- 13 hours ago
Prince, the pop superstar who sold over 100 million records over a 30 year career, was fit, health-conscious, and vehemently anti-drugs, and yet, on April 21, 2016, Prince died, shockingly, of a drug overdose; the case is still under investigation.
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00:00Good day. We are coming on the air with breaking news about the death of an American music icon.
00:05Prince, the innovative, one-of-a-kind artist who's given us so much great music over the decades, has been
00:11found dead.
00:13Prince sold 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time.
00:21He worked at it obsessively.
00:25Prince won seven Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe, and an Oscar.
00:30He was quite the genius, without question.
00:33But this massive success brought huge pressures Prince found hard to handle.
00:39He had tremendous stage fright.
00:42The record company wanted to own him and control him.
00:46He vowed, I will never, ever allow that to happen.
00:52And then, on April 21st, 2016, Prince's star went out.
01:00He was only 57.
01:02I just can't believe it. I just can't believe he's gone.
01:07It freaked me out when I heard it. Completely shocked the hell out of me.
01:12A lot of people are still trying to deal with the shock and the surprise, you know, how it happened.
01:18Why would Prince, who is so health-conscious and so against smoking, drinking, and using drugs, die suddenly at only
01:2757 years of age?
01:28Was this a tragic accident, or are there darker reasons for his mysterious death?
01:42Renowned forensic pathologist, Dr. Michael Hunter, is the chief medical examiner in one of America's biggest cities.
01:50He has conducted over 4,000 autopsies, and works closely with law enforcement to investigate suspicious deaths.
01:59I have here Prince's medical examiner statement, but in my 20 years of experience, I know to get the full
02:07picture of how someone died, you need to examine all of the available information.
02:12So, with this, along with news reports and witness statements, I'm going to piece together exactly how and why Prince
02:21died.
02:38The piano and microphone tour was a change in direction, kind of an autobiography about his life and growing up.
02:47And the piano was his first musical instrument that he played.
02:52He wanted to strip down everything and just have him, the microphone, the piano, and his audience.
03:00He had complete control of what he wanted to sing, when he wanted to sing it.
03:05He was floating on cloud nine.
03:08Kind of like an unplugged thing, which I heard at the house and at the studio, you know, years ago.
03:14I think it was the next phase of an older artist.
03:18The tour is a great success.
03:21And yet, just seven days later, Prince was dead.
03:31The first thing I see here is at the time of his death, he was 57 years old, and he
03:37only weighed 112 pounds.
03:39Even though he was 5 foot 2 inches, this is still very slim for a man of his age.
03:46It could be down to his punishing work schedule, or due to something else.
03:51I need to look deeper into his medical background.
03:57Prince Rogers Nelson was born in a poor neighborhood of Minneapolis on June 7th, 1958.
04:05His mother, Maddie, and father, John, were both jazz musicians and devout Seventh-day Adventists.
04:14But the marriage didn't last, and when they split, Prince moved in with his father.
04:21His dad was very strict, and Prince told me his dad had a piano, but he would never let him
04:27play the piano.
04:30His father hit him so hard, he'd knock him off the piano stool for daring to touch the piano.
04:37When Prince's father threw him out, Prince moved into the house of a childhood friend.
04:43Together, they turned the basement into a rehearsal studio.
04:48I started getting to know him musically at that time, and I used to go over and watch them rehearse
04:53in the basement.
04:55And I remember he was very shy.
05:00He was more shy in the public eye when he had to speak or whatnot, because that just wasn't a
05:05normal thing for him.
05:06The normal thing for him was to get out and perform, and boy, when he picked up a guitar or
05:12piano, whatever, you saw what Prince was capable of doing.
05:17Prince's talent for music, which was immense, seems to have come with birth.
05:24Here's a guy that, by the time he's 11, is playing his jazz musician father's piano.
05:32He wrote his first scores at the age of nine.
05:36By the time he was 12, he was able to play guitar, bass, piano, drums, keyboards.
05:45At the age of 19, Prince's talent is recognized, and he records his first album.
