9

To die would be an awfully big adventure.

J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

At 11:51 on the morning of Thursday, 25 June 2009, Dr Conrad Murray dialled the phone number of Sade Anding, a 24-year-old waitress in a steakhouse and cocktail bar in Houston, Texas. After meeting Anding, Murray had pursued her for seven months, despite her having a boyfriend and Murray having a wife and children as well as a 28-year-old former stripper and actress, Nicole Alvarez, as his mistress.1 At their initial meeting Murray had boasted to Anding about how successful he was and how he had come from Trinidad to start a clinic in Houston. At the bar on their first encounter, Murray had given her a $100 tip for a $10 drink after they had talked for 15 minutes, during which, at no time, did Murray mention his wife, a girlfriend, or any children he might have had.2 He did tell her that she was ‘… too beautiful to be waiting on people – at a place like this.’3

Murray began frequenting the bar and was keen for Anding to personally serve him every time he visited. He continued to tip well and soon they were speaking on the phone at least once a week. ‘I told him I had a boyfriend. I was his confidant,’ Anding recalled. ‘I felt like I was important to him. I felt like he needed me to get things off his chest. He would call me and tell me about his day and his problems. We just talked about stuff.’4

Before long, Murray told Anding, whom he referred to as his ‘girlfriend’, that he had landed the role as Michael Jackson’s personal doctor. He told her that he had been good friends with the singer for a while since he had treated Prince, Jackson’s son. From the moment he revealed he was Jackson’s personal doctor, Anding noticed that Murray began showing off more and becoming flashier with his cash. On one occasion he handed her $450 after taking her out for a pizza. He also bought her a black strapless dress, and gave her a $500 cheque as he sat on a hotel bed. ‘Looking back I think he was hoping I would join him on the bed, but I said I had to go,’ she remembered during an interview with The Sun.5 Murray even promised to take her to England to meet Michael Jackson at his London O2 concerts, despite also making Nicole Alvarez a similar promise.

At 11:51am on 25 June, Anding answered Murray’s call, which arrived somewhat out of the blue. She was in Houston at the time and had not heard from him since they had had dinner in Texas in May. When she answered Murray said, ‘It’s Conrad’. She asked him how he was doing and commented that they hadn’t spoken for a while, but sensed, quite quickly, that he was not his normal self and was distracted. Murray simply responded by saying, ‘Well’, and then failed to say anything else. Determined to break an awkward silence, Anding said brightly to Murray, ‘Okay, let me tell you about my day.’ Again, Murray didn’t respond. Not sure what was going on, Sade Anding began talking to Murray. It was a one-way conversation and she only stopped when, instead of silence, Anding heard a lot of commotion coming down the phone line. Both confused and alarmed, she became aware that something was wrong as she pressed the phone to her ear and heard coughing and mumbling coming from the room Murray was in, and she didn’t believe the mumbling she heard came from Dr Murray. ‘Hello? Hello? Hello? Are you there? Are you there?’ she started to call into the mouthpiece, but Murray was not responding. The indistinct noise she was hearing convinced her that Murray had been distracted and had put the phone in his pocket without turning it off or perhaps had dropped it somewhere where a lot of noise was being made. Sade Anding hung up and immediately called Murray back, but she got no answer. She tried texting him, but, again, no response from the doctor:

I knew there was something really wrong. I felt like this stabbing pain in my chest. For him to get off the phone like that without saying anything to me was not normal, and with all the commotion, it seemed to me like an emergency.6

It was now 11:57am. Sade Anding had hung up with Dr Murray not talking to her and involved in some sort of commotion. But what exactly was going on with Murray? The times of the phone calls, times that have been verified by Edward Dixon, a Senior Support Engineer with AT&T under oath, contradict considerably the story that Dr Murray gave to the LAPD on 27 June 2009. Murray’s AT&T mobile phone showed that at 11:51am he made a phone call that lasted 11 minutes. This was the phone call to Sade Anding, and followed directly his phone calls at 11:18am to his office and 11:49am to Bob Russell. It was during the 11:51am phone call, that Murray became distracted and was when Anding indicated she heard a ‘commotion’ and ‘coughing and mumbling’. However, Murray had told the LAPD that he had administered Propofol to Jackson at 10:40am, then observed and monitored the singer until ‘everything looked stable’ before going to the bathroom sometime between 10:50am and 11am. ‘I leave his bedside. I walk through another chamber, which is like a dressing area. And then I get into the third vault, which is where the bathrooms are and the, and where I can urinate’, Murray told the LAPD. He then revealed he was gone for about two minutes before he came back into Jackson’s bedroom to find the singer not breathing. What followed, according to Murray, were his frantic efforts to revive the King of Pop. So frantic that it seems he stopped at 11:07am to receive a call from his assistant, Stacey Ruggles, in San Diego, and then halted his efforts again at 11:17am to email Bob Taylor in London, before taking time out to call his Las Vegas clinic at 11:18am for 32 minutes. After this call, he left a message for his patient Bob Russell before calling Sade Anding at 11:51am. It was during this call that Anding heard the commotion in the room that Murray was in along with coughing and mumbling. So, in all likelihood, this was the moment when Murray actually noticed that Jackson was not breathing, not approximately 50 minutes earlier as he had claimed – unless the phone call was part of an elaborate alibi.

In an interview for Channel 4, conducted by Steve Hewlett on 30 October 2011, one week before the conclusion of Dr Murray’s trial, the doctor was questioned about the timeline of phone calls:

Steve Hewlett: In the initial statement, having given Michael Propofol and waited until he fell asleep and felt reasonably comfortable, you then say you left the room for two minutes to visit the lavatory and then when you came back Michael was in some form of distress. That timeframe doesn’t make sense because you were on the mobile phone talking to various people for something like forty-five or fifty minutes.

Murray: I would say, this is what I can tell you I have done. So he got medicine about 10:50, he drifted into sleep around five minutes, I sat there. As I said in my statement I waited as long as I felt I was comfortable that the effects of the medicine, Propofol, was gone.

Hewlett: And then you left the room.

Murray: How long was that? So normally Propofol would last about … the effective, end organ, sleep state would be gone in ten minutes. I sat there for at least thirty minutes. If you look at the calls as they were coming through, I think the very first call that came through was from my daughter. I did not even pick it up.

Hewlett: But the point is you’re out of the room for a lot more than two minutes.

Murray: No, I’m still at the bedside.

Hewlett: Taking calls at the bedside?

Murray: Let me clarify for you. After giving him his Propofol I sat there long enough, with Mr Jackson, looking at him, checking his vital signs, checking his oximeter, making sure his pulse is all fine, making sure he was asleep, and he was asleep but not as deep as he would normally sleep because he was not snoring. And then by 11:20, 11:25, I decided well, look, if the calls are going to start coming in and if I need to call and he’s now comfortable the effects of Propofol is more than twenty minutes gone …

Hewlett: Okay, but the point is this, you never mentioned the phone calls to the police.

