A sleepless Michael Jackson spent his last hours pleading for a dose of a powerful anesthetic, his doctor told police, according to court records unsealed Monday.
For six hours, Dr. Conrad Murray said he resisted -- fearful that the pop star had developed a dangerous addiction to propofol.
Instead, Murray administered the sedatives Valium, lorazepam and midazolam -- five times over six hours. But none put Jackson to sleep, and he continued to demand his "milk," the word the pop star used for propofol.
Murray finally relented and at 10:40 a.m. added the drug to Jackson's intravenous drip, according to the records.
That dose -- mixed with the cocktail of other sedatives in the pop star's system -- was enough to kill him, the Los Angeles County coroner's office concluded in a preliminary toxicology report cited in a search warrant affidavit unsealed Monday in Houston.
These documents address one of the central questions in the Jackson death investigation: What killed him. The coroner's office said in a preliminary report that it found "lethal levels" of propofol in Jackson's system, the records show.
The records also lay out the first detailed chronology of Jackson's final hours-- and reveal Murray's fateful decision to give Jackson the drugs despite his suspicions that the pop star was becoming addicted to them. The narrative is based largely on a three-hour interview Murray gave to Los Angeles police detective two days after Jackson's death on June 25.
Authorities still have not disclosed how Jackson or Murray obtained the propofol, which is typically used in hospitals by anesthesiologists. Another unanswered question is exactly when Jackson stopped breathing. Both are crucial to the criminal investigation.
Police said Murray told them he found Jackson not breathing at 11 a.m. -- a contention that Murray's attorney disputes -- but paramedics were not called until nearly 90 minutes later. During that time, police suspect that Murray made three cellphone calls totaling 47 minutes, according to the affidavits filed last month when authorities sought search warrants for Murray's Houston medical office and storage unit.
In addition, Murray failed to tell paramedics or emergency room doctors that he had administered propofol, a critical omission that calls into question his treatment and could bolster pursuit of an involuntary manslaughter charge, authorities said.