05:52He was very focused on what he wanted to do artistically.
05:56He did not want anybody to produce him.
05:59He wanted to produce himself.
06:01And he was spot on.
06:02He was able to go in the studio and put together that first record in pretty lightning speed, because he
06:09had so many great ideas.
06:11The following year, I Want to Be Your Lover becomes his first gold hit.
06:18After that, the hits just keep coming.
06:22Among them, chartbusters like 1999, Little Red Corvette, and the multi-award winning movie and soundtrack, Purple Rain.
06:33Prince is now an international star.
06:39His need to be successful stemmed from not having that much as a child.
06:46Everybody needs validation.
06:48Everybody likes that.
06:48But I think he needed the love and approval of his fans.
07:00Prince had a troubled childhood, and it was made worse by something that I found in his medical history.
07:05He was born with epilepsy, a debilitating brain disorder.
07:11Anybody that's ever suffered epilepsy or seen that in action knows how horrifying that can be.
07:18Other children don't understand and will inevitably mock you.
07:22You suddenly aren't one of the crowd.
07:27Prince's epilepsy also separated him from the church-going community he grew up in, where seizures were often seen as
07:35a curse.
07:36Epileptic seizures can be quite violent, and for reasons that doctors can't quite explain, there's an electrical storm that causes
07:45severe shaking, convulsions, and can even cause unconsciousness.
07:51But I can see here that those stopped suddenly when he was seven.
07:57Prince's epilepsy disappeared from one day to the next.
08:00Most epilepsies last a lifetime, but sometimes they just go away for no apparent reason.
08:06So, I don't believe this condition played any role in his death.
08:10But I can see that there is something that happened in the weeks prior to his death that could be
08:16significant.
08:30The last date on Prince's piano and microphone tour suddenly has to be rescheduled.
08:40Prince's notes tell us that he was sick with the flu, the fever, the muscle aches, the lethargy would have
08:47been extremely debilitating, and it would have made it very difficult for Prince to perform.
08:53In some cases, flu can spread to the lungs, causing pneumonia where the lungs become inflamed and fill up with
08:59fluid.
09:00This causes symptoms like coughing, fever, chills, and difficulty breathing.
09:06Oxygen can have trouble reaching the blood.
09:10In extreme cases, complications of pneumonia can be fatal.
09:14In the United States alone, approximately 35,000 people die each year from complications of the flu.
09:21So, if Prince did have the flu, it was good that he stayed in bed and got over it.
09:28His show is rescheduled for a week later.
09:33April 14th, 2016, Atlanta, Georgia.
09:38Seven days before his death.
09:41Prince is back on stage for the rescheduled last date of his piano and microphone tour.
09:47Some fans think he looks drained.
09:50People that were closer to the stage that night, they said, you know, he looked a little frail and pale
09:56as well,
09:56and they were still kind of worried about, was he at full health?
10:00The audience would actually sing a lot of the lyrics while he played the piano.
10:10Prince is famous for his after-show parties that go on all night.
10:15Yet, as soon as he comes off stage, he wants to go home.
10:20He flies back to Minneapolis that same night.
10:23I can't rule out Prince's flu worsening, but it's clear that there was something far more serious happening.
10:32Prince's fans said he looked weak and pale at the last rescheduled show of his piano and microphone tour.
10:38Rumors that he wasn't fully recovered from the flu took a much darker turn when he became unconscious on the
10:46plane home.
10:48Friday, April 15th, 2016.
10:52Quad City International Airport, Moline, Illinois.
10:56Six days before Prince's death.
10:59Around 1 a.m., an urgent radio call is received.
11:03What's the nature of the emergency?
11:05What's the nature of the emergency?
11:05An unresponsive passenger.
11:07Was it a male or female passenger?
11:09A male passenger.
11:13Just before 1.30 a.m. on the Friday morning, Prince's jet is met by an ambulance.
11:20Minutes later, and still unconscious, Prince is in the ambulance in the hands of paramedics.
11:29The paramedics immediately give him an injection, a so-called save shot, to bring him around.
