Speaking of Prince

  (By Maria Letizia Cerica) (Investigative Reports, pp. 51-52-53-54) Thursday, April 21, 2016 Detectives B and C proceed with an initial inspection of the premises at Paisley Park. (Office, Dressing Room, the bedroom with the circular bed — deeply kitsch, at least to a European eye — which appeared not to have been used in a long time, the conference room, a large bathroom with a large bathtub; they then inspect the Green Room) During the meticulous inspection, one detail stands out: there was a great deal of money scattered throughout Paisley. Cash. Ten-dollar bills, one-dollar bills, various denominations. You opened a drawer, looked at the dashboard of a car, and there it was — money, as if forgotten. In wardrobes and drawers, bundles of banknotes still bearing their bank labels were found, amounting to approximately ten thousand dollars. Further thousands of dollars would later be discovered inside an envelope within the Vault, once it was opened. The garage is also inspected. ...

(By Maria Letizia Cerica) ( Investigative Reports, pp. 33-34-35-36-37-38) April 21 2016 In this account, we will very often be moving alongside the investigators. We will follow what they wrote in their reports after carrying out inspections at Paisley Park. This is the best way to get a clear picture of events, without chasing after fanciful reconstructions that are almost always unfounded. At times, the reports I will be analyzing will resemble one another — for example, each detective explains the reason for the call they received and their time of arrival, then describes what they did, saw, or learned. Sometimes, therefore, the accounts are similar to one another, but very often different details emerge, because those descriptions come from different sets of eyes — eyes that may be moving through the same environment, but speaking to different people, and from which different situations consequently emerge. The reports are very similar to one another, but they are not identical. It...

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  (By Maria Letizia Cerica) Prince did not own a mobile phone. He communicated exclusively by landline, and for written messages he used email only. He would have had no reasonable reason to take the elevator that night. And without shoes — where could he have gone? He did not use his landline to call for help. Was he perhaps found on the floor, unconscious and half-naked in the Green Room, by someone the following morning? By someone who hastily dressed him, not yet knowing that there was nothing more to be done? Prince had a concentration of fentanyl in his blood ten times the maximum level administered to a terminal patient. The day before, he had undergone blood tests: the results had come back positive for opiates, but days after his death the tests were repeated, and in his blood that Wednesday afternoon there was no fentanyl. The fentanyl entered his bloodstream through the pills he took during the night. On Thursday, April 21, in one corner of the Green Room rug, police det...

(By Maria Letizia Cerica) If you look at the photographs of his body in front of the elevator — the photographs taken by the forensic team — you can see the same clothes he was wearing the day before, as confirmed by Kirk as well. So he didn’t go to sleep after going back upstairs? There would be nothing strange about that: Prince spent almost the entire night awake. He always had. In the Green Room, the covers of the bed are pushed to one side, however, and inside the fold of one of the sheets there is a Watson 853 pill. It must have slipped from his hand at some point. Had he gone to bed fully dressed? There are two strange details, however. The first is that part of the clothes he was wearing are inside out. Reversed. Why? Did Prince get dressed incorrectly after the appointment? It’s possible — he was very, very agitated that evening. Or did someone try to dress him hastily, after finding him half-naked and unconscious the following morning, before placing him inside the elevator? ...

  (By Maria Letizia Cerica) At this point we need to pay some attention to the clothes Prince was wearing when he was found in the elevator on the morning of April 21, 2016. I have already discussed this in the essays I previously dedicated to him. In my books about him. This is therefore not a new reflection, as far as I am concerned. These are, however, some important details — even if they do not change the substance of the account in the slightest: Prince died accidentally. He took a pill, not knowing it contained fentanyl. It’s true that he was very depressed in those days, but not to the point of wanting to die. The first time I studied the investigation materials, I wondered whether it might have been a deliberate act, but a more thorough examination of the events and their sequence led me to the conviction that he had no intention of dying. It was an accident. Let us return to those clothes. Inside the elevator, Prince was wearing the same clothes he had on the previous aft...