CROWD CLAMOURS Tributes continue to come in for Michael Hutchence, the INXS lead singer found dead in a Sydney hotel. He apparently took his own life for reasons no one yet knows. Uh, the body of an Australian citizen, uh, who has been a resident in England for some time, was discovered in the hotel, on the fifth floor. Saturday, 1pm, Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Double Bay, Sydney. The shocking death of the lyricist and frontman of INXS sparks a massive speculation in the media and around the world. But in Australia tonight, the mystery over his death continues. Detectives have taken into possession a leather belt, uh, for scientific examination. Devastated fiancee Paula Yates refused to believe he had deliberately taken his own life. The official verdict was death by hanging, but was Michael's tragic death a case of suicide, or was it an auto-erotic asphyxiation ` a sex game gone wrong? Captions by Antony Vlug. Edited by Faith Hamblyn. Copyright Able 2015 World-renowned forensic pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd has been performing high-profile autopsies for more than 25 years. His expertise has been called on for the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, the aftermath of the September the 11th attacks, and the inquest into the death of Princess Dianna. Autopsies are used to provide cold, hard facts ` not just about how someone died, but also about how they lived their life in the days, hours and minutes before their death. Armed with Michael's coroner's report, I'll be able to unravel the facts to enable me to explain the causes of his untimely death. TYPING Sydney Airport, four days before his death,... Hutchence lands on home soil to start rehearsals for a 13-day tour. He'll be playing to their loyal home fans and celebrating the band's 20th anniversary on the Australian leg of their 'Elegantly Wasted' world tour. This is the beginning of the proper tour. Yeah, we're really excited. Hutchence had spent a week in LA working on a solo album and had talks for movie roles with Quentin Tarantino and Michael Douglas. All indications when Michael came back here were that he was pretty chilled out. Everybody who had met them and caught up with him thought he was in a really good place. So, how did this Australian icon end up slumped naked on a hotel-room floor with a belt wrapped around his neck four days later? Being who he was, uh, as I found out, there was a lot of interest. As to whether he did it deliberately or not, that was the big question. We managed to obtain, exclusively now, a copy of the toxicology report from Michael Hutchence. This is information that's never been released before. It gives us a really good understanding into the effect that drugs and alcohol were having on him at the time that he died. INXS really hit their heyday in the mid-80s internationally. Into the '90s, tastes began to change, and the times began to change, so they were hitting a bit of a lull commercially. And, um, you know, as it does with every group, that took a toll on everyone. In the weeks leading up to his death, underneath the smiles, anxiety was bubbling in Hutchence's life. He'd been caught up in a bitter courtroom battle with the ex-husband, Bob Geldof, of his current girlfriend, Paula Yates. The couple planned to spend Christmas in Australia with their 14-month-old daughter, Tiger Lily, and two of Paula's children. But Bob Geldof was reluctant to allow his daughters to leave the UK to spend Christmas in Australia, because of the rumours of drug abuse surrounding the couple. These rumours started in 1996, when after a tip-off, police raided Hutchence's Chelsea home. Paula and Hutchence's concerned nanny had revealed an alarming incident to their close friend Gerry Agar. When I came over to collect my daughter, Anita the nanny said that she'd, uh, found them chewing on these brown sticks, and what were they, and she suspected that they were drugs. They looked like brown crayons. So we'll do a hunt. There was heroin. And sticks... and... a few of them. Not one or two ` at least 15 long brown... sticks of opium that had been put... into Smartie boxes. Hutchence's sister, Tina, has noted that pictures from 1996, and also his mannerisms, showed that drugs were a part of his life. ZAP! The coroner's report says that despite a history of drug abuse, this 37-year-old male was in pretty good on the outside, apart from two very deep burns between the index and middle fingers of his left hand, which had extended down to the bone. This would have been extremely painful and is very common in heroin addicts when they hit that high, and then enter a deep anaesthetised state ` sometimes known as a noddy. Heroin's a processed form of opium, and it's an extremely powerful sedative and painkilling drug, and so as Michael nodded off with a lit cigarette between his fingers, he wouldn't have felt the pain as it burnt through to his bone. The active components of heroin