Day 3 of the AEG trial: Conrad Murray’s heavy debt was his motive

Yesterday, the third session of the trial was held with Orlando Martinez present as a witness.

On that day, Martinez said that when Michael Jackson’s body was being transported to the hospital in an ambulance, Conrad Murray had called his girlfriend, Nicole Alvarez, on his mobile phone. The call was made at 1:08 p.m., one minute after the ambulance left Michael’s home for the hospital, and it lasted 133 seconds. Martinez said the importance of this was that during this call, Murray might have asked Alvarez to clean away evidence from their shared home.

Some time later, Martinez went to the shared home of Alvarez and Murray in Santa Monica with a court order. The only sign of Murray there was a small piece of paper with Murray’s name written on it.

Martinez said: “In the apartment where he had lived for at least two months, I found only one piece of paper with Dr. Murray’s name on it, lying behind the door in a cabinet.”

When Brian Panish, Katherine Jackson’s attorney, asked whether he had found anything suspicious, Martinez replied:

“Yes, he (Murray) lived there, but none of his belongings were there.”

Martinez then continued his testimony from the previous day about Murray’s heavy debt, and Panish showed the jury documents of Murray’s debts, including his children’s school loans and their monthly expenses, the costs related to the house, unpaid medical prescriptions, and mobile phone bills. Alongside these, the house Murray bought in Las Vegas— for which he had taken a $1.6 million loan from a bank—had dropped in value to $1 million and had been put up for sale by the bank due to nonpayment of the debt.

Beyond these documents, it showed that in 2007, a court judge had once ordered Murray to pay a $135,000 fine. Murray’s total debt was half a million dollars.

During the Q&A with Katherine Jackson’s attorney, Martinez said he obtained this information from a financial company. Panish asked whether this information was also accessible to people who had contracts with Murray. Martinez answered: “Yes.” Thus, Panish showed that Conrad Murray’s financial information was easily available to the company, but they had overlooked it.

Martinez said that knowing Murray’s financial problems, he believed Murray was thinking more about his $150,000 monthly salary than about his patient (Michael Jackson).

The session was very short because one of the jurors had to attend the funeral of a close relative. Katherine Jackson was not present in this one-hour session.

On the same day, Katherine’s lawyer said when leaving court that he believed they could find Michael’s former children’s nurse, Grace Rouwamb(a), and if necessary, summon her to testify in court.

“We couldn’t find her; nobody has been able to find any trace of her. But we think that in the coming days we will be able to track down where she lives.”

Source: eMJey.com / LA Times & NY Post