Original subtitles

It's so true in life, I believe,

that when we stop chasing illusions

and go after the truth,

life can be so wonderful.

♪♪

♪♪

Hey, everyone. I'm Hill Harper.

Welcome to "How It Really Happened."

He was born Prince Rogers Nelson.

His childhood nickname was "Skipper."

Over the course of his career, the world knew him as Prince,

the Purple One, the Artist Formerly Known As Prince,

a symbol and once again, Prince.

His towering fame didn't just come from his musical genius

but also from the many mysteries of his personal life

and perhaps the deepest secret of all

was the one that caused Prince to pass.

For many of us, it's hard to comprehend

how a man who had millions of fans

could come to an agonizing end all alone in an elevator.

Prince was a brilliant artist

who created music to entertain and stimulate,

and his songs that won over fans worldwide

Came from a profoundly personal place --

his great faith.

♪♪

I pretty much wanted to be dependent upon God,

and when you get the inner calling to do something,

and you know that you're being inspired by God,

you pretty much know you better answer that call.

♪♪

Sidner: On April 7th, lots of people excited in Atlanta --

Prince is coming to town,

and he's gonna do a couple of concerts.

And I think his last tour was just piano and microphone.

Sidner: But the day that the concert was supposed to happen,

everyone started getting news.

Something wasn't right.

Reporter: Happening now, hundreds of Prince fans

are waiting to learn the new date

for two concerts postponed tonight at the Fox Theater

because the performer is sick with the flu.

Dr. Pinsky: He may have thought he had the flu. He did not.

Jones: Everybody, you know, had a sense of alarm.

He is not a guy who cancels concerts.

You know, he could perform sick as a dog,

and nobody would know it, I mean, sick as a dog.

Sidner: On that very same day, he saw a doctor

named Michael Todd Shulenberg, and some tests were done,

and so the concerts got canceled, people disappointed.

Jones: When he had to cancel the show,

he wanted me to help with the press release

because he just felt badly about not doing the show.

Sidner: He comes back, and he does these powerful concerts,

long concerts.

One of the things that made fans go wild

is when he played "Purple Rain."

♪ Only want to see you ♪

♪ Laughing in the purple rain ♪

♪ Purple rain ♪

♪ Purple rain ♪

And, afterwards,

the crowd explodes and stands up

and is clapping and cheering, and they're touched by it,

you know, genuinely touched by it.

After those two amazing concerts,

Prince tweets a quote from a fan,

saying, "I am transformed."

He told fans at the Atlanta concert, his final show,

that, "Stay tuned.

In a few days, you're gonna see something

that's gonna happen."

Sidner: He gets on his plane that next day,

and then everything starts to tumble.

The plane makes an emergency landing.

Pilot: Chicago, this is 990. We're leveling on 18.

Dispatcher: 990. Chicago center...

Dr. Pinsky: Well, there was a forced landing allegedly

because he lost consciousness.

Cymone: Something is not right.

So when I heard about that,

I just got a really sinking feeling, you know,

because that just, you know, didn't make sense to me.

Jones: When Prince's plane had to land,

I knew about it before the press did,

and it was scary. It was a scary moment.

You can hear the pilot in the plane

talking to the control tower.

He is given, according to our sources,

he is given a medication to revive him.

Dr. Pinsky: The fact that he got a NARCAN shot

when the first responders got there means he was not awake.

He was unconscious.

The fact that he woke up from the NARCAN shot

tells me he was unconscious because of opiates.

[ Siren wailing ]

Sidner: The ambulance comes, takes him to the hospital.

He leaves, and from what our sources say,

he leaves prematurely from the hospital.

Once he's sort of up and at 'em, he leaves.

Dr. Pinsky: That's not a doctor's decision.

A physician would not allow that to happen.

That is a patient leaving against medical advice,

for sure.

Reporter 2: Prince's reps tell TMZ he's been battling the flu

for several weeks and felt considerably worse

after performing in Atlanta last night.

He was treated and released three hours after landing

and is now back home.

Dr. Pinsky: That was not the flu.

You don't land a plane because of the flu.

Smith: He died on the plane, and they brought him back.

