'Jackson killed by overdose'

US: "Lethal levels" of the powerful anesthetic propofol killed Michael Jackson, according to court documents unsealed Monday and quoted by US media which put the pop star's personal physician under mounting police scrutiny.

The documents unsealed in Houston and tied to the investigation into the June 25 death of the pop star cites the Los Angeles County coroner's office as concluding after an autopsy that a fatal cocktail of drugs including propofol was administered to Jackson hours before he died.

"The Los Angeles Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner, Dr. (Lakshmanan) Sathyavagiswaran, indicated that he had reviewed the preliminary toxicology results and his preliminary assessment of Jackson's cause of death was due to lethal levels of propofol," according to a facsimile of a Los Angeles search warrant and affidavit posted on investigative website TheSmokingGun.com and cited by US news networks. The affidavit also said the singer's personal physician, cardiologist Conrad Murray, was giving propofol and other drugs to Jackson at the star's insistence to treat his insomnia, but that he was worried Jackson had developed an addiction and so he "tried to wean Jackson off of the drug."

The documents shed light on one of the last remaining questions about Jackson's sudden death at age 50, but they also increase the possibility that the death is ruled a homicide and that criminal charges are brought against Murray, who was with Jackson on the morning of his death.

Los Angeles, AFP