Whitney Houston’s full autopsy report has been released. (You can read the PDF on TMZ) The details are sordid, but more than that they’re just sad. Reading and thinking about it made my heart sink. There were prescription bottles and drugs found all over the room, with a total of 12 prescription drugs entered into evidence. Cops found evidence of illegal drug use including “a small spoon with a white crystal like substance in it” and “remnants of a white powdery substance” in a drawer with a portable mirror in it. This suggests that the room was not wiped clean of evidence at all. Earlier reports claiming a shady hanger-on named Raffles Von Exel removed evidence from the scene are not being taken seriously by police. (Von Exel denies giving an interview in which he allegedly admitted removing evidence.)

The detail in this report that stood out for me is the fact that Whitney died alone in the bathtub after her assistant stepped out to run an errand. The assistant found her face down in the bathtub when she returned and no one else was in the room. For some reason I got the impression that there was a group of people partying with her – there wasn’t. It was just Whitney. Officials have ruled Whitney’s death an accident, and there was no evidence of foul play. Whitney did have some small abrasions on her forehead, nose and chest, suggesting that she either fell or slid in the bathtub. (They didn’t conclude that, it’s something I’m guessing.) They also noted that she had a hole in her septum from years of cocaine use. I wasn’t a huge Whitney Houston fan, but reading this is making me get teary. I know she was an addict but it’s still very, very sad. Here’s more on the report, from Radar:

The full autopsy report has been released for Whitney Houston, and disturbing details are revealed in the forty-two page document, including there was a white substance found in the bathroom on a spoon, and that Whitney had a perforation in her posterior nasal septum, RadarOnline.com is reporting.

The report states that the last person to see Houston alive was her assistant, who told the singer to take a bath to get ready for Clive Davis’ pre-Grammys party. The assistant went to Neiman Marcus to run an errand and when she got back, the report states, “she went into the bathroom and found the decedent lying face down in the bathtub, unresponsive, with the top of her head facing west. The bathtub was filled with water and there was water on the bathroom floor, however, the water was not running. She called out to the bodyguard and they pulled the decedent out of the bathtub. The assistant then called downstairs telling them to call 911.”

Various prescription pill bottles were found in the living room and bedroom of the hotel suite but the bathroom was where the cocaine was found. “Located on the south portion of the counter was a small spoon with a white crystal substance in it and a rolled up piece of white paper, along with other miscellaneous items. Located in the top drawer in the north side of the counter were remnants of a white powdery substance and a portable mirror on a base. On the bottom of that base were more remnants of a white powdery substance.”

[From Radar]

The report concluded that toxicology “showed cocaine, benzoylecgonice, cocaethylene, marijuana, Xanax, Flexiril, and Benadryl.” As was previously announced, “Death was due to drowning due to effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use. No foul play is suspected. The mode of death is accident.”

I’m not going to include more, if you want the details you can read them on Radar. I’m just going to hug everyone I love now.

Whitney’s mom, Cissy Houston, recently did an interview in which she said she misses Whitney and would do anything she could to bring her back. She also said she doesn’t blame herself for Whitney’s death, and that there are a lot of people coming out of the woodwork now that she’s passed. As for Cissy’s reaction to this autopsy report, she’s said to be “devastated,” especially because she doesn’t want people to remember her daughter as a drug addict.

This story is kind of crazy, so bear with me. Remember when that photo of poor Whitney in her casket was on the cover of The National Enquirer? The people at the funeral home were mortified, because they would never jeopardize their business for a quick buck. A lot of people wondered which one of Whitney’s family and friends at her private memorial would sell her out like that. Roger Friedman reported in Forbes about two weeks ago that the culprit was likely a guy named Raffles van Exel, a known con artist who uses several alias and has posted a YouTube video bragging about getting close to celebrities. People at the funeral home reported seeing this guy take a photo of Whitney in repose, and he seems to have ingratiated himself to her family following her death.

Well now van Exel (if that’s even his name) told a Dutch paper that he cleaned Whitney’s hotel suite right after she was found dead. This may be why no traces of cocaine were found at the scene, despite the fact that cocaine was found in her system after she died and is considered a contributing factor in her death. Celebuzz has this story:

A close confidant of the late pop diva Whitney Houston has admitted he cleaned up the hotel room where she drowned, Celebuzz has learned.

