Las Vegas Weekly

August 25, 2009 · 3:02 PM

Michael Jackson’s final hours: drugs, ‘dark’ poetry and Bible readings

By Robin Leach

Michael Jackson and Kenny Ortega at work in L.A. on Michael's upcoming London concerts.

Photo: Courtesy

The final 12 hours of Michael Jackson’s life on June 25 were a chaotic and tortured nightmare, and only now for the first time with the timeline of yesterday’s LAPD homicide complaint against Michael’s private physician, cardiologist Dr. Conrad Murray, and author Ian Halperin’s claims are all the incidents crystal clear leading up to his death -- and confirm what we first reported here at Vegas DeLuxe.

As midnight neared on June 23, Michael wrapped up his final dress rehearsal at Staples Center in Los Angeles for his This Is It concert run. It was photographed by longtime lens master Kevin Mazur and recorded in audio and video form under the direction of show collaborator Kenny Ortega. Everybody was getting ready to relocate to London to plan for the premiere at the 02 Arena about two weeks later.

All that remained were just two dance numbers to work out on June 24 with his son Prince Michael II (Blanket). According to Ian, who authored the bestselling Unmasked -- The Final Years of Michael Jackson, the King of Pop was a chronic insomniac, but after that night rehearsal had woken at noon on June 24. “He complained his throat and lungs hurt. He complained he’d pulled out his back at rehearsals and by 12:30 p.m., he began to inject himself with demerol, lidocaine and a psychiatric drug,” said Ian, who re-interviewed Michael’s aides, family members and investigators for his startling information.

Vegas DeLuxe reported shortly after Michael’s death that in those final tortured hours, he had said the 50 concert-run would kill him and he wanted to call it all off -- or at least cut it back to the original 10 dates. Ian confirmed that Michael became increasingly agitated and paranoid: “He demanded the tour be called off. He finally snapped and complained he’d made a deal with the devil.”

Ian, who is now making a documentary of Michael’s last days, added: “It was known he had been injecting himself in his hands and his feet with drugs. This time he had been injecting himself for over 12 hours to cope with the excruciating pain. It was 2:40 p.m. when he emerged from his bedroom in pajamas. Even though he was high, he talked with an aide about his own childhood. “

But then Michael canceled the last choreography rehearsal with Blanket, who was going to make surprise onstage appearances and dance with his dad at the London arena. At 4:30 p.m. June 24, Michael shut the door tight on his room -- and for six hours, nobody knew what was going on behind the closed door. But at 10:40 p.m., apparently Michael started playing classical music and records by the Gypsy Kings.

“He was consumed with fear and anger and was morose. His mood was extremely chaotic. By 1:20 a.m., he was on the phone and got into a shouting match over his financial situation. He said it was impossible to do 50 shows. He was crying and demanding his father, but they couldn’t reach him. Michael started to scribble poems -- dark, frightening stuff -- and he hung them on strings around the room.

“He was as high as a kite. He was over the edge. He was crying and reading the Bible for about 40 minutes,” the investigator said. By 2 a.m., he’d ordered Dr. Murray to the bedroom, and now it’s claimed that at 11 a.m. on June 25, he had stopped breathing even though it took 82 minutes before the paramedics were called!

In yesterday’s unsealed warrant affidavit, the doctor allegedly told LAPD detectives he had been treating the superstar singer for insomnia the previous six weeks using an intravenous drip of 50 mg of the operating room-only power drug propofol. Dr. Murray claimed he was fearful of Michael’s addiction and was lowering the doses and mixing them with the sleeping sedatives lorazepam and midazolam.

He said that on June 23, he actually withheld the propofol. On July 24, however, Michael would or could not sleep, so he admitted to administering valium at 1:30 a.m. At 2 a.m., he says he injected the lorazepam. With nothing working at 3 a.m. and Michael still awake, he gave him midazolam. He still remained agitated, as Ian detailed above, so Dr. Murray admits that after repeated requests from Michael for the propofol to let him sleep, he injected him at 10:40 a.m. on June 25 with 25 mg.

