LA police have requested that the coroner’s test results be sealed until the death investigation is completed. That means that it may several more weeks until the public gets to learn about the official cause of death and the toxicology results. According to  MTV, the security hold on the results has been put in place to ensure that the investigation doesn’t get derailed. Here’s the latest:

More than six weeks after Michael Jackson’s death, the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office announced on Monday that it had completed an autopsy on the singer that details his cause of death. Those results, however, are being withheld indefinitely to allow police to complete their investigation, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“The investigation was thorough and comprehensive,” a coroner’s official explained in a news release. But in order to avoid interfering with the ongoing criminal probe by the Los Angeles Police Department into what might have killed the 50-year-old singer, the office will honor the LAPD’s request to put the results on a “security hold.”

Quoting an unnamed police source, TMZ reported that the LAPD doesn’t want the autopsy released, because it could hamper their ongoing investigation. In a statement released on Monday, the police department said its investigation “has included dozens of individual interviews and the service of search warrants locally and out of-state.”

The Guardian reports that the insurance policy for Jackson’s planned 50-show concert covered a lot of things, like cancellation due to death, but it did not cover illicit drug use. So, if the tox reports show that Jackson had illegal drugs in his system, the Jackson estate won’t be able to cash in on the huge policy. Apparently, the insurers knew about Jackson’s history with prescription drug use. This could be a huge blow for the Jackson estate, which is still wading through the huge sums of debt that Michael Jackson accumulated while he was alive.

The insurance policy for Michael Jackson’s cancelled O2 residency will not apply if the late star is found to have taken illegal drugs, the Associated Press has confirmed. Though the policy covers cancellation resulting from death, the insurers are exempted if Jackson was involved in the possession or “illicit taking of drugs”.

The policy’s payout of millions of pounds may therefore hinge on Jackson’s autopsy results, which have twice been delayed. There are numerous reports linking Jackson’s alleged use of propofol, a powerful anaesthetic, with his death on 25 June.

According to the Associated Press, Jackson and AEG Live took out the insurance policy in April. The document only covers the first 13 gigs in the epic 50-show run – bolstering reports that promoters had been unable to insure the full residency. A March estimate showed the 50 concerts required more than £300m in insurance cover.

(Guardian)

E! Online reports today that the first and second autopsy of the Thriller singer have altered his body to such a great degree that any more examinations would be impossible. Jackson’s brain and other tissue have already been removed and embalmed, and the body’s been thoroughly worked over with various tests. However, we have yet to hear a peep about the results of these tests, since the autopsy reveal has been postponed indefinitely. Guess we’ll just have to keep guessing about what really happened to the King of Pop.

A Jackson family source tell E! News that despite a recent spate of reports claiming that Mama Katherine is so convinced of foul play in her son’s death that she wants the King of Pop’s body to go under the scalpel yet again, “there is neither a plan nor a need for another autopsy.”

But it’s not just that another autopsy is unplanned and potentially unnecessary. It may also be unfeasible, thanks to the current state of the star’s already worked-over remains.

The source said that all tissues and samples needed, which include his brain, were already removed and that Jackson’s body is currently embalmed and more or less “a shell” of little or no forensic value.

(E! Online)

Fans have been waiting with baited breath for weeks for the cause of death, while the Coroner’s office has continued to push back the deadline. We told you on Wednesday that the announcement had already been pushed back to next week.

Now we learn that the coroners are pushing back the reveal “indefinitely.” That doesn’t sound good. Apparently there are so many pieces to the puzzle- multiple doctors, prescriptions, and aliases- that the office can’t process everything fast enough. E! Online shares the disappointing tidbit:

At this point in time, the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office has “no idea” when the final autopsy report is going to be released, according to Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter.

The coroner’s office was once aiming for Friday to announce the cause of death. Then the middle of next week was deemed more likely.

But now, following a meeting between officials from the coroner’s office, the L.A. District Attorney’s Office and the L.A. Police Department, no one is making any guesses as to when they’ll announce their findings to the public, as authorities continue trying to connect the dots with regard to the King of Pop’s death.

The multiple law-enforcement agencies on the case are on the same page, a source told the L.A. Times Thursday. Instead, it’s the sheer scope of the investigation—and all the characters involved—that’s holding up the proceedings.

From Mercury News:

The Los Angeles County coroner’s office says release of Michael Jackson’s autopsy results will be delayed.