Somebody's gonna have to tell me the real story.

They're gonna have to tell me exactly why you did not,

when you found him on the plane, stay with him all night long

and have a doctor there when he got off that plane.

Jones: When Prince would talk about his childhood,

he would do it in a campy way often.

You could see underneath there, you know,

there was some real pain.

Reporter 3: His private jet makes an unexpected detour,

an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois,

rushed to the hospital, but Prince doesn't stay long.

So he goes back home,

and here's where things get really sort of odd

and I think a lot of us are scratching our heads.

He is seen that next day

riding his bicycle in the neighborhood.

And someone takes a video of it.

I looked outside and saw a gentleman riding a bike

and noticed right away that it was Prince.

I was actually shocked to see him riding his bike

after learning that just the day before,

you know, his plane had landed, and he wasn't doing well.

The emergency landing, the hospital stay --

It was all sort of shrouded in mystery,

but it's not that surprising because everyone knew Prince

to be a very private person.

He didn't like a lot of his life to be revealed,

and, in fact, he had said at one time

that he just wanted his music to speak for him.

I kind of did what I wanted to do, you know?

I wanted my music as, even now, to speak loudest for me.

Halperin: We've seen some great artists

in the last 100 years.

I don't think anybody in the pop genre or funk

or R&B holds a candle to Prince.

He took it to a completely different level,

set a completely different bar.

Levy: I don't think there's any doubt about

when Prince is at his best.

It's that moment from the work beginning on "1999"...

♪ So tonight I'm gonna party like it's 1999 ♪

...to the end of the "Purple Rain" tour.

That's when he's at his peak.

Every time he turns around, he's making a hit record.

I saw "Purple Rain" 17 times.

I was absolutely mesmerized by him, mesmerized.

♪ I only want to see you laughing ♪

♪ In the purple rain ♪

♪ Purple rain ♪

♪ Purple rain ♪

King: When did you decide music would be a career?

Well, I learned early on this was what I wanted to do,

maybe about 12 years old.

I knew that this is what I'd want to do

the rest of my life, yeah.

Levy: Prince is born into a musical family.

His father had a jazz group, the Prince Rogers trio,

so literally, Prince is born with the name

of his father's musical ambition.

Sidner: His mother was a jazz singer.

I don't know how you could not be musical

with that kind of a family.

When Prince would talk about his childhood,

he would do it in a campy way often.

You know, he would sort of, you know,

make a lot of jokes and that kind of stuff,

but you could see underneath there,

you know, there was some real pain.

Larry King did this interview with Prince

where he starts asking him

a little bit about his relationship with his father,

and he says something like,

"Mm, you had a difficult relationship

or a rough childhood."

You had a rough time with parent--

I mean, that's all resolved now, but your father,

you had a rough time with your father, right?

I wouldn't call it rough.

I mean, he was a very strict disciplinarian,

but all fathers were.

I learned the difference between right and wrong.

Prince says, "Well, I wouldn't call it rough,"

but in the nuance, you can hear the difficulties.

Halperin: Prince wrote a song called "Papa,"

and he needed to write that song.

It was therapeutic for him.

In that song, you get a glimpse.

He says, "Don't abuse children, or they'll turn out like me."

You can only assume he's talking about his own life.

That's what musicians, that's what actors --

that's what they do.

They talk about their own life in their music.

Halperin: That's why Prince was so passionate

about children's rights,

and he was a big advocate for protecting children.

Levy: When his parents split up...

-Prince! -Whoo!

Levy: ...his dad left behind a piano,

and that seems to be

when Prince gravitated towards music in earnest

and began learning or teaching himself how to play.

Smith: Prince learns the guitar,

blows me away because I'm with him every day.

I'm going like, "Where'd you learn -- What? How'd you --"

And he said, "Man, it was easy."

I met Prince in 1970.

I believe he was around 12 years old,

and I was dating his cousin.

When I found out that Prince played multiple instruments,

I'm going like, "Well, wait a minute.

This guy plays guitar, keyboards and bass?"