In an interview with respected Dutch newspaper The Telegraph on February 15, just four days after the singer’s death, Raffles van Exel confessed: “The room had to be emptied.”

“Someone had to do it,” van Exel told the newspaper, according to a translation of the article published online.

Van Exel stopped short of telling The Telegraph what exactly he removed from the suite and he has not returned Celebuzz’s request for comment.

Last week, the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office declared Houston, 48, died from an accidental drowning in a hotel bathtub with the “effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use.”

Sources tell Celebuzz that Beverly Hills police are still investigating how Houston acquired the drugs that contributed to her death and whether they were hidden from police and first responders.

No cocaine or drug paraphernalia were found in the suite at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., the source adds.

However, Houston’s cocaine use appeared to have occurred “in the time period just immediately prior to her collapse in the bathtub at the hotel,” Chief Coroner Craig Harvey said when he announced the findings of his report, last week.

“(Houston’s case) is still an open investigation for us… I can’t disclose any details about the investigation,” BHPD Lt. Mark Rosen told People on March 23.

In various media released, Van Exel, a Dutch national, touts himself as a “highly respected entertainment consultant” who has “guided some of the world’s most acclaimed executives and celebrities.”

[From Celebuzz]

Ok, so maybe some creepy hanger on just cashed in after Whitney died and covered up evidence of her overdose, it doesn’t have to mean that there’s some conspiracy over her death. This is still giving me butterflies in my stomach, particularly after watching this video of van Exel (below) that Roger Friedman clued me in on. If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, just fast forward to 1:43, where van Exel uses crutches to fake an injury and gain access to the Billboard Music Awards. He calls the security guard a “fool” for giving them a ride on a golf cart and letting them bypass security because he had crutches. He then pretends to be a representative for Joe Jackson despite not knowing him at all. At the beginning of the video, he explains that celebrities are just like regular people and that they’ll get more comfortable with you the more they see you hanging around. This is seriously creeping me out. He says at 3:40 “go for the kill and never take no for an answer.”

Note that the website mentioned on the video, “Diary of a Hollywood Street King,” is NOT van Exel’s blog. It’s an urban blog that copied the video and uploaded it again. They also claim to have details of how van Exel obtained cocaine for many celebrities, extorted money from them and was an enabler for Whitney’s drug habit. So maybe he was her dealer and he cleaned up the cocaine because he’s the one who got it for her. Now I know why her family isn’t convinced that her death was an accident. Holy sh*t. This is starting to remind me of Anna Nicole Smith’s death. Whitney had enablers around her, and this one in particular seems to have had nefarious intentions.

Photo via Celebrity Dirty Laundry.

The coroner has released a statement on the cause of death for Whitney Houston, and it actually surprised me. I thought that Whitney’s cause of death would have been a combination of sedative drugs, but the initial autopsy report claims that she died from accidental drowning, with the “effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use” contributing to her death. She was also on a cocktail of prescription and other non-prescription drugs, including marijuana, benadryl, a muscle relaxant and xanax. The coroner thinks that Whitney had a “cardiac event” perhaps brought on by cocaine use, which caused her to slip underwater and drown. This is perhaps a controversial conclusion given the evidence, as E! Online has quotes from another medical expert who claims that the sedatives in her system, even though they were in “therapeutic levels,” should have been considered contributing factors in her death. (They still might be, as the full coroner report has not yet been released.) Here’s E!’s very good explanation of the coroner’s report, and CNN has more:

Whitney Houston drowned on Feb. 11, having ingested cocaine recently enough to have it be a contributing factor in her death.

But what does that mean? Did she overdose? Hit her head? Simply fall asleep? Did years of cocaine use cause the heart disease that was also detected during autopsy?

How exactly did Houston, who was only 48, die in her bathtub at the Beverly Hilton?

Los Angeles County Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter, who determined cause of death to be accidental drowning combined with cocaine use and atherosclerotic heart disease, tells E! News that his team actually has not been able to pinpoint exactly how Houston died as far as sequence of events—but there are some likely possibilities.

“It means she could have passed out and drowned,” Winter says. “Also, continued use of drugs resulted in heart disease, and that could have led to a heart attack.”

“At this time,” he adds, “I don’t know how bad her heart was. That will be in the final report. We know she drowned, she had heart disease, and the cocaine was considered a contributing cause to her death.” They will be reexamining Houston’s heart for other indicators of deterioration in the coming days.

