Was Whitney Houston murdered by drug thugs?

LONDON: Singer Whitney Houston was murdered, according to a leading private investigator, who claims to have unearthed new evidence.

Paul Huebl, a former Chicago police investigator and now a top Hollywood private detective, plans to present his secret dossier to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to get the case reopened, reports showbizspy.com.

Huebl says he has received a tip from knowledgeable sources that Houston's killers are actually caught on hotel videotape, and he is contacting FBI agents to take a fresh look at the case, he believes local authorities bun­gled or covered up.

"I have evidence that points to Whitney being a victim of high-powered drug dealers, who sent thugs to collect a huge debt she owed for drugs," said Huebl.

The veteran investigator believes he is close to learning the identity of the vicious killers.

He says they are two men from a group of scruffy hangers-on who kept showing up in the days before the singer's untimely death at age 48, in February this year.

His confidential informants insist that close examination of the surveillance videos from the Bev­erly Hilton hotel, where Houston died, will show two shadowy characters entering and leaving her suite right around the time she died.