Murray: They never asked me.

Hewlett: But you’re supposed to … you’re telling them what’s happened.

Murray: Listen to me. I just sat there and we never interrupted the policemen, we never told them what they could ask, what they couldn’t ask. They did not ask me the question. I did not think it was important.

Whether this version of the timeline is true or not, one thing is certain; when Murray dialled Anding at 11:51am, it would be another 83 minutes before the gurney carrying the stricken body of Michael Jackson was rushed into the ER of the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and an incredible 134 minutes after Murray, according to his statement, had come back into Jackson’s bedroom after going to the toilet to find the singer not breathing.

It becomes quickly evident that Murray’s statement to the LAPD cannot be relied upon when comparing it to the statements and testimonies of the various witnesses who appeared in court subsequently as well as all the various phone and data records available. All these paint a very different picture of what really happened on the morning of 25 June 2009.

What is beyond doubt is that Murray was making a phone call to Sade Anding between 11:51am and 12:02pm. At some point during this phone call, probably around 11:57am, Murray returned to Michael Jackson’s bedroom and found the singer not breathing.

Clearly Murray had left the room, but not at 11am just to go to the toilet as he had previously stated to the LAPD. It is likely that he did leave the room around 11am, possibly to go to the toilet, but more likely to guarantee some privacy for the emails and phone calls he was about to make. According to phone records, from 11:18am Dr Murray was constantly on the phone without interruption and it was only when he re-entered Jackson’s bedroom probably at approximately 11:57am, that he responded to the stricken superstar.

Speaking in the documentary Michael Jackson & The Doctor: A Fatal Friendship before he was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, Conrad Murray said of the moment he noticed something was wrong with Jackson, ‘He was not breathing. So my concern was has those agents … the Valium, the Ativan, the Versed, acting in concert, has now overwhelmed him once he went to sleep. Not 25mg of Propofol.’7

Finding the singer not breathing, Murray said he was torn between what to do. Instead of calling 911 he attempted to revive Jackson. He leaned in to Jackson and felt for a pulse. There was no sign of a pulse in Jackson’s neck or wrist so Murray pulled back the sheets covering Jackson and thrust his hand down Jackson’s pyjama front to try and locate a femoral pulse in Jackson’s inner-thigh. According to Murray’s interview with the LAPD, he found a ‘… thread pulse in the femoral region’. He said that Jackson’s body was warm and there was no change in his colour so Murray assumed that everything had happened very quickly, ‘… just about the time I was gone, within that time and coming back’. He was referring here to the two minutes he had told the LAPD that he had been away from Jackson to visit the bathroom. Immediately, Dr Murray began to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on Jackson while the singer was still lying in bed, as well as mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.8 Murray started with chest compressions before resorting to mouth-to-mouth to get oxygen into him and said that he saw Jackson’s chest rise and fall appropriately. While he was doing this, Murray noticed the telephone on the stand beside Jackson’s bed, but this telephone, like the rest of the telephones within Jackson’s Carolwood mansion, were disconnected to avoid nuisance calls coming in. All calls had to be made on mobile phones.

The time was now around noon, and Murray still hadn’t called 911 and, instead, kept going with CPR. ‘The only way I can get help is, well, I know that he lives at 100 North Carolwood. I don’t know the zip code,’ Murray told the LAPD. ‘To speak to a 911 operator would be to neglect him. I don’t have that availability. I want to ventilate him, do chest compression, enough to give me an opportunity.’ In order to carry out his CPR efforts efficiently, Murray said he had to improvise as the bed Jackson was lying on was not firm enough for his CPR to be effective. Consequently, Murray laid his left hand under Jackson’s body, between his shoulder blades, to provide additional support and a harder surface while performing a non-standard form of CPR on the singer with his right hand only. It would have made sense to get Jackson onto the floor and to continue CPR with both hands, but Murray said he couldn’t move the singer off the bed himself, despite Jackson weighing only 136lbs (62 kilos).9

Sade Anding heard the beginning of the tragedy unfold before she hung up at 12:02pm. Nobody else at Jackson’s Carolwood mansion was aware of what was happening upstairs at that moment. His three children were all playing in the den, under the supervision of the nanny, Rosalind Muhammad,10 and Kai Chase was in the kitchen preparing a spinach Cobb salad with organic turkey breast for lunch, which was always served to Jackson and his children at 12:30pm.

Thirty-four-year-old Alberto Alvarez had arrived at Carolwood a couple of hours earlier, some time between 10am and 10:30am. Alvarez had worked for Jackson, on and off, since 2004 and his title in June 2009 was Director of Logistics. His main duties involved performing advance route surveys, checking venues and getting them ready for the arrival of Jackson, ensuring that everything around the singer was secure. Upon arrival at Carolwood he checked into the security office, a plain but functional white trailer that stood on a driveway by the side of the property. As far as Alvarez and the rest of the security detail were concerned, everything was okay. Jackson had arrived home early in the morning, they had seen him into the property, there had been no intruders on the grounds overnight or any other security scares, and their only tasks for the day might be the odd mundane chore before accompanying Jackson to another rehearsal at the Staples Center later in the evening.

As it happened, Alvarez soon found himself alone in the security trailer on the morning of 25 June, as his colleague for the day, Faheem Muhammad, was sent off to run an errand at the local bank.11 Originally hired as a driver,12 Muhammad, who had known Jackson’s personal assistant, Michael Amir Williams, for the previous 10 years, had worked for Jackson for approximately 10 months and been rapidly promoted to Jackson’s Chief of Security. At around 11:45am, Faheem Muhammad left Carolwood in one of the security team’s SUVs and headed for the nearby bank.

Meanwhile, Michael Amir Williams was yet to even arrive at Jackson’s Carolwood home. He was still at his own home in Downtown LA, getting ready for the day ahead. He was now described as the singer’s Chief of Staff and referred to himself as a friend of Jackson’s, as well as the liaison between Jackson’s security and major staff. Amir Williams was a confirmed fan of Jackson, often trying to sneak in at rehearsals to watch the singer performing, but he was usually on errands or doing other tasks for Jackson, so didn’t get as many opportunities to witness him singing and dancing as he’d hoped, but he was sure that the opportunity would present itself in London during the upcoming 50 shows at the O2. At noon on 25 June, Amir Williams was oblivious to the idea that he would never get to see the singer perform at the O2.

