83 Minutes

Michael Amir Williams had worked for Jackson for a little over two years after originally being hired to archive his DVD collection. Now, as his personal assistant, his duties involved answering calls, arranging day-to-day operations, hiring staff or anything Jackson needed, even ‘… sending me to pick up popcorn’.
In the March 2010 legal case of Joe Jackson v. Conrad Murray, Joe Jackson claimed that, ‘On 25 June 2009, prior to treating Michael Jackson, the defendant was at a “strip club” called Sam’s Hofbrau in Los Angeles where he had been “drinking”. It was reckless for him to “drink” prior to administering anaesthesia to Michael Jackson. He concealed his conduct from Michael Jackson.’ A member of Murray’s defence team told celebrity website TMZ.com that the allegations were false and that Murray doesn’t drink.
Steven Echols’ firm, Security Measures, would later sue Jackson’s creditors for $261,169 in unpaid security costs following the singer’s death. According to legal documents, the firm supplied Jackson with three guards around the clock at $25 per hour.
Michael Jackson fired Leonard Muhammad in the spring of 2004, in a move orchestrated by Randy Jackson who had his own ideas for Jackson’s future.
Matthew Moore, ‘Michael Jackson: Was He Influenced by the Nation of Islam?’, The Telegraph, 29 June 2009.
Louis Farrakhan had been banned by successive home secretaries from entering Britain since 1986, on the grounds he expressed racist and anti-Semitic views, and that he could threaten public order if he entered Britain.
People magazine, 29 November 1984.
Quote from an interview on The Arsenio Hall Show.
Jennifer Vineyard, ‘Is The Nation of Islam Taking Control of Jackson’s Affairs?’, MTV News, 31 December 2003.
Wallace D. Fard Muhammad arrived in Detroit in 1930 with an obscure background and a number of aliases: the FBI suggest as many as 58. He had an Indian appearance, had a Russian Jewish mother, was a dapper dresser, and told his followers he was born in the holy city of Mecca. However, the general consensus is that Fard was born in New Zealand in 1893. Within three years of his arrival in Detroit, the followers of his Allah Temple of Islam had risen to 8,000 as he sought to liberate the African Americans from their ‘half-slave and half-free’ condition, although conflicts arose between this community and the police when his followers started to refuse to send their children to school, and there were even allegations that one of the group, Robert Harris, who renamed himself Robert Karriem, had participated in human sacrifice to bring himself closer to Allah. Karriem was found to be insane but Fard was facing possible charges in connection with the murder, so he renounced the ATI and said he would use his influence to disband the organisation, as ordered in 1932 and agree to leave Detroit immediately to receive immunity. This he did, only to reappear in January 1933 in the city. The ATI had now become the Nation of Islam and Fard’s activities in the city once again alerted the authorities, who ordered him to leave Detroit again in May 1933. Following a brief spell in Chicago, where he was arrested for disturbing the peace, Fard returned to Detroit again. Following another brush with the law he left Detroit for good in April 1934 with Elijah Muhammad assuming control of the Nation of Islam until 1975 after a short leadership struggle. Fard disappeared into history. There were rumours of him becoming a Nazi spy during the Second World War, but nobody can positively pinpoint what happened to him. However there were reports that a Wallace D. Fard died in Chicago in 1971. Jay-Z, Ice Cube and Wu Tang Clan, amongst others, have since made references to Fard’s teachings in their music.
New York Times, 30 December 2003, “Dispute in Michael Jackson Camp Over Role of Nation of Islam”, Sharon Waxman
The Telegraph, ‘Michael Jackson’s Aide “Quit Due to Nation of Islam”’, 7 July 2009.
Sharon Waxman, ‘Dispute In Michael Jackson Camp Over Role of Nation of Islam’, New York Times, 30 December 2003.
Jermaine Jackson is not a member of the Nation of Islam, but Rwaramba is.
Bob Jones and Stacy Brown, Michael Jackson, the Man Behind The Mask: An Insider’s Story of the King of Pop (SelectBooks, 2009).
In an interview with Fox News, Leonard Muhammad said, ‘We have not tried to recruit Michael, nor has he expressed any interest in becoming a member of the Nation of Islam.’
Neil Syson ‘The Way You Mecca me Feel’, The Sun, 21 November 2008.
In an interview on 22 January 2010, Jermaine Jackson gave an hour-long interview to Al-Arabiya television. During the interview he confirmed that Michael Jackson had not converted to Islam, but stated that he was on the verge of converting at the time of his death. He acknowledged that Jackson hired a team that was all Muslim and revealed that the King of Pop was drawn by Islam, that he loved hearing the Muslim call to prayer and eagerly read books on Islam.
Caroline Graham, ‘No, I Didn’t Kill Michael. He Did It Himself … With A Massive Overdose Using His Own Stash’, The Mail on Sunday, 24 November 2013.
