Whitney Houston Aide Says He Covered Singer’s Naked Body, Broke News To Bobby Brown
June 17 2012, Published 7:19 a.m. ET
Whitney Houston’s companion and former aide Raffles van Exel has revealed new details from the day the singer died.
The 44-year-old Dutch entertainment consultant knew Houston for 24 years and says that as he saw her naked body lying on a wet carpet – he knew instantly she was dead and tried to preserve her modesty.
Raffles has spoken for the first time to Britain’s Mirror newspaper and says he ran for a towel to cover up the bottom half of her body as her bodyguard Ray Watson tried frantically to save her life.
He also said that he was with Houston’s daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown when she learned her mother had died.
“I walked into Bobbi Kristina’s room and she was crying and bawling,” he recalled. “She asked me, ‘Is my mommy gone?’ I said, “They are working on her.”
“She held me and said, ‘I can’t believe she is gone.’ I didn’t want to be the one who told her her mother was dead. I asked to borrow her phone and I called Bobby Brown and asked where he was.
“He said he was in Boston. I said, ‘I need you to come to L.A., Whitney just died.’ He started crying. He said, ‘Is this a joke? Tell me this is a f***ing joke'."
Raffles claimed he was shocked to learn Houston was still doing hard drugs in the weeks before she died.
“Whitney was good at hiding her drug habit,” he said. “I honestly thought she was clean in the two years before she died.”
As RadarOnline.com previously reported, the autopsy showed the 48-year-old had a cocktail of prescription drugs in her system when she died at the Beverly Hilton hotel on February 11 as well as marijuana and cocaine.
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