The first time I met Prince, I guess I was probably maybe 13,

and I think he either asked me what I did,

or I asked him what he did,

but he said he did music, and I said, "So do I, you know,

we should get together and jam."

So he ends up living with his mom

and his dad for a little while,

and when he and his dad have a fight,

he goes to live with a friend of his,

André Cymone, a bass player in Prince's first band.

He was kicked out of the house,

or he moved out of the house when he was somewhere around 13.

He just came, and he's like, "Man, can I live with you guys?"

And I was like, you know, it was kind of late, you know?

I was like -- I was like, "It's fine with me,"

I said, "But you're gonna have to talk to my mom."

Well, he talked to my mom,

and, you know, they had a long conversation,

and, you know, I know my mom was like,

"Well, I'm gonna have to let your mom know

because I can't just, you know..."

So my mom talked to his mom. They worked it out.

Halperin: I think that Prince felt

he was abandoned by his mother.

You know, from my experience

from when he came to live with us,

you know, you know, we had so much fun growing

that if there was a sense of abandonment,

I never recognized it because we were too busy

doing the things that, you know, teenage kids do.

I think he wound up living with us six, seven years.

Prince would use you until he used you up, baby.

[ Laughs ]

But that's how he had become, though.

Reporter 4: Over the weekend,

in an event called Paisley Park After Dark,

Prince just up and showed up.

It was a very intimate setting,

and the fans said something like, "Prince said,

'Save your prayers, at least for a few days, for me.'"

What does he mean by,

"Save your prayers for a few days"?

Doesn't that bother anybody?

I think that's a typically cryptic Prince remark.

He says things that you have no idea what they mean.

He may have no idea what they mean.

But he was just sort of implying --

that was his way of saying, "Hey.

I'm okay, I'm alive and well," I think.

As I go through this journey,

I don't look back much at all.

I try to stay in the now and live in the now.

No. I think it keeps you young.

Sidner: In junior high, Prince decides to form this band

along with a couple of others --

his best friend, his cousin, and his best friend's sister,

so his best friend's sister,

Linda, Chaz, his cousin and André, his best friend.

They name the band Grand Central.

Cymone: We played anywhere.

If somebody was getting married, they're having a reception,

you know, "Let's get the band."

"Well, we're having a book-club meeting.

Let's get the band."

"Oh, we're --" you know, whatever there --

You know, "We're having a backyard barbecue.

Let's get the band."

Wilie: All they wanted to do

was be onstage and play and get girls.

So that Battle-of-the-Band thing started coming in.

We started battling other groups and entering contests.

Our manager would put us in, and we'd wipe everybody out.

Cymone: If you won, you'd get some money,

but you'd also get, you know, some studio time.

Husney: From the very first second

that I heard this demo tape,

I knew it was something different.

It's one kid.

He just turned 18, and he's playing everything

and singing everything and writing everything.

Smith: I heard it and seen it with my own eyes.

He was built for this.

He was built to be a star.

King: How did you get famous?

Prince: It started with a lot of appearances

I was doing in and about Minneapolis,

and word just spread about what --

So you were a local name.

Yeah -- what I could do,

and then I was taken out to Los Angeles

by my first manager whose name escapes me.

Owen Husney, I guess, from what they tell me.

I was the guy who sort of discovered Prince

and got him his first deal and was his first manager.

Cymone: When Owen came in, obviously, he signed Prince

and him got a record deal and did all that stuff,

and, you know, but Owen was so much more than a manager.

You know, he was a person with a wealth of knowledge.

Owen Husney called me and said, "I would love for you

to do pictures for this amazing new talent

to get him a record deal, to get him signed."

I knew I wanted to be at Warner Bros. with Prince.

We wound up with the largest new-artist signing

in the history up until that point.

Cymone: We looked at this as our one shot.

The whole idea was, at this point,

was for him to do it himself,

you know, and to record it himself,

and, obviously, I was there, and, you know, he was billed

as sort of the one-man-band kind of thing.

He really hadn't had his persona formed.

He was just real.

He was so open.

He was just Prince.

Husney: This was a man who knew what he wanted

at a very early age,

and he had the gift to be able to get it done.

He had that extra something else, and that was that desire,

and he was not going to fail.

