Raffles van Exel was photographed with friend Whitney Houston shortly before her death.
Raffles van Exel, a Dutch entertainment consultant now living in West Hollywood, admitted he cleaned up Houston’s Beverly Hilton room in an interview with the influential Dutch newspaper The Telegraph Feb. 15.
“Someone had to do it,” he told the paper, according to a translation. "The room was empty."
Van Exel didn’t detail when he removed the items or exactly what they were. He has not responded to multiple requests for comment from the Daily News.
The Zelig-like entertainment guru, formerly friends with Michael Jackson, was photographed with Houston shortly before her death and also attended her funeral in New Jersey.
It was last week that Los Angeles County Coroner officials revealed Houston had enough cocaine in her system to contribute to her accidental drowning Feb. 11.
They said the pop icon used cocaine "immediately prior" to her collapse in a bathtub, but investigators previously said they found nothing “alarming” beyond some prescription bottles in the room.
TMZ.com, citing an unnamed source, said the shadowy figure who furnished the illegal drug scrubbed away any traces before authorities arrived.
“We know the levels (in her system) indicate it was an acute use, a recent use,” Chief Coroner Investigator Craig Harvey told the Daily News Friday.
He said the cocaine combined with Houston’s heart disease likely caused a “cardiac event” that prevented her from being “able to push herself out of the water.”
Houston was a “chronic” cocaine user who suffered a 60% narrowing of her heart arteries, Harvey said.
“We are saddened to learn of the toxicology results, although we are glad to now have closure,’ Houston’s sister-in-law and manager Patricia Houston said in a statement.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
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