As for the traces of pills found in her system, chief coroner investigator Craig Harvey told reporters during a press conference that it was “clear Houston was taking Xanax, but the levels were such they were a therapeutic level…normal for someone following the rules of a prescribed medication.”

“The Benadryl may have created a combined effect,” Harvey said, “but the toxicology said all levels were therapeutic or sub-therapeutic and not contributory to her death.”

They found a “moderate” amount of cocaine—an “acute dose, not too much before she collapsed,” he said, but noted that there was evidence of “chronic usage.”

“Drug use creates problems,” Harvey explained. “If you have one condition and you’re using cocaine, you’ll exacerbate it. It causes the heart to beat faster, the arteries to constrict, which can create a problem and set you up for a cardiac event.”

“It exacerbates heat disease,” he said. “Probably in the long run, [all of the substances] didn’t help.”

The coroner’s office said earlier today that the final report should be available for release within two weeks.

Meanwhile, at least one medical expert doesn’t buy the notion that the marijuana, Xanax and other sedatives found in her system were not considered contributing factors in Houston’s death.

“I don’t know how you can say that a bunch of sedating drugs, even in small amounts, couldn’t contribute to somebody either passing out or becoming sedated to the point where you wouldn’t necessarily struggle to recover the way most people would,” Dr. David Baron, chief of staff at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Ortopaedic Hospital, tells E! News.

“If we were falling asleep and slipped under the water, our emergency systems in our brain would wake us up,” Baron said. “When people are sedated, the brain doesn’t have the normal alarm systems working properly to make you struggle and fight for life. So I really don’t get why [the coroner's office] said they were not contributing causes; I don’t know how they can know that unless they were in such minute amounts.”

Which is a possibility—the official report hasn’t been released yet.

As for the cocaine, Baron said, if she ingested a “large amount…she could have easily had a cardiac event like a heart attack and an irregular heartbeat. There is no way after someone dies to know if they had an arrhythmia, they are always the mystery of sudden death where you weren’t there to witness it.”

“We are probably never going to know the exact sequence of events that took place,” Baron concluded. “But the question about whether the drug use caused her to drown or not I think is unquestionable. It either compromised her heart, made it weak, caused an arrhythmia and resulted in blood vessels constricting.”

[From E! Online]

As a layperson, I wondered how medical examiners can determine a death by heart attack. Like I assumed that there would be definitive evidence to show that a heart attack took place, but that doesn’t seem to be the case given the quotes in this article. Examiners might only be going on the condition of the heart and arteries. (Please correct me if I’m wrong.) I asked my husband, who is a scientist, to help me find out more about this, and he semi-confirmed this with some research. I also found this statement on Wikipedia’s autopsy entry “A study that focused on myocardial infarction (heart attack) as a cause of death found significant errors of omission and commission,[5] i.e. a sizable number cases ascribed to myocardial infarctions (MIs) were not MIs and a significant number of non-MIs were actually MIs.” So as this E! article explains, it sounds like the heart attack and then drowning theory for Whitney is just that, a theory.

Radar is trying to make this into a scandal and is suggesting that since no cocaine was found on the scene that someone must have cleaned it up. Life isn’t like a CSI episode and just because cocaine wasn’t found in the hotel room that doesn’t mean that someone hid evidence. Whitney could have done a bump from her purse that someone picked up after she died, or she might have done some lines in another person’s hotel room. Of course it’s easy to imagine people freaking out and cleaning up illegal drugs in Whitney’s suite before the paramedics came. Poor Whitney.

When I covered earlier details of this story yesterday, I mentioned that I have a brother and that’s why this creeps me out so much. I can’t imagine getting with my freaking brother in any way and I think I’d feel the same if he wasn’t my biological brother. It’s just – no way in hell. I talked to my brother yesterday and he was teasing me about this, which caused me to yell at him and cover my ears in horror. (Although he loves making me do that, he knows just what to say.)

So that’s an intro to this follow up about 19 year-old Bobbi Kristina Brown (some of you schooled me that I should call her “Krissi” as she goes by that, so I will). Krissi doesn’t consider it incestual in any way to date a dude she grew up with. Yesterday we heard that Krissi’s grandmother, the late Whitney Houston’s mom Cissy, was slamming Krissi’s new boyfriend, 22 year-old Nick Gordon, for taking advantage of her granddaughter at a vulnerable time. Cissy also called Krissi and Nick’s relationship “incestual,” but Krissi of course disagrees since Nick isn’t her actual brother. (Some of you mentioned the rumor that Nick is possibly Bobbi’s half brother, and was Whitney’s son with another man. I just hope that’s in no way true.) Here’s TMZ’s story on this. Oh and also, Krissi has been wearing a ring on her engagement finger, so she could be engaged.

