Conrad Murray, convicted of Michael Jackson’s death, says star was still alive on arrival at UCLA
THE man convicted of the manslaughter of Michael Jackson has opened up about that night and revealed details not heard before.
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THE man convicted of the manslaughter of Michael Jackson has blamed paramedics for the pop star’s death, describing them as “buffoons” for their mishandling of the singer in the crucial minutes after his overdose.
Conrad Murray claims Jackson was still alive when he was pronounced dead on arrival at UCLA hospital, despite ER doctors claiming he was “clinically dead” at the time.
“How could I forget those [final] hours? It was a night of trouble and frustration,” Mr Murray told news.com.au about Jackson’s 2009 death.
Since the singer’s death, Murray has claimed he had been treating Jackson for insomnia during rehearsals for his comeback tour, which was due to begin in London the following month.
Murray would wait for Jackson at his rented LA mansion every night after his rehearsals and would administer his “milk”, as Jackson called Propofol, along with other sedatives.
“I thought, ‘Can this guy get some sleep? Because I know his future relies on it.’ Michael would cry and complain and beg and remind me of what he had at stake,” Murray said.
“He was penniless, he was burnt, extremely sad. My losses have been colossal but that doesn’t stop me from loving him, but it doesn’t also stop me telling the story of him that is honest.”
Jackson died shortly after midday on June 25, 2009, of acute Propofol toxicity, a powerful anaesthetic that Murray had been giving Jackson in the months prior to his death. Two other barbiturates, also administered by Murray, were also in his system.
Found guilty of involuntary manslaughter after injecting the singer with the overdose, Murray spent nearly two years in jail.
But honesty is the crux of the public’s dismissal of Conrad Murray.
Despite cardiologists and anaesthesiologists testifying that Murray had committed numerous egregious acts of negligence while caring for Jackson — including lacking the proper heart and respiratory monitoring equipment, failing to keep records of the drugs he administered and, most inexplicably, waiting more than 20 minutes to call for an ambulance after Jackson had stopped breathing — Murray has consistently claimed his innocence, and claims a bigger conspiracy is at play here.
“[At the time of Jackson’s overdose, I] was in a room with a bunch of paramedics who were so sluggish they were buffoons. they were buffoons,” he said.
“They basically did nothing for Michael, as soon as they arrived, for 25 minutes they made mistakes, and because of the mistakes they made ... well ...
“I met Michael lifeless, he had no pulse, no blood pressure.”
Yet despite the emergency room doctor pronouncing Jackson dead on arrival at UCLA hospital, according to Murray, “he was not dead. He was alive”.
“The book will tell you how we know that.”
‘MY SECRET LIFE WITH MICHAEL’
The book, This Is It!: The Secret lives of Dr. Conrad Murray and Michael Jackson, chronicles Murray’s untold secret life with Jackson. It’s one he describes as a “cruel” accounting of the pop star, which after revelations Jackson dressed up as a clown to meet random women, might come as no surprise.
“There are many things more than that about Michael Jackson that have never been told,” Mr Murray told news.com.au.
“There’s much more. He walked around for years having a life loaded with misery. Unfortunately his confessions and regurgitations through me left me with this load, a heavy load.
“Trust me, the problems he encountered within his lifetime were full of misery. There’s so much more.
“I want people to really get to know Michael Jackson, they don’t know him, they’ve only made these references from afar. I’m not here to protect Michael. Neither am I here to give you an impression of him that is absolutely false.
“It is a raw, nitty gritty, raw and cruel accounting of both he and myself. When my mother reads this book, I can only imagine the sorrow that she will take on me, because she’s going to read some stuff about me that’s never been told. I have been very explicit.”
It includes details about why Murray was sceptical at the moment Jackson approached him to become the pop star’s exclusive personal physician on his comeback tour.
It was 2009, and while Murray had met Jackson three years earlier after treating one of his children in Las Vegas in 2006, things didn’t quite sit right. He couldn’t help but wonder if there was an ulterior motive.
“When I chose to accept the personal physician role for the This Is It concert, it was very tough, it was a very huge decision for me to make, but he [Michael] kept urging me, egging me on,” Murray told news.com.au.
“Michael said: ‘Dr Conrad, I’ve been watching you for a long time, for years, and I know, my children know, you are the one, you are the one we want to be with us. You are a member of our family’.
“When Michael Jackson told me that he was watching me for years, that does not make me feel comfortable.
“Why are you watching me? Was he dissecting me? Analysing me? Looking to see if there were strengths and weaknesses? And could he have taken advantage of situations?
“I don’t know, but it’s not a common statement. If I said that statement to you, you yourself would have some pause and think about what it really means.”
‘I DID NOT KILL MICHAEL JACKSON’
Seven years since his death, Murray believes he knows why he was wise to be so sceptical.
“I did not kill Michael Jackson. He was a drug addict,” Murray said after his release from prison in October 2013.
“Michael Jackson accidentally killed Michael Jackson.”
It is that defence Murray has used ever since he was charged with manslaughter in February 2010. Jackson did it when Murray’s back was turned; a desperate drug addict who needed his hit.
“I am a very good doctor, highly respected, practised more than 20 years in the most litigious place in the country where I never had a public reprimand, never had a medical malpractice lawsuit, anything. Completely clean. Impeccable.
“And there it is. You’re dealing with a person who has to give you their history, and he hid things from me, which in retrospect would have changed my entire relationship with Michael.
“He hid his entire drug abuse history.
“I have an aversion, my aversion has always been drugs. I don’t understand it, I don’t understand where it came from. I’ve seen some of my friends been destroyed by that damn thing.”
The way Murray explains it is almost conspiratorial, as if there was a secret plan to undermine his medical profession, despite the judge who found him guilty citing Jackson died “because of a totality of circumstances which are directly attributable to Dr Murray”.
“It isn’t the Propofol that was his problem, it was what he was hiding for me, by hiding his opioid abuse,” Murray said.
He described his “ordeal” since his initial meeting with Jackson as “horrific”. Particularly, he says, the trial.
“Imagine standing up in court, being read a verdict like that, to get the verdict and then to be called a danger to society and be reprimanded immediately into custody ... it was extremely harsh and unnecessary.
“The fact that I had charges and a trial brought about me unjustly, incarcerating an innocent man just like that, made my time spent in jail exponentially severe compared to other guys who committed a crime.
“It was harsh. The mental pain of it all, the physical impact.
“I must say all of that helped me because I am one man, I have faced this entire world alone. I had to stand up to the allegations that came from everywhere and every language, as the scapegoat.
“I faced the whole world alone, but I’m here to tell Michael’s story, and my story, that Michael wanted the world to know.”
Conrad Murray’s new book, This Is It!: The Secret lives of Dr Conrad Murray and Michael Jackson, is available online at booktopia.com.
Originally published as Conrad Murray, convicted of Michael Jackson’s death, says star was still alive on arrival at UCLA