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How did Prince die?
Prince
June 7, 1958 — April 21, 2016
Chanhassen, Minnesota
Prince died on April 21, 2016 in Chanhassen, Minnesota, aged 57. The official cause of death was accidental overdose of fentanyl. Readers have raised 3 theories about how it happened.
Prince Rogers Nelson was born in Minneapolis to two musicians, named after his father's jazz trio, and signed to Warner Bros. at nineteen with a contract that let him produce himself, which nobody that age got. He played every instrument on his first album. He was fifty-seven when he was found in an elevator at Paisley Park, the studio compound he built outside Minneapolis so he would never have to leave.
He wrote "Purple Rain," "When Doves Cry," "Kiss," "1999," "Little Red Corvette," "Nothing Compares 2 U," and several hundred other songs, a good number of them for other people and a good number of them still in a vault. He changed his name to a symbol to get out of a record deal and wrote "slave" on his face. He was five foot two, played guitar like a man who'd been told he couldn't, and gave a Super Bowl halftime show in the rain that people who don't like football still talk about. He was a Jehovah's Witness. He did not swear. He threw parties at Paisley Park at 2 a.m. and charged ten dollars.
He left no will. The estate took six years to settle.
Photos with Prince
If you met him, this is where that photo goes. No one has added one yet.
The record
What is established, from the authorities and the people who were there.
Official cause: Accidental overdose of fentanyl (Midwest Medical Examiner's Office, June 2, 2016)
On April 15, 2016, six days before he died, his private plane made an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois, on the way home from a show in Atlanta; he was unresponsive and was revived with naloxone, the opioid-overdose antidote, at the hospital. He performed at Paisley Park the next night and told the crowd to "wait a few days before you waste any prayers."
On April 20 his staff contacted Dr. Howard Kornfeld, a California addiction specialist, for help. Kornfeld sent his son, Andrew, overnight with buprenorphine, a treatment drug, to begin care the next morning.
At 9:43 a.m. on April 21, Andrew Kornfeld and two staff members found Prince unresponsive in an elevator at Paisley Park and called 911. He was pronounced dead at 10:07 a.m. He was 57.
The medical examiner found that he died of an accidental overdose of fentanyl. Pills found at Paisley Park were marked as Vicodin (hydrocodone) but contained fentanyl. A two-year investigation by the Carver County attorney found no evidence of who had supplied them and brought no charges. Dr. Michael Schulenberg, a local physician who had prescribed him oxycodone under a bodyguard's name, paid a $30,000 federal civil settlement. Prince had no known prescription for fentanyl and, by the accounts of people close to him, did not know the pills contained it.
What happened
The cause of death has been confirmed. The theories below are how readers understand it, and what people thought before it was known. Everyone here is anonymous.
He was found with pills marked Vicodin that were actually fentanyl, six days after being revived from an overdose on a plane. No one was ever charged. Who gave them to him, and did anyone around him know what was happening?
The page creator
- Confirmed54 of 59 readers find this likely
An accidental overdose on counterfeit pills he believed were Vicodin
The medical examiner's finding. He had used opioid painkillers for years, by most accounts for hip pain from decades of performing in heels. Somewhere in the supply chain, pills marked as Vicodin were actually fentanyl. He took what he thought was a normal dose and it wasn't one. Nothing in the two-year investigation contradicted this, and the prosecutor said as much: an accident, with a source that couldn't be found.
Anonymous. Says they are a pharmacist.
Confirmed by the Midwest Medical Examiner's Office, June 2016.
- Also raised38 of 45 readers find this likely
Six days of missed chances: the overdose on the plane should have ended at a hospital
He was revived with naloxone in Moline and left the hospital within hours against medical advice. The next five days were spent arranging discreet help instead of treatment. On this reading the fentanyl was the mechanism, but the cause was a system built to keep him private at the cost of keeping him alive.
Anonymous. Says they are an addiction counselor.
- Also raised41 of 50 readers find this likely
Someone close to him supplied the pills and the investigation couldn't prove it
Counterfeit pills don't appear in a locked compound by themselves. The investigation named no supplier, but the prosecutor acknowledged that someone had given them to him. People around him had a strong interest in not being that person. Not a different cause, a different question: not how he died, but who let it happen.
Anonymous.
- Unlikely6 of 44 readers find this likely
Underlying illness, with the drugs as a factor rather than the whole story
He had been visibly unwell for months, cancelled shows citing flu, and had long-standing hip problems. Some fans have argued that fentanyl was found but that something else, from AIDS to a heart condition, was the real story. The autopsy found no such thing and the medical examiner was specific. Here because many people believed it in 2016.
Anonymous.
The confirmed cause carries this mark and stays at the top. Theories can still be added; they sort below it.
Fentanyl is an opioid roughly fifty times stronger than heroin by weight. Pressed into pills that look like hydrocodone or oxycodone, it kills people who think they're taking something they've taken safely for years. In 2016 this was new; the counterfeit-pill wave that became the leading cause of overdose death in the United States was just beginning, and Prince was its most famous early case.
The Moline landing matters medically: a person revived with naloxone has had an opioid overdose, full stop. In a clinical setting that triggers immediate treatment. In a private compound with a famous, private man who did not want to be seen as an addict, it triggered a phone call to a doctor in California and a flight that landed a few hours too late.
Midwest Medical Examiner's Office, press release, June 2, 2016 Carver County Attorney, investigation findings, April 19, 2018 Minneapolis Star Tribune, coverage of the investigation, 2016–2018 Wikipedia, "Death of Prince"
Questions people ask
- What was Prince's cause of death?
- The official cause of death was accidental overdose of fentanyl.
- When did Prince die?
- Prince died on April 21, 2016, at the age of 57, in Chanhassen, Minnesota.
- What happened to Prince?
- 4 theories have been raised on this page and ranked by readers. The cause is settled; the theories are about understanding how it happened.
- Who else died in 2016?
- See everyone on Ohbit who died in 2016. Prince was 57.
Add a theory
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