He was not going to fail, no matter what.

Levy: The story of "For You," the first record,

is that Warner Bros. has signed him

to a guaranteed 3-album deal.

It's actually a good record.

Prince's second album is self-titled.

He's playing the instruments again.

By the time we get to "Dirty Mind,"

album number three, he is making songs overnight, sometimes.

♪ But, honey, you got me on my knees ♪

♪ Won't you please let me lay you down ♪

♪♪

That's the thing that lets the record company

and the world know that this guy is in it to win it.

Ladies and gentlemen, here is Prince.

[ Cheers and applause ]

I remember we were doing the gig,

the "American Bandstand" gig, and we were really excited.

Yeah. You know, "American Bandstand"

is not the first time that Prince trots out his

difficult-with-the-interviewer bit.

How many years ago did you make these demos

and then have offers on them?

Cymone: I just think Prince was nervous,

and so when Dick was asking him those questions, you know,

he wasn't sure what to say.

Did somebody tell me

you played every instrument on this album?

Is that correct?

Maybe. Naw.

That's it. You're very shy.

So, you know, depending on who you ask,

it was either a put-on, or he was genuinely nervous.

Sidner: There's this shy, quiet side

that wants to disappear.

So you have these two distinctly different personalities,

and they are fascinating, and that's what draws you in.

As Prince grows, and this happens

with a lot of different performers,

as he grows and changes, some of the people

that surrounded him at the very beginning

and sort of who grew with him to a point, all of a sudden,

he sort of cut them off, if you will.

Cymone: You know, I think, for the most part,

when I left, it was amicable.

It was very much amicable.

You know, there was issues of songs because I wanted --

there were songs that I had written that, you know,

I had recorded in his studio that I wanted to use as a demo.

He wouldn't allow me to do that,

so that was not cool, from my perspective,

but, you know, I wasn't mad at him, you know?

Okay, I was a little mad.

Willie: So I'm backstage, and I see Prince's back towards me.

He goes all the way around.

He comes right by me, right where the stand is,

and I say, "Yo, man. What's up?"

And he goes, "Hi!"

And he keeps walking.

I went like...

"What?"

Then the bodyguard comes up to me and says,

"You've got to go."

And then I just said, "Wow," you know?

It kind of hurt me a little bit.

For whatever reason,

we sort of split apart.

Prince wrote me a letter at one point,

and he said, "I love you, and I love your person."

"Maybe I'm giving you a lot of demands."

Prince would use you until he used you up, baby.

[ Laughs ]

But that's how he had become, though.

You know what I'm saying?

It's the nature of this business,

and unless you have somebody around you to keep you grounded,

that's what happens.

Sidner: Prince's half brother, Duane Nelson,

says to his attorney, Michael B. Padden,

"You know Prince was taking Percocet."

Welcome back to "How It Really Happened."

Prince is a legend.

He created all his own music

and on many songs played every instrument.

He became music royalty,

one of the best-selling artists of all time

with over 100 million records sold worldwide,

seven Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe

and an Academy Award for the movie "Purple Rain"

for best original score.

And in his first year of eligibility,

he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

That kind of purple power will no doubt stand the test of time.

I have been cool enough to stay close to people

that know the streets.

You know, I live -- I've always lived far away from everything.

Minneapolis is, well, you know, it's Fargo.

In one of Prince's last tweets, he sends out this message...

So here's this guy who's obviously

going through so much in his life,

but he's got such a good relationship with his fans,

and that goes back to well before "Purple Rain."

The "Purple Rain" concept... Prince: Mm-hmm?

...autobiographical?

Semi. Yeah.

Albert Magnoli wrote that, the script for that.

My whole thing was to --

I really wanted to chronicle the life

I was living at the time, which was in an area

that had a lot of great talent and a lot of rivalries.

"Purple Rain" is a movie made on Prince's terms.

♪ Purple rain ♪

♪ Purple rain ♪

Sidner: He not only comes up with the score,

he not only comes up with the music,

He comes up with the idea and where to shoot it --

Minneapolis, Minnesota, not exactly Hollywood.

Come on. Let's go.