11:43Within minutes, Prince regains consciousness.
11:48His friend, Judith Hill, is with him.
11:51News of the incident soon reaches Minneapolis.
11:55I was quite shocked when that happened.
11:57I texted them, and I just said, is everything okay?
12:01Because it worried me immediately.
12:04The information that we were getting was more of a dehydration that had happened.
12:12Prince's blackout was not caused by dehydration.
12:15In almost all cases, the save shot is given to someone who is thought to be having a drug overdose.
12:23The active ingredient in a save shot is a drug called naloxone.
12:27It attaches itself to the same receptors in the brain affected by narcotics, and it immediately reverses their effect.
12:35I find it very surprising that Prince would have overdosed on drugs.
12:40He was well-known for clean living, and he was strongly against smoking, drinking, and taking drugs.
12:52I've never seen him do any type of drugs at all, not even drink alcohol, not smoke cigarettes, nothing.
13:00He was very against that.
13:04Backstage, you were not allowed to drink to excess, and not at all in his presence.
13:10Drugs were a firing offense.
13:13But I have here a transcript of an interview in which it is revealed that a member of Prince's own
13:19family claimed, allegedly, that he was a heavy cocaine user.
13:25It was Prince's own stepsister, Lorna, who revealed this shocking information to her attorney.
13:33Lorna, she was almost like a mother to Prince when he was growing up.
13:37She loved him very much, but she was concerned about him as time went on, and that's when she opened
13:45up to me about his drug use.
13:49Lorna felt that the drug use was so significant that he would die of a heart attack at some point.
13:55She asked me that if something happened to Prince, if he died under suspicious circumstances, she asked me to speak
14:02on her behalf about it.
14:06This is a surprising development, especially since Prince was so outspoken against drugs.
14:12So I want to know, when and how did this supposed cocaine use begin?
14:22In 1979, having spent most of the year recording his first album, Prince's record company sent him out to promote
14:30it.
14:31He makes his first appearance on the legendary music show, Dick Clark's American Bandstand.
14:38How many instruments do you play?
14:42One of the telling incidents early on in his career was on the Dick Clark Show, which was a huge
14:48music TV show in the States.
14:50And of course, famously, he choked.
14:53How many years ago did you, did you make these demos and then have offers on them?
14:59And he's completely tongue-tied.
15:02And after the show, when friends teased him about it, he vowed, I will never, ever allow that to happen
15:09again.
15:10You didn't know what you were doing?
15:12Don't know.
15:13The more successful he became, he became increasingly shy in public as far as giving interviews.
15:21There are many claims that Prince began experimenting with various chemical substances as far back as Purple Rain.
15:31Only a few years later, after the global success of Purple Rain, a far more confident Prince is being interviewed
15:39on every major TV show in the world.
15:42The theory goes that how he did that was with some chemical assistance.
15:46Perhaps the drugs served a purpose.
15:49They allowed him to do the interviews and to connect with his fans and to, in effect, be the performer
15:57that matched his composer talent.
16:01How are you feeling? You all right?
16:02Beautiful, beautiful.
16:03Prince did not start taking cocaine for kicks.
16:06He did it because he had tremendous stage fright.
16:12Unfortunately, as so often happens, what may have started as a temporary crutch may have developed into a long-term
16:19habit.
16:21I have here a document from the Carver County Sheriff's Office which, if true, could suggest that Prince was struggling
16:29with cocaine as recently as 2011.
16:34There was a woman who called from Germany who Prince was touring with, who told the Carver County Sheriff's Office
16:42that this guy's cocaine problem is out of control.
16:45Can you guys do something?
16:48Apparently, Prince had advised her to make the call.
16:56If this phone call is to be believed, it sounds like a cry for help, which the police did not
17:01act on.
17:02So Prince may have been left to fight his apparent battle with cocaine alone.
17:10If that happened to him, then that's extremely sad.
17:13It would be really disappointing for me to believe that he was addicted to anything because he seemed so strong
17:21to me mentally and physically and just as a person.
17:25So it would be really hard to accept.