Sources close to BK tell TMZ, the 19-year-old finally ‘fessed up to her close buddies … she and 22-year-old Nick Gordon are dating — ten years after Whitney unofficially adopted the boy because he was having problems at home.

TMZ broke the story … Bobbi’s grandma Cissy Houston saw the video we posted — showing Bobbi and Nick holding hands and kissing on a lunch run in Atlanta this week — and told a close friend, “What [Bobbi and Nick] are doing is incestuous.”

But Bobbi couldn’t care less — telling friends … she doesn’t give a damn about what Cissy thinks about her controversial relationship … and because Nick’s not her blood brother, she definitely doesn’t consider it incest.

As one source put it — Bobbi “can’t please everyone, so she is going to please herself by doing what she wants to do for once.”

As for the maybe engagement ring Bobbi was wearing — we’re told she’s been mum on what it means … but cryptically told friends, she and Nick ARE planning a trip to Vegas in the near future.

[From TMZ]

I just hope these kids aren’t stupid and impulsive enough to actually get married. And if they do, they should get a DNA test first but you know that’s not going to happen. At least they’re there for each other at a really sad time I guess. Krissi needs support from her family.

Krissi and Whitney are shown on 9-1-09. Credit: WENN.com

Video of Bobbi Kristina and Nick together is here

This is one controversial story that I didn’t want to discuss when it came out, but now that there’s more news about it we may as well. I’ll start with an anecdote that comes to mind. About 15 years ago, when I was in college, I met a couple through a mutual friend that kind of blew my mind. They were step-brother and step-sister, not related at all except by marriage, and they acted like best buddies in public until one night when they started making out at a party. It skeeved both my friend and me out, but we acted cool about it and tried not to judge. I barely knew the couple and I lost touch with that friend, but I will always remember seeing them make out and wondering how that worked exactly. I have a brother and even if he wasn’t my blood brother I like to think I could never view him that way. Maybe since I have a brother I’m reacting more strongly to this than I otherwise would. (There’s also a couple on “Teen Mom,” Catelynn and Tyler, who are step brother and sister. Their situation is different because Catelynn and Tyler were dating before their parents met and got married.)

As you know Bobbi Kristina Brown, 19, lost her mother Whitney Houston just over a month ago. It’s a lot to deal with at such a young age, and she must be very vulnerable. We heard from Bobbi in an interview with Oprah last weekend. She sounded like she’s coping well, but it just seemed way too soon to be interviewing her. (And one of Bobbi’s aunts agrees.) Bobbi is now involved in what looks like a new romance with her “adopted brother” Nick Gordon, 22. Nick was living with Bobbi and her mom since he was 12, basically for the last 10 years, although he is not related to her at all. He’s currently living with her in the late Whitney’s mansion, and they were recently spotted out kissing and holding hands.

Nick has blasted his critics on twitter, and he sounds like he’s being defensive about the romance, not that he’s denying it at all. Outlets are reporting that Nick is tweeting that he’s not dating Bobbi Kristina, but read these tweets and tell me if he’s defending himself or saying he’s not involved with her. (Note that he seems to have cleaned up this account and I can no longer find these tweets.)

“Yea we got a little closer and what!”

Though he was never formally adopted by Whitney Houston, Gordon was essentially Houston’s “adopted son” after the late singer took him in when he was just 12-years old, her brother Michael Houston told ABCNews.com.

Similarly, Bobbi Kristina and Gordon were raised like brother and sister, though they are not blood-related.

“All the haters that don’t know us or the real story can’t unfollow me. I don’t give a f–k,” Gordon wrote on Twitter to address the rumors. “I’ve proved my loyalty to her and the Houston family. I don’t owe any of you anything. Ha, I don’t even know y’all haters.”

Bobbi Kristina’s “brother” also added that anyone who thought they were having an incestuous relationship because of the “sibling” label was badly mistaken.

“For the stupid ppl out there, she gave birth to 1 child. And she trusted me with EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!” he wrote.

