MICHAEL JACKSON’S personal doctor has been identified as a suspect in the Los Angeles Police Department’s manslaughter investigation into the pop star’s death, according to court records filed on Thursday in Houston.
A pair of search warrants filed in Harris County District Court stated that investigators were looking for “items constituting evidence of the offense of manslaughter that tend to show that Dr Conrad Murray committed the said criminal offence”.
The searches, which were carried out on Wednesday at Murray’s medical clinic and storage unit in Houston, gave authorities access to look for billing records, medication orders, transport receipts, billing receipts, medical records and “implements and instruments used in the commission of a crime”.
The court records were the first public confirmation by police that Murray was a focus of their probe. Detectives previously had interviewed Murray, but had declined to identify him as a suspect.
“I do not know what they are looking for and I can’t possibly tell you how anything they took in any way connects with the death of Michael Jackson,” said Murray’s lawyer Edward Chernoff who was present at both of the searches.
Chernoff has said that his client did not give Jackson any narcotics or other medication that “should have” caused his death.The inventory of items taken in the search of the medical clinic included vials of two drugs: 27 tablets of phentermine, a prescription appetite suppressant; and one tablet of clonazepam, a muscle relaxant.
Murray, a cardiologist with practices in Las Vegas and Houston, had been hired to care for Jackson at a monthly salary of $150,000. Murray discovered Jackson not breathing on June 25th, then administered CPR before paramedics were called. He was officially pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. Sources familiar with the investigation have said that authorities removed propofol, a powerful anaesthetic, and other medications from Jackson’s home.
Murray’s lawyer has declined to comment on whether the doctor administered the drug, which is most commonly used by anaesthesiologists.
Los Angeles County coroner’s investigators have collected evidence from two other medical professionals who worked with Jackson before his death. Earlier this week, Ed Winter, assistant chief coroner, obtained information from Dr Randy Rosen, an anaesthesiologist. Winter told the Los Angeles Times that Jackson had been treated at Rosen’s Beverly Hills facility, but declined to say under what circumstances. Jackson’s second child was delivered at the facility, according to birth records. Rosen’s office did not return calls seeking comment.
Winter also visited the Inglewood office of Cherilyn Lee, a registered nurse who operates a Los Angeles-based nutritional counselling business. Lee said Jackson complained to her earlier this year of insomnia and pleaded for her to get him some propofol.
Lee told the Times she never prescribed or gave Jackson drugs, but did design a nutritional plan, which she provided to Winter. She said she warned Jackson against using propofol.
–(LA Times-Washington Post service)