Michael Jackson’s ex-wife broke down in tears as she revealed she feels partly to blame for the singer’s death.
Debbie Rowe, 63, wept as she admitted she regrets not doing more to help Jackson when he became addicted to painkillers.
In a tearful new interview for a documentary, Debbie said: “I should have done something and I didn’t.”
She told the ‘TMZ investigation, Who Really Killed Michael Jackson’: “There is a number of people who died from addictions and in some way I was part of it.”
Jackson died aged 50 following a drug-induced cardiac arrest in June 2009 at his home in Los Angeles and his personal physician at the time, Dr Conrad Murray, was jailed for involuntary manslaughter.
Rowe, an American nurse, married Jackson in a secretive ceremony in Sydney, Australia, in 1996 and was surrogate mother to the singer’s two oldest children Prince and Paris. They divorced three years later in 1999.
Rowe was a nursing assistant to Beverley Hills dermatologist Dr Arnold Klein, who died in 2015, and met Jackson 15 years before their marriage, while he was having treatment for his skin condition.
Klein would give Jackson and other strong painkillers and wrinkle filler drugs like Botox and Restylane.
In the new documentary, Rowe said: ‘I was basically as bad as him [Klein] and I am so sorry I participated in it.’
Those close to the case say that there are others – not just Dr Murray – who should have been found guilty for allowing Jackson to reach the level of drug dependency he was at when he died.
Elsewhere in the documentary, Dr Murray said that his experience in prison was ‘shattering’ after being decimated by grief and pain following Michael’s death and his own trial.
Holding back his emotions, Dr Murray told the documentary ‘I will always love Michael’ despite the fact he believes it ‘was not right’ that he personally took so much of the blame over the legend’s death.
The 69-year-old heart surgeon – released from prison in 2013 having served half of his four-year sentence for involuntary manslaughter – began working for Jackson in 2006.
He had administered Jackson various drugs to help him sleep on the night of his death, at his rented home in Holmy Hills, Los Angeles.
But now Los Angeles Police Department Detective Orlando Martinez admitted it was ‘amazing’ that Michael Jackson didn’t pass away sooner, because of his acute, ongoing addition to anesthetic drugs like propofol.
He told the TMZ investigation, Who Really Killed Michael Jackson: ‘I really do believe that this death was inevitable.
‘Michael was going to get what he wanted. And if you said no, he would find someone who would do it for him.
‘There are a lot of folks who are to blame that have never had a reckoning for his death.’
Michael Jackson would go to multiple different doctors who would prescribe him medication, so he would often accumulate a large quantity rather than normal doses, the LAPD detective explained.
And in the documentary, he admits that he doesn’t think it’s right Dr Murray was wholly blamed for the popstar’s death – but it was incredibly difficult to prove that others were to blame during the court process.
He said that it was tough to even get other experts within the medical profession to help the case at the time, since they didn’t want to get involved.
Dr Murray was charged with involuntary manslaughter in February 2011, and after his trial he was slapped with the maximum penalty of four years in prison.
After serving time in jail for involuntary manslaughter, Dr Murray has now revealed that he believes the other doctors who provided Michael with drugs over the years are complicit in his death.
He also claimed that he was ‘manipulated’ by the star – who never told him that he was suffering with a drug addiction when he became his physician.
It was only when he arrived in LA to help him prepare for his This Is It comeback tour, he discovered that Michael kept a personal stash of the drugs.
The doctor previously said Jackson’ 5’11” frame had wasted to little over nine stone, he was suffering from chills, insomnia and mood swings and he was dependent on the prescription drug propofol to help him sleep.
Murray claims he had ‘weaned’ Jackson off the drug the singer called ‘milk’ only days before his death on June 25, 2009.