At 12:05pm, Kai Chase, working in the corner of the kitchen with music playing in the background, saw Dr Murray for the first time that day. Murray had not appeared earlier in the day, as was usual, to pick up the juice she had made for Jackson. This had slightly surprised her, but not as much as the state Murray was in when she saw him running down the stairs in a panic. Murray stopped at the third bannister and leant over to scream out to her to get help urgently and call for security. He also told her to, ‘Go get Prince!’ Chase immediately dropped what she was doing and ran to the den to get Jackson’s son. But Prince had already been alerted to the commotion and screaming going on, and was coming towards the kitchen when Chase reached him. She instructed Prince to hurry to Dr Murray who, by now, had made his way back up the stairs towards Jackson’s bedroom.

Prince made his way through the kitchen, past the two housekeeping assistants, Jimmy and Blanca, who had started to cry but who were unaware exactly what was going on. Kai Chase remained in the kitchen, without ever calling security as Murray had screamed at her to do, and returned to her work as Prince headed towards Murray who was standing at the top of the stairwell.13 Seeing Prince, Dr Murray began descending the stairs to halt the child’s progress towards the bedroom. He tells Prince that there’s something wrong with his dad before instructing him to go back downstairs and stay in the kitchen. Murray ends with a reassurance, telling the child that everything will be all right.

The two housekeepers had told Kai Chase that they suspected there must be something wrong with Michael Jackson and when Prince came back, to join his siblings, the nanny, Chase and the housekeepers in the kitchen, all grouped together and began consoling each other while praying and crying. Chase recalled the energy in the house had suddenly changed and that something was not right. She remembered Carolwood as normally being a happy house, full of music and children and animals playing. Now, it was different, the whole house seemed to be almost at a standstill.

Murray’s interview with the LAPD once again throws up contradictions in the timeline. In his interview, Murray stated that he had called Michael Amir Williams about Jackson’s predicament and given Jackson a 0.2mg injection of Flumazenil, a drug specifically used to reverse drowsiness, sedation and other effects caused by benzodiazepines14 before he went to call Kai Chase to get Prince. In his interview, Murray said he reached for his mobile phone to call Jackson’s assistant as he continued CPR with his ‘… left hand singularly’, the same left hand that he earlier said he had placed under Jackson’s body. Managing to grab his mobile phone, Murray said he then called Brother Michael, who didn’t answer and left a voicemail message, which said, ‘Brother Michael, you need to send security up to Mr Jackson’s room immediately. We have a problem.’ Murray then returned to Jackson’s body and continued CPR but noticed that the singer didn’t have a pulse now, so he tried lifting Jackson’s legs to give the singer what he referred to as an autotransfusion.15 But with nothing to prop Jackson’s legs up, Murray lowered them once more to continue with CPR before injecting Flumazenil into the IV port. Was Murray aware of the benzodiazepines reacting with the Propofol he had already given to the singer? The benzodiazepines would not be dangerous when used by themselves, but when mixed with central nervous system depressants, such as Propofol, they can be lethal. It was only after carrying out all of these actions that Murray said he then raced out to the kitchen where Kai Chase was. But Kai Chase testified that Murray had shouted to her at 12:05pm while phone records show that it wasn’t until 12:12pm when Murray called Michael Amir Williams, or Brother Michael as he was known, for the first time. So yet again Murray’s version of events seems at odds with official phone records.

At 12:13pm, after stepping out of the shower, Michael Amir Williams noticed he had a missed call from Dr Murray. The doctor had left a voicemail for him and after Amir Williams dialled the number to access it, he heard a frantic Dr Murray: ‘Call me right away, Hurry. Call me, Call me right away’. Amir Williams immediately called Murray back. It was 12:15pm. Murray answered quickly, asking Amir Williams where he was. Amir Williams told him he was at home. ‘Get here right away,’ Murray urged. ‘Get here right away. Mr Jackson had a bad reaction. He had a bad reaction. Get someone up here.’ It wasn’t just what Murray had said that shocked Amir Williams, it was the way he had said it. Something serious was up. But, throughout the call, Murray had never asked Amir Williams to call 911.

Murray had instead asked Amir Williams to ‘Get someone up here’ so, before leaving his house, he called Faheem Muhammad, as he knew Jackson was comfortable with him. Faheem was still on the way to the local bank at this point and took the call on his mobile in the SUV at 12:16pm. ‘Where are you?’ asked Amir Williams when Faheem answered. ‘I just left the property. I went to the bank,’ replied Faheem. Amir Williams ordered Faheem to turn around immediately and when questioned about what was going on said, ‘I don’t know, but something. Get back right away.’

Amir Williams, still unsure what was going on at Carolwood, now called Alberto Alvarez. He tried him three times in succession but failed to get through. He then tried another member of the security detail, Derrick Cleveland, but couldn’t get through to him, either. He then dialled Alberto Alvarez one more time. This time he managed to get through. It was 12:17pm when Alvarez answered. He was sitting in the security trailer outside the house but left quickly when Amir William said, ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but get back to the front door.’ Carrying his mobile phone to his ear, with Amir Williams still on the line, Alvarez started walking towards the front door. ‘Are you walking? Okay, walk faster,’ said an increasingly anxious Amir Williams. Alvarez started running towards the front door.

When Alvarez reached the front door, he found it locked. He rattled the handles, pulling at the doors, but they wouldn’t open. He peered through the glass and saw the nanny, Rosalind Muhammad, quickly making her way to open the door for him. Behind her he spotted Paris and then further back the chef, Kai Chase. Looking up towards the stairway, Alvarez saw Murray standing at the top.

As Alvarez entered the property, Amir Williams heard Dr Murray’s voice over the still connected phone line and understood that ‘… a lot is going on’.16 Murray called to Alvarez from the top of the stairs, saying, ‘Alberto, come. Come quick.’ Suddenly, Alberto Alvarez hung up on Amir Williams who, by now desperately worried, had thrown on some clothes and rushed to his car to make the drive to Carolwood. During the drive, Amir Williams continued to try to contact Alvarez to get an update on events, but he was unable to get any response.

Alvarez had run up the stairs as soon as he had entered the building, skipping steps as he did so. The stairs were on the left-hand side of the foyer and it was the first time that Alvarez had ever been upstairs in Jackson’s house. Dr Murray was standing at the top calling down to Alvarez, ‘Alberto, come quick, come quick’, before he disappeared into the bedroom. Alvarez followed him through the small foyer before he entered Jackson’s bedroom. What Alvarez saw as he entered the bedroom left him ‘frozen’. Michael Jackson was lying flat on the bed with his head on the pillow and his mouth open. His hands were down by his sides, his head leaning slightly to the left and his eyes were half-open. Alvarez noticed that Jackson’s penis was out of his pyjamas and that it had something plastic covering it. He also saw an IV stand with a drip on it.