are removed from the bloodstream in approximately six hours, so if he last used it in LA and got the injuries to his fingers in LA, then it's no surprise that the drug was not detected at the time of his death in Sydney, four days later. TYPING Wednesday, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Double Bay, Sydney. Approximately one hour after his arrival in Australia, Hutchence checks in under the alias Murray River. Jet-lagged, he heads straight to room 524. It was one of the rock-and-roll hotels where they give a bit of leeway to the guests, and, you know, what happens there, stays there. He was a rock star ` of course there were rumours about drug use. There would have to be. In her book written with Michael's mother, his sister, Tina, also reveals some of the other drugs he was using recreationally. By 1996, he was fond of opium and ecstasy. He had also been prescribed Rohypnol. There were no traces of these recreational drugs in Michael Hutchence at the time of his death, however, another illegal drug was found. We see from the report that cocaine is present in his bloodstream, and we know that cocaine is cleared from the body within 48 hours, so we can say with certainty that he's been using cocaine in the last two days of his life. Terribly shy, and of course taking cocaine and drugs, he would have viewed that being a prop to help ease his shyness. Cocaine is normally snorted up the nose and gets very rapidly into the bloodstream and affects the brain, stimulating the chemicals, including dopamine, and it's one of the ways Michael could have been getting that natural rush by taking the drug. TYPING Hutchence's need for that dopamine rush affected other areas of his life, turning him into a hedonistic pleasure seeker. One of the side effects of cocaine use is increased libido. When you have sex, the brain releases a number of chemicals, including dopamine and other endorphins, and they're really powerful natural drugs, which can be addictive. So could Hutchence's well-known reputation as a rock-star sex god have been fuelled by his addictions? Hutchence spent the first few days in Sydney catching up with old friends. PHONE RINGS One of the calls he made from his room was to ex-girlfriend Michelle Bennett. Hey. How's it going? Michael Hutchence definitely had a way with women that was pretty legendary. Garry Beers, bass player in INXS, uh, usually got the room right next door to Michael's for years on tour, and he always said that he would hear these moans and sounds emanating from... from next door all night long, and he would just sit there wondering what exactly was going on. < Did Michael ever choke you, strangle you or tie you up in bed? Oh, please. (LAUGHS) You can't ask me that, can you? Can he ask me that? < He can ask of you. Yeah, he did everything. I can't think of anything really, sort of, out of bounds ` threesomes, foursomes, whatever. TENSE MUSIC Friday, 1pm, Hutchence heads out to join his band, INXS, for rehearsals. The coroner's report showed the presence of cocaine, but it also showed that another drug was present in Michael's system, a drug that's used to treat a disease that Michael had hidden from family and from friends and from his fans. But within 24 hours, Michael Hutchence would be dead. . World-renowned pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd has been piecing together the last days of Michael Hutchence's life from the evidence in the toxicology and coroner's report. The toxicology report has revealed traces of cocaine in Hutchence's system, and further investigations have uncovered deep burns on Hutchence's fingers, possibly caused by a heroin noddy ` an involuntary deep sleep while on the drug. What the report tells us is that there was also a cocktail of other drugs and alcohol present and that that cocktail could well prove fatal. PENSIVE MUSIC Hutchence has been back in Sydney for almost three days. His band, INXS, is preparing to start a 13-day tour in a few days' time. But what the world didn't know was that Hutchence's life was in turmoil and starting to unravel, and in less than 24 hours, he'd be dead. According to the coroner's report, cocaine wasn't the only drug found in Michael's blood. Another drug found was Prozac. To give it its proper medical name, fluoxetine is one of the most widely used drugs within the world. It's used to treat panic attacks and depression. In 1992, five years before his death, Hutchence's life had seemed as perfect as he could've hoped. He was the lead singer in a critically acclaimed band and a global rock star. After dating a series of famous, beautiful women, he was now with supermodel Helena Christensen. Michael Hutchence was riding high. FOREBODING MUSIC Then after a night out in August, Hutchence got into a row with a taxi driver. CAR HORN BEEPS FOREBODING MUSIC CONTINUES The fight would change his life forever. Oh God. A blow to his head would transform how he experienced the world. Are you