John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley.
The autopsies of such legends should have been the most painstaking and impartial. But there appears to be substantial evidence to the contrary in these historic cases and others.
Could the autopsy of Michael Jackson be the same?
The full report has not yet been publicized by the Los Angeles Medical Examiner, Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, who covered the murder cases of both Phil Spector and O.J. Simpson. But released details and conclusions from his report give cause for wonder even on basic issues.
First, take Jackson’s weight.
The ME recorded the star at 136. But when booked on child molestation charges in Santa Barbara in 2003, he was 120. In the final six years of his life, Jackson handlers expressed alarm at his weight loss, calling him “emaciated” and possibly bulimic. His own personal physician and close friend, Dr. Arnold Klein, told TMZ that the King of Pop looked like he’d “come from Auschwitz.”
But the autopsy reports that Jackson gained 16 pounds in these last years. One would have expected a loss. Indeed, coroner inside sources said the star was “skin and bones,” and told Geraldo Rivera he weighed 112.
The next area of autopsy report peculiarity: Jackson’s lungs. In his 1988 autobiography, “Moon Walk,” he revealed that he had been diagnosed in the ‘70s with a condition related to pleurisy. Subsequently, he was often hospitalized with the flu, pneumonia and shortness of breath. He traveled with oxygen tanks.
Though the coroner found that Jackson did indeed have “chronically inflamed lungs,” he concluded that he was “fairly healthy” even so.
Since the star died of pulmonary failure, did the coroner test for the cause of the inflammation and find it to be indeterminable or benign?
In 1987, Jackson’s close friend, Liberace, died. His personal physician recorded cardiac arrest on the death certificate. But after autopsy, the Riverside medical examiner concluded the entertainer had died of cytomegalovirus pneumonia from the AIDS virus. His estate’s executors filed a libel suit against the coroner’s office. They lost.
Liberace -- whom Michael called “Lee, my guardian angel”— had lost 75 pounds and been bedridden and on oxygen for months. He had been diagnosed HIV-positive the previous year by Dr. Elias Ghanem, Vegas’ doctor to the stars who had treated Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, among others.
The tragic 1990 AIDS death of young Ryan White devastated his benefactor, Michael. Soon afterwards, he was rushed to the hospital, suffering shortness of breath, vertigo and chest pains. According to his biographer, J. Randy Taraborrelli, he was tested for HIV and found negative. His friend and collaborator, Freddie Mercury of Queen, was not so fortunate: The virus claimed his life the following year.
Michael, too, was at high risk for the disease: He was a transfusion recipient and -- according to his biographer, Ian Halperin, as well as several others – he was gay. In the last years of his life, he suffered many bacterial and viral infections, flu-like fatigue, nausea, as well as skin problems, dramatic weight-loss and insomnia.