17:29Friday, April 15, 2016.
17:33Moline, Illinois.
17:35Six days before Prince's death.
17:38After receiving the save shot, Prince is taken to a nearby hospital where he is kept overnight for observation.
17:47The news of that emergency landing was shocking to me and shocking to a lot of fans because, you know,
17:55this is kind of the first time we were ever hearing that there was any drug use involved with Prince.
18:02So far, there are no medical records documenting his use of cocaine.
18:07But there are reports that Prince used another drug a week before he died, Percocet.
18:15Percocet is a powerful painkiller used to manage severe pain from an injury or after surgery.
18:23Reports show that in 2010, Prince had a serious operation, and this could explain the painkillers.
18:32Prince was a powerful painkillers.
18:33Between 1979 and 2007, Prince toured almost continuously, performing over 1,000 shows on stages around the world.
18:45Prince really pushed himself too much with doing the shows and the performances and rehearsals and God knows what else.
18:53Prince was a powerful painkillers.
18:56He worked at it obsessively.
18:59Prince was an incredibly athletic performer.
19:04I mean, he didn't just do the splits.
19:05He could do them ten times and then twirl and usually as he was playing at least one instrument and
19:11singing at the time.
19:13Prince paid a high price for his physically punishing shows.
19:19He suffered with his ankles and his knees and his back.
19:23Typical ailments for a classically trained ballet dancer.
19:28Let alone a young guy who'd never had any training in dancing, had simply just gone for it.
19:36He may have been taking medication because of pain, which is a normal thing.
19:42You know, I mean, anybody that's in constant pain would have to take something for it to be able to
19:48bear that.
19:51According to reports, in the early 90s, Prince was suffering from chronic hip pain,
19:56and by 2005, he needed a double hip replacement.
20:02At first, Prince refused to have the operation because he had become the Jehovah's Witness,
20:07and they don't allow blood transfusions.
20:09But a hip replacement doesn't necessarily require a transfusion, and he eventually had the surgery in 2010.
20:18And yet, six years after the operation, when it's likely that he's no longer in pain,
20:23he apparently suffers an overdose by painkillers.
20:27So, why was he still taking them?
20:31One theory is, is he was taking painkillers to alleviate the discomfort of HIV infection.
20:37Percocet is commonly prescribed to patients with that disease.
20:42A shocking story is published after his death, saying Prince was famous for his wild sex life,
20:49and claiming that he died of AIDS.
20:55I do know that he was a complete womanizer, and that he loved women for sure.
20:59I think he had his times of being a one-woman guy for a couple of months here and there.
21:09Women loved him, he's a man, but with this clearly very strong feminine side.
21:18Many of his lovers were budding artists.
21:22He would write songs for them, push them in a certain direction.
21:27I will say this, he was very respectful.
21:30When I was with him, I got his complete undivided attention.
21:35It was very loving, very close, it was very special.
21:41Prince just exudes sexuality.
21:45When anyone gets fame, one of the things that they're standing with is the ease of getting
21:50what you want.
21:50I think in Prince's case, having not had much success with relationships prior to the
21:57fame, I think once he got that, it's not surprising that he then went overboard.
22:05People said, well, he had hundreds of lovers.
22:07No, he had thousands of sexual encounters.
22:16If Prince had unprotected sex with numerous partners, his chances of contracting a sexually
22:21transmitted disease like HIV rises significantly.
22:26People with this disease can suffer from severe pain from nerve damage, inflammation, pancreatitis,
22:33swollen joints, and other various disorders.
22:36Prince said he had the flu in the weeks prior to his death, and people with AIDS oftentimes
22:42have flu-like symptoms.
22:44They also can experience severe weight loss.
22:47And when he died, Prince only weighed 112 pounds.
22:52And on top of that, his own sister Tyka said in an interview that Prince told her that he
22:58only had two more years to live.
23:03But the AIDS theory isn't believed by everyone.
23:07Prince being such a controlling guy, it seems almost unimaginable to me that he would have
23:15unprotected sex.