“She called me her ‘God Son,’” he continued. “I swear some ppl in this world act like they don’t have a brain …”

[From The Daily News]

Now Bobbi Kristina’s grandmother, Whitney’s mom, has told TMZ off the record that she thinks this is like incest and that Nick is taking advantage of Bobbi. Well, Bobbi is the sole heir to her late mom’s fortune. I wouldn’t be surprised.

Cissy Houston — Whitney Houston’s mom — has reacted fiercely to the video we posted Wednesday … showing Bobbi Kristina and Whitney’s “adopted” son Nick Gordon in a romantic grip, and then kissing (below).

Cissy told a close friend, “What they’re doing is incestuous.” Cissy feels her granddaughter has problems and Nick is taking advantage of her.

Although Whitney never formally adopted Nick, she considered him her son and Bobbi called him her brother. For his part, Nick called Bobbi his sister.

Cissy is so concerned that Bobbi has become impressionable and therefore an easy target for Nick, she’s asking the Whitney Houston Estate to take legal steps to get him evicted from Whitney’s home — where Bobbi Kristina is also living.

[From TMZ]

If they called each other brother and sister for the last 10 years, I don’t really get it. I do understand how relatives could be outraged. It’s not that I think it’s necessarily wrong, and Bobbi deserves some happiness. It’s just that I can’t imagine it personally, if that makes sense. Hopefully they genuinely care for each other and Nick has Bobbi’s best interests at heart.

Photo credit: OWN via PCNPhotos and Twitter

Just reading some of these quotes from Bobbi Kristina on Oprah’s show honestly made me cry a little. I cannot imagine losing my mom like that and my heart goes out to her. Still, I do feel like it’s too soon for her to be giving interviews about her mom’s death. Oprah scored an interview with Whitney Houston’s 19 year-old daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown. (Update: DListed has the video, and it’s below now.) From the little I could see on the video, Bobbi Kristina seems in good spirits. She finds a lot of comfort in her fond memories of her mom, and belief that she’s with her in spirit. Here’s some of what she said:

In her first interview since Whitney Houston’s death, daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown said she’s “doing as good as I possibly can” and recalled the tender last moments she shared with her superstar mother before her sudden death last month.

“She’s always with me,” said the 19-year-old, Houston’s only child and sole heir. “Her spirit is strong, it’s a strong spirit. I feel her pass through me all the time.”

“I can hear her voice in spirit talking to me, ‘Keep talking to me. I got you,’” says Brown. “She’s always with me. I can always feel her. I can always feel her with me. She always asked me,’Do you need me?’ And I caught myself, out of nowhere, I didn’t even know I said it, I said, ‘I’ll always need you.’ ”

Brown made the comments in a Sunday interview with Oprah Winfrey on Winfrey’s network, OWN, that also featured Pat Houston, the singer’s manager and sister-in-law, and Gary Houston, the brother of Whitney Houston.

Brown credited her family and God for helping her cope since her mother’s death on Feb. 11 at the age of 48.

“It comes in waves. One moment I can be happy and laughing, but then it comes over me. It’s my mom,” she said.

Houston, who had struggled with drugs and alcohol in the past but according to family had been apparently clean, was found in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on the eve of the Grammys. She was to attend a pre-Grammy party the night she died.

Brown said the night before her mother’s death, she asked Houston to spend the night with her.

“I slept in her arms all day, all night long,” said Brown, whose father is singer Bobby Brown.

Pat Houston said in the days before Houston died, the singer had not been abusing drugs, despite reports that she had been acting erratically.

[From Huffington Post, with additional quotes from People.com]

Bobbi Kristina also said that she just automatically wakes up at 5:00 am every day and starts praying for her mom. She said that she believes her mom turns on and off lights in the house. She added “I can still laugh. I can still sit there and I can still talk to her.” She also thinks that Whitney’s spirit told her that it was ok for her to “come home.”

As for the other interview on Oprah’s show last night, it’s worth noting that Pat Houston is not the sister-in-law who sold Whitney out to the National Enquirer years ago, nor is she the sister-in-law who was wasted out of her mind on Access Hollywood recently. Those two in-laws are on Bobby Brown’s side, predictably. Like the wasted sister-in-law we just heard from, Pat Houston seems to think there’s some kind of conspiracy surrounding Whitney’s death. She told Oprah she “didn’t know how” Whitney got in the tub where she was found dead. Pat didn’t say outright that Whitney was murdered, though, she just hinted that there was something fishy about it.

