MICHAEL JACKSON: HOW DID HE REALLY DIE?
AUTOPSY TURVY
KILLER THRILLER
MICHAEL JACKSON:
HOW DID HE REALLY DIE?
We all want the truth. Especially when a star dies. For closure, we must know why -- the real cause. Especially more in the case of an “icon.” “A living legend.”
But imagine now the ghost of the Prince of Pop. Would he want the real truth of his tragic demise revealed? Probably not. Because how he really died was the result of how he, in his gated Neverland, really lived. And, in his lifetime, he tried to keep this private.
But, if not secrecy, wasn’t he at least entitled to privacy? He thought so, just as did Elvis and other stars. Throughout their careers, each resented being public property. Each felt that once they left stage their responsibility to their audience was over – that their off-stage life should be no one’s business but their own. Except the reality of a “living legend’s” life is this: to the fans, the entirety of it – on and off-stage – is a performance. And, therefore, public domain.
Like many politicians, superstars are reduced to living their “private” lives as masqueraders.
With every living legend, in life and in death, there are two warring camps: the star and his spin-controllers and image protectors versus the hounds fed by anonymous insiders. The truth is usually the first casualty in this war that soon deteriorates into denials, lawsuits, and sensationalism.
So how did Michael Jackson truly live and die?
The King of Pop has been the object of three battles. The first involved his alleged molestation of children; the second, his rumored drug abuse; the third, the true nature of his health. In the search for the cause of his death, the second two issues have been hotly debated between the protectors and the deep throats.
Between the two poles, where is the truth?
* * *
Speculation about his death was keen because, in life, Michael Jackson seemed to be less than candid about his medical history.
Regarding his dramatic change in appearance, he told the BBC’s Martin Rashid that he had only had two plastic surgeries. Otherwise, “I just changed!” he insisted. NBC’s Dateline medical expert and others declared, however, that fifty procedures would have been necessary for such a transformation. An actor friend of Jackson’s, Eddie Reynoza, said: “The whole side of his face is artificial implants. He told me, ‘I can’t go out in the sun. My face would fall off.” Other insiders said that tip of the singer’s nose was prosthetic.
Then, the skin color controversy. He and his doctor insisted that he suffered from Vitiligo, a rare, congenital skin-lightening condition. However, his maid, Blanca Francia, claimed in an affidavit that he used powerful skin lightening creams (Solaquin, Benoquin, Fore, Retin A). “He hates dark-skinned people,” said another insider, Stacy Brown.
What of his fair-complexioned children? He told Martin Bashir not only that he was the sperm-donor for the third, Blanket, but that the surrogate mother had been black as well.
Finally, the state of his health. In later years, Jackson was often seen in surgical masks, in wheelchairs, and – alarmingly gaunt – being carried by bodyguards. In 2001, when his brothers tried to stage a drug intervention, he turned them away saying, “I’ll be dead in a year anyway.”
In the mid-eighties, his doctors announced that had been diagnosed with Lupus, a serious immunological disease. Soon after his death, insiders revealed that Jackson suffered as well from Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency (AAD), a rare lung ailment.
In such a condition the question became: Could Michael Jackson perform again?
“I can do this,” he told Randy Phillips, the promoter for his “comeback” performances at London’s O2 Arena, equipped with the state-of-the-art lip-synching technology. Phillips stated that the star passed a four-hour physical for the concerts’ insurer. Would the exam have revealed drug abuse? “Absolutely,” replied the promoter.
Jackson collapsed after his second rehearsal, but endured his last at L.A.’s Staple Center. Staging executive, Johnny Caswell, recalled. “He was energetic, passionate, diligent, excited… This guy was ready to go!”
The Prince of Pop died 36 hours later.
He had been “terrified” of the upcoming performances, a Jackson aide told biographer, Ian Halperin: “We knew it was a disaster waiting to happen. I don’t think anybody predicted it would actually kill him but nobody believed he would end up performing.”
* * *
A third and climactic offensive was waged on Michael: the drug war.
“From my heart, I just don’t know,” Jermaine Jackson told Larry King when asked if his brother had a controlled substance problem.