Coroner’s officials had said they were going to release the results this week but Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter said Wednesday the announcement will probably not come until next week.

Winter did not discuss reasons for the delay, saying only that his office needed to “finish up a bunch of stuff.”

Jackson died June 25.

A law enforcement official has said investigators are working under the theory that the powerful anesthetic propofol (PROH’-puh-fahl) caused Jackson’s heart to stop. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Color us confused- why isn’t the autopsy ready? All of these extras delays makes us suspect that there are details within the report that authorities are afraid to let the public know about. But in reality, the extra waiting just makes us all the more eager to find out what’s going on. Stay tuned!

Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators have begun an inquiry into whether coroner’s employees illegally leaked or sold private information related to the investigation of Michael Jackson’s death.

Investigators spoke to the coroner’s office Friday and will handle the inquiry with the district attorney’s office, according to sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore. The department was asked to conduct the probe by county supervisors, he said.

“It’s an inquiry, not an investigation, and it is very preliminary,” Whitmore said. “We’ve just made a couple of calls. We want to find out if we need to proceed, if this requires an investigation.”

On Wednesday the coroner’s office said Jackson’s death certificate was improperly viewed by at least a half-dozen employees who had no role in investigating the cause of his death.

If the Jackson case officially turns into a manslaughter probe — no charges have been filed yet, and police and the coroner’s office are still conducting investigations — prosecutors would have to provide clear evidence that his doctor, or other health-care providers, acted in a reckless or negligent manner, thereby causing the 50-year-old pop icon’s death on June 25.

“Any time you do any lawful act, like the administration of drugs, if you do it in a way that’s reckless or indifferent to its consequences, you can be charged with manslaughter,” said Los Angeles attorney Harland Braun, who is not connected to the Jackson case, but is best known for successfully defending filmmaker John Landis in 1984 against manslaughter charges connected to three stunt-related deaths on the set of “The Twilight Zone” movie. “It’s just like if you’re driving recklessly down the street without regard to people’s safety. It has to be recklessness more than negligence … knowing the danger and acting despite that danger.”

Unlike a murder charge, manslaughter does not require proof of an intent to kill. In Jackson’s case, prosecutors would be looking at whether Murray or another health-care provider took an unnecessary risk by injecting the singer with drugs or providing him with dangerous medication. Read on…

Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter said Thursday that those results are expected to take two more weeks, though he did not specify what is causing the delay. TMZ reported that unnamed sources pinned the delay on incomplete reports from several outside consultants. The final toxicology screen should detail what drugs were in Jackson’s system when he died and could determine whether criminal charges are brought in the case. If police find that the singer died as a result of an overdose of medication administered by medical personnel, that person or persons could face criminal charges.

Although Los Angeles police officials backpedaled earlier this week from reports that the probe into Jackson’s death could become a homicide investigation, Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office spokesperson Sandi Gibbons told TMZ on Thursday that the LAPD’s investigation is criminal. (source)

Jon Furniss/WireImage.com

British newspaper The Sun published gruesome details from what was purported to be Michael Jackson’s autopsy, but now the LA coroner’s office is challenging the authenticity of the story. The coroners claim that many of the details in the  report that The Sun obtained are false, but the findings have already started making the rounds on the Internet.

Reuters breaks it down in this article:

Assistant chief coroner Ed Winter said on Monday details reported in the British Sun tabloid about Jackson’s condition did not come from either the private or the county autopsy.

“I don’t know where that information came from, or who that information came from. It is not accurate. Some of it is totally false,” Winters told reporters.

The Sun’s sensationalist report claimed that Jackson’s face was covered with plastic surgery scars, he was wearing a wig, and his frail, emaciated body was filled with painkillers and covered with injection wounds.

Frustrated by the lack of hard information, the family requested a second autopsy on Jackson’s body, which was being kept at an undisclosed location, officials and local media reports said.

Late on Saturday the Los Angeles Times reported the autopsy had been completed but there was no word on the findings. “We don’t like what’s going on,” family patriarch Joe Jackson told People magazine. The Jacksons later issued a statement to fans describing the death as “one of the darkest moments of our lives”.

The Los Angeles Coroner’s office said on Friday a preliminary autopsy on Jackson was inconclusive and a final cause of death would not be known until exhaustive toxicology tests are completed in “six to eight weeks”.