Murray Left Michael Alone To Make Phone Calls

According to the LA Times, Dr. Conrad Murray (51), a cardiologist and Michael’s personal physician, left him alone under the influence of a powerful anesthetic to make telephone calls the morning he died. By the time he returned, Michael had stopped breathing.

The paper received this information from three people familiar with the investigation. The sources spoke on the condition that they not be named because the investigation is ongoing.

Murray acquired the drug, propofol, from a Las Vegas pharmacy and gave it to Michael as treatment for insomnia. In an interview with Los Angeles police detectives two days after Michael`s death, Murray acknowledged obtaining and administering the medication. He reportedly told police that the entertainer had returned to his Holmby Hills mansion in the early hours of June 25, exhausted from a lengthy concert rehearsal and unable to sleep.

Michael Jackson had been using propofol as a sleep aid on and off for a decade, according to one law enforcement source. Murray told investigators that he had given Michael Jackson doses of the drug repeatedly since taking a $150,000-a-month job as his doctor in May.

Murray told detectives that because there had never been a problem in the past, he felt comfortable leaving Michael alone to place calls on his cellphone, the sources said.

For the record: Propofol is a powerful anesthetic and operation room drug that should only be adminstered in a hospital and with sufficient and constant monitoring of heartbeat and respiration!

It’s unclear how long Murray left Michael alone. When he returned, the 50-year-old entertainer was not breathing. Murray performed CPR and another person called 911. At 2:26 pm Michael was officially pronounced dead.

Murray has maintained that he did nothing wrong. His attorney, Edward Chernoff, has repeatedly declined to say whether his client gave Michael Jackson propofol. Asked Wednesday about the version of events outlined by the sources, the lawyer said:

“I’m not going to dispute the police officers' claims in that regard. They were there at the interview, and Dr. Murray did not lie to them. But they are not telling the whole story.”

Chernoff confirmed that the doctor had spent time on the phone talking to family members and employees in his medical offices before he discovered Michael Jackson stricken in a bedroom.

In an interview Wednesday, Chernoff suggested that Murray did not realize what he was signing up for when he agreed to become Michael Jackson’s doctor.

“When he accepted the job, he was not aware of any specific requirements regarding medications that Michael Jackson was taking or any addictions that he was suffering from,” Chernoff said.

But after relocating to Los Angeles, “he realized that Michael Jackson had some very unusual problems,” the lawyer said

Dmitry Gorin, a defense lawyer who was a deputy district attorney, said that to prove involuntary manslaughter, prosecutors would have to show that Murray’s conduct was reckless to the point that no reasonable physician would consider such a course of treatment.

“They’d use medical experts to show that the lack of monitoring equipment, lack of staff and leaving the room was so beyond the pale of what a professional would do,” Gorin said.

Source: MJFC / LA Times