I'm not going anywhere.

Loder: The movie "Purple Rain" was,

or is, like a fairy tale, like a funk fairy tale,

and it was -- it really lifted you up.

You'd see it, and you'd come out of the theater feeling

just a little bit different.

Levy: You're talking about this guy

who makes this music of unification.

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today..."

♪ Dearly beloved ♪

♪ We are gathered here today ♪

♪ To get through this thing called life ♪

Levy: I don't know how many people I married that summer,

but there were a lot of us,

and we got through this thing called life.

Halperin: He was extremely quiet behind the scenes,

but when those lights came up,

nobody did it better than him.

[ Cheers and applause ]

Let's face it.

If you look at the moves he did onstage

in the first 10 years of his career,

I mean, you had to be a refined athlete

to do something like that every night.

One, two three!

Paster: If you look at some of the videos

from "Sign O' the Times" or from "Love Sexy" or --

I mean, that was pretty physical stuff he was doing --

Jumping off of stacks,

doing the spins into the splits three or four times.

Levy: There are those who say that his injuries go back

to 1985 to the "Purple Rain" tour.

He was rumored to have a hip issue

and maybe a hip replacement.

He walked with a cane.

We all saw that.

Prince performed at a very, very, very high level,

and I think he sustained, you know, some injuries,

and I think for those injuries, he had to take medication.

I didn't see the pain. I didn't see the drugs.

Sidner: We know from talking to an attorney

for one of Prince's half brothers --

Duane Nelson was Prince's half brother.

He is now deceased.

He died many years ago,

but Duane imparted some information

to his attorney long after him and Prince had a falling out.

Padden: They basically grew up together,

and throughout their young life,

Duane was someone who protected Prince.

When Prince became a music star, he was on the payroll,

and he was Prince's number-one bodyguard.

Sidner: Duane Nelson says to his attorney,

Michael B. Padden, "You know Prince was taking Percocet."

One of his main duties when he was Prince's bodyguard

was to procure Percocet for Prince.

Sidner: Another of his siblings, Lorna Nelson,

also gave similar information saying that,

"Yes, indeed, Prince had taken some illicit drugs."

Padden: It became such a significant issue that Lorna,

who also was estranged from Prince --

I want to be very clear about that --

but was very privy to what was going on in his life,

and I would say approximately 2004,

it was her belief that Prince was going to die,

his drug use was so out of control.

So you have two half siblings who both share the same story

at different times in Prince's life.

Unfortunately, we can't talk to them

because they have both died.

Dr. Pinsky: Prince apparently had long-standing hip pain.

The nature of the hip injury is not really clear,

but it would not be appropriate for him

to take opiates on a long-term basis

because it will make the pain worse

and trigger a second problem -- dependency or addiction.

Camerota: Despite those allegations

from his half siblings that there was drug use,

there were also people who were very close to Prince,

had known him throughout his life

and say they never saw any drug use whatsoever,

and they were very shocked by it.

He was so against drugs, never did any drugs in his life,

didn't drink, didn't do anything.

He had created a world that was unlike any other world --

No drugs, none of that crazy junk.

Prince was skeletal the last weeks of his life.

He certainly was unhealthy.

People around him should have woken up

and really seen the writing on the wall.

John, you were at the party at Paisley Park

this Saturday that now has received so much attention.

You also saw him, I guess,

this past Tuesday at a jazz club in Minneapolis.

You know, what was he doing there,

and did he look all right there?

He was at the Dakota jazz club in downtown Minneapolis.

He was seeing a performer by the name of Lizz Wright,

an old folk singer.

He was sitting upstairs on the balcony

in his kind of private table

where they pull the curtains around him.

He walked out single file with all the people in his entourage.

He had his cane thrust -- kind of slung over his shoulder,

strutting out with the usual Prince attitude.

Sidner: There was an image, I think,

that Prince had of himself

that he wanted the world to see, just like all of us,

and there was a part of him

that was a regular, flawed human.

He didn't want people to see that part of him.

How do you handle that aspect of the media,

which has often given you trouble, the tabloids?

I don't have trouble with anybody.

