LOS ANGELES — Jurors who have sat facing Dr. Conrad Murray for two weeks listened Friday as the physician detailed in a recorded interview his interactions and treatments on Michael Jackson in the months and hours before the singer’s death.
Murray sounded calm on the more than two hour recording as he spoke of their relationship, efforts to save his life and the medications he gave Jackson in his efforts to get him to fall asleep. It was the first time Murray’s interview with police detectives had been played in public.
The June 27, 2009, interview outside a noisy hotel ballroom gave police their first hint that Jackson’s death was not from natural causes and that he had been given the powerful anesthetic propofol in an effort to cure his extreme insomnia.
“He’s not able to sleep naturally,” Murray told the detectives early in the interview.
Just before court adjourned for the day, Murray is heard on the recording telling detectives that he had no intention of hurting Jackson: “I did not want him to fail.”
Murray walked detectives through the treatments he gave the singer on the day he died, including doses of the sedatives lorazepam and Versed.
In a calm, slightly accented voice, Murray told detectives that the singer remained awake and continued to complain about his lack of sleep.
Murray told detectives he relented to Jackson’s demand for his “milk” — a nickname the doctor said the singer used for propofol, which is a milky-white liquid.
Authorities claim Murray gave Jackson a lethal dose of propofol and other sedatives while trying to help the singer. Defense attorneys say Jackson gave himself the lethal dose after Murray left the room.
