Michael Jackson's father suspects foul play over death

Michael Jackson's father said today he suspected foul play over his son's death.

Joe Jackson said he could not understand why the star died suddenly, having appeared fit and well hours before. The mystery over the singer's final hours deepened with fresh revelations:

Alleged details of an autopsy suggested Jackson was "a virtual skeleton". There was no food in his stomach, only partly dissolved pills, and he weighed just eight stone. He was almost bald and his body was riddled with needle wounds from pain-killing injections.

Jackson's doctor Conrad Murray denied injecting the singer with the painkiller Demerol and said he was innocent of causing the death.

It was revealed Jackson's 12-year-old son Michael Joseph, known as Prince, watched the struggle to save his father but thought the 50-year-old was playing a practical joke.

His funeral could be as early as Wednesday with plans being made for a huge public ceremony.

The intervention by Joe Jackson increases pressure on authorities to produce definitive results from the two post-mortem examinations. He said: "Michael was dead before he left the house. I'm suspecting foul play somewhere. He was waving to everybody and telling them he loves them and all, the fans at the gate. A few minutes after Michael was out there, he was dead."

In another interview at the Black Entertainment Awards, where stars paid tribute to his son, Joe, 80, said: "I have a lot of concerns. I don't like what happened."

He refused to elaborate but the family, which met to discuss funeral arrangements, is reportedly pushing the police to mount a criminal investigation to answer nagging questions that surround last Thursday's tragedy. They ordered a second autopsy on Jackson's body over the weekend in the hope that it might provide more answers.

Dr Murray's lawyer, Edward Chernoff, went on television to defend his client. Police interviewed Dr Murray on Saturday and said he was not a suspect.

The doctor told police he did not inject Jackson with a shot of Demerol less than an hour before the singer collapsed with a heart attack. He maintained that Jackson was still alive when he first found him, slumped in his bed unable to breathe.

Mr Chernoff said Jackson still had a faint pulse and his body was warm when Dr Murray tried desperately to revive him. He said Dr Murray administered cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, putting one hand behind Jackson's back and compressing with the other hand.

Dr Murray eventually moved Jackson on to the floor to continue giving him CPR. "Keep in mind that Michael Jackson is a very frail individual and the doctor knew this and he was compressing hard enough that the doctor knew he was pumping the blood throughout the system," he said.

He denied that Dr Murray had ever prescribed or administered Demerol to Jackson. "Not ever, not that day. Not Oxycontin either, for that matter," added Mr Chernoff.

"Michael Jackson had specific medical problems that Dr Murray as his private physician inherited. As a result of the tour he was doing in Europe, he [Jackson] was under a lot of stress."

Mr Chernoff said that Murray attempted to dial 911 on his mobile phone, but he did not know the exact address of Jackson's home.

He said that none of the phones in the home was working "for privacy reasons". So Murray ran around the house until he found Jackson's chef, who alerted security. It was the security person, Chernoff said, who called 911.

Reported results of the post-mortem examination on Jackson stated that he was "severely emaciated", weighing eight stone one ounce, far below his ideal body weight.

There was evidence of four adrenaline injections to his heart and several broken ribs from CPR. He was virtually bald and wearing a wig, while his face was heavily scarred from plastic surgery: the bridge to his nose had vanished and the right side had caved in.

According to a family friend, the entire drama was witnessed by Prince Michael, who thought at first that his father was "clowning around". The boy watched the nightmare scene unfold "in a trance", said Jackson biographer Stacy Brown. Jackson regularly "played dead" to his children.

The funeral could come as early as Wednesday, with up to a million fans expected to head to Los Angeles. He may be buried at Neverland.