Michael Jackson’s death has been ruled a homicide after
a police affidavit filed in Houston the other day concluded that the singer’s heart stopped after being administered high levels of the anesthetic Propofol. Traces of other drugs were also found in his body, but were not in high enough quantities to result in death. The police are still faced with one major issue, though,
TMZ says, namely that of establishing
the exact hour when Michael died.
The affidavit has Dr. Conrad Murray, the doctor who administered the drugs to the singer, as telling police officers he waited about an hour and a half before he made the 911 call, during which time he made other calls, left the room to seek help and performed CPR on Jackson. Murray’s attorney insists his client did not make such statements and, most important of all, did not wait more than a few minutes before calling the paramedics, let alone wait for more than an hour.
The problem is the police can’t determine whether Murray is telling the truth or not, because they have no certain way of establishing the time of death. “Sources say cops are suspicious of Dr. Murray’s account. […] If rigor mortis has not set in, the only way to approximate time of death is by body temperature. Once a person dies, their temperature eventually rises or falls to the temperature of the environment. […] Here’s the problem – when paramedics arrived the room was sweltering. So Jackson’s body temperature could register in the 90 degree range, even if he were dead for a long time. But we’re told paramedics did not get a read on his body temp because they were busy performing CPR.” TMZ says.
The conclusion is the police have now no scientific way of determining when Michael died, especially since Dr. Murray seems to have given very contradictory statements in the weeks following his patient’s death. Aside from the suspicions related to the exact hour when Murray noticed Michael was not breathing, there are also several questions as to the
amount of Propofol he administered to him. In the affidavit, Dr. Murrary says it was only 25mg that night, having cut down dosage from 50mg after noticing Jackson was becoming addicted to the very powerful anesthetic.
“He said
he gave Jackson 25 milligrams of Propofol shortly before the singer stopped breathing. Dr. Murray also said he had been giving Jackson 50 milligrams of Propofol for the prior six weeks so Jackson could sleep, but he felt the singer may have been forming an addiction so he cut back. Here’s the reality. It takes approximately 400 milligrams of Propofol for someone of Jackson’s body size to sleep 8 hours – that’s 16 times the amount Dr. Murray says he gave Jackson the day he died.” TMZ adds. Given this and the fact that Jackson already had some tolerance to the drug, a 25mg dose would have meant nothing to him, the police believe.
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