THE mystery over Michael Jackson's death deepened yesterday amid claims from one of his sisters he was murdered and new revelations about money-driven hangers-on who seemingly held the singer under their spell.
Claiming to have foreseen his death just weeks before it happened, Jackson's older sister La Toya, 53, accused unnamed members of his "shadowy" entourage of deliberately getting him hooked on drugs so that they could milk him financially.
"I think
it shocked his system so much it killed him … I believe Michael was murdered, I felt that from the start," she said.
"Not just one person was involved – rather it was a conspiracy of people. He was surrounded by a bad circle … Michael was worth more than a billion dollars. When anyone is worth that much money, there are always greedy people around them," she said.
Her comments echoed a declaration by Bill Bratton, the police chief for Los Angeles, that the ongoing investigation into the King of Pop's sudden death last month could yet result in homicide charges.
In an interview due to be aired tomorrow, Jackson's father, Joe, 79, will also claim that his son was the victim of a sinister clique. "I do believe it was foul play," he says in the interview.
While some reports yesterday suggested that Jackson's mother Katherine, 79, had teamed up with her son's ex-wife, Debbie Rowe – mother of two of his three children – to discuss how to keep Jackson's father away from the youngsters, Mr Jackson himself betrayed no signs of such a rift.
Meanwhile, a doctor in Las Vegas came forward yesterday to claim that he experienced first-hand Jackson's habit of "doctor shopping" – and the extent to which those around him used intimidatory tactics to facilitate it – when he was called to a suite at the city's Mirage hotel, where the entertainer was staying, in November 2003.
Jackson was to said to have had a cold and bad throat, but the doctor concluded that the singer, backed by his handlers, was simply faking in an attempt to get a prescription.
"The whole thing was staged," the doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, adding: "It was all a lie. They just wanted drugs. They wanted me to call in all these pills under someone else's name." When the doctor indicated that he could not go along with the fraud, Jackson's main handler "started giving me a rough time".
As he backed out of the hotel room, the doctor stuttered that he would see what he could do. Jackson's representative strode up to him, jabbed a finger into his chest and snarled: "You do that."
As the wrangling continued over where Jackson's body should be laid to rest, with some members of the Jackson family said to favour his former California estate, Neverland, Jack Wishna, president of the entertainment consultancy CPAmerica, revealed that Jackson himself might have begged to differ.
Mr Wishna, who worked with Jackson on a plan to relaunch the singer's career two years ago, but dropped the idea concluding that the star was mentally and vocally incapable of performing, said that the trauma of the child sex abuse allegations made against him – which centred on Neverland – had left Jackson unable to face going back there.
"Jackson said 'I never, never, never want to go back to Neverland. Never'," Mr Wishna said.
"My thought is if someone buries him in Neverland he will come up out of the ground like in Thriller and strangle them … He would never set foot back on Neverland. He never wanted to go there, never wanted to sleep there – never, never."