OK? Talk to me. You OK? Blows to the back of the head are transmitted through the bones, round to the front, and damage the nerves that supply the sense of smell at the top of the nose. Michael talked to me about,... um, the` his frustration at not being able to taste or smell. And the reason taste is lost as well is that the sense of smell is a huge component of taste. You lose your smell, you lose 90% of your sense of taste as well. Head injuries that lead to chronic effects like the loss of sense of smell and taste, are commonly associated with depression. To all intents and purposes, he would have looked the same to everybody else, but he would have felt very cut off. He was so separated from everyday experiences and probably felt very lonely and isolated. It depressed him tremendously that he couldn't... he literally couldn't taste food. He was fond of cooking. He told friends that the most depressing thing to him was that he could no longer taste his girlfriend, and to someone who valued hedonism in the extreme, this was a severe, severe blow to him. Debilitating bouts of depression had troubled Hutchence since the incident in Copenhagen. By December 1995, he was prescribed Prozac. Prozac, or fluoxetine, acts on the brain by increasing... the effects of some nerve cells. Nerve cells when they work release a chemical that transmits a message from that nerve cell to the next one in the line. The chemical is called serotonin, and Prozac, or fluoxetine, blocks the reuptake of serotonin, causing a change in mood, making the individual happier. But like any medication, it has side effects. As human beings, we are biochemically sensitive, so put too much of one drug in the way, and it can alter our behaviour and our brain chemistry. The effects are going to be potentially catastrophic. Use of Prozac should always be controlled by a medical professional, because there's an increased statistical risk of suicide in the early use of the drug. By 1997, Hutchence had been on and off Prozac for two years. During this period, his use of other drugs increased dramatically, and his friends reported radical changes in his behaviour. Hutchence's last prescription for Prozac had been filled in London, exactly three weeks before his death. It was extremely difficult to watch this horrendous deterioration. I started to notice, uh, a three-day cycle. This is the day he's up, and he's, like, gonna float off there, and, 'My album's gonna be, like, amazing.' I always know, Oh my God, tomorrow we're not gonna be able to get hold of him. I'm not gonna be able to. He'll be in bed. He'll be away. I also knew not to be anywhere near him the third day. That's the day ` the moods, and could be so spiteful. He could have been going through clinical depression and fighting so hard to deal with those difficult feelings, taking a different cocktail of drugs, which would have had different effects on his system. Being a rock star and abusing all sorts of drugs, he may have felt invincible, and not been following the instructions about how to take the Prozac properly. Hutchence struggled to reconcile his true personality with a rock star alter ego. There were two people. There absolutely were two people, and sometimes three or four ` um, the showman,... and a fabulous showman,... and this other person,... who was very needy,... incredibly shy. We're here with INXS, who are on... Hutchence had met Paula Yates in 1986. The sexual chemistry between them as obvious. Nearly. You were saying that earlier on, that in England everyone's very concerned about your trousers. Mm. I'm not surprised. My trousers, yeah. They look a little tight to me. Now, um, how would you describe the music? (LAUGHS) However, despite rumours of an affair, the couple didn't officially get together until years later. And for the first time, this is a guest that I want to have... my leg over. In February 1995, four months after this interview, Paula left her husband and three children and set up home with Hutchence. 10 months after moving in with Michael, Paula filed for divorce. This drew Hutchence into the couple's custody battle. In July 1996, less than two months after her divorce from Geldof was settled, Paula gave birth to Hutchence's only child, Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily. He was pretty much the last guy in the band, I think, to have a child, becoming a family man and having something outside of the music. It changed him drastically. It made him value different things, and it made him think about the future and want something more than just, you know, being the rock-star poet that he had been ever since he was a teenager. Since they got together, the couple had endured savage attacks in the British press. Seeing the photographers at a distance push Pixie, who's 6 years old, over to make her cry and take a photograph, and then print a front-page headline ` 'Life with Paula and Michael for Pixie.' You know, that's... that's, uh... that's