But Michael’s friends, Uri Geller and Depak Chopra, did. And just as their own efforts to “save Michael from himself” had proved fruitless, so had those of Randy and Tito. The brothers had repeatedly tried to get Michael to rehab, the last attempt shortly before his death. Didn’t they talk to Jermaine?
Another friend of the deceased, Lisa Minelli, had no illusions either. ‘When the autopsy comes, all hell’s going to break loose,” she said.
Three autopsies were performed, the first two ordered by the authorities, the last by his family.
Why so many?
Is an autopsy, particularly of such a celebrity, not a carefully monitored and exhaustive scientific procedure performed by the best professionals in the field? Even if one had been incomplete or mishandled – three?
The Jackson family wanted a third because they suspected foul play by his last personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray.
Autopsies do not reveal who. They reveal what: the drugs in the system and the pathology of the organs. On this basis they identify three things: immediate cause of death – in Jackson’s case suffocation and cardiac arrest; proximate cause – probably toxic drug interaction; and original, root cause – likely viral and/or immunological.
Toward the end of his career, Michael cancelled concerts due to “back problems,” “exhaustion,” and bouts with the “flu.” He was often in bed or wheelchair bound, suffering from vision loss, weight loss, hyperventilation, nausea, insomnia, mental disorientation.
Some of these are symptoms of Lupus, some of AAD, some of AIDS. Queen’s Freddy Mercury suffered from the same at the end of his life. The day before he died in 1991, Mercury confirmed long-standing rumors that he had AIDS.
HIV, as is well known, is most commonly contracted sexually or through transfusion. Given his prolific surgical history, Jackson likely received a transfusion at some time.
But “He was also playing a truly dangerous game,” wrote his biographer, Ian Halperin (Unmasked: The Final Years of Michael Jackson). “It is clear to me that Michael was homosexual and that his taste was for young men, albeit not as young as Jordan Chandler or Gavin Arvizo [the boys Jackson was accused of molesting]…. In the course of my investigations, I spoke to two of his gay lovers, one a Hollywood waiter, the other an aspiring actor.”
Halperin goes on to say that the waiter remained friends with Jackson until the end, and that the actor provided photographs and a witness. The biographer adds: “When Jackson lived in Las Vegas, one of his closest aides told me how he would sneak off to a ‘grungy, rat-infested’ motel – often dressed as a woman to disguise his identity –‘to meet a male construction worker he had fallen in love with.’”
Whatever Michael Jackson’s disease was, it caused him excruciating pain, both physical and psychological. In his final years he was ingesting Demerol, Dilaudid Vistaril, Xanax, Zoloft, Prosac, Proilosec, and Ritalin on a daily basis and at a monthly cost of $48,000. In his last days, he begged his nurse for an IV of Propofol used in general anesthesia for major surgery. Such a superhuman habit was rivaled by only Elvis himself. Like his father-in-law, too, Michael carried his narcotics in a huge suitcase filled with pre-loaded syringes and IV bags. He completed several hospital detoxes but afterwards fell off the wagon again.
When Dr. Murray found Michael comatose on that June morning in 2009 he tried to administer CPR. Murray’s explanation for waiting a half hour to call an ambulance was that he couldn’t find a corded phone and didn’t know the address of the house he had been living in with his failing patient for two weeks.
The LAPD removed prescription drugs from the trunk of Dr. Murray’s Mercedes. His Houston-based lawyer stated that Murray never injected Michael with Demerol as had been alleged, nor had he ever prescribed him narcotics. The coroner discovered pill residue in the star’s stomach and countless injection sites all over the body. Four were fresh injections to the heart.
According to ABC news, in 2002 Murray’s Houston medical clinic was closed for being what authorities called a ‘pill mill.”
So, the fundamental question remains: What was the real cause of Michael Jackson’s death? An immunological condition, drug abuse, a propofol overdose? The cause of his death may remain a mystery beneath which lies not just one cause, but many and not all of them physical.
Finally, was any one person behind this tragedy? Could it have truly been a deceitful or negligent doctor? Or might it have been we, his fans, who kept him in a gilded cage and elevated him to a height where the star could no longer moonwalk, much less breathe?