Part of the bedtime routine was for Dr Murray to sit by Jackson’s bed and read travel magazines or medical journals to him. In an interview with The Mail on Sunday in 2013, Murray said, ‘In the beginning we talked a lot about medicine. He was fascinated by human anomalies and congenital malformations. He was obsessed by the Elephant Man’. (A rumour in 1987 suggested Jackson had tried to buy the skeleton of John Merrick, the Elephant Man, from the Royal London Hospital.)
Dr Murray described Jackson’s veins as being ‘sclerotic’. This means his veins, particularly around normal IV sites, such as arms and hands, had become hardened through excessive injections and, consequently, it was becoming increasingly difficult to administer further injections in these sites.
Timm Woolley and Randy Phillips of AEG Live had been cc’d throughout this email exchange, as had Dr Murray. Another recipient was Shawn Trell, AEG Live’s Senior Vice President. Trell had been active in the issuing of the contract to Jackson since January. One earlier email exchange between Trell and Ted Firke, the General Counsel for AEG, seems to illustrate the lack of respect AEG representatives had towards Michael Jackson. In January 2009, Trell revealed to Firke that he was going to Jackson’s home to sign the contracts. ‘Does this mean you get to meet the freak?’ Firke emailed back to Trell, who replied, ‘Apparently. Not sure how I feel about that. Interesting for sure, but kind of creepy.’
Matilda Battersby, ‘Prince Jackson Claims Late Father Michael Thought “This Is It” Rehearsals Were Going To Kill Him’, The Independent, 27 June 2013.
Alan Duke, ‘“They’re Going To Kill Me”, Michael Jackson Told Son’, CNN, 27 June 2013.
Dr Murray had two phones: one was an iPhone under a contract from AT&T, the other was a Sprint phone.
In an interview with Caroline Graham of The Mail on Sunday on 24 November 2013 Murray revealed that Jackson always wore dark trousers because, ‘… after he went to the toilet he would drip for hours’. He continued, ‘I held his penis every night. I had to put a condom catheter on him because Michael dripped urine. He had a loss of sensation and was incontinent’. However, in his interview with the LAPD on 27 June 2009, following Michael Jackson’s death, Dr Murray said, ‘Mr Jackson had trouble urinating … In the course of the last three months, he explained to me that when he went to the bathroom, it would take him hours to urinate’. Murray had prescribed the singer Flomax as he thought Jackson had benign prostatic hypertrophy and this medication would shrink Jackson’s prostate and allow him to urinate properly.
Kai Chase had been a professional chef for 17 years, having studied in Paris at the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu. Upon returning to the USA she started her own catering company and had since cooked for clients such as Bernie Mac, Macy Gray and President Barack Obama. Her catering company closed down in 2001, following 9/11, and she entered the private chef world. She had started work for Jackson at the end of March, following a meeting with Michael Amir Williams and a second interview at Carolwood held solely by Jackson’s three children. She would cook Jackson lots of lean proteins, such as chicken, fish and turkey, but never pork or beef, and lots of vegetables as well as juices, especially beet juice. But Jackson’s favourite meal she cooked him was tacos made out of blue corn tortilla shells, vegan ground beef and guacamole salsa. In the first week of May, Chase was let go by Michael Amir Williams owing to a change of management in Jackson’s hierarchy who were trying to get different employees to join Jackson in London, but Chase was re-hired on 2 June when Jackson’s children requested her back. When she retuned, Chase noticed that Jackson ‘… looked very different. He appeared very weak. He looked much thinner, he looked undernourished, and he didn’t look as well as I had seen him in April.’ In June, Chase also witnessed Jackson’s son, Prince, having to help his father up the stairs, as the singer was weak from the toll his rehearsals and schedule was having on him.
The children were home-schooled from Monday to Friday with a teacher coming in every morning and leaving in the afternoon, after which they were allowed to do activities, such as all go to the theatre, and were encouraged to write about their experiences creatively when they returned home.
Propofol has been referred to as ‘milk of amnesia’, a play on the term ‘milk of magnesia’, owing to its milk-like appearance and use as an anaesthetic.
At this point in time, Murray hadn’t received any money at all from AEG Live, despite his contract and oral agreements stating that he should have been paid his first instalment on 15 May and his second on 15 June.
A pulse oximeter is a sensor device that is placed on a patient’s fingertip to monitor the percentage of haemoglobin that is oxygen-saturated within a patient. Oxygen saturation should always be above 95 per cent.
In his book, My Friend Michael, Frank Cascio wrote, ‘Over the years I had grown accustomed to seeing doctors coming and going, particularly during tours, when Michael was under great stress and needed help falling asleep. I thought he was simply someone who had serious medical problems and used drugs to treat them.’
Los Angeles Police Department, recorded interview of Conrad Murry, 27 June 2009.
While he was on the phone, Murray also received a text at 10:36am from Texas.
Bob Russell had been treated by Dr Murray following a heart attack in Las Vegas. Russell was convinced that Murray had saved his life and felt that initially, he was getting the best care in the world from Dr Murray. But all this changed after Murray sent out the letter to his patients telling them that he would be leaving his practice to follow a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. From then on, Russell felt abandoned by Murray at a critical point in his recovery and even threatened Murray with legal action to get the recovery care he felt he was entitled to from the doctor.