Prince: The last hours
Slumped on the floor in his £8m compound, final tragic images of a pop superstar
EYES closed and right hand on his stomach, Prince’s body lies motionless in distressing footage released after a two-year investigation into his death.
The singer’s left arm reaches out to a sun design on the carpet of his Paisley Park compound.
This was the scene confronting police who found him dead in April 2016, along with suspicious white powder on his desk and pill bottles strewn around his home.
The Mirror has decided not to show the upsetting lifeless image of Prince which tells little of his death.
For, despite all the photographic evidence, CCTV of the superstar visiting his doctor 24 hours before he died and testimony from singer Sinead O’Connor about Prince’s dark side, the tragedy remains cloaked in mystery. An autopsy found he died of an accidental overdose of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times stronger than heroin.
Nobody will face criminal charges over the death, despite the police probe.
“We have no direct evidence that a specific person provided the fentanyl to Prince,” Carver County attorney, Mark Metz said, adding the investigation uncovered “no sinister motive, intent or conspiracy to murder.”
“My focus was lasered in on trying to find out who provided that fentanyl.
“But we may never know. It’s pretty clear from the evidence he did not know, and the people around him didn’t know, that he was taking fentanyl.”
Detectives said the musician had been struggling with a dependence on painkillers and most likely believed he was taking Vicodin, which does not contain fentanyl.
Prince took a lookalike, counterfeit version of the drug that was far more powerful.
Metz spoke as a tape was also released of O’Connor telling police Prince had a hard drug habit and beat women while he was high. She said he put several women in hospital and claimed she had suffered the abuse first-hand.
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also alleged Prince was “into devil worship”, telling them: “It’s not just drugs he was into, it was darkness.”
O’Connor, 51, spoke to them on May 2, 2016, two weeks after Prince died.
She tells officers: “Everyone is mistaken who believes that he did not have a drug habit for the entire of his life. He used hard drugs commonly.
“I know it because I spent time with the man. He did not release an album, famously, called The Black Album.
“The reason he didn’t, he told me himself, was that he had been taking so many dark drugs that he had had a vision from God and God had told him, the album was evil, and he was not to release it.”
O’Connor admits she never saw Prince taking drugs because he would excuse himself to another room.
But when he came back, she said “his eyeballs would disappear, literally, from his eyes. They vanished.” Her words are backed up by the police photographs at the star’s £8million Minneapolis home showing several pills, many not in original containers.
Two of the bottles contained medicines used to counter symptoms of opiate withdrawal – clonidine and hydroxyzine.
Police also found a pouch with the word “opium” scrawled on the front in a vault with thousands of files and drugs.
Wads of cash were also found, with other personal belongings piled up.
One set of images show an untidy dresser full of beauty products and make-up, revealing the 57-year-old’s obsession with appearing young and beautiful.
The counter was full of expensive moisturising creams such as La Mer which sells for hundreds of pounds, as well as other products such as exfoliators and cover-up make-up.
He also had numerous boxes of vitamins and supplements, while a list, which appears to have been written by one of his doctors, set out a regime of drugs and supplements for stress and weight loss.
In the background, the walls are adorned with pictures, his famous symbol and gold discs showing the singer’s achievements.
Yet the home lacks personal touches such as images of friends or family. Members of Prince’s family attended Thursday’s news conference but declined to comment on the decision. But a representative, John Goetz, said of the investigators: “They certainly dug deep and tried hard.”
He added the family had not ruled out filing a wrongful-death lawsuit.
Metz also said Minnesota doctor, Michael Schulenberg, who had treated Prince before his death, has agreed to pay £21,400 to settle a federal civil violation for an illegal prescription.
To protect Prince’s privacy, Dr Schulenberg had prescribed the painkiller Percocet to the singer in the name of Kirk Johnson, Prince’s friend, bodyguard and former drummer.
Dr Schulenberg admitted no liability as part of the settlement and has maintained he did not prescribe drugs to anyone with the intention they were redirected to Prince.
His lawyer said Dr Schulenberg “is not a target in any criminal inquiry and there have been no allegations that he had any role in Prince’s death.”