Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, and Prince Deaths
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Michael Jackson’s Death
When popular entertainers die, the public mourns them on social media pages. We download their music, re-watch their old music and movies, and consume their work and scouring YouTube to check on their old interview clips. When it happened too soon, we start to find answers for the course of their deaths, and we start asking ourselves nagging questions like why so soon. It has been 11 years since the passing of Michael Jackson, and his death happened suddenly at the age of 50, and basically, we still ask ourselves the cause of his death (Bruhm, 2017). In 2011, his physician was convicted, Mr. Conrad Murray, for a cause of manslaughter since it was found put the singer died of the fatal cocktail of medications in his system which Murray had administered in an excessive amount of the surgical anesthetic propofol which the doctor said he used to take them frequently so that he could be able to sleep.
Michael’s death was later ruled as a homicide by Los Angeles County coroner, and the report indicated that he was poisoned by the use of excessive surgical anesthetic propofol. In a brief interview with the media coroner’s office, he told the media that he died of acute propofol intoxication. Contributing to his death is the presence of valium and Lorazepam in his system. The local anesthetic lidocaine and the stimulant ephedrine were found in his system, and it was said that he used them to mask the pain of the injections of propofol. The findings could lead to the prosecution of his physicians who use to treat him, and those believed to have provided the drugs to Jacksons towards the end of his life. The homicide case in the United States refers to the negligence, accidental manslaughter, or negligence that can lead to death, but the findings may not trigger any criminal charges.
In the affidavit on the cause of his death, the detective said that his physician Murray had admitted that he had given him a veritable cocktail of drugs which will help him to sleep the night and the morning just before he died, which included Lorazepam and propofol which Jackson referred to as his milk. He was reported to have begged for the injection of propofol just some hours before his death and that he was addicted to it from the way the physician explained. Murray was not immediately named as the official suspect, but he was on investigation for manslaughter. The final report indicated that Jackson used to obtain the drugs from multiple sources, which led to an investigation of his plastic surgeon Larry Koplin, his dermatologist Arnold Klein, his general practitioner Alan Metzger, and his anesthesiologist David Adams who had recently treated Michael Jackson. The final report was withheld when the police of Los Angeles requested it. This is where they found out that Michael Jackson used to obtain drugs from different sources using different people, including Jack London, Omar Arnold, and Josephine Baker. When Murray spoke to the investigators, he went into hiding, but he released a video on YouTube saying that he had spoken the truth and the truth would prevail.
In other news, one of Michael Jackson’s friends said that he had sent a letter predicting his own death just a few weeks before Jackson died of a drug overdose. Michael Jacobshagen was friends with Michael Jackson for two decades, and he was a business claimed that the singer had written 13 letters with one phrase saying that, “They are trying to murder me” and “ I am scared about my life.” When speaking to the Australian TV show on Sunday night, Jacobshagen mentioned that he was in an emotional meltdown, saying that they would murder him. He was in Germany when he learned about this, and Jackson had called to fly back to Los Angeles where together with him they spent three days to him, and it was at this point where he was handed the thirteen letters. According to his doctor Murray, Jackson’s death was determined by an overdose of sedative propofol, who served two years in prison for being guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Jackson’s daughter claimed that his father was murdered, and Jacobshagen has come forward to help her case with letters from Michael Jackson.
Whitney Houston Death
The news about her death was tragic, and this was a shocker since her fans had developed an addiction to the Hollywood star. Her death case seems to be an open and shut case, and the singer was found face down in the bathtub, and she was told that she was doing from drowning and heart disease, and cocaine use (Kroenert, 2017). When the toxicology results came out, they found out that Houston had Benadryl, cocaine, Xanax, weeb, and Flexeril in her system. Nothing was pointing out of any abnormalities in her death, and the star was lost through a tragic disease of addiction. The filmmaker, Kevin MacDonald, who the director of the Whitney documentary in 2018, thinks that this case is worth investigating, especially from interviewing those close to Houston.
The question on who turned the tub off was raised by Mary Jones, who was longtime Houston’s assistant in MacDonald’s interviews for her documentary. Her death is one of the tragic deaths, and it came with tragic circumstances. Jones brought up this point, which was overlooked by the police that by the time everyone showed up in the room, the water wasn’t running anymore. The reports indicated that the bathroom was soaked with water from the overflowing tub. But the big question was who turned off the tub. It was official that her death drowned among the causes of her death, and she couldn’t turn off the faucets by herself before drowning.
From her doubtful ex-husband Bobby Brown we found out that he rubbished the idea that Houston died from drugs since when he can remember earlier in 2018, he commented that she was really working hard to fight the addiction and sober up. She was doing a job leading up to her death. He questioned the toxicology report that shows there were drugs in her system. If indeed this was true, and besides the cocaine in her system, all the other substances in her system were legal, and in any case, these drugs were prescribed by the doctor. So his question was if it was a good idea to mix for her drugs and if that was meant to kill her.
