LOS ANGELES: The family of Michael Jackson might seek an independent autopsy, it emerged on Saturday amid mounting anger and frustration over the final hours of the pop icon’s life.
Jackson’s family members were huddled at their family compound in the northern Los Angeles suburb of Encino, where they have been based since the most famous member of their clan died suddenly on Thursday at age 50.
The Los Angeles Coroner’s office said a preliminary autopsy on Jackson was inconclusive and a final cause of death would not be known until exhaustive toxicology tests are completed in ‘six to eight weeks.’
Jackson’s body was released to his family under cover of darkness late on Friday, and was being kept at an undisclosed location, officials said.
Veteran US politician and activist Reverend Jesse Jackson — who is not related to the family — told ABC television’s Good Morning America that he had spent Friday counselling the family at their estate.
And he revealed that family members were angry and frustrated by unanswered questions surrounding Jackson’s death, and were focussing their attention on the role of the singer’s doctor, identified as Conrad Murray.
Dr Murray is reported to have injected Jackson with the powerful painkiller Demerol shortly before his death.
Los Angeles police said they intended to interview Murray for a second time after initially speaking to him on Thursday. However Jesse Jackson said the family had a flurry of questions of their own.
‘When did the doctor come? What did he do? Did they inject him, if so with what,’ Jesse Jackson said, claiming that Murray had gone missing in the hours immediately following the singer’s death.
‘His absence raises questions of substance that will not go away until they are answered,’ Jesse Jackson said.
‘They (the family) are suspicious of this doctor and they have real reason to be, because any other doctor would say ‘Here’s what happened in the last hour of his life and I was there. I gave him some medicine.’
‘He owes it to the family and to the public to say ‘These were the last hours of Michael’s life and here’s what happened.’ That’s a reasonable expectation.’
Asked if the family would seek their own autopsy, Jesse Jackson replied: ‘I’m sure they ought to, they probably will.’
Los Angeles coroners have said Friday’s preliminary investigation showed no evidence of ‘external trauma or foul play’ on the singer’s body.
However friends and associates of Jackson took to the airwaves to voice anger over the role of advisers and physicians that surrounded the star.
New age guru and Jackson confidante Deepak Chopra – a qualified cardiologist – told CNN bluntly: ‘I think drugs killed him.’Jackson’s former producer Tarak Ben Ammar denounced the doctors around the late pop icon as ‘criminals.’
‘It’s clear that the criminals in this affair are the doctors who treated him throughout his career, who destroyed his face, who gave him medicine to ease his pain,’ he said.—AFP
