Background and career
Conrad Robert Murray (born February 19, 1953) is a Grenadian-born American former physician who was convicted for his role in the death of American singer and dancer Michael Jackson. He was the personal doctor of Jackson on the day of the singer's death in 2009. In 2011, during People v. Murray, Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Jackson's death for having inadvertently overdosed him with the surgical anesthetic propofol, which was being improperly used as a bedtime sleep agent. Murray served just under two years out of his original four-year prison sentence. He released a memoir titled This Is It! in 2016.
Conrad Robert Murray was born on February 19th, 1953, and was raised by his maternal grandparents, who were farmers in Grenada. He later 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 Sr., 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.
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 residency at the Loma Linda University Medical Center in California. He then completed a cardiology fellowship at the University of Arizona.
Murray worked at the Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego as an associate director of its cardiology fellowship training program. In 1990, he opened a private practice in Las Vegas. In 2006, he founded the Acres Homes Heart and Vascular Institute in Houston. Murray met Michael Jackson in 2006, in Las Vegas, and treated his daughter Paris when she fell ill. Jackson hired Murray to be his exclusive personal physician prior to his This Is It concert residency in July 2009. Jackson insisted that Murray be employed by his show promoter, AEG Live, for $150,000 monthly. However, AEG later claimed there was never a contract with Murray. Murray and AEG agree Murray was never paid. His medical licenses in California and Nevada had been suspended following his arrest. Following his release from prison in 2013 for involuntary manslaughter, Murray's legal team filed petitions in Texas to have his medical license reinstated since it had been revoked earlier that year. In 2016, Inside Edition reported Murray was "still visiting patients" in Florida, although Murray claimed he does not charge patients anything for his services and he is only "providing a consultation" without prescribing medication, and therefore he "is not breaking the law". In 2016, Murray released a memoir, This Is It!, which detailed his experience as Michael Jackson's physician and tells of having treated Mother Teresa. Murray wrote,
However my most magnanimous and noble patient is also deceased. She was the world-renowned quintessential nun who is now a saint: Mother Theresa. I loved the way I dedicated my services to her, it was totally selfless because when I agreed to serve her, I literally had no idea then that she was widely known… The A.V. Club called the book "literary poison with no antidote," and The Daily Telegraph said any revelations the memoir contains are "mired in several thousand words of self-aggrandising, poorly punctuated and repetitive text." In 2022, it was reported Murray is allowed to retain his medical license after a recent review by the Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners. In May 2023, Murray opened a medical center in San Juan, Trinidad and Tobago.
Murray is a naturalized American citizen. By 2009, Murray had reportedly fathered seven children by six different women. 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. Another relationship, with a cocktail waitress from Houston, was also reported. In 2016, Murray lived in a luxury condo building near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with his dog, Sebastian, but later immigrated back to Trinidad and Tobago.