You don't? But do you read them? No.

Do you hear about them? Very seldom.

Do you think any part

of a personality's private life is our business?

Do you think your marriage is our business?

Well, you know, I'm like this.

My music is my music.

That's pretty much what you come to the party for.

Halperin: Prince was linked

to a plethora of women in his life.

By all accounts, he probably slept with thousands of women.

He made the woman who he was with his queen,

his shining star.

It is so funny because, you know, Prince is such,

you know, the ladies' man in the popular imagination,

but I think what people don't understand is,

Prince really cared about these women,

like, sometimes embarrassingly so.

Man, he was just almost embarrassingly attentive,

and he would try to keep it cool,

but you're not cool right now.

You know what I mean? You're not being cool right now.

Prince ends up marrying Mayte in 1996.

They marry on Valentine's Day.

He clearly loved her,

and evidence of that is a song he wrote for her,

"The Most Beautiful Girl in the World."

♪ Could you be ♪

♪ The most beautiful girl in the world? ♪

And then she got pregnant,

and in late 1996,

they had their first child.

Mayte gave birth to a baby boy,

and the baby was born with a rare disease,

and the baby only survived a week and then died,

and that was devastating to Prince and Mayte.

And many people say that it was something

that Prince never got over.

Your heart just goes out for -- to anybody that happens to,

and it was such a terrible thing,

and that's got to mark you.

Halperin: He really could not get over it.

In fact, he didn't even acknowledge it.

Like, you look at interviews with Oprah,

talked about it like his son was alive.

Oprah: What is the status of your baby,

your pregnancy? Your --

Our family exists.

Mm-hmm.

We're just beginning it. Mm-hmm.

And we've got many kids to have,

a long way to go.

They talked about their baby boy

as if the child was alive when, in fact, the child had died.

You're wondering, like, "What happened?"

And you realize now, they were in absolute time of mourning,

like deep, deep sadness and mourning

when they're doing that interview

because their baby boy had died,

and clearly, they didn't want to reveal that or talk about it,

and, eventually, Prince and the most beautiful girl

in the world ended up divorcing.

Smith: You mean to tell me my 57-year-old cousin

who weighed 115 pounds at his death --

that horrified my family.

We were like, "What? Wait a minute."

I just sat there,

and I was like... "How can this be?"

Levy: The suspicion that something was wrong

was one that he worked to dispel.

He wanted to be seen in public,

and he wanted people to have the idea that he was well.

On Wednesday, April 20th, the day before Prince died,

a doctor, a California addiction specialist

named Dr. Howard Kornfeld gets a call

from Prince's representatives, and they are so desperate.

They say that they want to get Prince into treatment.

It was Prince's people calling him to say,

"We need help, and we need it now."

This was an emergency intervention.

They needed someone there as fast as possible.

Dr. Kornfeld has a scheduling conflict,

and he sends his son instead,

who also worked at the clinic, Andrew Kornfeld.

He sends him to Minneapolis on a red-eye flight

to meet with Prince,

but he goes there to try to talk to Prince and meet with Prince

because they realize, the Kornfeld,

the father and the son, just how urgent it is.

Why would you do "something special,"

like call for a doctor multiple states away?

He is just a few miles

from one of the premier treatment centers in the world.

Hazelden is around the corner.

It's insane they did not just take him.

Banfield: So after flying all night,

Andrew Kornfeld gets to Paisley Park and bangs on the door.

And, ultimately, Andrew and a couple of the people there

find Prince unresponsive in that elevator.

This is CNN breaking news.

Breaking news coverage, I'm Brooke Baldwin.

A massive loss in the world of music, pop culture,

art, superstar, music pioneer, music legend Prince,

has died at the age of 57.

Prince is dead.

He's gone.

And...we're all stunned.

I just sat, stared at the computer.

I-I couldn't believe it, and that one sentence that said,

"The body was identified as Prince Rogers Nelson,"

and I just broke down.

Cymone: I just sat there.

I hung up the phone,

and I just sat there,

and I was like... "How can this be?

This makes no sense."

Police have released the logs of dozens of emergency calls

made from Prince's Paisley Park Studios

as they work to try to piece together

what happened to the singer.