what you read. Hutchence was hounded so much that on one occasion, he lashed out and assaulted one of the photographers. It was so different for him. He was adored in Australia, adored in every other part of the world, and to be hated with that kind of vengeance was incredibly difficult for him. As he approached 40, Hutchence's band, INXS, were on the slide. Record sales had dwindled, and in the UK, Michael was now being seen as front-page tabloid fodder, rather than the talented musician he'd set out to be. After he became, sort of, entangled with, uh, Paula Yates and Bob Geldof and the struggle for her to get custody of the children, and what had become essentially Michael's nuclear family, all of that affected him tremendously, and, um, was definitely fuel for even more drug abuse. If you're in the public eye, you probably do feel a sense of chronic self-awareness ` everyone can see my weaknesses. Everyone can see my insecurities, and this may have heightened his sense of anxiety. And the people closest to Hutchence could see the danger ahead. There's only one place that you can go when you're already going down there anyway. You go down further and further. There was an incident at the Brits. Michael was fuming about it. Has-beens shouldn't present fucking awards to gonna-bes. And that seemed to annihilate him. With insecurities eating away inside and his drug use on the increase, Michael was a ticking time bomb. I knew if somebody didn't help him,... he is going to die. . The toxicology report shows there was a small quantity of diazepam, Valium, circulating in his bloodstream, which is a very common antidepressant, anti-anxiety drug, which has a significant sedative effect. It almost doesn't matter what drug Michael was taking, because, the point is, whatever he was taking, he was trying desperately hard to change his emotional state. So much more is revealed by the cocktail of drugs ` some prescribed and some abused. The Prozac would have helped him in his depression. The cocaine would have given him that moment of excitement when he needed it, but it came at a cost. Perhaps the Valium helped him through that post-cocaine downer. Friday, 6pm, band rehearsal over, Hutchence returns to his hotel and goes to the bar. Gail and David Coward, guests in the hotel, recount what happened that evening. We were meeting some friends in the bar, and as we were sitting there having a drink, I saw Michael Hutchence over in the corner. Paula Duncan, who was there, she brought him over and introduced him to us. INDISTINCT CONVERSATIONS We all said, 'Hello. How are you?' David said, 'Do you wanna have a drink with us?' He said, 'No, no, I'm fine. I've gotta go out for dinner.' But he was very relaxed. We know from the facts that Michael has been drinking steadily. He had alcohol present in his bloodstream at the time that he died, so we have to add alcohol to the whole mix. Friday night, Sydney, just before 8pm. Hutchence meets his father, Kell, and stepmother, Susie, for dinner. Initially, he is uncharacteristically quiet. He told me about the court action, and, um, they were hoping to get, uh... uh, some verdict that day, the Friday, and, um,... he was looking forward to a phone call that night. Over dinner, Hutchence confessed the effect all this was having on him. He was depressed because of all the court stuff going on in England. He's been tugged by Hollywood and tugged by the band. Michael was awaiting the result of the court hearing. In a matter of hours, he would know if Paula would be permitted to fly to Australia and whether he would finally be reunited with his family. Not having control over Tiger Lily would have been a very emasculating feeling for Michael. You know, 'I can't even be a proper dad to her.' After wine and several beers, Hutchence's mood was much improved. By the time he'd dropped his son off at his hotel, Kell stated he was full of fun. Danced away, jumping in the air, waving like this. It was vintage Michael. (SIGHS) It's very hard to figure out what's, uh... what went wrong. The combination of alcohol and Prozac are difficult to predict, because the two drugs are acting in opposite directions. One is a stimulant, the Prozac, and one is a depressant, the alcohol, and so it's difficult to know how they're gonna work together, but they may well work together by causing mood swings. An exuberant Hutchence no longer shows any signs that he was worried or dangerously depressed. So what really happened to change Michael's mood so drastically in the next 14 hours? We've exclusive access to the toxicology report. For the first time in 17 years, we're able to analyse the part that drugs and alcohol played in Michael's tragic death. Friday the 21st of November, after rehearsals for his band's upcoming tour and dinner with his father, Kell, Hutchence is back in room 524 at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. We know from the coroner's report that he's taking cocaine, Valium and