-sale records, building a children's hospital, finding a stable home for his three children — ended after the demanding celebrity with a sleep problem hired a star-struck doctor who prosecutors say cut corners to supply risky drugs Jackson begged for. On one side of the picture, the trial has provided unflattering evidence that Jackson was insulated and self-indulgent, reckless with his health, dazzling a series of compliant doctors into enabling his insomnia-linked dependency on drugs. Other evidence showed that despite the Thriller composer's pop-music genius, he wasn't much different from many ordinary Americans. Witnesses described Jackson as a devoted single father raising three children, straining a skinny and much-injured body to make money to provide his paparazzi-chased kids a quiet haven after four years of wandering. And while his bedroom nightstands were a veritable drugstore of prescription vials, he ate healthful New Age breakfasts of granola with almond milk. The coroner said Jackson died of "acute propofol intoxication," an overdose of a hospital-grade anesthetic aggravated by effects of the sedative lorazepam. Prosecutors charged Murray with involuntary manslaughter. He pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he faces up to four years in prison. Working under a $150,000-a-month contract — which was never paid — the cardiologist had been putting Jackson to sleep with drips of the potent propofol almost nightly for two months. He stayed alone all night with Jackson in his bedroom, without the electronic monitoring and resuscitation resources that four doctors told the court were required under the medical "standard of care." The jurors must decide: Did Murray administer medications with criminal negligence? Or did a desperately sleepless and drug-addicted Jackson inject himself when the doctor wasn't looking, as Murray's defense attorneys argued? No Jackson fingerprints were found on IV equipment. Even if Jackson did grab a syringe and misuse propofol, is Murray culpable for leaving him alone with access to the drug? Because the defense strategy essentially was to put his patient on trial, a verdict on the defendant also could amount to a verdict on Jackson. The trial cast a spotlight on an eccentric who fiercely guarded his privacy, leaving few facets of his walled and gated existence unexplored. Many intimate aspects of Jackson's last months emerged from police detectives' 2 ½-hour interview of Murray two days after the death. Murray did not testify at the trial. Jackson's personal assistant, security guards and chef, concert-tour executives and other health care providers delivered more details. Jurors viewed the singer's medical records, compiled by doctors who assigned him the pseudonyms Omar Arnold and Paul Farance to evade tabloid scrutiny. They saw photos, floor plans and videos of Jackson's final residence. The trial took onlookers into Jackson's messy master bedroom and into the bathroom where, Murray told police, the superstar, who had an enlarged prostate, would spend hours every night trying to urinate. It exposed Jackson's childlike nature and emotional pain. "I hurt," he told Murray in the phone recording. "I had no childhood." Jackson had been front and center in the Jackson Five singing group at age 8, performing under what he frequently recalled as mockery and punishing demands from a perfectionist father. [size=14pt]A comeback with the kids in mind[/size] In 2005, after a jury in Santa Maria, Calif., acquitted Jackson of charges of molesting a 12-year-old boy, he decamped to Bahrain. He shut down his 3,000-acre Neverland Ranch, with its amusement park rides, petting zoo and statues of children. He said he could no longer live there because police searchers had "violated" it. In 2006, Jackson moved to Las Vegas with his son Prince, who is now 14, daughter Paris, 13, and son Blanket, 8. In 2007, he took his children to Virginia for the summer. His manager put out feelers to the concert-promotion firm AEG Live about going back on stage. Jackson met with AEG Live CEO Randy Phillips at the Bel-Air Hotel in Los Angeles on Halloween in 2008, Phillips testified. There, Phillips said, Jackson said his main reason for wanting to resume appearances was that "he wanted to settle down and get a really, really good home for his family, for the kids. He said they were living like vagabonds." The meeting got emotional. "He cried," Phillips said. "I cried." Jackson set two conditions for the London engagement, Phillips said. He wanted promoters to find him a 16-acre estate far from the city so the kids would have a pastoral