Untouchable

by Randall Sullivan

  (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

  Jackson’s children Prince, Blanket, and Paris (L-R) with Katherine Jackson and Justin Bieber at a 2012 Grauman’s Chinese Theatre Hand & Footprint Ceremony. The kids would use their father’s sequined glove and dance shoes to “immortalize” him in the forecourt of the theater.

  (Lester Cohen/WireImage)

  This memorial, erected by fans in Prague’s Old Town Square a few days after Jackson died, demonstrates that grief for him stretched across the globe.

  (STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images)

  Moonwalker: Michael Jackson doing his signature move onstage at Wembley during the Bad tour in 1988.

  (©Harrison Funk/ZUMApress.com)

  Prince and Paris Jackson stepped into the bedroom moments later. Both of them began to cry as they watched Murray and Alvarez struggling to revive their father. Paris fell down on her hands and knees; she began to sob and scream, “Daddy!” over and over again, Muhammad remembered. “Get them out! Get them out!” Murray shouted at the security guards. “Don’t let them see their father like this!” Alvarez called for the nanny, who quickly ushered the two children out of the room and back down the stairs.

  It was 12:20 by then and still no call to 911 had been made. Somehow, though, Murray managed to send text messages at 12:03 and 12:04, and data packages—possibly photos or other media—at 12:15 and 12:18. According to Alvarez, Dr. Murray delayed making the call to emergency services so that he could disconnect the IV line (in which “a milklike substance” showed through the tubing) from Mr. Jackson’s leg, then gather up the drug vials strewn about the bedroom. Dr. Murray handed the vials and the IV line to him, Alvarez recalled, then said to load the whole lot of it into medical bags and place the bags in the closet.

  It was Alvarez himself who finally made the 911 call at 12:21 p.m. and engaged in the following one-minute-and-fifty-six-second conversation:

  911 operator: Paramedic 33, what is the nature of your emergency?

  Alvarez: Yes, sir, I need an ambulance as soon as possible.

  911 operator: Okay, sir, what’s your address?

  Alvarez: Carolwood Drive, Los Angeles, California, 90077.

  911 operator: Is it Carolwood?

  Alvarez: Carolwood Drive, yes (inaudible).

  911 operator: Okay, sir, what’s the phone number you’re calling from and (inaudible) and what exactly happened?

  Alvarez: Sir, we have a gentleman here that needs help and he’s not breathing, he’s not breathing and we need to—we’re trying to pump him but he’s not . . .

  911 operator: Okay, how old is he?

  Alvarez: He’s fifty years old, sir.

  911 operator: Okay, he’s unconscious and he’s not breathing?

  Alvarez: Yes, he’s not breathing, sir.

  911 operator: Okay, and he’s not conscious, either?

  Alvarez: No, he’s not conscious, sir.

  911 operator: Okay, all right, is he on the floor, where is he at right now?

  Alvarez: He’s on the bed, sir. He’s on the bed.

  911 operator: Okay, let’s get him on the floor. Let’s get him down to the floor. I’m gonna help you with CPR right now, okay?

  Alvarez: (inaudible), we need to . . .

  911 operator: We’re on our way there. We’re on our way. I’m gonna do as much as I can to help you over the phone. We’re already on our way. (inaudible) did anybody see him?

  Alvarez: Yes, we have a personal doctor here with him, sir.

  911 operator: Oh! You have a doctor there?

  Alvarez: Yes, but he’s not responding to anything. He’s not responding to CPR or anything.

  911 operator: Okay, okay, we’re on our way there. If you guys are doing CPR instructed by a doctor you have a higher authority than me. Did anybody witness what happened?

  Alvarez: Just the doctor, sir. The doctor’s been the only one here.

  911 operator: Okay, did the doctor see what happened, sir?

  [Alvarez can be heard beginning to ask the question before he’s cut off by someone speaking angrily in an uncommon foreign language (many residents of Conrad Murray’s home country speak “Patois Trinidad,” which was first identified as a language by Christopher Columbus in 1498.]

  Alvarez: Sir, you just—if you can please . . .

  911 operator: We’re on our way. I’m just passing these questions on to my paramedics while they’re on their way there.

  Alvarez: Okay. He’s pumping his chest but he’s not responding to anything, sir. Please . . .