Dr Murray was on the right side of the bed and was continuing to administer his one-handed CPR. When Alvarez entered Murray said to him, ‘Alberto, he had a bad reaction. Mr Jackson had a bad reaction.’ The situation in the room seemed frantic as Murray asked Alvarez to help him perform CPR by carrying out the chest compressions while Murray continued his attempts at mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

It was now 12:20pm, and outside Faheem Muhammad had returned from his aborted trip to the bank. Before entering the house, Faheem called Michael Amir Williams who, himself, was racing towards Carolwood. Faheem made the call to ensure that what Amir Williams had previously ordered him to do, to go back to the house and to rush upstairs, was correct as there was an unwritten rule that no members of staff were allowed to go upstairs within the property.17 Amir Williams confirmed with Faheem that he should go ahead and go upstairs to see what’s going on and check on everything.

Meanwhile, in the bedroom, the call to 911 still hadn’t been made. In his interview with the LAPD, Dr Murray discussed the moment when Alvarez entered the room, which, according to phone records, would probably have been 12:17 or 12:18pm. Murray, however, had told the LAPD that he, himself, had returned to Jackson’s bedroom, shortly after 11:00am, after a two-minute toilet break, to find the singer not breathing. This, if we believe the LAPD interview, would indicate that Murray had carried out CPR himself for over an hour, perhaps from 11:02am to 12:12pm, before calling Michael Amir Williams. Of course, phone records indicate that Dr Murray had been making numerous phone calls between 11:18am and 11:51am, culminating in his call to Sade Anding, so it seems inconceivable that he was administering CPR to Jackson at this time. So when Murray said to the LAPD, ‘That’s when the gentleman you hear on the 911 call comes upstairs. The door is open. He gets inside there. I said “Call 911”. While he’s doing 911, I am doing chest compressions. I’m doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But I want 911 to be called now, even though he’s still on the bed, because I would still need help to move him off the bed and place him at an appropriate site on the floor, where I would have a firmer surface,’ he was almost certainly referring to 12:17pm or 12:18pm, the moment when Alvarez entered the bedroom.

But, according to the testimony of Alvarez, Dr Murray wanted him to do something entirely different before he called 911, and it wasn’t assisting with CPR.

Alvarez recalled, during his testimony, that at one point, Murray froze and was simply surveying the situation within the room, glancing around at the scene before him. Then, suddenly breaking out of this trance, Dr Murray grabbed a handful of vials from a nightstand beside Jackson’s bed, before handing them across the bed to Alvarez and ordering him to put them in a bag. Alvarez managed to find a plastic grocery bag within reach and held this bag open while Murray dropped the bottles and vials into it. Then Murray pointed and ordered Alvarez to ‘… put them in the brown bag’. Alvarez saw a brown canvas bag, which looked like a reusable lunch bag with a white lining inside it. Alvarez did as he was instructed and dropped the plastic bag into the brown bag. Not yet finished, Dr Murray pointed to the saline bag hanging from the IV stand and told Alvarez to ‘… remove that and put it in the blue bag’. As he went to do as ordered, Alvarez noticed there was a small bottle lying inside, at the bottom of the saline bag. The saline solution inside the bag was mixing with a milk-like substance, which was likely to be Propofol. Alvarez removed this saline bag, but left another one, which had no bottle inside it, hanging on the stand. Once this was done, Dr Murray told Alvarez to put everything he had gathered into the closet.

It was now 12:21pm and the call to 911 was finally made. Alvarez made the emergency call while Dr Murray continued with the CPR on the bed. The 911 dispatcher at Beverly Hills Police Department answered the call:

911 Operator: Paramedic 33, what is the nature of your emergency?

Alvarez: Yes, sir, I need an ambulance as soon as possible.

911 Operator: Okay, sir, what is your address?

Alvarez: Carolwood Drive, Los Angeles, California, 90077.

911 Operator: Is it Carolwood?

Alvarez: Carolwood Drive, yes [inaudible]

911 Operator: Okay, sir, what’s the phone number you’re calling from and [inaudible] and what exactly happened?

Alvarez: Sir, we have a gentleman here that needs help and he’s not breathing, he’s not breathing and we need to – we’re trying to pump him but he’s not …

911 Operator: Okay, how old is he?

Alvarez: He’s 50 years old, sir.

911 Operator: Okay, he’s unconscious and he’s not breathing?

Alvarez: Yes, he’s not breathing, sir.

911 Operator: Okay, and he’s not conscious either?

Alvarez: No, he’s not conscious, sir.

911 Operator: Okay, all right, is he on the floor, where is he at right now?

Alvarez: He’s on the bed, sir. He’s on the bed.

911 Operator: Okay, let’s get him on the floor. Let’s get him down to the floor. I’m gonna help you with CPR right now, okay?

Alvarez: [inaudible] … we need to …

911 Operator: We’re on our way there. We’re on our way. I’m gonna do as much as I can to help you over the phone. We’re already on our way. [inaudible] did anybody see him?

Alvarez: Yes, we have a personal doctor here with him, sir.

911 Operator: Oh, you have a doctor there?

Alvarez: Yes, but he’s not responding to anything. He’s not responding to CPR or anything.

911 Operator: Okay, okay, we’re on our way there. If you guys are doing CPR instructed by a doctor you have a higher authority than me. Did anybody witness what happened?

Alvarez: Just the doctor, sir. The doctor’s been the only one here.

911 Operator: Okay, did the doctor see what happened, sir?

At this point in the phone call, Alvarez begins to relay the question to Dr Murray, who was still working on Jackson in the background. But Alvarez was abruptly cut off by someone, it could only be Murray, speaking angrily in a foreign language that cannot be identified.18 After being halted in his attempts to try to relay the questions to Murray, Alvarez returns to the phone call.

Alvarez: Sir, you just, if you can please …

911 Operator: We’re on our way. I’m just passing these questions on to my paramedics while they’re on their way there.

Alvarez: Okay. He’s pumping his chest but he’s not responding to anything, sir. Please …

911 Operator: Okay, we’re on our way. We’re less than a mile away. We’ll be there shortly.

The paramedics who were rushing to Jackson’s home were coming from Station 71 on South Beverly Glen Boulevard in Bel Air, about four minutes away from Jackson’s Carolwood mansion. Opened on 11 May 1948, Station 71 was one of 106 neighbourhood fire stations under the 471 square-mile jurisdiction of the Los Angeles Fire Department who, as well as providing firefighting and fire prevention services, also provided emergency medical services. The call was relayed to them from the 911 operator at 12:22pm and a Fire Department Rescue Ambulance and Engine,19 with a crew consisting of Firefighter-Paramedic Richard Senneff, Paramedic Martin Blount, Paramedic Mark Goodwin, Firefighter Brett Herron, Fire Captain Jeff Mills, Engineer Gary Burgandy and EMS Supervisor Bob Linnel, was dispatched immediately.

