Nelson’s body had drug traces

Press, 3 February 1986, Page 6

Nelson’s body had drug traces

NZPA-AP Dallas The body of Rick Nelson, the entertainer, had contained a small amount of cocaine when he was killed in a New Year’s eve plane crash, the Dallas “Times Herald” reported at the week-end. Toxicology tests had showed no evidence that “free-basing,”a method of cocaine use that entails heating the drug with an open flame, the newspaper quoted an unidentified Federal Aviation Administration toxicologist as saying. The “Times Herald” quoted an unnamed official at the Civil Aeromedic Institute, in Oklahoma City, as saying that traces of metabolised and unmetabolised cocaine, as well as a compound of the pain-killer Darvon, had been found in Nelson’s blood and urine samples. “I can’t confirm that

because it is not public information. We have not released any data, and we are not prepared to comment on reports that are not ours,” said a National Transportation Safety Board spokesman. The board had “sent blood samples and urine samples from the victims and the flight crew to two different laboratories for analysis,” he said. "We now have, but have not released, the toxicological results from those two labs.” Nelson, his fiancee and five members of his band were killed on their way to a performance in Dallas when their smokefilled DC3 crashed near De Kalb, Texas. The Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office has listed the official cause of death for the victims as thermal burns and smoke inhalation.