The King of Pop will reportedly be buried at  Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles, though the exact burial spot hasn’t been revealed. Now that fans know the date of the funeral, we’re guessing swarms of them will show up at the cemetery at the end of the month to catch of the glimpses of the proceedings.

Joseph Jackson says his son Michael will be finally laid to rest on Aug. 29, on what would have been the King of Pop’s 51st birthday.

Speaking to New York’s Daily News, the Jackson patriarch said the burial would take place at Los Angeles’s Forest Lawn Cemetery at 10 that morning, some two months after Michael’s June 25 death.

Jackson, 80, said that these arrangements had only been finalized recently, says the News. He also said that his wife Katherine, from whom he lives separately, has been particularly hard hit by their son’s death and suffers crying jags.

(From People Magazine)

According to the unnamed business associate, Jackson’s behavior on a trip in Dubai was so bizarre that those around him questioned him about his drug usage, and Jackson admitted to using a substance with a description matching Propofol.

Michael Jackson’s propofol abuse could have started as early as 2005, according to sources with longstanding relationships with the singer.

“He went to Dubai in 2005 and when he was there, people around him started to grow concerned. He was acting bizarre, and everyone knew he was using,” said one business associate. “Finally he was confronted and all he’d say was ‘It’s stronger than Demerol, it’s something you can only get at the hospital.’ Now, looking back, it sounds like it could have been propofol.”

“He described it to me as ‘something to sleep that completely puts you out, that you get in hospitals,’ ” said another source who was in talks to start a new tour with Jackson during the Dubai trip, which followed the singer’s acquittal on child molestation charges.

“His behavior was strange enough that it was good reason to not continue talks of a tour, at least until he got help,” the source said. “He was an addict. He admitted so himself on television. But now that we know about the propofol, there’s a lot of us thinking that was why he was so weird in Dubai — maybe it was propofol.”

(From MSNBC)

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)

AP Photo/Houston Chronicle, File

The sedatives, commonly given to patients before surgery, could be lethal if administered improperly or combined in risky doses with other drugs. Dr. Murray, who is not an anesthesiologist, insists that his treatment of the Thriller singer was within normal medical practices.

The late Jackson’s tox screen has yet to be released, so investigators can’t pin down Dr. Murray, though they reportedly believe that Jackson’s untimely death is linked to the propofol that the doctor gave Jackson.

More here:

Hours before Michael Jackson’s death, his doctor administered multiple sedatives along with a powerful anesthetic the pop star used to sleep, according to a law enforcement official. It’s a safe combination if done properly; potentially lethal if not.The official said the type of sedatives Dr. Conrad Murray gave Jackson were benzodiazepines, often used to calm patients before surgery. Murray told investigators the doses were within normal medical guidelines, said the official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Even at acceptable levels, benzodiazepines can intensify how the anesthetic propofol depresses breathing, so strict monitoring and careful dosing is required. The balance can be tricky, a slip-up disastrous.

Murray, who administered the drugs to Jackson in a room at the pop star’s rented mansion, told investigators Jackson stopped breathing the morning of June 25 and he was unable to revive him. The doctor is the central figure in what police term a manslaughter investigation, but authorities have not classified him a suspect.

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)

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!

ABC News reports the following:

The King of Pop, for all intents and purposes, was dead — killed, ABC News has learned, by a lethal cocktail of prescription drugs that included OxyContin and Demerol.

But according to The Associate Press, investigators believe it was Dr. Conrad Murray who injected the pop icon around midnight with propofol, the powerful anesthetic authorities believe ultimately killed him.

“This doctor is in serious trouble,” criminal defense attorney Roy Black told “Good Morning America” today.

That’s not all. One chilling paragraph from that same article shows that this wasn’t Jackson’s first experience with the dangerous propofol:

An official close to the investigation told The Associated Press that Jackson relied on propofol like an alarm clock, instructing doctors to stop the IV when he wanted to wake up. It’s a drug authorities believe he may have been using for two years.

Michael Jackson’s personal physician was identified as a suspect in the Los Angeles Police Department’s manslaughter investigation into the pop star’s death, according to court records filed Thursday in Houston.

A pair of search warrants filed in Harris County District Court stated that investigators were looking for “items constituting evidence of the offense of manslaughter that tend to show that Dr. Conrad Murray committed the said criminal offense.”

The searches, which were carried out Wednesday at Murray’s medical clinic and storage unit in Houston, gave authorities access to billing records, medication orders, shipping receipts, billing receipts, medical records and “implements and instruments used in the commission of a crime.”

The court records were the first public confirmation by police that Murray was a focus of their probe. Detectives previously had interviewed Murray, but had declined to identify him as a suspect.

“I do not know what they are looking for, and I can’t possibly tell you how anything they took in any way connects with the death of Michael Jackson,” said Murray’s attorney, Edward Chernoff, who was present at both of the searches. Read on…

Murray still denies giving Michael Jackson anything that would result in the death of a patient. However, given all the physicians and drugs surrounding Michael Jackson, it sure seems like someone dropped the ball.

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…