AUTOPSY TURVY
John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley. The autopsies of such legends, one would expect, should have been the most painstaking, impeccable, and impartial. But there is substantial evidence to the contrary in these historic cases and others.
Could the autopsy of Michael Jackson have been the same?
The report of Los Angeles Medical Examiner, Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran (who covered the murder cases of both Phil Spector and O.J. Simpson), gives cause for wonder even on basic physical questions.
First, Jackson’s weight. The L.A. coroner said the star was 136. When booked on child molestation charges in Santa Barbara in 2003, he weighed 120.
In the final six years of his life, Jackson handlers expressed alarm at the singer’s weight loss, calling him “skeletal” and possibly bulimic. His own personal physician and close friend, Dr. Arnold Klein, told TMZ that he looked like he’d “come from Auschwitz.” Could he really have gained sixteen pounds in the last six years? Indeed, coroner inside sources said he was “skin and bones,” and told Geraldo Rivera he weighed 112.
A second autopsy report peculiarity: Jackson’s lungs. In his 1988 autobiography, Moon Walk, he revealed that he had been diagnosed in the seventies with a condition related to pleurisy. Subsequently, he was often hospitalized with the flu, pneumonia, and shortness of breath. He traveled with oxygen tanks. Though the coroner found that Jackson did indeed have “chronically inflamed lungs,” he concluded that he was “fairly healthy” even so.
In 1987, Jackson’s dear friend, Liberace, died. His personal physician recorded cardiac arrest on the death certificate. But after autopsy, the Riverside coroner concluded the entertainer had died of cytomegalovirus pneumonia from the AIDS virus. His estate’s executors filed a libel suit against the coroner’s office. They lost. Liberace – whom Michael called “Lee, my guardian angel”—had lost 75 pounds and been bedridden and on oxygen for months. He had been diagnosed HIV-positive the year before by Dr. Elias Ghanem, Vegas’s “doctor to the stars” who had treated Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, among others.
The tragic 1990 AIDs death of Michael’s young friend, Ryan White, devastated him. Soon afterwards, he was rushed to the hospital, suffering shortness of breath, vertigo, and chest pains. According to his biographer, J. Randy Taraborrelli, he tested negative for HIV.
In the last years of his life, Jackson suffered many bacterial and viral infections, flu-like fatigue, headache, and nausea, as well as skin problems, weight-loss and insomnia. These can be symptoms of AIDS or Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency. Insiders told his biographer, Ian Halperin, that Jackson had suffered from this virulent immunological disease and needed a lung transplant. In the meantime, they claimed the singer had undergone “augmentation therapy” – he was injected with pulmonary protein from human blood -- commonly administered to both AAD and AIDS patients.
Did the L.A. M.E. test the star for these conditions? Unlikely. Especially in the later case. According to Dr. Carol J. Huser, author of the Coroner’s Report column for the Durango Herald, an M.E. is forbidden to test for AIDS unless he – as in the Liberace case -- believes the decedent may have put others at risk.
“I test [for HIV] VERY rarely, as I think do most of my colleagues,” asserted Dr. Huser. “And, in many states, the results would be confidential and the M.E. could not release them.”
In any case, the coroner disclosed that Jackson’s body bore 13 puncture wounds. Insiders went further, claiming that it was “riddled” with injection sites from both IVs and intermuscular shots. So, how was it possible to conclude that such a patient was “fairly healthy”?
According to California Code 27499: “The coroner shall summon and examine as witnesses every person who in his opinion or that of any of the jury has any knowledge of the facts.”
If the L.A. coroner did not fulfill this legal obligation, why not? Did Michael’s legacy, posthumous record sales, exorbitant insurance policies, and/or pressures from family managers influence his report?
As Dr. Michael M. Baden wrote in Unnatural Death, when he became the Chief Medical Examiner for New York City, “I envisioned the office as independent, scientific, apolitical…. [But] It is an arm of the DA’s office. What is really wanted is an elastic man, one who will stretch and bend his findings to suit the DA’s needs… Truth and excellence play no part in the arrangement.”
***
A similar posthumous mystery surrounded the death of the Prince of Pop’s father-in-law, the King of Rock.
