Prince's death: His laptop, diet, weight loss and distress highlight intriguing police docs

We still don’t know any more today than we did two years ago about how or where music superstar Prince got the deadly fentanyl that killed him in an accidental opioid overdose. But now we can scroll through 10 gigabytes of documents, pictures and videos police gathered in their futile investigative effort to find out.

Once authorities in his home Carver County, Minn., announced Thursday that no charges would be filed against anyone in connection with Prince’s April 21, 2016, death, all of the records of their inconclusive investigation became public and were posted online at the Carver County Sheriff’s Office website.

There are pages and pages of transcripts of long interviews with various people in Prince’s life, such as his young and new-on-the-job assistant Meron Bekure, his longtime best friend, bodyguard and Paisley Park estate manager, Kirk Johnson, and his personal chef, Ray Roberts.

There are voluminous police reports written in cop-speak and dense with details about every single thing cops said or did or photographed at Prince’s Paisley Park home/studio compound on the day he was found dead in an elevator there.

There are details about all the things they found inside, including dozens of bottles containing pills and thousands of dollars in cash lying around or in drawers or cases.

There are multiple videos on the inside of parts of Paisley Park, some of which look anything but homey and more like the lobby of a large office building.

There are videos and pictures of Prince’s dead body and where it was found. There are videos of the inside of a local pharmacy where Prince pal Johnson picked up a prescription the night before Prince’s death. There are audio files on the recording of various statements.

Here are some of the intriguing details we’ve found so far:

The death scene:

There are five videos containing close-ups of Prince’s dead body, sprawled on his back on a Persian-style rug at the entrance to the elevator at Paisley Park.

He was slightly on his left side, his left arm on the floor, his right arm across his midsection. His left arm and right ankle had EKG cable patches from lifesaving techniques used by paramedics. His right wrist was wrapped in blue tape. He was shoeless, dressed in black and grey workout-style clothes with black socks, and a black knit cap covered his head and hair.

Prince’s laptop:

A report by Sgt. DeWitt Meier described what he saw and did when he arrived to help with the investigation of the scene on the day Prince’s body was found. On April 21, 2016, Meier saw an Apple laptop sitting on the dresser in Prince’s bedroom, but he didn’t search it or seize it. He saw no cellphones.

The next day, Meier says, after numerous pill bottles were found throughout Paisley Park, he learned that Prince and his staff communicated by telephone or email only, not cellphone.

“I regretted not taking the computer by the bedside, as I believe that this contained conversations between his staff and (Prince) about medications possibly,” Meier wrote.

Only then did he direct someone to get a search warrant for the laptop, which by then had been placed in a locked office. When the search warrant was finally executed five days after Prince’s death, a locksmith had to be called to open the door and retrieve it.

Prince did not have or use a cellphone, authorities said, and that was one of the reasons it was difficult to find evidence to show how he obtained counterfeit Vicodin laced with fentanyl. If there was any such evidence on Prince’s laptop it might have been tampered with before it was finally seized.

Prince’s half-sister, Sharon Nelson, tweeted her dismay about how the laptop was handled.

“There is so much about Prince’s death and this investigation that troubles me and millions of #Prince fans around the world,” she tweeted Friday.

Interview with Kirk Johnson:

He was Prince’s friend from the 1980s, a sometime drummer for him, best man at his first wedding, bodyguard and estate manager. But he told investigators even he did not always know what was going on with Prince.

“He’s really, he’s always been private so I mean even from me he would keep me at a
distance so you know, I respected that, respected his privacy,” he said in his interview with Det. Chris Wagner.

Not until just before his death did Johnson realize how ill Prince was. “He had been looking just a little frail, but I just, you know…he just always kind of goes up and down,” he said.

Then, on the way home from an Atlanta gig a week before his death, Prince became unconscious on his private plane, Johnson said. The plane made an emergency landing in Moline, Ill., Prince was given doses of the drug used to treat a narcotics overdose and he was rushed to a local hospital where he was treated and released.

Was Prince addicted to painkillers, Johnson was asked.

“He never told me that but that’s what I’m finding out,” Johnson said. “I mean and l just figured that out after that time we had to land the plane that this is what…it started to all make sense through just his behavior sometimes and change of mood…That’s why I took the initiative and said let’s go to my doctor because you haven’t been to the doctor, let’s check it all out.”

The day before his death, Johnson took Prince to his longtime local doctor, Michael Todd Schulenberg, who also was interviewed by investigators. On that day, Schulenberg saw Prince and ran some tests and prescribed other medications to help him. A urinalysis came back positive for opioids.

Schulenberg prescribed the opioid painkiller oxycodone to Prince on April 14, 2016, but put it under the name of Johnson. Two years later, on Thursday, Schulenberg agreed to pay $30,000 to settle a federal civil claim for knowingly writing a prescription in someone else’s name, which violates the Controlled Substances Act.

Interviews with Meron Berkure, Prince’s personal assistant:

The transcripts of her interviews show she was reluctant to talk to investigators, saying repeatedly that she and all of Prince’s staff had signed “confidentiality agreements” as a condition of employment. At one point, she said she wanted a lawyer.

“As his personal assistant and knowing (he’s) private, I would like to keep his privacy,” she told Det. Pat Murray.

Murray tried to reassure her she was not in trouble, that investigators were trying to find out more about how Prince had ended up dead. He said investigators already gathered information that Prince was struggling with chemical dependency, and as his personal assistant did she notice if he seemed normal or “out of it” the day before his death?

Berkure didn’t know, only saw him from a “far distance.” She said he went to the doctor the day before for a “checkup.” In another interview with another detective and Sheriff Jim Olson, she said Prince had been unusually quiet.

“He usually emails us and like throughout the day but because he wasn’t feeling well, you know…” she said.

She said he had the “flu” and canceled a performance. But she said she didn’t see any symptoms of the flu. “Unless he shared it with the doctor. He didn’t share it with me,” she said.

She also had about $3,000 in cash in her purse, which was searched. She said, “I do a lot of like tour book sales and stuff like that.”

Interview with Ray Roberts

Prince’s personal chef since 2013, Roberts also owns a local restaurant, Peoples Organic, and provided Prince, a vegan, with a daily dinner of appetizer, entre and dessert, and stocked his fridge. The night before Prince’s death, Roberts arrived with a meal: roasted pepper bisque, a salad and a smoothie. Roberts thought Prince didn’t look good, which usually meant he wanted his privacy.

“Roberts stated that night Prince didn’t seem good. Roberts stated Prince looked distressed. Roberts stated Prince looked like he wasn’t feeling good,” the transcript reads.

(In fact, the dinner didn’t get eaten; Roberts said it was still in his refrigerator during Prince’s memorial lunch later.)

Roberts said Prince’s behavior was “up and down” and that the people around him talked about his health “a lot.” Roberts noticed weight loss.

“Roberts stated he had noticed over the last month Prince had been losing weight. Roberts stated he felt like Prince was eating less and wasn’t drinking any water,” the transcript says.

Roberts told investigators that Prince would be “happy and energetic and then he would be sleeping or not feeling well,” the transcript says. “Roberts stated Prince’s health issue was related to stress from his work.”

Roberts said his job was to make sure Prince was “eating right and drinking enough fluids.” When Prince would report ailments (such as a sore throat) to Roberts, Roberts would prepare food accordingly.

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