I’m glad to know that Bobbi is ok, and that she seems sober. She’s going to launch some kind of singing career, which she was reportedly aiming for prior to her mother’s death. She told Oprah “I have to carry on the legacy. We’re going to do the singing thing. Some acting, some dancing.” I just hope she has good people around her.

There’s also news that Bobbi Kristina wants to change her last name from “Brown” to “Houston,” probably more in memory of her mom than necessarily to cut ties with her dad. At least I hope that’s the case.

Update: Here’s the video, .

Is it wrong that when I’m watching this would-be serious video with Bobby Brown’s sister that all I can focus on are her sparkly eyes and glistening lips? She’s got some huge spider eyelashes going on too. Anyway Bobby Brown’s sister talked to Access Hollywood about how concerned she is for her niece, Bobby and Whitney’s daughter Bobbi Kristina. She also seems to think Whitney’s death was some kind of conspiracy. Unlike the family friend who previously spoke to Extra, “Aunt Dolly,” Bobbi Kristina’s real aunt seems like she’s in it for the paycheck and doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Bobbi. She wants Bobbi Kristina to know that she shouldn’t trust anyone, though, except for her dad, grandmother and herself of course. She also seems to think Whitney’s death was some kind of conspiracy, probably because she takes a cocktail of prescription drugs too and nothing’s happened to her yet. Here’s some of what she said, and you really have to watch it. She can hardly keep her eyes open, and it’s no wonder with all the crap she has spackled on them. In all seriousness she looks completely drugged out and wasted to me. Poor Bobbi Kristina.

Bobbi Kristina should not trust anyone
I want to say to Krissy that it’s very very very important that she does not trust anybody at this time, anybody except her father, her grandmother Sissy and myself. And I mean that.

Right now is the time to just really shut the door.

Bobby Brown is not to blame
Bobby [Brown] has nothing, nothing at all to do with Whitney’s death.

[Whitney's] father said he was tired of people talking about his son-in-law. He said Bobby had nothin’ to do with Whitney doing drugs in the past or whatever. Bobby had nothing to do with that.

Believes Whitney’s death was not an accident.
I believe Whitney’s death was not accidental. No.

My attorney has advised me not to get into that at all, but it’s very important to know, she did not pass away like that. No. If it’s the last thing I do I’m going to find out what truly happened to my sister.

This is not same sister who sold out Whitney to the Enquirer back in 2006 by taking photos of her bathroom strewn with drug paraphernalia. Here’s a picture of that lady, Tina Brown. That’s a different person. This is Leola Brown.

Leola’s lawyer also spoke and said “there are persons that possibly who would want to take advantage of Bobbi Kristina’s fragile state of mind.” He seemed sober enough, especially compared to Leola. What can I say except that Bobby Brown has relatives with drug problems who are talking to the press. Watch that video above and tell me this lady is sober by any stretch.

Whitney Houston in her coffin is still on the cover of The National Enquirer, on newsstands everywhere. The issue won’t be replaced until Thursday or Friday of this week. In the two stores that I’ve checked, The Enquirer has been moved behind the other tabloids so that the only thing visible is the headline. Several of you commented on the story that you saw the issue out and visible at a child’s eye level.

Well not only is this photo presumably devastating to Whitney’s family, it could seriously damage the business of the funeral home where it was taken. The owner of the facility where Whitney was interred, the Whigham Funeral Home in Newark, N.J., told The Daily News that the leak of the photo was “devastating” to her personally and to her longstanding family business. What’s more is that the owner swears that security guards were with Whitney’s body 24 hours a day up until the private family viewing. So someone in Whitney’s inner circle had to have taken and sold that photo. Despicable.

The respected owner of Whitney Houston’s funeral home said Friday she’s “devastated” a photo of the singer in her open casket appeared on the cover of the National Enquirer.

Carolyn Whigham wants fans to know her family-run business did not sell the now notorious image and that she’s “horrified” by accusations her close-knit staff is to blame, she told the Daily News.

“We did not take that photo. We did not sell the photo. We would never do something like that,” the second-generation CEO of the Whigham Funeral Home in Newark, N.J., said.

“Whitney was a friend,” she continued. “I’m the one who flew to Los Angeles and got Whitney from the coroner’s office. I did everything to protect her.”