“It may take several weeks to discover the exact cause of death,” Elvis Presley’s personal physician, Dr. George Nichopoulos, a.k.a. “Needle Nick, told reporters the day after he died. “The precise cause may never be discovered,” he added, positing simple “cardiac arrest” in agreement with his colleague, the Memphis coroner.
A full autopsy was performed, requiring the removal of the star’s brain and organs. But the contents of his stomach were destroyed without being analyzed. No coroner’s inquest was ordered. The medical examiner’s notes, toxicology report, and photos disappeared from official files.
Rumors of a cover-up soon began to flourish.
Two years later, investigators discovered that ten major narcotics had been found in Elvis’s system. Independent medical experts concluded that he had died as a result of “poly-pharmacy,” the lethal interaction of these controlled substances. The most toxic in the mix was codeine, to which Elvis knew he was dangerously allergic. He had secured a bottle of the painkiller during an emergency dental appointment on that fatal night of August 15, 1977. His liver was found to contain twenty-three times the average therapeutic dose (equivalent to the entire bottle). Another American icon, Howard Hughes himself, had suffered a fatal codeine overdose the year before.
The King’s young step-brother, David Stanley – his self-described bodyguard “lifer” – insisted that he had committed suicide, but was immediately muzzled. “There were millions and millions of dollars wrapped up in Elvis’s various insurance policies,” he later wrote. “If they even got a whiff of the theory that Elvis died of self-induced drug overdose then a fortune was at stake.”
But why, at age 43, would the world’s most popular entertainer take his own life? Several reasons have been ventured. His estranged bodyguards had just published a tell-all – Elvis: What Happened – depicting their boss as a terminally addicted, uncontrollable prescription junkie. He was deeply in debt, his record sales at an all-time low. He feared he was a has-been. He was exhausted from relentless touring, but was being forced back on the road by his insatiable manager, Colonel Parker. And his fiancé, Ginger Alden, was threatening to leave him.
And the King was in very poor health. He’d been battling Lupus for more than a decade. The stress of his career exacerbated the immunological disease. Its symptoms could only be relieved by cortisone. This steroid was widely regarded as a “miracle” drug in the sixties and seventies; but it is now known to cause, in heavy continuous doses, psychosis and suicidal depression.
Suicide allegations, however, were nipped in the bud, and Elvis’s life insurance policies were paid out in full.
Seven years earlier, Jimi Hendrix had fatally ODed. His close friend, Eric Burdon of the Animals, announced in a TV interview that the guitarist had committed suicide. Hendrix’s manager and his record label, Warner Brothers, had taken out a multi-million dollar insurance policy on him. After Burdon’s announcement, a Warner’s VP confronted him: “You f**ker, don’t open your mouth again – that’s our insurance policy!” The singer immediately retracted his statement. Hendrix’s beneficiaries were paid in full.
Weeks later, Janis Joplin’s body was found in her L.A. hotel room. Her insurance company denied her manager, Albert Grossman’s, claim. They alleged that the singer had intentionally ODed, nullifying the policy. Grossman prevailed in court and was paid. He and his attorney had arrived at the hotel room before the authorities and all the drug paraphernalia had gone missing.
KILLER THRILLER
Both the Prince of Pop, and his father-in-law, The King of Rock, wanted only one thing in the end: a good night’s sleep. For all their wealth and power, they couldn’t buy or command the simple rest most mortals take for granted. For years, the two icons had suffered insomnia and nightmares which, in the end, brought them to the Big Sleep itself.
Among stressed-out stars, narcotic abuse has been epidemic for years. Barbiturates and/or heroin helped kill Hendrix, Morrison, Janis, Elvis, Cobain, Garcia, and many others. Even if they failed to induce sleep, these drugs alone could induce a womblike oblivion, delivering a star briefly from the crushing pressures of being “a living legend.” Heroin in particular has become the most popular chemotherapy for super-celebrity.
Addicts say that a heroin high is as close as you can get to death, without actually dying. But Michael Jackson found an elixir which brought him even closer: Propofol. According to experts, this general anesthesia does not induce sleep, but a coma. The waking life of the Prince of Pop had become so unbearable that he wanted more than sleep: he wanted suspended animation.
