Conrad Murray
Conrad Robert Murray (born February 19, 1953) is a Grenadian-American[1] former cardiologist who was the personal physician of Michael Jackson, providing medical treatment to help him sleep on the day Jackson died in 2009. In 2011, Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Jackson's death for having inadvertently overdosed him with a powerful surgical anesthetic, propofol, which was being improperly used as a bedtime sleep agent.[2] Murray served a little less than two years out of his original four-year prison sentence.
Conrad Murray
Physician
Personal physician of Michael Jackson at the time of his death in 2009
Released on October 28, 2013
7
Four years in prison; paroled after one year and eleven months
Early life[edit]
Conrad Robert Murray was born on February 19, 1953, and was raised by his maternal grandparents, who were farmers in Grenada until he joined his mother, Milta, in Trinidad and Tobago when he was seven years old. He grew up poor in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago. He did not meet his father, Rawle Andrew, also a physician, until he was 25. Andrew, who died in 2001, was devoted to providing medical services to the poor. Murray finished high school and worked as a volunteer elementary school teacher in Trinidad. After teaching, he worked as a customs clerk and insurance underwriter to save up for college tuition.[2]
Education[edit]
In 1973, Murray moved to Houston, Texas, where his father worked, to attend Texas Southern University, and graduated magna cum laude with a degree in pre-med and biological sciences. Murray continued his education at Meharry Medical College, in Nashville, Tennessee, the same school his father attended, and the first medical school in the Southern United States for African Americans. He began his internal medicine residency at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Murray completed it at the Loma Linda University Medical Center in California. He then completed a cardiology fellowship at the University of Arizona.[2]
Personal life[edit]
Murray is a naturalized U.S. citizen.[1] In May 2009, Murray began working as Jackson's personal physician.[9] By that time, he had reportedly fathered seven children by six different women.[10] He was in arrears on the mortgage for the Las Vegas home occupied by his first wife and children and owed child support to the mothers of children outside of his marriage, which he could not pay due to the amount of money he owed to Michael Jackson's family. He was married to Blanche, his second wife, whom he met at medical school, and helped pay rent for another woman, Nicole Alvarez. Murray met Alvarez at a gentlemen's club in Las Vegas when she worked as a stripper, and Alvarez gave birth to their son Che Giovanni Murray in March 2009.[11] Another relationship, with a cocktail waitress from Houston, was also reported.[12]
Murray was at risk of losing his California medical license due to unpaid child support to one of his children and owed $13,000 to a California woman, Nenita Malibiran.[13] Murray was a defendant in numerous civil lawsuits (though none for medical malpractice). By 2008, he had accumulated over $600,000 in court judgments against him for medical equipment and unpaid rent for his practices in Texas and Nevada. He also owed $71,000 for student loans at Meharry Medical College.[14] Murray had filed for bankruptcy in 2002, in California.[15]