setting. And he wanted a Guinness World Records representative at his 50th show at London's O2 Arena to document record attendance for a single act at one venue: 850,000 concertgoers in total. In January 2009, Jackson and AEG Live signed the contract. The singer, his kids and a nanny moved to a rented $20,000-a-month home at 100 North Carolwood Drive in L.A.'s posh Holmby Hills. [size=14pt]Desperate for propofol[/size] The two-story house was behind high walls and a massive gate with an entry keypad and intercom. Fans camped outside day and night. Some followed Jackson's two-SUV security caravan to concert rehearsals, then raced to beat him home. Jackson installed a security trailer in the courtyard. Beefy guards were on duty around the clock, watching video surveillance screens, walking the perimeter or driving big Cadillac Escalades. The house had no phone lines, "I guess to avoid calls," Murray told police. Guards testified that they could not enter the house without permission from Michael Amir Williams, Jackson's personal assistant, and were allowed upstairs only to carry heavy packages or plants. Murray told police Jackson was not "humane" in making the guards use the bathroom at a neighborhood gas station. Allan Metzger, a longtime primary physician for Jackson, testified that for 15 to 20 years, Jackson had suffered from a "profound sleep disorder." Jackson told Metzger near the end of his life that intravenous anesthetics were the only thing that could give him sleep. Jackson told that to more than one health care provider. Nurse practitioner Cherilyn Lee, his nutrition adviser, testified she visited Jackson regularly to give him "holistic" injections of vitamins and supplements. Weeping on the witness stand, she said she persuaded him to stop drinking heavily caffeinated Red Bull, but he continued to sleep with lights on and music and movies playing while moaning about insomnia. None of Lee's natural remedies met Jackson's demands to be "knocked out" quickly. As she observed him early one morning, Lee said, Jackson awoke after a fitful three hours of sleep and complained, "This is going to mess up my performance for the day." He pleaded with her to find a doctor who would give him propofol and monitor his sleep for safety, she said. She rejected his request, she said, and was never invited back. Soon, Murray suspended his medical practices in Las Vegas and Houston to care exclusively for Jackson. He sent patients a letter saying he was on a "sabbatical," the "opportunity of a lifetime." Jackson and his children had seen Murray in Las Vegas for various ailments since 2006. Reluctantly, AEG Live executives testified, the company honored Jackson's costly demand that they hire Murray to treat him from May 1, 2009, through the London shows' conclusion 10 months later. In April, Murray started showing up and ordering medicines, including an eventual total of more than 4 gallons of propofol. Before Murray was officially on board, Jackson knew the tall and courtly West Indies-born doctor would go to great lengths to get him propofol, a milky-white drug that prosecution medical experts said is wrong for insomnia and should never be used outside a hospital. Murray told police that in March and April 2009, Jackson took his children from Los Angeles to see shows in Las Vegas and phoned him, anxious to find propofol. Murray said he had none, but at Jackson's request he located David Adams, a doctor whom Jackson said had provided propofol in the past, and lent his office to Adams for a propofol infusion. Jackson gratefully slept there for six hours on Adams' anesthetic, Murray said. Jackson told him, Murray said, that doctors in Germany and elsewhere had given him propofol during concert tours, enabling him to sleep for 15 to 18 hours before his exhausting performances. Murray told police he gave Jackson the propofol, which the singer called his "milk," in a second upstairs bedroom at the Carolwood residence, not the master bedroom. "He does not trust people coming into his room, because he said he had lost things before," Murray said. "His room is always in a bad state. Not even the cleaners would be allowed to go in there." Personal chef Kai Chase testified to the granola breakfasts, which Jackson usually took in his bedroom about 9:30 a.m. Murray viewed Jackson's eating habits as less health-conscious than the chef did. "Generally speaking, he was not a person who ate well," the doctor told detectives in the recorded interview. Jackson was thin and dehydrated because "he don't drink and eat," Murray said. "He says all his life his mother had to force