  911 operator: Okay, we’re on our way. We’re less than a mile away. We’ll be there shortly.

  Three minutes and seventeen seconds later, the paramedics came in through the front door of the Carolwood chateau and ran toward the stairs leading to the master bedroom.

  “I walked into the hall, and I saw the children there crying,” Kai Chase recalled. “The daughter was crying. I saw paramedics running up the stairs.”

  At 12:26 p.m. the paramedics arrived at the bedside of Michael Jackson, where they found him unconscious, not breathing, and in full cardiac arrest. He thought at first that the man on the bed was much older than fifty, recalled paramedic Richard Senneff. The fellow looked like a hospice patient, almost skeletal and with feet that were a disturbing shade of blackish blue. He was startled, Senneff said, when someone told him this was Michael Jackson. Senneff and his partner, Martin Blount, quickly pulled Jackson’s body to the floor and began performing the standard form of CPR the way it should have been done from the beginning.

  Kai Chase, along with the children’s nanny and one of the housekeepers, held hands and formed a circle with Prince, Paris, and Blanket in the hallway at the foot of the stairs. “We were all praying,” Chase remembered. “‘Help Mr. Jackson be okay.’ Then everyone was quiet.”

  It was obvious to the paramedics within moments that they had arrived too late, Senneff and Blount recalled. Senneff had asked as he came into the bedroom how long the man on the bed had been “down” and was told by the doctor that, “It just happened.” He and Blount, though, agreed that based on Mr. Jackson’s dilated pupils, dry eyes, and cold skin, the man had gone into arrest quite some time ago. Dr. Murray, who was sopping wet with sweat, insisted to the two paramedics that he had phoned 911 one minute after noticing that Michael was no longer breathing.

  At 12:57 p.m., the paramedics received permission over the telephone from Dr. Richelle Cooper at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center to pronounce the patient dead. Dr. Murray responded by kneeling over the body and laying two fingers on the inside of one elbow. He could feel a pulse, Murray told Senneff and Blount, and was refusing to accept a pronouncement of death. Urged on by Murray, the paramedics attempted to restart Michael Jackson’s heart with a defibrillator and deployed an air pump to inflate his lungs. When that failed, Murray got on the phone with Dr. Cooper and her colleague Dr. Than Nguyen, who instructed the paramedics to inject adrenalin directly into Michael’s heart. It had no discernible effect.

  At 1:07 p.m., nearly forty-two minutes after their arrival at the Carolwood address, the paramedics loaded Michael Jackson’s body onto a stretcher and carried him to the ambulance, followed by Conrad Murray, who would ride with his patient to UCLA. According to Dr. Murray, Michael still had a faint pulse.

  It was about 1:30, Kai Chase said, when security guards ordered her and the rest of the staff to leave the property because “Mr. Jackson was being taken to the hospital.”

  Frank Dileo had been eating lunch at the Beverly Hilton Hotel when he received a cell phone call from a Michael Jackson fan who said there was an ambulance in front of the Carolwood house. Dileo immediately phoned Michael Amir Williams to ask if that was true. It was, said Brother Michael, who added that he was on his way to Carolwood right now. After taking the elevator upstairs to change from shorts into long pants, Dileo returned to the hotel lobby, then went out front to retrieve his car from valet parking. He was already driving toward Holmby Hills, Dileo said, when he ph
oned Randy Phillips, who lived very close to Carolwood Drive. Phillips was at the dry cleaners when he answered the call. He headed quickly outside to his car and started driving to Holmby Hills.

  Tohme Tohme was at home in Brentwood when he took a cell phone call from an Internet reporter who asked if it was true that Michael Jackson had had a heart attack. “I said, ‘You gotta be out of your mind,’” Tohme remembered. “And then I got a call from NBC asking the same thing. Then I got a call from ABC. So I told my son to turn the TV on.” The first image that came onscreen was of an ambulance parked in front of the Carolwood house.

