Doctor claims he felt ‘entrapped’ working for Jackson

THE doctor convicted of killing Michael Jackson remained silent during his trial, but Conrad Murray defended himself in interviews taped just days before a jury found him guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

Murray defended his use of the surgical anaesthetic propofol to put Jackson to sleep in an interview aired last night on NBC.

He said he felt entrapped once he started working for Jackson and was later betrayed.

“Once I got in there I was entrapped,” he said. “Through his most intense desire to have me there with him, it was interwinded (sic) with a degree of betrayal.

“He was basically hysterical,” he said. “He begged and pleaded and said, ‘please Dr Conrad, I need some milk (propofol) so that I can get some sleep. If I don’t get some sleep ... everything will go down the drain.’ He looked to me during that morning to be like the thriller. He looked that hysterical.

“I think propofol is not recommended to be given in the home setting,” Murray said, “but it is not contraindicated.”

The Houston cardiologist also said Jackson had been using the substance long before the pop star met Murray.

Under questioning by the Today show’s Savannah Guthrie, Murray said it was not necessary for him to monitor Jackson because he had given him only a small dose of propofol, and he said that was the reason he didn’t mention it to paramedics when they arrived at Jackson’s mansion.

“That’s a very sad reason,” he said, “because it was inconsequential — 25 milligrams and the effect’s gone. Means nothing.”

Guthrie asked, “Well, you told them about the other drugs, but you didn’t tell them about propofol?”

“Because it had no effect,” Murray said. “It was not an issue.”

The coroner would subsequently find that Jackson, 50, died of “acute propofol intoxication” after a huge dose of the drug complicated by other sedatives.

Murray’s defence tried to show that Jackson gave himself an extra dose of propofol while Murray was out of the room, but prosecution experts said there was no evidence of that.

Murray, 58, was hired by Jackson at a promised salary of $150,000 (€110,449) a month to accompany the singer on his This Is It concert tour to London.

He cried as he described Jackson’s death: “I tried so hard. It was horrible ... I didn’t want to lose him. I love him.

“He felt I was someone he could trust,” he said. “All of his life he was searching for a friend. He had very close acquaintances — he spoke about Marlon Brando and his son, and Fred Astaire and Ginger — but friends he didn’t have. He said ‘of all my life I have found one friend, which is you, Dr Conrad’.”