Michael Jackson: After tributes the questions

As his fans across the globe continued to mourn the pop star, questions about the last minutes of his life with his doctor at his side, the fate of his children and his complex financial dealings began to slowly and inconclusively unravel.

Los Angeles County medical officials said Michael Jackson had taken prescription medications but that the cause of his sudden death would not be known for weeks, pending toxicology tests. Craig Harvey, chief investigator for the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, said there was no evidence of trauma or foul play and that the family was allowed to take Jackson’s body.

The police investigation into Jackson’s death focused in part on his private doctor, Conrad Murray. The authorities impounded Murray’s car at Jackson’s rented home in Holmby Hills, with the hope of finding clues to what led to the singer’s cardiac
arrest. Police officials interviewed Murray and intended to do so again, officials said.
“Every investigation can go one

way or another,” said Deputy Chief Charlie Beck, the chief of detectives. “But nothing suggests criminality at this point.”

The 50-year-old pop star, who had been preparing for a lengthy comeback concert series in London, was rushed to UCLA Medical Center shortly after noon Thursday by paramedics and was pronounced dead in the emergency room.

A 911 tape released Friday featured the voice of a young man imploring an ambulance to hurry to Jackson’s home, where he described a doctor frantically trying to revive Jackson.

When asked if anyone had seen what happened, the unidentified man replied: “No, just the doctor, sir. He’s not responding to CPR. He’s pumping his chest, but he’s not responding to anything.”

Dr Murray, who public records show is a 56-year-old cardiologist with a practice in Las Vegas, has lived in numerous homes over the last decade in several states, filed for personal bankruptcy in 1992 in California and has five tax liens against him for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

According to HealthGrades, a health care ratings company, Dr Murray is board certified in neither of his two specialties, internal medicine and cardiology. Board certification is not required to practise a specialty but is recommended and indicates a high level of training and expertise.

Jackson had a long and intricate history of health problems. But because rumors always swirled around him, his health history is not easy to pin down.

By most accounts, including his own, Jackson began getting hooked on pain medication after an accident during the filming of a commercial in 1984 in which some special effects exploded and burned his scalp. In 1993, in a recorded statement, he said that child molestation allegations against him contributed to his continuing drug use.

“I became increasingly more dependent to the painkillers to get me through the days of the tour,” he said. “My friends and doctors advised me to seek professional guidance immediately in order to eliminate what has become an addiction.”

Later, Jackson developed severe back pain. During the 2005 trial on child molestation charges, “I sat behind him in court every day for the entire trial,” Taraborrelli said, and “he had very serious back problems,” and was “obviously medicated to the point where I wasn’t even sure that he understood that he had been acquitted.”

Another biographer Stacy Brown said the narcotic Demerol had “been one of the concerns for a long time.” He said that Jackson was receiving “one injection per day. He always had a doctor give it to him.” Brown said the doctors “were legitimate,” but, at the same time, “no one was ever in a position to say no” to Jackson.

Jackson was able to get himself healthy enough to pass medical exams that qualified him for insurance coverage for his upcoming 50-performance concert engagement in London. But Brown said that recently his family had been worried that he would not be healthy enough to handle the pressure of such performing. “Trying to prepare for those shows, he had been on call constantly,” Brown said. “The procedure of getting him ready was a great undertaking.”

Brown also said that Jackson had a longstanding eating problem with “seemingly no motivation to eat. And most things, by all accounts, seemed to repulse him anyway.”
“He had become “very frail, totally, totally underweight,” Brown said.

Did drugs push his heart too far?
Sources close to Michael Jackson’s entourage said that he was taking three narcotic painkillers at the same time. They said he was injected three times a day with Demerol — the potent painkiller given to him before his collapse at home. Apart from painkillers, Jackson was taking the muscle relaxant Soma, a sedative called Xanax and anti-depressant Zoloft. He also took Paxil for anxiety and heartburn pill Prilosec.

Is his personal doc also to blame?
Police are questioning Jackson’s doctor, Conrad Murray, whose credentials are dubious. He was at MJ’s home the day of his death. AEG Live President Randy Phillips, who organised Jackson’s forthcoming tour, said Jackson insisted they take the cardiologist along. “He just said, ‘Look, this business revolves around me. I’m a machine and we’ve to keep the machine well-oiled,’ and you don’t argue with the King of Pop.”

Who gets the kids and the fortune?
A central concern now is the fate of Jackson’s three children, who are being cared for by their grandmother. Debbie Rowe, who was married to the singer for three years and is the mother of the two oldest children, has fought to have her parental rights restored. Although Jackson’s debts are huge, his assets are valued higher, which raises prospects of a battle for custody of his children and their lucrative child support.