She said a deluge of distressing emails from irate Houston fans now has her fearing for her staff’s safety.

“One email said that if the person owned a dog, and the dog died, they would not come to my funeral home,” she said with sadness. “I’m worried about my employees, worried about me. I’ve been in business since 1943. This is my name, my character. Honestly, this is my life’s work. We would never do something like this.”

She said Houston’s family has made it clear they do not blame her business.

“I am very confident they are on the same page with me. Family friend Tyler Perry was on the Steve Harvey (radio) show this morning, and he said emphatically he knows we did not do it,” she told The News.

She said security was with Houston the entire time her body was at the funeral home.

“They were there 24 hours a day. They slept there with her. She was never alone, anywhere,” Whigham said. “The only time security fell back was when the family had the private viewing Friday. We weren’t involved with that. The family invited its own guests.”

[From The NY Daily News]

Several of you who work in the funeral industry commented on this story last week and we’re grateful to you for your insight, particularly to MorticiansDoItDeader and another commenter who just used an ellipses as a handle. Morticians said that the funeral home should have asked visitors to surrender their cellphones as a precaution given the high profile person interred there. She also noted that the embalmers did a good job with Whitney.

There was also the issue of Whitney being buried in 1/2 million worth of jewelry, which Morticians and many of you considered irresponsible by the Enquirer to put out there, as it could invite grave robbers. Morticians noted that it’s not likely Whitney will be buried in that jewelry. “We take that off when everyone leaves and give it back to the family after the service.” The owner of the funeral home said basically the same thing to The Daily News about the jewelry. “That’s crazy. It’s not true.” Poor Whitney and poor Bobbi Kristina. I hope she’s ok, but I’m glad we haven’t heard much about her. Hopefully her family is around her at this time.

Let me get this out of the way at the start, as the title can sound misleading. This isn’t some nefarious plot by Ray-J to cash in on Whitney post-mortem. Apparently he’s genuinely heartbroken over her death and is unsure if he’ll continue to pursue plans for a reality show, which would include footage of the two of them together. (Remember he did issue a very sad statement after she passed.) Ray-J was pitching a reality show prior to Whitney’s death, and part of that included using his relationship with the famous singer to make his show seem more interesting. In light of this, some are questioning whether Ray J was using Whitney in the months leading up to her death. The Daily Beast has an article about Ray J and Whitney’s relationship and how it came about. They mention that Ray J was sweet and charming with Whitney, but that he wasn’t faithful to her by any stretch. Whitney was allegedly aware of this and didn’t seem to mind. Here’s the part at the end of story questioning whether Ray had ulterior motives for getting with Whitney in the months leading up to her death:

But others are less kind about his motives. One source points to how—just like Brown—Ray J was trying to pitch a reality TV series with him and Houston. “He was just using her like many people did, to get a deal,” the source says.

In an exclusive statement to The Daily Beast, Ray J’s publicist Courtney Barnes says: “It was his show, and they shot footage of the two of them together that appeared in the sizzle reel, which was being used to pitch the show.”

Those who know Ray J say he’s always been a hard worker when it comes to his career. He’s released five albums on independent music labels and promoted them heavily, even when it wasn’t easy. “He’s extremely dedicated to his craft,” says Paula Tuggey, a music executive who has worked on his recent albums. “I can book him from 7 a.m. until midnight. He’ll do anything that he can to get his music out there to be heard.”

On the night of Houston’s death, Ray J was in San Diego.

Steffans [one of Ray's former lovers] says she reached out to him out of concern. “I don’t think Ray is OK,” she says. “I don’t think any of us would be OK. I think Ray is going to be traumatized forever.”

“He hasn’t talked to anybody yet. He’s not ready yet,” his publicist says. Asked if he’s still shopping the reality show that includes footage of Houston, his publicist emailed back, “I don’t know.”

[From The Daily Beast]

Ray J had a dating reality show on VH1 called “For The Love of Ray J,” which aired for two seasons in 2009 and 2010. He also had a two season reality show with his sister, Brandy, called “Brandy and Ray J: A Family Business,” in 2010 and 2011. So it just seems expected that he would be pitching another reality show to try and keep the money flowing. I don’t think it means he was using Whitney. It’s not like he just met her. He first hooked up with her way back in early 2007 when she was divorcing Bobby Brown, according to a source quoted on The Daily Beast. The two were even seen out on a date together as early as January, 2007, I remember covering that. So I believe that Ray cared for Whitney in his way and that he’s probably devastated to lose her. I wouldn’t put it past him to make sure that his reality show makes it to air, and to use Whitney to continue to promote it, whether its disrespectful to Whitney’s memory or not. After all, he made sure that his sex tape with Kim Kardashian got released. He probably planned out the whole thing from start to uh, finish, and we know that Kim’s career was launched from it.

