Summertime is a time to go on vacation and relax especially if you’re a rising celebrity, but what happens when the people you are supposed to trust sabotage you? Michael Jackson was at a good place in his life until June 25, 2005, when a crooked doctor gave him sleeping medicine used as amnesia that was so strong that even Michael couldn’t “Beat It”. Let’s look at Michael Jackson and the conspiracy theories surrounding his death with the AEG company, Michael’s record label, and Conrad Murray as suspects in Michael’s murder.
Who was Michael Jackson? People classify Jackson as the “King of Pop” “perfectionist" and at times a "lonely man." Imagine a rising star who seemed to have so many hidden things about his life that it took him about fourteen years to come out to the public about his life (“The Michael Jackson Interview: Oprah Reflects”). As a father of three children, most people would not expect him to be such an isolated, closed book. The mystery of why he always spent time in his huge mansion, Neverland Ranch, to relive his childhood because of the traumatizing childhood he had. To this day, the public doesn’t know the full extent of all his secrets, and it makes people wonder was he alone throughout his life.
How did Michael Jacksons’ fans describe him? He was classified as a talented dancer and singer. According to the 1992 Rolling Stone magazine article, idolized Michael Jackson as “The King of Pop” (“10 Reasons Michael Jackson Became the King of Pop”). He did it all starting at a very young age. He was in a band with his family called Jackson 5 and he was the starring role, even though he was the second youngest sibling at the age of five. As lead singer in the band and the family favorite which was a lot of pressure as a child. In an interview with Oprah, Jackson spoke about the hardships that led him to the “King of Pop”:
I don't know if I was his golden child or whatever it was," he said. "Some may call him a strict disciplinarian or whatever, but he was very strict. He was very hard. Just a look would scare…but I do forgive him. (Jackson)
This later resulted in Michael breaking up the group and pursuing his solo musical career, especially after the Thriller album was released (Tribune News Service). A lot of tension was built up within the group and family due to the amount of attention that Michael was getting. After officially leaving the group after the "Victory" tour, which was the final tour that the Jackson 5 took (1). Ever since Michael left the group his siblings and he grew further apart as his stardom kept increasing due to his new album. The album is what put Michael Jackson on the map and led him to be known as the "King of Pop." Within that album, the famous dance move that is trademarked by Michael, the moonwalk, was displayed in music videos such as ‘Billie Jean’ and raised eyebrows on his dance moves along with vocals.
Michael Jackson was viewed by the world as a man who liked things to be in order or other words perfect. In certain cases, this is not always a good thing because very quickly the perfectionist trait can lead to a lack of self-esteem and depression. Michael went through so much but never wanted to let anything get between him and his music. He informed the public during an interview with that that, "I’m never pleased with anything. I am a perfectionist. It’s part of who I am” (Jackson). Michael struggled a lot with perfecting his appearance due to the pressure from his father. Michael claims about his father:
He seems to have reserved a particularly cruel streak of psychological bullying for Michael, the band’s youngest and most talented member. When Joe Jackson learned his teenage son was self-conscious about the size of his nose, he took to referring to him as Big Nose, an insult that haunted him into adulthood. Michael developed a nervous tic of constantly touching and covering his nose with his left hand as if sniffing it – hence producer Quincy Jones giving him the nickname Smelly. Then he began a series of surgical procedures so extreme that he was reportedly forced to wear a prosthesis to cover up the results. (Petridis)
He has undergone two main surgeries in his life and the major one talked about is his nose job (Jackson). Michael received a lot of heat for this surgery because his fans saw it as getting rid of his African American features. To make matters worse, Michael decided to lighten all his skin due to the huge albino patches all over his body due to a disease called vitiligo. At the time, Vitiligo was not a common disease especially among celebrities, so many people were very quick to call him “whitewashed (2). Michael later explained, “We're trying to control it, and using make-up evens it out because it makes blotches on the skin," he told Oprah Winfrey in 1993. “I have to even out the skin” (2). This just proves that he needed everything in his life to be perfect and in place.