Martin Blount, who became a paramedic in 1999, was driving the rescue ambulance. Alongside him in the front was Richard Senneff, a firefighter-paramedic who had worked in this capacity for the Los Angeles Fire Department since 1984 and who had worked as a paramedic since 1982. He would ride on the LAFD rescue ambulance part of the time and the remainder of the time he’d ride on a fire engine, which is also a paramedic assessment engine. On 25 June, Senneff was in the attendant position on the rescue ambulance, working as a paramedic.20

In front of him, Senneff had a teletype readout21 which told him they were speeding to a cardiac arrest at 100 North Carolwood and that the casualty was a 50-year-old male. It also stated the incident time was 12:21pm and the dispatch time was 12:22pm. It only took four minutes for the ambulance to arrive at Jackson’s mansion, pass through the gates and park beside the front door to the property. It was now 12:26pm. The call to 911 had been made five minutes previously, but those five minutes had witnessed more incredible scenes within Jackson’s bedroom.

As soon as Alberto Alvarez had finished making the 911 call, he went to help Dr Murray move Michael Jackson’s body onto the floor, where Murray could perform more effective CPR with both hands, using the floor as a firm support. Alvarez went to grab Jackson’s legs but hesitated when he noticed a needle was still stuck in one of the singer’s legs. This needle was connected to a clear plastic tube, which led to the bag on the IV that Alvarez hadn’t been told to remove earlier. Dr Murray, seeing Alvarez’s hesitancy, came across and removed the needle and tube from Jackson’s leg and then, with Alvarez grabbing the singer’s legs and Murray his upper body, they moved Jackson from the bed to the floor.22

Once Michael Jackson’s body was on the floor, Dr Murray placed a pulse oximeter on the singer’s fingertip. Alvarez asked Murray what the device was and was told that it was like a heart monitor. In fact, a pulse oximeter is nothing like a heart monitor as it instead monitors a person’s pulse rate and the percentage of a patient’s red blood cells that have oxygen attached to them, not a heart rate. The percentage of red blood cells that have oxygen attached to them should always be 95 per cent or above and, on most pulse oximeters, the default low oxygen saturation alarm setting is 90 per cent. But the pulse oximeter that Murray was using was a Nonin 9500, a device that comes with instructions that say it ‘… must be used with other methods of assessing clinical signs and symptoms. This device has no audible alarms and is intended for spot-checking’. This model retails for $275, but Nonin Medical produces other pulse oximeters that contain visual and audible alarms. They retail between $750 and $1,250. It appears that the device that Murray was using was a cheaper option without an alarm and one not sufficient enough for his duty of care to Jackson at that moment in time.23

Dr Murray and Alberto Alvarez were then joined by Faheem Muhammad, who had been given the all clear by Michael Amir Williams to enter the house, and who had subsequently rushed upstairs to see what was happening. Approaching Faheem, Alvarez said, ‘It’s not looking good’. Then, to the amazement of both Alvarez and Faheem, Dr Murray suddenly asked, ‘Does anyone know CPR?’ Alvarez looked at Faheem before going to assist Dr Murray once more. Alvarez performed chest compressions on Jackson while Dr Murray, on his knees, continued mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. As he was doing so, Murray breaks away to say, ‘You know, this is the first time that I give mouth-to-mouth, but I have to do it, he’s my friend.’ The fact that a trained cardiologist had never given mouth-to-mouth before may have shocked Alvarez and Faheem who understood Murray to be Jackson’s personal physician and, therefore, a professional trained in, and with experience of, medical procedures.

Faheem could only see Jackson’s legs and feet from where he was standing, so he moved around to the left side of the bed. Here he was able to look down on the singer. Jackson’s eyes and mouth were wide open and, to a layperson like Faheem, the singer looked dead.

The whole tragic scenario was suddenly made worse when Paris and Prince walked into the room to see Murray and Alvarez attempting to revive their father. Prince was standing at the doorway, a couple of paces inside, gently weeping with a look of shock on his face at seeing his father stricken on the floor. Paris, however, had crumpled to her knees instantly, screaming ‘Daddy’ and beginning to cry hysterically.24 Murray shouted out, ‘Don’t let them see their dad like this.’ Faheem ushered the two children away from the scene and took them downstairs to Rosalind, their nanny, telling her to take them back to the den. As soon as he had done this, Faheem instructed security to prepare the cars, in the event that they would have to go to the hospital.

It had been a frantic five minutes. Five minutes which had culminated with the arrival of the rescue ambulance at 12:26pm.

Firefighter-Paramedic Richard Senneff was the first out of the ambulance. His role on 25 June was that of the Radio Man. The Radio Man is, medically speaking, in overall charge of the patient once on location. He looks after communication with those in the immediate vicinity and the receiving hospital, and is in charge of information gathering and information dispersing on site.

Senneff was escorted into the house by several members of Jackson’s external security team, all looking the part – wearing dark suits, dark ties and white shirts.25 As soon as he entered the house, Senneff began asking questions of the security detail that greeted him. He asked one of them, ‘What’s going on?’ and was simply told, ‘There is a man who needs your help upstairs.’ As Senneff led the way, Paramedic Martin Blount, Firefighter Herron and Paramedic Mark Goodwin followed him. They all galloped up the stairs, still totally unaware of the identity of the patient needing their help.

As soon as Senneff entered the bedroom, he saw Dr Murray reaching over the patient from the far side of the bed. Both Alberto Alvarez and Dr Murray say in the court testimony and LAPD interview that they had moved Jackson’s body to the floor by the time the paramedics arrived to administer CPR in a more regulated manner, but this contradicts the testimony of Senneff and Blount, who both say they saw the patient on the bed. ‘I saw what appeared to be a thin, pale, patient wearing pyjamas,’ Senneff said, before going on, ‘… and a shirt opened up, laying on the bed.’ Blount was even more specific in his testimony when questioned by District Attorney Walgren:

Blount: I observed a male lying on the bed, very pale, very thin and, at that time, the next time I saw him was when the guys in front of me got him off the bed and put him on the floor.

Walgren: Okay, well, when you saw the patient, was he on the floor?

Blount: No, sir. He was in the bed.26

Why did Murray and Alvarez say they had moved Jackson to the floor before the paramedics arrived when, quite clearly, they hadn’t? Was it in an attempt to suggest they had carried out proper CPR procedures? One-handed CPR on a soft bed certainly goes against best advice. Did the two of them come up with this version of events before the paramedics arrived to give a different impression of the care that Murray was giving Jackson? If so, what did Alvarez stand to gain from such misleading statements if it was, indeed, his intention to mislead? Certainly, there was a lot of frantic activity and confusion in the bedroom, but this evidence suggests Murray was already starting to cover his tracks as the paramedics arrived.