  Dileo got lost on his way to Carolwood Drive and found the gates to Michael’s house flung wide open with a group of security guards standing out front when he finally arrived. The ambulance had already left with Michael, the guards said. Figuring that the ambulance was headed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Dileo began driving in that direction. While on the road, he again phoned Randy Phillips, who said he was following the ambulance to the hospital. No—it was UCLA, not Cedars, Phillips told Dileo. Moments later, Dileo got a call on his cell phone from the Hayvenhurst estate. It was Katherine Jackson. “I heard they took my son to the hospital,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on,” Dileo told her. “Give me a minute to find out and I’ll call back.” He was still headed toward UCLA three minutes later, Dileo said, when Mrs. Jackson’s driver called to ask what he should do. “Bring her to UCLA Medical Center,” Dileo told the driver.

  The seven-minute ride to the hospital’s emergency room was “unbelievable . . . like the Rose Parade,” Richard Senneff remembered. “People running down the street, taking pictures, random cars passing the ambulance. It was insane.”

  By the time Dileo arrived at the UCLA Medical Center, the main lobby was filled with security guards and nobody could get through. He made his way through a crowd to the emergency room, Dileo recalled, and found Randy Phillips waiting. Randy said he wasn’t sure what was going on. The staff in emergency knew who he and Randy were, Dileo said, and permitted the two men through the security door that led back to the room where a team of doctors surrounded the gurney on which Michael Jackson lay. “Outside the room, we heard them working on him,” Dileo recalled. “We thought he was alive. Then—no.”

  Dr. Cooper and Dr. Nguyen agreed that Michael Jackson was officially dead an hour and twelve minutes after his body’s arrival at the hospital. Frank Dileo and Randy Phillips walked back out to the emergency room lobby, where they arranged for the wheelchair, the cardiologist, and the social worker who would be waiting when Katherine Jackson arrived at the hospital a short time later.

  “It was madness at the hospital when I got there,” Tohme Tohme remembered. “Police, fans, media. The police are keeping everybody back, but they knew me and let me in. I walked in by myself and then I saw Randy Phillips. He told me, ‘We lost him.’ I said, ‘I wanna see him.’ So they took me in a room, he was in a small room, a viewing room. I saw him and it broke my heart. Then I saw Katherine and the kids come in. Everybody was crying. I just couldn’t stand it. I didn’t know what to think or do. I just hugged the kids and started to leave. But Randy Phillips came to me and said, ‘Doc, we need you.’ He and someone else from AEG, I don’t even remember who they were, said we need to go to the conference room to sign some document. I didn’t even know what it was. I was in a daze. I just signed it. Randy said we needed more security at the house, so I called for that. Then Randy said we had to go talk to some administrator at the hospital. As we were walking by he introduced me to Dr. Murray. I said, ‘Who the hell is Dr. Murray?’ And Randy said, ‘This was Michael’s personal doctor.’ The first time I heard they hired a doctor for Michael was the first and only time I saw Dr. Murray. Dr. Murray came in the conference room with us and there was a conversation I can’t talk about. Murray left, and then they said we had to make an announcement to the media.”

  The group remaining in the conference room decided that Tohme would introduce Jermaine Jackson, and that Jermaine would address the media.

  Michael Jackson had been dead for nearly four hours when his older brother Jermaine, wearing a crisp white shirt and a remarkably calm expression, stood before the cameras and microphones to read a prepared statement that someone else had written.

  “This is hard,” he began: “My brother, the legendary King of Pop, Michael Jackson, passed away on Thursday, June 25, 2009, at 2:26 p.m. It is believed he suffered cardiac arrest in his home. However, the cause of death is unknown until the results of the autopsy are known.

  “His personal physician, who was with him at the time, attempted to resuscitate my brother—as did the paramedics who transported him to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. Upon arriving at the hospital at approximately 1:14 p.m., a team of doctors, including emergency physicians and cardiologists, attempted to resuscitate him for a period of more than one hour. They were unsuccessful.

  “Our family requests that the media please respect our privacy during this tough time,” Jermaine went on, then added his own addendum: “May Allah be with you, Michael, always. Love you.”

  As respectful of Michael’s “personal physician” as the prepared statement had been, a number of those at the hospital already harbored suspicions about Conrad Murray. The doctor was “spinning . . . moving around, nervous, sweating, multitasking,” remembered Richard Senneff, who told the emergency room doctors that Murray had initially told him Mr. Jackson was “dehydrated,” then admitted to giving Michael some Ativan to sleep, but made no mention of any other drug.