23:18There is no public evidence that supports the theory that Prince suffered from HIV or AIDS.
23:24If he was in the final stages of AIDS, he would have been far too weak to perform on stage
23:29in the days prior to his death.
23:32So I don't believe AIDS is the cause of his death.
23:36But I need to understand why he continued to take strong painkillers.
23:52The very next evening, after his painkiller overdose on the plane, Prince appears to be strong enough
24:00to host a party at Paisley Park.
24:05Everyone was waiting for Prince to come out to make sure everything was okay.
24:10With the plane making an emergency landing, and I think they were just kind of worried.
24:17But Prince appears to be fully recovered.
24:20From my point of view, you know, he looked fine, you know, he looked great, just like the
24:25normal Prince.
24:27These parties would start at 1 o'clock in the morning, and you never knew what he was
24:32going to do, but it was always very interesting, because I think he used that as his area of
24:39trying something new and getting feedback.
24:44When he's not touring, Prince is writing and recording new material for his next album.
24:50He had so many song ideas, he just never stopped recording.
24:54He was in constant recording motion.
24:57If I think about it, I would have to say Prince was a workaholic.
25:01But I don't know about that word.
25:03He just loved what he did, and that was his passion, and he wanted to do it as much as
25:08he could.
25:09He used to rehearse so long, other musicians would be falling asleep.
25:15Prince would stay up for days on end.
25:18He had a 12-piece band and recording studio on 24-7 notice.
25:24The amplifiers in his recording studio were never turned off.
25:29Some believe it was Prince's alleged cocaine addiction that fueled this relentless creativity.
25:37cocaine gave him energy to the point that he would have trouble falling asleep for days.
25:44And the reason that he took the Percocet was to come down from the euphoric high of the
25:51cocaine.
25:52What happens is, you know, the more habituated one gets to that kind of medication, the more
25:57they need.
25:58And the more addicted they come to it, both physiologically, but also psychologically.
26:02And, and perhaps what we were seeing there is, is this dependence resulting from that kind
26:08of, you know, that rhythm that he'd get into.
26:10This is what I use to kind of help me get up in the morning.
26:12This is what I use to help me get through my performance.
26:14And it becomes almost Pavlovian.
26:16It's just the thing that you do and you don't think about it.
26:19What puzzles me is that Prince appears to have been able to control his drug use over
26:25the years.
26:31So what happened this time?
26:35His close friend, Judith Hill, who was with him when he was said to have overdosed on the
26:40airplane, something she said afterwards may help explain the events of that last evening.
26:48Judith revealed that the supposed overdose really scared him.
26:53And that in the hospital that night, Prince swore to her that he would stop abusing painkillers.
27:00For Prince, who'd kept his addiction a dark secret for so many years, this was a major turning point.
27:12Where there's secrecy, there's shame, we very rarely keep secret things that we're proud of.
27:20Under normal circumstances, keeping that to yourself would be really hard.
27:24But you've got to remember the kind of disparity of power that he would have had with anyone else around
27:30him.
27:31He was the prince, right?
27:33He was literally and metaphorically in his world, royalty.
27:38So it seems unlikely there would have been too many people that would have challenged him or challenged,
27:44you know, his privacy, challenged what they may have seen happening.
27:48Because there would have been this sense of he's very much the leader here.
27:54If he was addicted to that, that would have been extremely hard for him to accept.
28:00You know, because he was against any kind of addiction.
28:04He felt it was weak.
28:07If somebody was addicted to anything,
28:10he would have had a huge problem with that and that coming out.
28:22Wednesday, April 20th, 2016.
28:25North Memorial Medical Center, Robbinsdale, Minnesota.
28:30The day before his death.
28:33Prince visits his regular physician, Dr. Schulenberg, who runs some tests on him.
28:45The safe shot that Prince was given wiped the effects of the drug out of his system.
28:52So, a few days later, when Dr. Schulenberg's test came back completely clean,
28:57that suggests that he was committed to remaining drug-free.
29:05On the same day, one of Prince's assistants calls a number in California.
