Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Man Who Killed Michael Jackson - The Dr. Conrad Murray Story

Episode Date: November 29, 2025

In 2009, Michael Jackson died of an overdose at his Los Angeles home. A powerful anesthetic propofol had been administered by his personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray. In a highly publicized 2011 trial, Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.

So what really happened to Michael Jackson? And why do people say he was murdered? Well, it all starts with this guy, Dr. Murray. And Dr. Murray is 56 years old and he's living in Vegas. And Dr. Murray apparently loves the ladies. Despite the fact that he's married, he loves going to gentlemen's clubs and making it rain and making a big show about how much money he spends

so that he can get the attention of the strippers and the cocktail servers working there. And this appears to work well. for him because he smashes a lot and all that smashing results in babies. Lots and lots of babies. In fact, Dr. Murray has seven children from six different baby mamas. And that's great and all, but kids cost money and bro doesn't really like paying child support for all those kids. And so he gets sued again and again and again by his many baby mamas for not paying child support. In fact, at the end of it all, Dr. Murray owes over 700,000 in court judgments for back child support,

not to mention late mortgage payments on his Vegas mansion, plus he got some credit card debt. So the dude needs money, real bad. And one day in 2009, he gets a call that might be the answer to all his financial problems. And that call is from this guy, Michael Jackson, the king of pop. So this is happening in 2009. So who is Michael Jackson to the world in 2009? Well, he's still probably the most famous, most recognizable person on the entire planet. Everyone knows he made the biggest album of all time and broke records with his massive sellout

tours in the 80s and 90s. But by 2009, he's 50 years old at this point. And Michael, he's been dealing with his own financial problems. And so due to legal bills and drug dependency and mismanagement, Michael is now apparently $500 million in debt. And so to solve this problem, he needs to start touring again. And this will be his first tour in over a decade. And so he announces this tour and it's called This Is It. And fans are super pumped. And it sells out like 50 shows in just a few hours. It's insane. However, Michael, he's much older now and he's not in as good a health as he was the last time he toured. But despite that,

he's still determined to give it his all and perform as well as he ever has. His legacy and his financial future depend on it. And so all of this pressure, plus some health problems he's having, causes him to have terrible insomnia. And to deal with this insomnia, Michael wants a doctor to help him get through rehearsals and then through the tour. So he calls up a doctor he knows, Dr. Murray. And he's like, I need help sleeping.

I really like the drug they gave me. I had surgery. The drug they gave him to knock him out during surgery was propofal. So Michael is asking for a very powerful surgery drug to help him sleep at night. Now, Dr. Murray is a board-certified physician, so it is his professional responsibility to counsel his patient and say, no, no, that's not appropriate to give you propofal to help you sleep. That's actually dangerous. But that's not what Dr. Murray does. Instead, he ends up giving Michael a regular supply of the drug he wants in exchange for $150,000 a month.

And so Dr. Murray flies all the way from Las Vegas over to Los Angeles to be with Michael and be his personal doctor. And of course, Dr. Murray loves the way this makes him look important. He's always name dropping when he's in front of women. Like, yeah, I'm Michael Jackson's doctor. I'll introduce you sometime. Sometimes he'll even use Michael's name to get dates with women half his age. Like, it's really gross.

Anyway, so Dr. Murray and Michael, they get on this whole routine. Michael will go to rehearsals for the tour during the day, and at night, Dr. Murray sets up an IV drip of Propofal next to his bed, and he gives it to him. Now, just to be clear, propofal is not a sleep medication. Like, it doesn't make you sleep. It puts you in a drug-induced coma, so that you don't wake up during major surgery. Like, literally, that's what it's for. And it's only supposed to be used in hospitals because it's crucial.

that someone watch over you the entire time that you're on this drug because Propheaval slows down your breathing and if you stop breathing you won't wake up and you will in fact die. But Dr. Murray ignores all this and he continues to put Michael on an extremely dangerous drug night after night after night. And he doesn't hook Michael up to a heart monitor to be alerted if he stops breathing or anything. Nor does he even have life-saving equipment with him in case something goes wrong. And about two months go by. And then one night something does go horribly wrong.

On this night, Dr. Murray gives Michael a whole cocktail of heavy anti-anxiety drugs, but he still can't sleep. So the next morning he gives him propofal. And then he does the worst thing that a doctor or anyone could do in this moment. He walks away and he leaves Michael there alone unattended. And it's during that time that Michael stops breathing. And of course, Dr. Murray doesn't notice, like, he's busy messing around on his computer and he's like checking his email and he sees that he got an email from Michael's insurance broker for the upcoming tour and the insurance broker is like, are you sure Michael is healthy enough to tour? We've heard he's not in good health. And Dr. Murray emails them back and he's like, that's ridiculous. Michael's in perfect health. Then the dude starts making phone calls and he's on

the phone chatting with a new younger woman he's trying to smash with. And then, That is when he finally checks and he notices that Michael isn't breathing. So he panics and he tries to give Michael CPR. But here's the weird thing. Despite being a doctor, Dr. Murray doesn't know how to properly do CPR. So he does it wrong. Now, at this point, he should at the very least call 911. But he doesn't even do that.

Instead, he calls Michael's personal security. And so soon you have Michael's bodyguard running into the room and Dr. Murray instructs the bodyguard to help him get rid of the Propofal vials and the ivy bag of Propofal. And so Dr. Murray waits until after he's cleaned everything up in the room to say, okay, call 911. And so finally, more than 25 minutes after Murray first saw Michael not breathing, the bodyguard calls 911. Some sources say he waited as long as 83 minutes,

so that's somewhere between 25 and 83 minutes of his patient not breathing. And so Michael, he's rushed. to the hospital, but by that point, it's too late. He's already gone. The most famous person in the world has passed away. And then, when the news of Michael's passing gets out, it is a massive story that blows the fuck up. And millions of people flood to Google and Wikipedia and Twitter looking for news about Michael,

so much so that the sites can't handle that much traffic and they all temporarily go down. In fact, so many people Google Michael Jackson at the same time that the people working at Google think that they're under some kind of cyber attack. That's how big this news is. And so you already know he had hundreds of millions of fans all over the world. And of course, they are shocked and devastated. But the news the fans get next ends up being even more shocking. Due to the lethal amount of Propofal medical examiners find in his system, Michael's death is officially ruled a homicide. And so, bam, police arrest Dr. Murray.

Here's his mugshot. And so ultimately, he has to go to trial and answer for the fact that he gave Michael's so much propofol? By the end of it all, Dr. Murray admits no fault and takes no responsibility. And so he's found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, and he's sentenced to four years in prison. And later in 2016, after he's out,

he releases a book about Michael called This Is It, same thing as Tor was called, and in it he apparently blames everyone else for Michael's death besides himself, because I guess he's a turd, and he still keeps trying to make money off of Michael's name.