him to eat as a child. So he just don't like to eat foods. And the foods that he eats, when he eats, is mostly chicken and rice." The coroner's autopsy determined that Jackson, 5 feet 9 and 136 pounds, was on the thin side but healthier than a typical person of his age, with plaque-free arteries and no sign of disease. Murray reported that Jackson had poor eyesight and, perhaps, poor hygiene. "He used excessive cologne," Murray said. "I never understood how he sprayed that much on all the time. He sat and he just keep spraying. It could have been to dismiss any odor. I don't know." [size=14pt]Other doctors provided drugs[/size] Murray said Jackson kept him in the dark about other doctors he was seeing. One was Arnold Klein, his Beverly Hills dermatologist. Jackson had vitiligo, a skin-blotching condition. Klein's subpoenaed records showed "Omar Arnold" was at Klein's office up to three times weekly, receiving skin-filling Botox and Restylane injections accompanied by massive doses of the painkiller Demerol. Jackson told his security chief, Faheem Muhammad, "You must think I'm crazy" for seeing Klein so often, Muhammad testified. It's likely Jackson got addicted to Demerol, which can cause insomnia as a withdrawal symptom, Robert Waldman, a defense expert on addiction, told jurors. Several witnesses said Jackson would arrive at some This Is It rehearsals woozy after seeing Klein. He missed some rehearsals in early June. Director Kenny Ortega worried that "Michael wasn't as engaged as he had to be, as focused as he had to be, on a production of this magnitude," Phillips testified. Phillips said Jackson was not eating and was losing weight. The concern led to a meeting at Carolwood. Murray promised the producers he would watch Jackson's diet. Jackson reassured Ortega that he was working at home with choreographer Travis Payne and was up on his dance moves. As time pressure mounted, Jackson was sick and unable to perform at a June 19 rehearsal. Ortega e-mailed Phillips and Frank DiLeo, Jackson's manager, saying it was time for "tough love," including warning Jackson that the promoters could "pull the plug." At the Carolwood mansion the next day, Jackson and Murray reassured AEG Live there was no problem. But the next day, nutrition adviser Lee testified, Jackson called her to complain that "one side of my body is hot and the other side is cold." Waldman said hot and cold sensations are a symptom of Demerol withdrawal. Lee told Jackson to go to a hospital. He didn't go. Rehearsals moved to their final phase at Staples Center. Jackson regained focus and enthusiasm, witnesses said. Jurors watched video of his last two rehearsals, on June 23 and 24. He danced and sang with energy. Phillips said the last rehearsal was "amazing." He said Jackson was optimistic as he walked back to his SUV. The star and the promoter envisioned a revived, lucrative career — expanding the tour to New York City, Paris and Mumbai, then four or five movie projects, including a film Jackson would base on the best-selling 1982 Thriller album. On the voice recording Murray made, Jackson groggily says that with the fortune he'll earn from these ventures he will exceed other superstars of music — not in sales but in philanthropy. "Elvis didn't do it," he says. "Beatles didn't do it." He was planning "a children's hospital, the biggest in the world, Michael Jackson's Children's Hospital. Gonna have a movie theater, game room … I want to give them that. I care about them, them angels." He wanted sick children to have the happy childhood he had missed, he said. Beside the SUV at Staples Center, "He put his hand on my shoulder," Phillips said. "He said, 'You got me here. Now I'm ready. I can take it from here.' He gave me a big hug." Jackson got into the Escalade and headed west toward his home sanctum, where Murray and the IV stand would be waiting. It was the last time Phillips saw Jackson alive.

Snoopy71 · November 2011

The star and the promoter envisioned a revived, lucrative career — expanding the tour to New York City, Paris and Mumbai, then four or five movie projects, including a film Jackson would base on the best-selling 1982 Thriller album. He was planning "a children's hospital, the biggest in the world, Michael Jackson's Children's Hospital. Gonna have a movie theater, game room … I want to give them that. I care about them, them angels." He wanted sick children to have the happy childhood he had missed, he said. ....somehow I think all his dreams will come true!

Trial: Michael Jackson fretted about fame, kids in last days

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