This was not a recent development. During his 1993 Dangerous tour, Jackson traveled with an anesthesiologist who, according to insiders, “brought him down” at night, and “brought him back” the next day. The star became a sort of pharmaceutical Lazarus. He grew all the more dependent on anesthesia when his worst nightmare materialized: he was charged with child molestation.
Canceling the Dangerous tour, he retreated to a London detox clinic with friend and rehab veteran, Elizabeth Taylor. But the valium IV here was not enough to rescue the hypersensitive Michael from his terror of being found guilty, professionally ruined and personally disgraced. While lying sleepless in the hospital bed, his own break-out song may have echoed nightmarishly in his mind:
You’re fighting for your life inside a killer, thriller tonight. There’s no escapin the jaws of the alien this time --This is the end of your life.
Said one of his assistants: “In therapy, he began to see that he was his own worst enemy.” His old Bad song had particular resonance for him now. I’m starting with the man in the mirror, I’m asking him to change his ways. After detox, he settled out of court with his accuser, Jordan Chandler, for $22 million, returned to Neverland and, indeed, sought to change his ways.
* * *
But, twelve years later, his relentless prosecutor, DA Tom Sneddon, charged Michael yet again. Though eventually acquitted, the star was devastated. And he became even more dangerously addicted to narcotic sleep aids and propofol.
Family and friends tried drug interventions. Michael excommunicated them. Doctors and nurses refused to give him more. Michael fired them.
His father-in-law, Elvis, had been even more incorrigible. When his doctors refused to prescribe more of what he called his Vitamin E, the King jumped up on a pool table, air-conditioned the ceiling with his .38, and shouted, “I’ll buy the goddamned drugstore if I have to. I’m going to get what I want. People have to realize either they’re for me or against me!” When his own bodyguards refused to dose him, he told them: “I’m in charge here and if anyone wants to say different, then I may get hurt but somebody is going to die.” When his own step-brother, David Stanley, told him he was confiscating his stash, the King put a gun to his head and said, “No, you’re not.”
Other stars were just as stubborn. Said Jerry Garcia’s detox acupuncturist, Yen-wei Chong: “In ancient China, you know which kind of patient is the most difficult to treat? The Emperor.”
Long before the Doors’ Jim Morrison – aka the Lizard King -- fatally ODed in Paris, his producer, Paul Rothchild, said of his suicidal drinking and doping: “Everybody tried to stop him. He was unstoppable!”
The same went for Hendrix, Joplin, Cobain, and many others.
So, like his predecessors, the Prince of Pop refused to take no for an answer. On the fatal night, Dr. Conrad Murray, in an attempt to wean his patient off the propofol, gave him only a half dose. But soon he was forced to administer six additional sedatives. By that morning, the still sleepless star was reportedly “begging” for his “milk” – the propofol. Murray gave in. Jackson died.
But fans continue to ask HOW? WHY? Expressing a common sentiment, Leonard Pitts wrote What Michael Jackson Needed Most: A Dr. No. “That’s Michael Jackson’s ineffable tragedy,” the columnist concluded. “He died of an overdose of yes.”
But didn’t Michael -- like Elvis, and so many other stars – fire many Dr. No’s during his years of addiction? And, had Murray said no, wouldn’t he have simply been replaced by another Dr. Yes? By most accounts, Michael – devastated by the past trials, and terrified by the future “comeback” concerts – had no interest in continuing to live. He just wanted to sleep at last and forever.
THE KING OF ROCK. ELVIS PRESLEY. THE KING OF POP. MICHAEL JACKSON. COLONEL PARKER. GINGER ALDEN. LUPUS. CORTISONE. SUICIDE. JIM HENDRIX. ERIC BURDON. WARNER BROTHERS. DR. GEORGE NICHOPOULOS. DR. CONRAD MURRAY. LIFE INSURANCE. AUTOPSY. ASSASSINATE. AEG.
The author is a Pushcart Fiction Prize nominee, and has been a finalist for the Faulkner Award, Chicago Tribune Nelson Algren, America’s Best, Narrative, Glimmer Train, Helicon Nine, and Heekin Graywolf Fellowship. His current short fiction appears in The Evergreen Review, Cortland Review, The Morning Newes, Scholars & Rogues, and Inkwell.