29:12She reaches out to a Dr. Howard Kornfeld and asks that he come quickly to Paisley Park.
29:19Dr. Kornfeld is unable to travel immediately, so he sends his son Andrew, an addiction recovery consultant.
29:27He will arrive the following morning.
29:30This phone call to an addiction specialist strongly suggests that Prince was seriously addicted to painkillers,
29:38and that he was determined to kick the habit.
29:43Wednesday night, April 20th, 2016.
29:47Paisley Park, Shanhassen, Minnesota.
29:50Eight hours before his death.
29:53That night, Prince dines alone.
29:57His chef later tells police that he looked pale and unwell.
30:05Thursday, April 21st, 2016.
30:09According to reports, the following morning, Prince is nowhere to be found.
30:15Andrew Kornfeld arrives from Los Angeles.
30:18He joins Prince's assistants in searching for him.
30:25When they head towards his private apartment, they get a terrible shock.
30:32Prince lies unconscious in the elevator.
30:37He's not breathing and has no pulse.
30:419.43 a.m., Kornfeld calls 9-1-1.
30:52When the emergency services arrive, they find Prince unresponsive.
30:5810.07 a.m., Prince is pronounced dead.
31:03They estimate he has been dead for at least six hours.
31:08Good day. We are coming on the air with breaking news about the death of an American music icon.
31:15Prince, the innovative, one-of-a-kind artist who's given us so much great music over the decades,
31:20has been found dead.
31:24Investigators find no evidence of foul play.
31:27There were no obvious signs of trauma on the body of it.
31:31And there is a growing memorial outside Prince's Minneapolis-area home as others are sharing their
31:37grief on social media tonight.
31:39It freaked me out when I heard it.
31:41And then when I heard the circumstances of how he died, it completely shocked the hell out of me.
31:48When it actually hit me that he had passed away, I was just...
31:56It felt like just a part of me, my childhood, my life stories just gone, you know.
32:07I mean, he was my first love, so...
32:11When Prince died, you know, the whole world went into shock.
32:15The reaction around the world was incredible.
32:18Whole cities bathing the streets in purple.
32:22There was no way for anybody to get their head around it.
32:25He was 57, far too young to die of natural causes.
32:31There wasn't any record of illness or addiction.
32:34There were no events, car crashes or anything like that.
32:39He just seemed to die.
32:40And I think people found it shocking, tragic, mysterious, and utterly bewildering.
32:49While the world anxiously awaits the results of Prince's autopsy,
32:54speculation runs wild as to how and why he died so suddenly.
33:01On that last evening, there were no witnesses.
33:04So what actually happened can only be surmised.
33:10He was increasingly frail, he was very thin, he was very troubled, and he was alone.
33:15He had people that did everything for him.
33:19There was always someone there.
33:22And if the incident on the plane happened just before that, why was he left alone after that?
33:27That I do not understand.
33:31According to Prince's chef, who was the last person to see him alive, Prince looked unwell.
33:37He said that in the last few months, Prince always had the flu or a cold.
33:42He hardly ate and drank very little water.
33:48The symptoms described by the chef, loss of appetite, persistent aches and pains,
33:54headache, cramps, these can be caused by a lot of disorders.
33:58But there are a couple of other things here that lead me to believe that he could have been suffering
34:03from severe depression. A Paisley Park employee reportedly finds a suicide note.
34:09And in it, he claims that Prince said that he needs to stop the pain,
34:15even if it means ending everything, and that it was time for him to go.
34:20If this is to be believed, what I need to understand is what pain is he referring to?
34:30At Prince's funeral, his former girlfriend, Anna Fantastic, receives some shocking news.
34:41I heard from a family member that he may have had early onset Alzheimer's.
34:51They said he was using the monitor on stage already for his lyrics.
34:58He was having problems even remembering certain parts on the guitar.
35:04That would definitely be devastating to him.
35:07And he wouldn't be able to take that as a person.
35:12There are many cases of people taking their own lives
35:16when confronted with the prospect of such a harrowing decline.
35:24The suicide theory does not convince me.
