In Was Michael Jackson Murdered? You Be the Judge, the author of this absorbing, real-life murder mystery examines in detail the final hours of the life of Michael Jackson, to help readers discern what might have been the cause of the superstar’s death in 2009.
When Jackson died, Everett Watson was avid to learn the cause. Was it heart failure as initially reported, or a drug overdose, as later evidence indicated? If related to Jackson’s chronic drug use for insomnia, was it a suicidal move or the result of a third party intervention? And could that third party be, as was later argued, the highly paid physician charged with Michael’s constant care, the only person by his side in his last conscious moments?
Watson was irate when he learned that Dr. Robert Conrad Murray, Jackson’s physician and caretaker in his last moments, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, and equally so because a movie narrated by Murray was being released. The author’s ire stemmed from one major source: he himself had produced a movie, a labor of two years, titled “The Murder of Michael Jackson – the Perfect Murder!”
Watson’s intellectual obsession with the case, coupled with his artistic creation of a 3-D animation project about the events, would lead to a suit against the state of California for allowing the release of Murray’s confessional film, “Michael Joseph Jackson and the Doctor: a Fatal Friendship,” contrary to copyright law. Watson’s fascination with the death of Jackson was not unique; many persons, including Jackson’s closest family, suspected foul play. Murray’s actions in the period leading to Jackson’s demise were sufficiently suspicious to warrant a court case and ultimately, a four-year prison sentence, and the loss of all of medical credentials and licensure.
Watsons’ book covers all this ground, including documentation and photographs. He extracts text from his personal journal, and shows his own actions behind the scenes as the superstar’s sudden demise was being publicly discussed and debated. At the crux of the drama is the anesthesia Propofol, used to rapidly sedate certain patients, which is safe only in prescribed and infrequent doses, and has limited but very occasional incidence of abuse because repeated use, such has been suggested in Jackson’s case, can have fatal reactions including cessation of breathing.
Murray said Jackson begged for Propofol and that he administered it once on that fateful morning, but as Watson points out and others have observed, Murray’s actions were strange when faced with a possibly dying patient: he administered cardiac resuscitation but with one arm only and on a bed rather than a hard surface, and he disappeared entirely hours after Jackson was taken to the hospital. All told, it’s one of the most high-profile deaths in history, which Watson persuasively turns into a murder mystery.
Citing painstakingly gathered facts, with some notable repetitions as evidence is garnered from multiple sources, and the author’s own fertile speculations, Watson has constructed a rational scenario regarding the unexpected death of the controversial but widely admired King of Pop. He does cite opinion as fact to a fair degree, but his book will provide further grounds for speculation about his death, and will shed brighter light upon it for those who only know a few details from media headlines.
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