Later in his evidence, Senneff stated that he ‘… saw the doctor attempting to move the patient from the bed to the floor. He was about halfway between the two.’ In his own testimony, Murray had told the LAPD that he was unable to move Jackson by himself earlier, yet here it seems as though he was making efforts to get the singer off the bed, but wasn’t quite quick enough to avoid being spotted by the LAFD when they burst into the room.

Upon meeting the paramedics, Dr Murray introduced himself as the patient’s doctor.27 Paramedic Martin Blount was at the rear of the group of emergency personnel as they entered the room, but recalled seeing Dr Murray immediately and noticed him sweating profusely and acting in an agitated manner.

Senneff, meanwhile, was quickly looking around, surveying the scene that had greeted him. He noticed an IV stand on the same side of the bed as Dr Murray and that the patient still had an IV tube attached to his right leg. He also noted a number of medical vials and bottles scattered about the room.28 Immediately, Senneff began trying to obtain information from Dr Murray. He asked what the patient’s underlying medical condition was. At first, Murray didn’t answer, so Senneff asked him again. This time Murray responded, ‘There isn’t any’, he said. Senneff found this unusual and irregular, and pursued his questioning of Murray. ‘I did pursue it,’ said Senneff in his testimony, ‘because it is unusual to come to someone’s home, I’ve been to a lot of homes through the years, and have an IV pole and a personal doctor there. That is just not usual.’ But that wasn’t all that was unusual in the room.

Senneff thought the patient was anyone but the King of Pop: ‘And the patient, he appeared to me to be pale and underweight. I was thinking along the lines of, this is a hospice patient.’ He also said he could see the patient’s ribs and, at that point, couldn’t recognise who the patient was. He even questioned Dr Murray about whether the patient had a ‘Do not resuscitate order’ as the patient looked so poorly. As far as the paramedic was concerned, it just didn’t add up, especially when Dr Murray told him that the patient had no problems. ‘He is fine,’ Dr Murray explained to Senneff, ‘He was practising all night. I’m just treating him for dehydration.’ What Senneff saw in front of him, however, was an underweight, thin person lying in bed with an IV pole, a personal doctor around him and items scattered about the room suggesting someone who was under the care of a physician for a chronic illness. But Martin Blount was under no illusions as to who the patient actually was, he recognised Michael Jackson immediately.29 He went to Jackson’s head straight away and began to provide air support to the singer by inserting a tongue suppressor, tilting Jackson’s head back, and using an Ambu Bag connected to an oxygen tank that he had wheeled in himself.30 Following this, he did advanced life support with an endotracheal tube, ensuring 100 per cent of the oxygen was going directly into Jackson’s lungs.

While Blount was doing this, Senneff was asking Dr Murray if the patient was taking any medications. ‘No, none. He is not taking anything,’ replied Murray. Unconvinced, Senneff repeated the question. This time Murray gave him a different answer, ‘Well, I gave him a little bit of Lorazepam to help him sleep.’ As testified by the paramedic, this was the only information regarding medication that Murray gave to Senneff. He didn’t mention any other medicines or narcotics, and he certainly didn’t mention Propofol.

The next question Senneff asked Dr Murray was crucial, not only in determining how to treat the patient, but also in how the truth would manifest itself later. Senneff asked Dr Murray how long the patient had been in this condition, how long he had been down. Murray replied by saying, ‘It just happened right when I called you.’31 At that point, Senneff thought, with the patient only just down and a doctor present who surely must have been doing CPR, they might have a chance to revive the patient. But once Senneff touched Jackson to move him to a different area to work on, he had second thoughts.

Walgren: Now, despite Dr Murray telling you the patient had just been down when he called, did the patient, in your expert opinion, appear to have been just down?

Senneff: Initially, when he told me that, sure. Sounds fine. Then as soon as I picked him up, his legs were quite cool, cool to the touch.

Walgren: How about his eyes?

Senneff: His eyes, the moisture in his eyes, his eyes had become dry.

Walgren: What does that mean?

Senneff: Time has elapsed.32

Senneff also noticed that Jackson’s hands and feet were tinged blue, meaning there wasn’t any respiration going on and no circulation, and his eyes were also ‘blown’ and dilated. A few minutes earlier, Murray had placed the cheap version of a pulse oximeter on Jackson’s finger-tip, but this had no audible alarm on it so would not have alerted Dr Murray, if he needed to be alerted, that Jackson was already cyanotic.33 This also confirmed to Senneff that time had elapsed and he formed the opinion that Jackson was already dead when the paramedics arrived at the scene. Paramedic Blount also felt Jackson was cool to the touch and was certain that the singer had been down for a while despite Murray’s comments.

The paramedics, specifically Mark Goodwin, then hooked Jackson up to an EKG machine34 while Blount continued to try to get oxygen into Jackson’s lungs. The EKG machine was flat lining, showing Jackson was asystole, a dire form of cardiac arrest in which the heart is at a total standstill. As far as Senneff was concerned, this confirmed the event hadn’t just happened, as Murray had told him, but guessed it must have occurred, at the very least, within the last 20 minutes but could well have been considerably longer.

Throughout all of this, Alvarez and Faheem Muhammad could do little but stand by and watch as the paramedics struggled, in vain, to revive Jackson. Downstairs, in the kitchen, Kai Chase, the nanny, the housekeepers and Jackson’s three children all huddled together, praying and consoling each other. Michael Amir Williams was still in his vehicle rushing towards Jackson’s Carolwood home and, outside the gates, tour buses stopped momentarily to enable the tourists to take photos while the singer’s devout fans and a few paparazzi gathered beside the gates, totally unaware of what was happening inside Jackson’s bedroom.

Up to this point, the number of paparazzi waiting outside Jackson’s home had been slowly diminishing for some months. Other celebrities had appeared on the scene for photographers to trail and the value of a Jackson photo was not what it once was. One of the few paparazzi waiting outside Jackson’s home on 25 June was 31-year-old Ben Evenstad. He was the co-founder of the National Photo Group Agency and had been fascinated by Jackson for years. ‘As a pap, you spend most of your time chasing sex symbols, but M.J. was different, almost like a Howard Hughes character. With the masks and the umbrellas and the mystery, I thought Michael was more interesting than any other celebrity, and he has more interesting fans than any other celebrity – this group, mostly female, who would follow him all over the world. If he went to Ireland, France, Bahrain, Neverland, they were there. The same individuals. Nobody else had what he had. I set out to document why,’ said Evenstad in an interview with Vanity Fair in June 2009. It was this quest to document what Jackson had that led Evenstad to be standing outside Jackson’s Carolwood home on the afternoon of 25 June 2009.