Prozac. There was also alcohol present. Presence of quinine in his urine most likely suggests that he'd a gin and tonic sometime that evening. Hutchence is just over seven hours away from finding out the decision of the court hearing in London. He will finally know if his plans for a family Christmas in Australia will include his beloved daughter, Tiger Lily. SEAGULLS SQUAWK At approximate 10.40pm, he's visited by a woman known only as Karen. Karen has only ever given one interview about the events that night. Michael had reportedly known Karen for 15 years. She said that Hutchence had told her he'd been on a variety of medicines for a month, and one of them was Keflex. Keflex is one of the strongest antibiotics available on the market, and it's used to treat bacterial infections in all sorts of areas of the body. Could Hutchence have self-medicated by buying this over-the-counter antibiotic in LA to treat the severe cigarette burns caused by passing out on heroin? We know that Michael had been on and off Prozac for a number of years to treat the depression, possibly caused by his loss of sense of smell and taste. He was known to be taking Keflex, a strong antibiotic, and he'd also taken cocaine and heroin. The chances of adverse drug interactions are increasing with each new drug that's taken. In the interview, Karen went on to say, 'Michael was so up when I saw him, but looking back, 'he was like a volcano waiting to explode with the amount of pharmaceuticals in him.' The tests show that there was a tiny amount of codeine present in the bile ` the fluid that's produced by the liver. This suggests that he may have had a codeine painkiller some days previously. 11pm, Hutchence leaves his room and heads down to the bar. He meets up with old-flame Kym Wilson and her then-boyfriend, Andrew Rayment. Rather than sit in the bar, Hutchence takes Kym and Andrew back to his room to await news on the verdict of his custody case in London. Hotel records show the trio tucked into the minibar, drank strawberry daiquiris and settled in for a long evening. Gail Coward and her husband, David, were staying in the room next door. You could hear somebody` a female laughing. I know I remember hearing that and clinking of glasses. I mean, I must have heard something to think it's a party going on next door. I reckon it would have been around midnight. That night, Hutchence spoke quite openly about how proud he was that his stepdaughters called him Daddy. He may have seen it as his way to health ` 'If I have my family around me, I feel OK.' Michael also told his friends how desperately he wanted the girls to be with him, and that it was right that he and Paula should get custody of the children. He swore that if it didn't happen this time, he would keep on fighting. Getting custody of them became a crusade for him. He was willing to, like, see this fight to the end, to do whatever it took. Uh, it was essentially a do-or-die situation for him. PHONE RINGS As the evening went on, Hutchence received a phone call from his manager in New York, Martha Troup. The news was not good. He hadn't landed the film role with Tarantino, but the director said he had something else in mind. Hutchence seemed to take this disappointment well. But as the night wore on and the call from Paula grew nearer, it seemed Michael may have resorted to his usual coping strategy. Detectives at the scene reported that cocaine wraps were found in the bin. After almost five hours at Hutchence's side, there was still no news from the hearing in London. An exhausted Andrew was falling asleep at the foot of Hutchence's bed. A tired Kym decides it's time to leave. But still anxiously awaiting the call, Hutchence wasn't ready for sleep. When you've trained your brain to be used to high levels of stimulation through dopamines and endorphins, when you stop taking drugs, the comedown can be very hard indeed. The person may desperately want to sleep, but feel so agitated in their own skin, and everything they want to do, which is about rest, they can't do. Their body won't let them. As they leave, Hutchence asks Kym for a Valium, but she didn't have any. Perhaps he felt the only way he could cope was to ingest drugs to change his mood, to change his state again. We know from the toxicology, that there was already some Valium circulating in Michael's blood. So it's perhaps fortunate that Kym and Andrew didn't have any more to give him. Perhaps the main thing here, though, is that he was prepared to take any drug to try and manage his moods. Kym and Andrew arranged to see Michael the next night, not knowing as they left that this would be the last time they saw their friend alive. Kym Wilson, when she made a statement to police, she described Michael's mood as, um, elevated, when they left him, that he'd been a bit anxious cos he was waiting for the call from London from Paula. Left alone in a high state of anxiety, Hutchence is now entering the final five hours of his