We're also learning powerful prescription painkillers

were found on Prince's body

and in his home, and now, the DEA is on the case.

So clearly, there were secrets being kept,

and they didn't want folks to know.

We now know what killed music superstar Prince.

It was an accidental opioid overdose,

but there's a lot more to it than that,

and, in fact, this isn't the end of the understanding.

It's actually just the beginning.

The medical examiner's report reveals that Prince

was on one of the most potent drugs on the market right now.

It's called fentanyl.

Dr. Pinsky: Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid.

It's been around for many, many years.

It was designed to be used for severe pain,

cancer pain, short-term pain.

It is an extremely powerful opiate.

What we are hearing now, though,

from the Minneapolis "Star Tribune" sources

is that there were some pills

found inside of the estate at Paisley Park

and that those pills were labeled hydrocodone,

and that the pills, when tested, turned out to be fentanyl.

Dr. Pinsky: In fact, we're hearing

that the pills were stamped --

they were containing fentanyl but stamped with a mark

that suggests hydrocodone or vicodin.

It suggests that was something obtained on the street.

What he was taking and what he thought he was taking

and where he got these drugs --

That's a story that still needs to be told.

Smith: I don't believe it was an accident

that the bottles were mislabeled.

I don't believe that.

I don't believe any of the stories that they told me.

Sidner: Who supplied these particular pills to Prince?

They can't find a valid prescription.

So there is a criminal side to this investigation.

Dr. Pinsky: This, no doubt,

was a slow escalation into dependency.

He had hip pain, and then, unfortunately,

these drugs actually amplify pain over time,

so he would start to need it during the day.

Then he would start having trouble sleeping,

and then we does have trouble sleeping,

we'll add in a benzodiazepine, add in those hypnotic,

and now, we have a lethal combination.

So he's on his own in a big, empty house,

in pain, looking for a way to relieve the pain,

and that's what kills Prince, and that's just --

that's not the way you want any story to end.

Halperin: How do we get here?

Another pop icon, a tragedy, found dead mysteriously,

but drugs into play.

I think there's only one answer.

It's enablers who are greedy.

Smith: I always felt like people keeping him from us,

like they were keeping people away from Michael Jackson.

Michael Jackson, they were keeping them away,

and I was warned after Michael ended up dying,

I was warned the same thing was gonna

probably happen to Prince.

Prince wasn't Prince anymore.

He wasn't the guy that I knew.

He was just too far up, too far gone

as far as in the music industry,

you would say, not as a musician but as a star.

Did I let him down?

Did he need me, and I wasn't there?

You know, should I have jumped on a plane then?

You know, should I have done this? Should I have done that?

You can't help but feel that way.

I think all of us feel that way.

There was nobody else there.

There was nobody else to help him.

I felt bad that I wasn't there for him.

I loved him.

I was there from day one.

We put this beginning of this together.

Obviously, after that, it was his genius, you know?

But we were -- you know, like, it's really hard to talk about.

Cymone: It's hard to lose a best friend,

but I think to celebrate his spirit and,

I guess, you know, his, you know, his memory,

is to do whatever you can to keep his music alive.

When he died, nobody on five continents said,

"Prince who?"

Everybody knows who.

How does one kid own the word "Prince" and the color purple?

But he did it.

Prince: Everybody has a place on this Earth,

and I was trying to find out where my place was,

and I'm really close now, and I get closer every day.

I love living more now than I did ever.

Prince's legacy is that his music will absolutely live on.

He was one of the world's most famous people,

a musical genius, an ultra intelligent, sensitive man

and somebody I considered a friend.

Prince's friends around the world have always wanted

to hear the new music in his vault,

a strongbox at Paisley Park

where Prince stored all the music

he never made public,

but Prince did give up some hints or secrets.

He said inside the vault, we'll find some amazing jazz,

the best, headiest tracks that his band,

The Revolution, ever recorded,

the more psychedelic-rock version of his art,

the really erotic Prince, and, finally,

he said, and I quote, "We'll find the future."

Thanks for watching, everybody.

Here's to Prince. Good night.