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Rediff.com  » Movies » Whitney Houston's final autopsy report released

Whitney Houston's final autopsy report released

Source: ANI
April 05, 2012 17:13 IST
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Whitney HoustonWhitney Houston's final autopsy report has revealed that the singer died facedown in blazing hot hotel bathtub just a feet from a spoon containing white crystals and white powder caked on a mirror.

The report released on Wednesday said the suite where the singer breathed her last was littered with prescription drugs and open alcohol containers and sopping wet from bathtub flooding when investigators arrived February 11.

'I collected... a spoon with a white crystal-like substance in it, a rolled up piece of white paper from off the top of a counter along the east wall in the bathroom,' the New York Daily News quoted coroner's supervisor Kristy McCracken writing in the report.

'I also collected remnants of a white powdery substance from out of a drawer and from the bottom of a mirror in the same drawer in the bathroom counter,' the investigator said.

An open champagne bottle, multiple packages of prescription medication, plates of food and an open beer can lay in disarray around the room.

A loose tablet was recovered from one table, a single capsule from another. An empty blister pack for an unidentified medication was on the floor.

Early in the afternoon that turned out to be her last, Houston complained of a sore throat, the report said.

Her assistant said she should take a bath and then left her alone around 2:45 pm to run an errand at Neiman Marcus.

When the assistant returned less than an hour later at 3:36
p.m., she found Houston 'lying face down in the bathtub, unresponsive,' the report said.


'The bathtub was filled with water, and there was water on the bathroom floor, however, the water was not running,' the report said.

The assistant called out to a bodyguard, and the two removed Houston from the tub before calling downstairs and telling hotel staff to call 911.

The bathtub contained 'extremely hot water,' the report said -- 93.5 degrees at 9:35 pm, more than five hours after Houston died.

An investigator noted that Houston had a 'bloody purge coming from her nose' after she was pulled out of the water.

A 'perforation' of her 'posterior nasal septum' was evidence of prolonged substance abuse, the report said.

The report did not confirm any testing done on the white powdery substance recovered from Houston's room, but coroner officials earlier confirmed the presence of cocaine in her system.

The official cause of death was accidental drowning 'due to effects' of heart disease and cocaine use, the report said, confirming coroner statements from two weeks ago.

The six-time Grammy winner also had marijuana, the anti-anxiety drug Xanax, the muscle relaxant Flexeril and the over-the-counter antihistamine Benadryl in her bloodstream, officials said.

Houston's body showed no signs of an aneurysm or foul play but a history of cosmetic procedures including breast implants.

She died wearing a brown wig 'tightly attached to the hair,' the report added.

Photograph: Michael Buckner/Getty Images

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Source: ANI