There is a bizarre coincidence between her death and that of her daughter, which happened in 2015, Bobbi Kristina Brown. She was too found dead in her bathtub at home, and she was rushed to the hospital, and she hasn’t announced the death on their arrival, and she wasn’t in good shape when they arrived at the hospital. She was taken to rehab for six months, but unfortunately, her case was far much gone, and she passed on 22nd July 2015 when she was 22 years. The autopsy was done when she was found in the drowning incident and how she died. There was no need for the police to proceed with the investigation since her death was associated with drug intoxication.
Time and many years have passed, and the police haven’t looked at Houston’s case since she passed away. They made the case look like an open and shut case, and they didn’t dig out to find who was in the room though there is no evidence of the second person being in the house that could have murdered the singer. Unless there will emerge other pressing evidence from the investigation, there is no reason to believe that her death was anything other than a tragedy. Nonetheless, how she died means we lost an iconic person, a musician who inspired many people, and we sot music icon that fateful February day.
Prince’s death
There is no one to be blamed or charged in Prince’s death in the year 2016 due to an accidental fentanyl overdose. The Minnesota authorities announced this on Thursday, where they said they could determine who gave or supplied the singer with the powerful drug that ended up killing him (Hawkins, 2017). The singer was dependent on the painkillers, and he had struggled for a long time. It is believed that he took Vicodin, which contains fentanyl, according to Mark Metz, who is the carver county attorney when he addressed the news conference. He was supplied with a look-alike drug, a counterfeit drug, and it is far more dangerous and powerful and was described by Mr. Metz. According to them, they could not trace a direct contact on who provided him with the drug. The investigation concluded that there was no sinister evidence that could show any motive, conspiracy, or intent to murder the Prince.
Michael Schulenburg, a Minnesota doctor who treated Prince before his death, agreed he would pay $30,000 to pay as a legal fee for the violation of prescribing an illegal drug to him. The doctor had agreed to protect the Prince’s privacy by providing him with a painkiller Percocet to the singer in Kirk Johnson, his bodyguard, drummer, and longtime friend. It is illegal to prescribe a drug to someone while knowing it will be taken by someone else. The doctor admitted that he had prescribed the drug but not with the intention or knowledge that the drug will be redirected to the Prince. In his defense, the lawyer argued that it was not in any criminal inquiry that the government was making false accusations on his client, while Schulenburg didn’t play any role in Prince’s death.
Metz mentioned that the pills prescribed by Dr. Schulenburg dint lead to the Prince’s death due to a fatal overdose, and he mentioned that they didn’t have sufficient evidence to link anyone with any crime related to his death. Prince declined to buy the story, and they declined to talk to the news conference. John Goetz, who is the family representative, said that they tried hard and dug deep into the story, and the family didn’t rule out the filing of a wrongful-death lawsuit. The investigators had focused much on the medical personnel and doctors trying to treat Prince from apparent painkillers addiction and an employee musician Mr. Johnson in the court document released later in April.
According to his friends, Prince had a sober life after the overdose; he suffered chronic hip pain when trying to perform and manage himself. After his death, there were so many pills in a studio in Chanhassen, and at his Paisley Park home. According to Mr. Metz, almost all of them were counterfeits of Vicodin, and they were kept in the bottles marked Aleve and Bayer. Mr. Johnson and others found the musician dead in the elevator on April 21, 2016. According to the toxicology report, there were high concentrations of fentanyl in his blood system, from the liver, and in his stomach. This drug can be legally prescribed in the form of a patch, and this is often used to make counterfeit pills, which are sold on the black market as oxycodone and other pain relievers.
While announcing the position that they were not judging anyone from Prince’s death, Metz mentioned that the singer might have been in pain for so many years, and he used painkillers to treat himself. However, he didn’t have the known prescriptions for fentanyl or the Vicodin in his name. Prince was known to be a silent and private person, which means other people assisted him in obtaining some of these medications. Metz believed that among the people who helped Prince included Kirk Johnson and Dr. Schulenburg, there is no specific person tied to the fatal pills. Since the initial interview, Mr. Johnson still works at Paisley Park as an estate manager and has not been questioned.
Prince was a notorious character, and he didn’t even have a cellphone, which hindered the investigation. His details remained in secret as no one knew what brought the unexpected death. Those who were present at home that morning provided contradictory and inconsistent stories on how the musician left. Even after his death, no will remains, which led to the complex issues on the proceeding among his six heirs.
References
Bruhm, S. (2017). Michael Jackson’s queer funk. In Queering the Gothic. Manchester University Press.
Hawkins, S. (2017). The sun, the moon, and stars: Prince Rogers Nelson, 1958–2016.
Kroenert, T. (2017). Who killed Whitney Houston?. Eureka Street, 27(11), 11.