Court told of Jackson 'dependency'
In his own words, Dr Conrad Murray described how he spent months trying to shepherd Michael Jackson through a raging case of insomnia, giving him nightly infusions of an anaesthetic until realising that the singer was becoming addicted.
Murray’s account, in an interview with police that was played publicly for the first time yesterday, was so detailed and graphic that Jackson’s sister, Rebbie, arose and rushed from the courtroom during the description of the singer’s death scene.
Given two days after the King of Pop died, Murray is heard in the more-than two-hour recording describing his relationship with the star, the medications he gave him and the efforts to save his life.
Murray sounded calm, speaking in a lightly accented voice. As he neared the end of his story, emotion crept in.
“I loved Mr Jackson,” he told the detectives. “He was my friend. He opened up to me in different ways. I wanted to help him... I cared for him. I had no intention of hurting him. I did not want him to fail.”
But he added: “I realised Michael Jackson had a dependency and I was trying to wean him off it.”
The June 27 2009 interview outside a noisy hotel ballroom gave police their first hint that Jackson’s death was not from natural causes and that he had been given the powerful anaesthetic propofol in an effort to cure his extreme insomnia.
“He’s not able to sleep naturally,” Murray told the detectives early in the interview.
Prosecutors contend that Murray was reckless by giving Jackson propofol outside of a hospital setting and without the proper monitoring equipment. They claim he gave the singer a lethal dose of the drug and other sedatives on the day Jackson died.
Defence attorneys say Jackson gave himself the lethal dose after Murray left the room. Murray has pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter. If convicted, he faces up to four years behind bars and the loss of his medical licence.
Murray’s account disclosed a long history of Jackson’s reliance on propofol.
Jackson told him he had received the drug from doctors in Germany and then from a Las Vegas physician, Dr David Adams, who came to Murray’s office and put Jackson to sleep for hours with the anaesthetic.
Murray sat motionless next to his lawyers as the tape played in the hushed courtroom. The only sound came from jurors turning pages of the 125-page transcripts given to them.
The doctor’s story, interrupted infrequently by detectives’ questions, was probably his substitute for testifying in the two-week-old trial. It offered him the chance to describe his treatment of Jackson without cross-examination.
The interview made clear that detectives knew nothing about propofol before Murray mentioned Jackson’s dependence on it. When Murray said that Jackson had demanded “his milk,” his nickname for the drug, Detective Scott Smith asked: “Hot milk?”
“No”, the doctor said. Murray then described the anaesthetic.
Jackson remained awake for hours after returning home at around 1am on June 25 2009 after rehearsals. “It was 4 o’clock in the morning, and then he complained,” Murray said. “’I’ve got to sleep Dr Conrad. I have these rehearsals to perform.”’
Jackson threatened to cancel that day’s rehearsal, so Murray gave him some more lorazepam.
Over the course of the interview, Murray told police that other doctors had given the anaesthetic before. Defence attorney Ed Chernoff told the detectives that Jackson was familiar with how the drug was administered through an IV and certain dosages.
Murray said Jackson actually asked him if he could “push it” through the IV himself and said he had done it before.
The doctor said he did not allow Jackson to do it.
Murray told the detectives he took all possible precautions – keeping oxygen and a pulse monitoring machine nearby – and constantly warned Jackson that using propofol was an artificial way to sleep.
Murray said Jackson told him before he agreed to be his personal physician that he might need help. The physician said Jackson told him that he expected to sleep for 15 to 18 hours at a time.
Jackson had battled insomnia before he came to Murray. Repeatedly, Murray said, Jackson talked of cancelling his landmark This Is It comeback concerts in London if he could not sleep.
“He said he would not satisfy his fans if he was not rested,” Murray said. “There was a lot of pressure.”
In his account of Jackson’s final hours, Murray told of how he infused Jackson with lorazepam and another drug, Versed, during a 10-hour struggle to get the singer to sleep. At one point, he said, he checked to make sure the sedatives weren’t leaking out of the IV bag.
“Where was this medicine going? Why was this man not responding?” Murray asked.
When Jackson stopped breathing, Murray added flumazenil, a drug designed to reverse the effects of the two drugs. There is no antidote for propofol.
In the interview, Murray acknowledged that he had left Jackson’s side to go to the bathroom “for two minutes”. He never mentioned the series of phone calls he made that were later detected on his mobile phone records.
Murray recounted how the singer’s assistant sought him out in early 2009 to accompany Jackson on his upcoming series of comeback shows. Then he got a call from Jackson, “telling me how elated he was that I was going to join the trip,” Murray said.
The doctor said there was no commitment yet, but indicated how impressed he was about the request.
“Michael Jackson asked me to be on his team,” Murray said. “I was talking to Michael Jackson himself.”
The interview was nearing its end when court recessed. The final portion will be played when court resumes on Tuesday.
