A YEAR after Michael Jackson’s death from a drug overdose, his former $140,000-a-month doctor is still awaiting trial on a manslaughter charge
Family members, meanwhile, claim the King of Pop was a victim of everything from negligence to a murder plot.
The controversy over Jackson’s fatal dose of a hospital-grade anaesthetic – which the 50-year-old was misusing as a sleeping aid with the help of his doctor, Conrad Murray – is threatening to escalate into a full-scale family feud.
Dr Murray – who has been allowed to keep his California medical licence – will face a preliminary hearing on August 23, after being the subject of an official investigation. Prosecutors in Los Angeles have admitted that the timetable is likely to slip and it’s still unclear if there is enough evidence to push ahead with a trial, let alone a jury conviction.
Jackson’s father, Joe, has blamed his wife, Katherine, 80, for his son’s death, saying she should have mothered him more. “Katherine was weeping uncontrollably and highly upset,” he said of the day after the couple learned they had lost their son. “But I didn’t give her a hug because I was mad at her. I said. ‘If you had listened to me, Michael would be living now’ I kept thinking about the times I had stood in front of her saying something was wrong” Jackson Sr has since retracted the comment.
He has turned his attention to the medical board of California, where he has filed a complaint against AEG Live, the promoter of his son’s doomed This Is It comeback tour in London, accusing it of engaging in the “unlawful practice of corporate medicine”.
La Toya Jackson, the singer’s sister, has claimed that he was murdered because he was “worth so much more dead than alive”. Another sibling, Jermaine Jackson, has claimed that his brother’s life would have been saved if he’d converted to Islam.
The least contested issue after the singer’s death has been how to divide up the vast earnings of his estate. A will signed by Jackson in 2002 named his mother and three young children as the main beneficiaries.
Family sources say Jackson’s children – Prince Michael, 12, Paris, 11, and Prince Michael II, 8 – are coping well with the loss of their father.
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