life. So, at this stage, his friends have left. They've not provided him with Valium, but he's still got cocaine, Prozac, alcohol, possibly Keflex... on board, but he's going down. His mood is going to be getting worse, and he's going to be feeling worse and worse. PHONE RINGS Saturday, approximately half an hour after Kym and Andrew have left, Hutchence finally receives the long-awaited call from London. Fresh from court, Paula breaks the news he's been dreading. The hearing has been adjourned for a further three weeks. Without the court's permission, Paula and the girls will not be joining him for Christmas. He was told the children were not allowed to come out. That meant Tiger wouldn't be coming out. It was a devastating blow. Michael perceived Tiger Lily, this child he adored, as... a glimmer of hope. Here is a symbol of something that is good about me. Michael was facing what could be considered to be the perfect storm. All of these things were hitting him at the same time. He's going down because of the combination of the drugs ` the cocaine, the Prozac, the alcohol ` and we know from the coroner's report there was also other prescription drugs. Who does he think he is? The psychological effects of the phone calls he's had ` I mean, this man must have been right on the edge at this point. He had told all his friends and even his parents that, um... that they were coming. He decided that, um, he was gonna call Bob and try to reason with him. What else can I do? At that point, you know, he was` he was desperate, he was angry, and he was gonna do anything he possibly could to make that happen. Gail Coward, a guest in the room next door, heard everything. Don't you understand things change? I heard this guy talking on the phone, and he was saying, 'She's not your wife; she's your ex-wife.' Then the voices got louder, and he started swearing and getting a bit angry. Jesus Christ! Bob said he was virtually incoherent,... screaming down the phone, 'They're not yours. You can't have Tiger.' And then... And then nothing. What Michael may have felt was cut out of the family picture, and potentially having that denied to him may have exacerbated feelings of frustration, anger, anxiety and even insecurity. By now Hutchence is possibly deep in the well of a cocaine crash. His last-ditch appeal to Bob Geldof to let Tiger Lily join him in Australia had fallen on deaf ears. He turns to his friends for support. In this final hours, he made several frantic phone calls, one of them to his old friend Michelle Bennett, asking her to come to the hotel, during which he broke down and started to cry. Look, I need you. He also left a note at the front desk for their tour manager saying that Mr Rivers, which was his pseudonym at the time, would not be going to rehearsals that day. Obviously, that note can be interpreted in many different ways. At 9.38 that morning, Michael Hutchence rang his manager, Martha in New York, and left a message on her voicemail saying, 'Martha, I've fucking had enough.' When she rang him back at the Ritz-Carlton, there was no answer from his room. Hutchence's final call was to Michelle Bennett. He'd called her earlier and left a message on her answering machine, in which she said he sounded drunk. The toxicology report shows that he had 116mg per decilitre of alcohol present in his bloodstream at the time that he died. This level of alcohol would certainly lead to some slurring of the speech, impaired judgment and observation. It may also be a contributory factor in some impulsive acts. At 9.54am, he called Michelle again. When Michelle heard his voice, she knew that something was very wrong. Um, she immediately said she would come to the hotel and just really feared for his well-being. MELANCHOLY MUSIC MUSIC CONTINUES WATER SPLASHES She went to the door of his room and knocked on the door. There was no answer. The maid pushed the door open at 11.50am. She couldn't get the door open and had to push it because the weight of his body was behind the door. David and Gail Coward recount what they heard that morning. I remember waking up. There was a thump from next door. FOREBODING MUSIC A lot of Michael's friends all said that in the weeks leading up to his death, he was very happy. He was very hopeful, and he was like the Michael that they all knew when he was young. Um, they said that he'd decided to come back to Australia. He was excited about that. He was excited about the future. Deciding at the end of a complex case like this which is the most important factor is very difficult. Here we've got drug use, drug abuse and also hanging. Which one is the most important in determining the cause of death? There are so many twists and turns in the medical evidence. Putting them all in the correct order and reaching a final conclusion can be very difficult. . FOG HORN BLARES INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence has been found dead in his hotel room aged just 37. Detectives have