At the end of the day, Michael Jackson was also known as a lonely man. In the early 1980s he was deeply unhappy he said, “Even at home I am lonely, I sit in my room sometimes and cry, it's so hard to make friends, sometimes I walk around the neighborhood at night just to find someone to talk to but I just end up coming home" (Wadud). Once splitting from the family group, Michael lost a lot of connections from his siblings. Many say that jealousy split them up and that being the “golden child” of 10 siblings takes a toll on the rest of the family ("Here's What Michael Jackson Said About His Relationship with His Father, Joe Jackson."). As Michael’s fame and wealth grew, it seemed that his loneliness grew too. Michael is a father of three children and lived in a mansion of about 2700 acres. The name of his mansion is called Neverland Ranch and is decorated in the theme of Disney because Michael claimed that he wanted to recreate his childhood, but while doing that he lost a part of his adulthood. He was married twice and both relationships ended with a divorce. Michael was fond of getting to know and spend a lot of his time with young children. To this day, there are many speculations about what his intentions were with those kids and what happened in the Neverland mansion. Jackson denied all claims of having any sexual relationships with these children and just living his childhood vicariously through them.
In the murder case of Michael Jackson, three conspiracy theories are highlighted. One of the conspiracies suggest that Michael Jackson killed himself. The other two conspiracies are that his personal doctor and the music company conspired together to kill Jackson. Many people believe in this theory because of how lonely he was and the ongoing controversy with his relationships with children (“Did Michael Jackson Kill Himself?”1). To this day there are documentaries, articles and discussions out about Michael Jackson sexually assaulting the little boys that he spent majority of his with. The claims were enough to keep Jackson up at night and having trouble sleeping. His personal doctor claimed that Jackson might have been the only person to ever go two months straight without sleep. A Harvard Medical School sleep expert stated the symptoms, “inability to do standard dances or remember words to songs he sang for decades, paranoia, talking to himself and hearing voices, and severe weight loss” was very dangerous for his health. Many experts say that if the surgical anesthetics didn’t kill him on June 25, 2005, then the lack of REM sleep would have taken his life within days (Czeisler 2).
Another conspiracy claims that Michael Jackson was killed by his doctor, which most people believe; especially since his doctor, Conrad Murray, was charged with involuntary manslaughter. Murray was not the first-person Michael asked to infuse him with the surgical anesthetic Propofol. Before him there was two other people, the first person was his personal nurse and the other was Metzger, his doctor for 26 years. Both of them refused to give him what he wanted and advised him that it was unsafe to use the anesthetic outside of a hospital or clinic. This theory is the most realistic among the three because of the evidence built against him in his trial. Jackson died 65 days after the two advised him against taking the drug. He passed by an overdose of Propofol, a drug Dr. Murray told detectives he infused Jackson into Jackson every night for almost 2 months that put him to sleep. The main problem with Dr. Murray is that he practiced as a cardiologist, but Jackson’s main issue was his insomnia and he had no special training to prescribe or handle insomnia as a cardiologist.
The most far-fetched conspiracy is that the music agency was behind Michael Jackson’s death and hired Dr. Murray. The AEG Live, also known as e Anschutz Entertainment Group known for its worldwide music entertainment presenters. They were in full awareness and also known to be in contact with of Dr. Murray. It was even AEG Live and not Jackson who paid Dr. Murray’s salary each month. The Jacksons blame AEG live for Michael Jackson’s death. They accuse the company for not doing a deep enough background check to see that the doctor was dependent on the $150,000 salary that he was receiving. The question everyone wanted to know is whether or not “AEG Live executives knew that Murray might be using dangerous treatments for Jackson's insomnia as he prepared for his 2009 tour.”
The majority of people from my survey which included students from Clear Springs High School, believe that Michael Jackson was killed by his Dr. Conrad Murray. The rest of the votes were split evenly between the theory of Michael Jackson committing suicide and AEG Live conspiracy with Dr. Murry. The fact that majority of people believe that it was all the doctor’s fault is because he was charged with manslaughter and there was circumstantial evidence against him.
On June 25, 2009, the world received terrible and devastating news, Michael Jackson the “King of Pop” was found dead. The music master’s death devolved into three conspiracy theories:
- Did Michael Jackson commit suicide?
- Dr. Conrad Murray murdered Michael Jackson to gain money.
- Dr. Conrad Murray and the AEG Live radio station conspired together to kill Michael Jackson.
Although Conrad Murray was convicted on November 29, 2011, for the involuntary manslaughter of Michael Jackson, the Jackson family still strongly believe that the AEG music company played a strong role in his death.
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