  Murray would say later that he was upset because Paris Jackson had wept to him that she was now “an orphan.” He told Michael’s daughter that “I tried my best,” Murray said, and the girl answered, “I know you tried your best.”

  Even before the public announcement of Michael Jackson’s death, Murray asked at least two people for rides back to the Carolwood chateau. Brother Michael, who had followed the ambulance to the hospital, recalled that shortly after Michael Jackson was pronounced dead Dr. Murray said he needed to return to the Carolwood chateau, “so that he could pick up some cream that Mr. Jackson has so that the world wouldn’t find out about it.” (Dozens of tubes of skin-whitening creams were later found, along with a large quantity of Diprivan, in a medical bag that had been stashed in a cupboard of a closet in Michael Jackson’s bedroom.) Faheem Muhammad, also at the hospital, remembered that Dr. Murray told him he was hungry and wanted to leave. He suggested the doctor eat at the hospital, Muhammad recalled, but watched as Murray walked out of the building anyway.

  Travis Payne was driving on Sunset Boulevard, headed to the Carolwood chateau for his 2 p.m. private rehearsal with Michael Jackson, when his cell phone rang. It was a cousin from Atlanta, calling to say he had heard that Michael Jackson had been rushed to the hospital and might be dead. He thought it was just “another big story,” Payne recalled, but when Payne’s mother phoned a few minutes later and said she had heard something similar, “I started to worry,” he admitted. He still figured the whole thing was another hoax, the choreographer said, but decided to drive to the Staples Center to see what was happening there.

  “We were getting a lot of rumor calls,” remembered Kenny Ortega, who was already at Staples when Payne arrived. “My phone was just ringing constantly.” He was waiting for Randy Phillips to call from the hospital and tell him “what was really happening,” Ortega said: “Of course, what I wanted to believe was that this was another of those days in the life of Michael where rumor and exaggeration take over.”

  He and Kenny agreed that they should just begin getting ready for rehearsal like they always did, Travis Payne recalled. First, though, Ortega gathered the entire production team around him—musicians, dancers, the musical director, the vocal coach, the dance coach, the production and lighting designers, even the technicians—and led them in a prayer that Michael would “return to us in a strong state of health,” as the show director recalled it.

  Only a few more m
inutes passed, though, before Ortega got that call from the hospital. “I just saw Kenny’s face drop,” Payne remembered. They all knew what had happened before Ortega said a word, the choreographer recalled: “Everyone went silent.”

  People were slow to react, Travis Payne remembered: “No one wanted to believe it. Finally, we all realized it must be true.” The entire group gathered again, dimmed the lights, lit a candle, and watched the flame flicker in the dark.

  PART FIVE

  REMAINS

  24

  The Michael Jackson show was still going on, even bigger in his absence than it had been while he was around. New media and old were seized by the revelation of his passing on a scale and to a depth that surpassed all understanding. Order would not be easily restored.

  The Los Angeles–based “entertainment news” purveyor TMZ.com claimed credit for breaking the story of Michael Jackson’s death with a terse bulletin it had issued at 2:44 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time. CNN needed two full hours after TMZ’s initial report to confirm the news. Word of Michael’s death had first gone public twenty-three minutes before TMZ announced it, however, with a Facebook status update posted at 2:21 p.m., five minutes before the official announcement by the UCLA Medical Center. By the time the media was alerted, a crowd of praying, chanting, clamoring fans had already formed at the main entrance to the hospital, serenaded by Michael’s own performance of his song “Human Nature,” played repeatedly on speakers that had been stacked in the windows of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house across the street.

  People had begun to gather even earlier outside the gates of the Carolwood chateau, where, in an only-in-Los Angeles moment, a celebrity homes tour bus happened to pull up outside Michael Jackson’s rented home at the very moment the entertainer’s body was being driven through the open gates in a cherry-red ambulance. Several passengers disembarked right there and became the nucleus of a crowd that by three o’clock was swollen with grief-stricken fans who sobbed to Michael’s music, many already dressed in various renditions of his wardrobe. Among them was Marie Courchinoux, one of the dancers Michael had selected for his London shows, who wore a single white glove and explained through tears that she simply didn’t know where else to go. A second tour bus passed by and many of the passengers demanded to be let off to join the mourners.