Ray J and Whitney are shown out together in July, 2008. Credit: PRJ/Fame Pictures

This is a version in which I’ve blurred over the photo. In the version on newsstands, Whitney’s full face is shown. She’s made up and looks like she’s sleeping

I still remember when OK! Magazine featured a cover photo of Michael Jackson after he’d died. It was sad and unnecessary, and many people found it both disrespectful to the family and to Michael’s memory. That’s how I feel about this Enquirer cover photo of Whitney Houston’s open casket. This will be featured on the issue that’s about to hit newsstands today, and it makes me wonder: will it have a “family shield” to cover up this image of a dead person? My son is at an age where he can understand death, but when he was younger he had no concept of it and I wouldn’t want to have to explain it to the little guy in a supermarket checkout line. I’d rather my kid see some T&A (and he can see two daddies or mommies any day) than a dead person staring out at him. It’s not the image so much as the questions and sadness it brings up.

Last week The National Enquirer seemed to have stooped to a new low when they published photos inside the magazine that recreated Whitney’s death scene. They even had a photo on the cover that looked like Whitney laying dead face down on the bathroom floor. (Really! Here’s that cover above, thanks to Sammie.) That picture was captioned “Photo Re-Created” below in smallish lettering, but larger font screamed that they had “Exclusive Crime Scene Photos.” Well they didn’t have to use a fake Whitney to recreate the poor lady dead in her casket, since someone at a private open casket viewing scored a payday by snapping a photo and selling it to the tabloids. Here’s more:

Whitney Houston fans expressed shock and outrage Wednesday after the National Enquirer printed an image of the iconic singer in an open casket on its cover.

The morbid photo, purportedly taken inside the family’s private viewing at the Whigham Funeral Home in Newark, N.J., last Friday, shows Houston’s body lying in her half-opened, polished bronze casket.

It shows the dead pop star wearing what looks like a purple dress along with a brooch pinned to her chest and an earing sparkling in her ear.

The headline claims she was buried wearing $500,000 worth of jewels and gold slippers on her feet.

Facebook and Twitter users lashed out at the tabloid, calling the move trashy and shameful.

“MADD at who ever sold Whitney Houston’s pic of her in a casket,” reality star Evelyn Lozada, from VH1′s “Basketball Wives,” wrote on Twitter.

“Whoever sold the photo of Whitney Houston in her coffin to the National Enquirer is a vile, twisted, evil and unscrupulous sub-human,” London-based fan Christiana Mbakwe tweeted.

Even celebrity blogger Perez Hilton called it a “tasteless, insensitive, morbid thing to do” on his eponymous website.

Of course, the death photo is hardly without precedent. The National Enquirer famously ran a photo of Elvis in his coffin in 1977.

[From The NY Daily News]

In 2007, The Enquirer ran a “photo recreation” of a deceased Anna Nicole Smith in a body bag after her death. We covered that, and some outlets claimed that the photos were really of Anna after her death. At least one paparazzi agency did claim to have photos of Anna’s corpse, which lent credence to the stories that it was really her.

Let’s play devil’s advocate for a moment: Whitney looks pretty in that photo in her casket, she appears at peace, and some may say that she lived in the public eye so it’s fitting that this photo be published. That reasoning doesn’t account for all the people and loved ones she left behind, particularly her 18 year-old daughter, Bobbi Kristina. Bobbi is already going through the worst time of her life, how is this going to affect her to have to see her deceased mom on a tabloid cover? That’s just ridiculously mean. My heart has been sinking the whole time I’m writing this, because I’m imagining seeing a loved one in their casket before going through the awful process of attending their burial. We have open casket viewings to provide closure to family and loved ones, the dead person is not meant to be publicly gawked at.

I deliberately didn’t include a link to the photo. It’s all over the place though and if you have even moderate Google skill you can easily find it. Hell, just go to the store on Friday and it will probably be there already.