35:27If Prince was so depressed that he took his own life,
35:30would he have taken such firm steps to kick his drug habit?
35:35And on the last evening, he was waiting for the addiction specialist,
35:39who was due to arrive the following morning.
35:42So would he have flown him all the way from Los Angeles if he was contemplating suicide?
35:49I don't believe he took his own life, and neither does the sheriff's office.
35:55We have no reason to believe at this time it's a suicide.
35:57The rest of it's under investigation.
36:00It then emerges that the person who claimed to find the suicide note never showed it to anyone,
36:07so its existence cannot be verified.
36:11Finally, six weeks later, the medical examiner reveals the actual cause of Prince's death.
36:19Prince died of an overdose from the powerful painkiller Fentanyl.
36:23Fentanyl is nearly 100 times stronger than morphine and nearly 50 times stronger than heroin.
36:30It targets the brain's reward system by flooding the circuits with dopamine, a feel-good hormone.
36:37This produces a euphoric effect, but an overdose of fentanyl is lethal.
36:43It depresses the respiratory system and can cause death by slowing down breathing until it stops.
36:51Prince appeared to be very serious about kicking his drug habit.
36:54So why did he take this extremely strong painkiller?
37:00The symptoms described by Prince's chef could provide another clue.
37:06Those symptoms suggest that Prince could have been suffering from drug withdrawal,
37:10and the clean shot cleaned his system of the effects of the narcotics.
37:16And he was taking positive steps to kick his alleged drug habit.
37:21So by the time that he has his last meal, he may have gone a week without drugs.
37:29The fever, nausea, and cramps that he was experiencing, according to the chef,
37:34may have caused him to relapse and reach for what he thought was a familiar painkiller.
37:41So the death user went through an upstairs, except that apparently the branded pills that he took
37:45were not what they appeared to be.
37:48pec.
37:59What happened?
38:01What happened in the future?
38:03What happened?
38:18A report claims that when the police process the crime scene after Prince's death,
38:23they find a number of hidden bottles of over-the-counter vitamins and aspirins,
38:29which they send away for analysis.
38:33When the results come back, they are shocking.
38:37The innocent-looking bottles contained extremely powerful painkillers, including fentanyl.
38:44Fentanyl is so strong and so addictive,
38:47no responsible physician would ever give anyone an open-ended supply.
38:52It was reported that the investigation into Prince's death
38:56showed that he had no prescriptions of any controlled substances in the state of Minnesota for the 12 months prior
39:03to his death.
39:04So, if true, he must have obtained these falsely branded pills illegally.
39:11To avoid detection, these illegal painkillers are disguised as innocent-looking name-brand aspirin and vitamins.
39:20As little as two milligrams of fentanyl can be lethal.
39:24But those who make it illegally are not meticulous about how much goes into each pill.
39:31Prince's cause of death statement shows that he died from a fentanyl overdose.
39:35And according to reports, his levels were extremely high.
39:40Having managed his alleged drug habit for so long,
39:44Prince would have known his drugs and the dosages that he could tolerate.
39:51Therefore, I think that Prince probably didn't know that the pills he took that night had fentanyl in them.
39:59I believe Prince died from a tragic accident bordering on a homicide.
40:06Sadly, in the United States, fatal overdoses from powerful painkillers are increasing exponentially.
40:15It's important to point out that the making and distribution of fentanyl sold under the guise of another prescription medication
40:23leading to death can be considered murder.
40:30I think Prince's legacy is that dreams come true.
40:36He came from nothing.
40:37He had nothing.
40:38He became so successful.
40:41And I think it proves that we're capable of doing and becoming anything we want if we work hard enough.
40:50He brought everybody together.
40:52You know, it didn't matter what age or race you were.
40:57His music is going to last for a long, long, long time.
41:04Prince burned brighter and longer than most pop artists.
41:08He brought pleasure to millions of fans around the world.
41:13But as he famously sang in his hit song 1999,
41:19Life is just a party.
41:21And parties weren't meant to last.
41:23Outro music was also a party and very rich.
41:54Transcription by CastingWords
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