According to a search warrant, detectives interviewed Kirk A. Johnson — a former Prince drummer and current manager of the singer’s Paisley Park estate — following the performer’s unexpected death last month.
The court document, obtained by the Los Angeles Times, discloses that police seized Prince Rogers Nelson’s medical records from a Minneapolis-area hospital in early May. Investigators were particularly interested in files involving a family-medicine doctor who had treated Prince in the weeks before the singer was found dead April 21 in a Paisley Park elevator.
The warrant also reveals Johnson, 51, told detectives that Prince had gone to another local medical clinic for an illness in 2014 or 2015.
Despite weeks of media speculation that an addiction to prescription painkillers may have led to Prince’s sudden death, authorities haven’t announced how the 57-year-old artist died.
“I am unable to provide any comment or clarification about specifics of the investigation,” Carver County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Jason Kamerud told Yahoo News on Tuesday.
The singer’s inner circle has also kept mum.
Johnson, who oversaw Prince’s sprawling studios and home in Chanhassen, Minn., and was described by the Minneapolis Star Tribune as Prince’s de facto bodyguard, has hired Minneapolis criminal defense attorney F. Clayton Tyler. Johnson hasn’t spoken publicly about Prince’s death, and Yahoo News messages to him weren’t returned. Johnson is also a personal trainer at Life Time Fitness in Chanhassen but hasn’t been to the gym since Prince’s passing, the AP reports.
He did, however, send a text message to the Star Tribune on Friday.
“Right now, it’s just too painful to even speak,” Johnson told the newspaper.
Johnson graduated from Minneapolis Central High School in 1982, six years after Prince. In the 1984 rock musical drama “Purple Rain,” Johnson makes a brief appearance as a dancer on the balcony at the nightclub First Avenue, where Prince filmed his iconic movie.
Johnson, a drummer for other bands through the years, is credited for various roles on 11 Prince albums in the 1990s. He was the singer’s best man when Prince married backup singer Mayte Garcia on Valentine’s Day 1996.