Evenstad set his agency up in 2007 after spending the previous eight years as a paparazzo for another photo agency who had begun to express concerns at the amount of time Evenstad was spending chasing Jackson when photographs of him were not of great value. Upon founding his own agency Evenstad offered a job to his close friend, Christopher Weiss, and trained him up to be a paparazzo. Weiss really wanted to be a doctor, and was in the process of getting his paramedic’s licence, but he was also becoming increasingly anxious about the debt he was accruing to fund his medical training. Evenstad’s offer seemed to Weiss to be a convenient way out of his potential debt and he quickly started to become fascinated by the job. When Jackson moved into the Hotel Bel Air in Los Angeles in late 2008, Evenstad sent Weiss to sit outside the hotel and wait for any Jackson photo opportunity. Evenstad was eager for his agency to become known for its photo scoops of Jackson. When Jackson moved out of that hotel, Evenstad discovered that the singer would be living in Los Angeles at Carolwood. No other photo agency had this information ensuring that Evenstad’s agency was the only one for some time with a photographer outside Jackson’s house.

But on 25 June, neither Christopher Weiss nor Ben Evenstad was outside Jackson’s home to begin with. Weiss was, instead, setting up camp outside the home of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, some eight miles away from Jackson’s home. Pitt and Jolie were Hollywood’s hottest couple at the time and Weiss had already photographed Pitt but was waiting to capture a photo of Jolie when he suddenly received a phone call from Ben Evenstad who had, in turn, received a call from one of his other agency photographers, Alfred Ibanez, who was situated outside Jackson’s house. Ibanez told Evansted that there was an ambulance at Jackson’s home and instructed him to get there as quickly as he could. Evansted made his way there as fast as possible, but told Weiss to rush there immediately too.

Weiss arrived first to find only two fans and three autograph hunters waiting outside the gates of Jackson’s house. A number of other paparazzi were there also, but they were all from Evansted’s agency as the call Evansted had made to Weiss was one he had made to every other photographer on his books. But none of these other photographers had the medical background that Weiss had, and he was able to analyse an image that Alfred Ibanez had already taken with his telephoto lens. Ibanez had zoomed in to snap a picture of the call screen inside the window of a fire truck that was parked on the street outside Jackson’s property. When Weiss looked at Ibanez’s digital image, he was able to read ‘50-year-old-male … not breathing…’. With his medical background, Weiss knew that this was more serious than simply an anxiety attack but as time passed – and during this period Ben Evansted had turned up to join Weiss – he assumed that it was probably nothing life threatening. ‘We were there for 20 minutes,’ Weiss recalled, ‘and if you’ve got a full arrest the paramedics usually load and go within 8 to 10 minutes.’

While the paparazzi waited outside the gates, wondering what was going on and speculating with the handful of onlookers, inside the house efforts were still being made to revive Jackson.

It was now 12:40pm and despite the singer’s EKG showing he had flat-lined, and the capnography35 reading 16 instead of the normal 36 to 40, the paramedics had been administering both Epinephrine and Atropine since 12:34pm.36 Epinephrine is adrenaline and it can kick-start the heart, while Atropine is used to take the brakes off the heart so it can accelerate. But the paramedics found administering these drugs into Jackson wasn’t straightforward as they struggled to find a vein in the singer’s arms. Paramedic Goodwin inserted a needle a number of times into Jackson’s arms but each time failed to locate a suitable vein.37 They had noticed that Jackson had an IV in his right leg, but on investigation discovered it wasn’t flowing properly. An urgent discussion ensued to decide whether they should administer drugs down the endotracheal tube, which is an approved method of administration in emergency situations, but as they were debating this, Senneff found he could get an IV into Jackson’s jugular vein and they were able to administer the first round of drugs via the left jugular vein in Jackson’s neck.

While they were administering these drugs, Senneff was in contact with a care nurse at the base station of the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. This was standard protocol for paramedics. The nurse at the hospital is charged with radioing back care for the patient under the supervision of an attendant at the hospital, in this case Dr Richelle Cooper. Dr Cooper began working at UCLA in 1994 after graduating from the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, the UCLA EM Residency, and the UCLA EM Research Fellowship. Highly experienced, Dr Cooper was viewed as one of UCLA’s finest clinicians and also received some of the highest evaluation scores from the residents for her bedside teaching with a specialty in emergency medicine. Unaware who the patient was, this was simply another emergency call for Dr Cooper.

Senneff constantly relayed back their actions to UCLA. At no point, did he or any of the medical team feel any indication of a pulse in Jackson. After administering the first round of starter drugs, Senneff relayed to UCLA that there was no sign of life but suggested that they wanted to continue. After the second round of starter drugs, Senneff fed back to UCLA again and, once more, stated that there was no sign of life. This time UCLA was ready to pronounce Michael Jackson dead. But, at this point, Dr Murray suddenly indicated that he had identified a femoral pulse again in Jackson’s groin area.38 Senneff didn’t see any sign of a pulse or electrical activity on the EKG heart monitor and instructed two members of his paramedic team to check the area, but neither of them found any sign of a pulse either. The paramedics even stopped CPR to see if the heart was functioning by itself. But there was no visible activity.

At this point, Martin Blount’s attention was drawn to some vials of medicine he saw scattered on the floor. Looking closer he saw that they were vials of Lidocaine and, moreover, that three of them were open and had been emptied. Lidocaine is a drug administered with Propofol to ease the burning sensation. These three opened vials could only have been used by Murray to treat Jackson whilst administering Propofol to him. In Volume 97, Issue 2 of the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia, it states categorically that ‘Lidocaine is widely used to reduce the pain associated with injection of Propofol, administered either mixed with Propofol or as a separate injection.’ But the most vital part of the article is the conclusion which states, ‘The use of a freshly prepared mix of Propofol 1% Lidocaine 1% in a 10:1 volume did not affect the dose of Propofol required for the induction of anesthesia.’ This potentially means that if Murray used three vials of Lidocaine, then it is conceivable that ten times as much Propofol could have been used on the singer, based on this 10:1 ratio. And at this point, Murray hadn’t even revealed to any of the paramedics on the scene that he had given Jackson Propofol earlier in the morning.

With two rounds of starter drugs failing to have any effect on Jackson, and UCLA ready to pronounce him dead, the paramedics administered one final round of starter drugs at 12:40pm. Again, there was no sign of life in Jackson and at 12:57pm, UCLA base station, through Dr Richelle Cooper, advised that further resuscitation efforts on Jackson would be futile and that they could pronounce him dead.39 Hearing this verdict over the radio, Dr Murray said, ‘No, I don’t want to call it. I want to keep trying’. Murray was convinced he could feel another pulse in Jackson, this time inside one of the singer’s elbows. UCLA were aware that Murray was in the room, but not that he was a doctor and when Senneff told them that the patient was a very high profile VIP and that ‘the physician on the scene doesn’t want to call it,’ Dr Richelle Cooper asked if Murray was willing to assume control of the call by saying, ‘If the doctor wants to try, if he accepts the care, that will be fine.’ As Murray had a valid California medical licence, this was all within protocol.