taken into possession a leather belt for scientific examination. It would appear that there are no suspicious circumstances. As the police arrive at the scene and seal off the room, news of Hutchence's mysterious death leaks to the media. It was one of those events, one of those stories, where you just drop everything else you're doing. It's just all hands on deck to find out everything you can about what happened. Australia's in shock as fans and the paparazzi gather outside. Investigators get to work inside the hotel to determine the cause of death. The first priority in the examination of a scene of a sudden death, particularly one associated with hanging, is the position of the body, the state of the ligature and how the ligature was actually attached to the high point. In room 524, they find a bed with the sheets strewn on the floor, half-empty glasses of alcohol, various pills and prescription medicines as well as photos of Paula and Hutchence's daughter, Tiger Lily. There is no sign of a suicide note. He was found naked. We've had cases of people, who to get an auto-erotic, uh, sensation,... uh, have done that, not intending to kill themselves. We had to go right into it to see what the answer was. Hutchence was lying on his right-hand side, facing the door. He had the belt loop tied around his neck with the buckle under this ear. As to whether he did it deliberately or not, that was the big question. The 24th of November, two days after his death, Hutchence's girlfriend, Paula Yates, flies into Sydney to formally identify the body. She refuses to believe Michael would end his own life. People will go with whatever narrative they're comfortable with, so, uh, the family may go with a narrative that... that gives them some kind of peace of mind, that it was something that went wrong. In keeping with his rock-and-roll lifestyle and sex-god status, the media frenzy around Hutchence's death chose to report that he'd accidently killed himself in a sex game gone wrong ` auto-erotic asphyxiation. And some of the evidence seems to support this. Perhaps the most obvious thing to consider in this death is the fact that Michael is naked. It could simply be that he was just about to have a bath, and there was water in the bathtub waiting, or it could be that the hanging had a sexual component to it. I've had the odd case over the years, and in auto-eroticism, you find evidence of semen and so forth, because the hanging occurs when they're in the throes of, uh... of orgasm. When trying to make a distinction between a suicidal hanging and an auto-erotic hanging, the presence of semen in the genital region is often quoted. In fact, about 50 to 60% of men will leak semen as a normal post-mortem process, and so the presence of semen in the genital area is not a marker of an auto-erotic hanging. And the hard leather belt Hutchence used to hang himself also challenges the 'sex game gone wrong' theory. I'm sure that in auto-eroticism, it seems to be reasonable to suggest that, uh, you would put something around your neck not to, uh, show any marks and make sure that you didn't do, uh, yourself any harm. And other clues from the crime scene could once and for all put paid to the idea that Hutchence's suicide was due to auto-erotic asphyxiation. The attachment point, in this case on the back of the door, is strong enough to bear his weight. The belt he used was made of leather, and so to get the pressure on his neck, he would have had to of sunk to his knees, and this type of hanging is known as partial suspension. The effect of pressure on the neck from hanging results in very rapid restriction of blood flow to the brain, and death will be permanent in about five to seven minutes. For family and friends seeking closure, the absence of a suicide note had suggested that Hutchence's death was an accident. In most cases, people who commit suicide do not leave notes. You see, people think that you've gotta leave a note to commit suicide. You don't. That decision may have been a very impulsive decision, driven by... very primary emotions... rather than logic. It might have just happened in that moment of absolute pain and agony. In my experience, sadly, it's not that unusual for apparently happy and healthy people to commit suicide by any means without leaving any note and without giving any explanation. So in that sense, Michael Hutchence's death is not unique. He died by suicide by hanging. All of these things were happening to him that morning, and each one has built up his frustration, and then he just ` I could use the word ` snapped. For friends and family alike, they will always associate Michael Hutchence with a tragic waste of life in its prime. He lived the rock-and-roll lifestyle for approximately 20 years, but in the end, it was the mundane pressures of ordinary life that proved too much for him to handle. Captions by Antony Vlug. Edited by Faith Hamblyn. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2015