Dr. Murray left his patient sleeping and went to make phone calls to his Las Vegas and Houston medical offices and family friends before they all flew off to England. Apparently around 11 a.m., he returned and discovered Michael was no longer breathing, and he began yelling for security to call for medics and began CPR. Some 80 minutes later, Michael was taken by ambulance to UCLA Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

After DEA agents searched the Los Angeles mansion where Michael died, they confiscated eight bottles of propofol, plus vials of valium, tamsulosin, lorazepam, temazepam, clonazepam, trazodone and tizanidine. Dr. Murray told detectives he was not the first doctor to administer the powerful anesthetics and claimed in the affidavit that a Las Vegas cosmetologist, Dr. David Adams, had sedated Michael previously. The LAPD homicide warrant also lists Dr. Arnold Klein, Dr. Allan Metzger and Dr. Adams for prescribing the drugs.

Last night, Michael’s sister LaToya Jackson, who lives here in Las Vegas, said she will talk with Barbra Walters on ABC as to why she believes her brother was murdered. “I am thankful to the investigators for uncovering the truth to the world,” she said in a statement released by ABC this morning. “I look forward to the day that justice will be served to all the parties involved in my brother’s homicide.” LaToya will sit with Barbara for the one-on-one interview to be broadcast Sept. 11. LaToya and Michael had an extremely close relationship while he lived here at the Palms for three months, and this will be her first full interview since his death.

All this week leading up to this Saturday’s musical tribute to Michael at the Palms and the presentation of his celebrity star and screening of Moonwalker, Vegas DeLuxe will have the latest stories on the King of Pop. Tomorrow, startling revelations from his private cell phone and email account as to how he’d begun to allegedly line-up the medical drugs for his concert run in England.

Rebuttal to the homicide affidavit

Dr. Murray’s attorney this morning released a statement calling information in a search warrant affidavit unsealed yesterday “theory” and denying that his client gave police the timeline contained in the document.

“Much of what was in the search warrant affidavit is factual,” attorney Edward Chernoff said in the statement. “However, unfortunately, much is police theory. Most egregiously, the timeline reported by law enforcement was not obtained through interviews with Dr. Murray, as was implied by the affidavit. Dr. Murray simply never told investigators that he found Michael Jackson at 11 a.m. not breathing. He also never said that he waited a mere 10 minutes before leaving to make several phone calls. In fact, Dr. Murray never said that he left Michael Jackson’s room to make phone calls at all.”

The timeline in the affidavit says that Dr. Murray gave a series of drugs, including valium, lorazepam (commonly known as ativan) and midazolam (commonly known as versed), and then finally administered a 25 mg dose of propofol that put Michael to sleep, The Associated Press reported. Dr. Murray then reportedly stayed with Michael for 10 minutes and left to go to the bathroom, returning less than two minutes later to find Michael had stopped breathing. Cell phone records then indicate that Murray made three separate calls between 11:18 a.m. and 12:05 p.m., though it’s unclear who received those calls.

During that period, Dr. Murray has told authorities he was administering CPR , but the detective’s report alleges that the doctor didn’t tell paramedics or E.R. staffers that he’d administered propofol to Michael, only that he’d given him ativan and an antidote meant to reverse the effects of the sedative. It was not until follow-up interviews with police that Dr. Murray reportedly gave a full account of the events that transpired before the 911 call. Police also said that Dr. Murray refused to sign the death certificate at UCLA Medical Center after Michael was pronounced dead.

“We will not comment on the ‘anonymous’ law enforcement source that claims that Michael Jackson’s death will be ruled a homicide,” the attorney added, apparently referring to an AP story yesterday that quoted an anonymous source saying that the L.A. County Coroner’s Office had found that Michael’s death was a homicide. “Most of the reports by anonymous sources have been proven wrong. We will be happy to address the coroner’s report when it is officially released.”

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

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