Murray was eager to assume control. He felt that UCLA were slow in giving orders and that the 20 minutes they had tried to revive Jackson was an unnecessarily limited amount of time given the fact that he said he had only been out of the room for two minutes. He didn’t want to pronounce Jackson dead. Not there. And not then.

Detective Martinez: Okay, and they want to give up, and you don’t want to give up.

Dr Murray: I said, ‘No’.

Detective Martinez: So they transfer care to you.

Dr Murray: Yeah.

Detective Martinez: Okay.

Dr Murray: I mean, I love Mr Jackson. He was my friend. And he opened up to me in different ways. And I wanted to help him as much as I can. You know, he was a single parent. You don’t always hear that from a man. But he would state that, you know, he was a single parent of three. And I … I always thought of his children, you know, as I would think about mine. So I wanted to give him the best chance.

So, once he had assumed control, Murray suddenly had power over the paramedics within the room. Senneff relinquished responsibility and stopped the radio call with the base station at UCLA a few seconds later and began to follow instructions from Dr Murray.

Murray had his own ideas about what should be done; he wanted to give Jackson some bicarbonate, he wanted to administer a central line and he also wanted to give Jackson magnesium.40 41 But most of all, Murray wanted to get Jackson to hospital.

Following Murray’s instructions, the paramedics gave Jackson bicarbonate before preparing to transport him to hospital. They had to transfer the singer down a flight of stairs so Paramedic Herron rushed out to get the backboard, which they would use to carry Jackson down the stairs to the waiting gurney. As Herron left the room he bumped into Alberto Alvarez who was waiting outside. Alvarez wanted to know what was happening and Herron told him that they were preparing to bring Jackson out. Alvarez thought for a moment then followed Herron down the stairs before heading into the kitchen.

By now, Faheem Muhammad himself was in the kitchen, and when Alvarez walked in he demanded to know where Jackson’s children were. One of the housekeepers told Alvarez that they were in the den with the nanny. Alvarez implored the housekeeper to make sure they stayed in the den, as the paramedics were about to bring their father down to the ambulance.

Meanwhile, up in the bedroom, Herron had returned with the backboard and the paramedics carefully slid Jackson onto it before securing him with binds and ties. During this time, Martin Blount saw Murray scooping Lidocaine bottles off the floor and putting them into a black bag.

The paramedics gathered up as much of their equipment as they could, but couldn’t carry it all while transferring Jackson down the stairs, so Senneff left some of their equipment in the room to collect later.

At 1:07pm, they started taking Jackson out of the room. As they left, Dr Murray told them he’d join them in a few moments and remained in the room as the paramedics carefully made their way down the stairs and into the ambulance. As his colleagues secured Jackson in the ambulance, Richard Senneff headed back to Jackson’s bedroom to collect their equipment that they couldn’t originally carry down. But as he entered the bedroom, he was met with a startled Dr Murray who was standing next to the nightstand, holding a plastic trash bag, and picking things up and placing them in the bag. After collecting up all the paramedics’ remaining equipment, Senneff left Murray and went back to the ambulance. Outside the house, they waited briefly for Murray to join them before making the short trip to the hospital. Nobody asked what Murray had been clearing up in the room.

Michael Amir Williams finally arrived at Carolwood after the 40-minute journey from his home just as the medics were carrying the gurney to the ambulance. He saw Dr Murray come down and get into the ambulance as well, and later described Murray as looking frantic at this time. During all of this, Alberto Alvarez was desperately trying to distract Jackson’s children, so they wouldn’t see the paramedics bring their father down and load him into the ambulance.

Despite the apparently grave situation and the need to get Jackson to hospital as quickly as possible, the nature with which the ambulance left Jackson’s Carolwood home was quite remarkable, and all filmed by the gathering group of onlookers outside the gates. Firstly, the ambulance reversed out slowly making no effort to turn around in the driveway to make its exit easier and quicker. Secondly, the ambulance failed to use its sirens. And thirdly, as the ambulance slowly exited the gates, it actually stopped to allow a bus of Japanese tourists to crawl by as they all took photos of Jackson’s home, totally oblivious to the fact they were witnessing the tragic end of the King of Pop.

The ambulance slowing down gave the waiting paparazzi the opportunity to take photographs. Ben Evenstad had been anxiously waiting outside Jackson’s house with his team of agency photographers gathered around, including Christopher Weiss. Evenstad was well aware that something was happening and, as the ambulance slowly came out of the gates he shouted at his photographers, ‘This might be the biggest picture ever, so get up to the windows of that vehicle and shoot. I don’t care if you can’t see. Just shoot.’ Weiss went into action and managed to get to within a foot of the ambulance window, but Evenstad was convinced all he’d get was a picture of his own reflection as the flash went off. Nobody knew what was going on inside the ambulance and they were just hoping they would get something on camera. Jumping in their cars to follow Jackson’s entourage as it made its way to hospital, Weiss checked a few of the photos he had tried to take through the window, but all he found was photos of a reflection on the glass. He was depressed, convincing himself that he’d missed a massive photo opportunity.

As the ambulance carrying Jackson to UCLA made its way along the freeway, it began to gather a following of press cars, photographers on motorcycles and helicopters in the air, all alerted that something serious might be going on.

Behind the ambulance, Alberto Alvarez was following, as was Michael Amir Williams with Jackson’s children in the vehicle, whilst in the ambulance everything was being done by the paramedics to help Jackson. Dr Murray, however, was making a phone call from the back of the ambulance. At 1:08pm, he called his mistress, Nicole Alvarez. The call lasted for two minutes and Martin Blount heard Murray tell her, ‘It’s about Michael, and it doesn’t look good.’

At 1:13pm, the ambulance arrived at UCLA. As they pulled up Dr Murray asked if the paramedics had a towel they could put over Jackson’s face as they wheel him into the hospital to avoid him being recognised. The paramedics find a towel and drape it over Jackson’s lifeless face as they move the gurney from the ambulance and towards the hospital.

At 1:14pm, the gurney carrying Michael Jackson crashes through the door of the UCLA emergency room. It had been 83 minutes since Murray had called Sade Anding from outside Jackson’s bedroom, the call that was interrupted when he re-entered the room to find Jackson not breathing.

So much had happened in those 83 minutes, but for Jackson it was 83 minutes too long. As the hospital staff waited to do what they could, and whilst Ben Evenstad began scanning the digital images taken by his photographers to see if he had struck gold, it slowly began to dawn on Dr Conrad Murray that there was no hope for his patient.

And, consequently, no hope for him.