Doctor Tells How Jackson Sought Sleep (Published 2011) (2024)

In an interview recorded two days after Michael Jackson’s death, Dr. Conrad Murray told the Los Angeles police that he had spent hours trying to get the singer to sleep using milder drugs before resorting to a powerful anesthetic that Jackson referred to as his “milk.”

Neither the two-hour recording nor its contents had been made public before being played in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Friday. Dr. Murray is charged with involuntary manslaughter and is accused of giving Jackson an overdose of the anesthetic propofol, which killed him. Dr. Murray has pleaded not guilty.

In the recording, Dr. Murray detailed the doses of the sedatives lorazepam and midazolam that he administered to Jackson from 2 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. before the singer died on June 25, 2009. The drugs, given intravenously in the leg, seemed to have no effect, and he remained wide awake, the doctor said.

By 10 a.m., Dr. Murray said that Jackson requested propofol.

Dr. Murray said that he had administered propofol to Jackson every night for two months, but that Jackson was so familiar with the medication that the first time he used it, he knew exactly how much he needed and asked to be the one who pushed it through the needle. Early in the interview with the police, Dr. Murray said he assumed that other doctors were caring for Mr. Jackson, but that he never said so. Later in the interview, he listed the names of other doctors who had treated Mr. Jackson before.

Dr. Murray said he started to wean Jackson off propofol and onto milder drugs three days before he died. “I didn’t want him to fail,” he said. “I had no intentions to quitting him, but when I realized that Michael Jackson might have had a dependency, I tried to wean him.”

But on June 25, it was not working, and after several hours, the singer persuaded his doctor to resort to the anesthetic.

“He said, ‘Just make me sleep, it doesn’t matter what happens,’” Dr. Murray said. “I said what about rehearsals?’ ‘I don’t care what time I wake,’ he said. ‘I can’t function if I can’t sleep.’”