a powerful anesthetic, his doctor told police, according to court
records unsealed Monday.
For six hours, Dr. Conrad Murray said he resisted -- fearful that the
pop star had developed a dangerous addiction to propofol.
Instead, Murray administered the sedatives Valium, lorazepam and
midazolam -- five times over six hours. But none put Jackson to sleep,
and he continued to demand his "milk," the word the pop star used for
propofol.
Murray finally relented and at 10:40 a.m. added the drug to Jackson's
intravenous drip, according to the records.
That dose -- mixed with the cocktail of other sedatives in the pop
star's system -- was enough to kill him, the Los Angeles County
coroner's office concluded in a preliminary toxicology report cited in a
search warrant affidavit unsealed Monday in Houston.
These documents address one of the central questions in the Jackson
death investigation: What killed him. The coroner's office said in a
preliminary report that it found "lethal levels" of propofol in
Jackson's system, the records show.
The records also lay out the first detailed chronology of Jackson's
final hours-- and reveal Murray's fateful decision to give Jackson the
drugs despite his suspicions that the pop star was becoming addicted to
them. The narrative is based largely on a three-hour interview Murray
gave to Los Angeles police detective two days after Jackson's death on
June 25.
Authorities still have not disclosed how Jackson or Murray obtained the
propofol, which is typically used in hospitals by anesthesiologists.
Another unanswered question is exactly when Jackson stopped breathing.
Both are crucial to the criminal investigation.
Police said Murray told them he found Jackson not breathing at 11 a.m.
-- a contention that Murray's attorney disputes -- but paramedics were
not called until nearly 90 minutes later. During that time, police
suspect that Murray made three cellphone calls totaling 47 minutes,
according to the affidavits filed last month when authorities sought
search warrants for Murray's Houston medical office and storage unit.
In addition, Murray failed to tell paramedics or emergency room doctors
that he had administered propofol, a critical omission that calls into
question his treatment and could bolster pursuit of an involuntary
manslaughter charge, authorities said.
"Michael Jackson was not the usual patient with the usual problems in
the usual circumstances," said Murray's attorney, Edward Chernoff, in
response to the court records. "Dr. Murray's overriding goal was to try
to help him. . . . To place negligence on him simply because he was
there, I don't think is fair."
Authorities have sought records from at least five different physicians
who treated Jackson as well as pharmacies in Las Vegas and Beverly
Hills, but Murray is the only one named in court documents as the target
of the manslaughter investigation. Jackson had specifically asked
concert promoter AEG Live to hire Murray as his $150,000-a-month
personal physician to travel with him to London, where he was scheduled
to perform 50 concerts.
At Jackson's request, Murray had been administering 50 milligrams of
propofol in the six weeks prior to his death using an intravenous line,
according to court records. But after weeks of use, Murray said he tried
to wean the pop star off the medication. Murray told detectives that he
lowered Jackson's dosage to 25 milligrams and mixed it with two other
sedatives, lorazepam and midazolam. Then, on June 23, he administered
those two medications and withheld the propofol -- and Jackson was able
to sleep.
On June 25, the day Jackson died, Murray once again tried to induce
sleep without resorting to propofol, according to the affidavit. He
first gave Jackson the three alternative sedatives at 1:30 a.m., 2 a.m.,
3 a.m., 5 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. But Jackson remained awake.
Finally, "after repeated demands/requests from Jackson," Murray relented
and gave Jackson 25 milligrams of propofol, diluted with another
sedative, records state.
Medical experts said that a 25-milligram dose for someone Jackson's size
should not have been enough to kill him. But combined with other drugs,
the propofol could have been more dangerous.
"You start giving a lot of drugs and don't know what the final effects
might be," said Dr. Scott Engwall, vice chairman of the Department of
Anesthesiology at UC Irvine School of Medicine. "When you give a little
bit of this and a little bit of that, it starts adding up."
More ...
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-michael-jackson25-2009aug25,0,249630.story
