Hendrix Murdered accusation

[rickg]

Interesting story out of United Kingdom regarding Jimi Hendrix "murder."


Hendrix murdered by his manager, says former aide
Star 'stuffed with pills as part of insurance scam'
By Sadie Gray
Sunday, 31 May 2009

Getty
The rock legend Jimi Hendrix was murdered by his manager, who stood to collect millions of dollars on the star's life insurance policy, a former roadie has claimed in a new book.
The rock legend Jimi Hendrix was murdered by his manager, who stood to collect millions of dollars on the star's life insurance policy, a former roadie has claimed in a new book.
James "Tappy" Wright says that Hendrix's manager, Michael Jeffrey, drunkenly confessed to killing him by stuffing pills into his mouth and washing them down with several bottles of red wine because he feared Hendrix intended to dump him for a new manager, according to a report in the Mail on Sunday.
In his book, Rock Roadie, Mr Wright says Jeffrey told him in 1971 that Hendrix had been "worth more to him dead than alive" as he had taken out a life insurance policy on the musician worth $2m (about £1.2m at the time), with himself as the beneficiary. Two years later, Jeffrey was killed in a plane crash.
Hendrix died in September 1970, aged 27. An ambulance crew found his body in the Samarkand Hotel, west London, in the room of a woman called Monika Dannemann, whom he had known for only a few days.
Hendrix was alone in the room, lying on his back, with the gas fire on and the door open. There was no record of who had called the ambulance. His inquest recorded the cause of his death as barbiturate intoxication and inhalation of vomit, and recorded an open verdict.
Describing the night of Jeffrey's confession, Mr Wright wrote: "I can still hear that conversation, see the man I'd known for so much of my life, his face pale, hand clutching at his glass in sudden rage."
Wright claims Jeffrey told him: "I had to do it, Tappy. You understand, don't you? I had to do it. You know damn well what I'm talking about.
"I was in London the night of Jimi's death and together with some old friends... we went round to Monika's hotel room, got a handful of pills and stuffed them into his mouth... then poured a few bottles of red wine deep into his windpipe.
"I had to do it. Jimi was worth much more to me dead than alive. That son of a bitch was going to leave me. If I lost him, I'd lose everything."
John Bannister, the surgeon who dealt with Hendrix at hospital, has said he was convinced the star had drowned in red wine, despite having very little alcohol in his bloodstream.
"I recall vividly the very large amounts of red wine that oozed from his stomach and his lungs and in my opinion there was no question that Jimi Hendrix had drowned, if not at home then on the way to the hospital," he wrote in 1992

[Matt Gagne]

wow that's crazy

[Adam]

This comment is posted on behalf of James 'Tappy' Wright, author of Rock Roadie - check with Borkowski PR (Borkowski) in the UK for confirmation.

"I knew what Mike Jeffrey had done and I kept quiet for all this time because I was terrified. It wasn’t just me and him involved – the Mafia were part of this and Mike owed them money. He was paying out $30,000 a month to pay back the money he’d borrowed – I know this because I drove Bob Levine out to New Jersey to borrow it for him. I was one of his closest employees. If I hadn’t kept quiet, you’d have been reading about me in the obituaries. All this happened in 1973, not 1971 as has been reported, just months before Mike died in a plane crash.

"I waited to tell the truth because I was scared and there were people still alive who were involved. Some of them could still be alive today. I started to write the book ten years ago because Rod Weinberg told me I had a moral obligation to get the truth out there – he was right, but it would have been suicide not to wait. After talking to Rod I realised that it was my duty to set the record straight. That’s why I started writing the book ten years ago.

"Mike Jeffrey had Jimi killed because he needed the money. Jimi’s girlfriend Devon tried to take him away from Mike and she died – I believe she was thrown off the roof of the Chelsea Hotel. I don’t think she just fell. If I’d said anything before now, that could have been me.

"This is not about some broke roadie cashing in on a story. I’m comfortably off. It’s about a moral obligation. Of course I’d like the book to sell, but it’s not about the money. It’s about getting the truth out there. I was Mike Jeffrey’s longest serving employee, right from before The Animals were even called that – there’s no story about Hendrix without the Animals. What happened to Jimi Hendrix is not the only story in the book, but it was important to tell it.

"I remember all these things happening. I started writing the books ten years ago and I have thought long and hard about getting every memory down. I never took drugs during the 60s – except once, when Eric Burdon spiked me with acid. Girls, yes I slept with a lot of girls. But I never deliberately took drugs. So my memory is d****d good and what gaps there were I filled in by talking to all the people who were involved and thinking back on what happened. You look at all the Hendrix books that have come out in the last 40 years and it’s all the same regurgitated s**t. I knew the right people to ask and with their help I have remembered most of it.

"I’ve also been asked to think about the past a lot since those days. The papers in the North East of England come to me regularly for anecdotes when people like Elvis and Ike Turner die – all the people I met and worked with. I have kept the memories alive over the years."

[Adam]

Another quote from James 'Tappy' Wright:

"Noel Redding said publicly that “Jimi’s death was very kind to Mike Jeffrey” – and he certainly came into a lot of money after Jimi’s death. He paid off his back taxes, his debts, gave Al Hendrix $250,000 for Jimi’s share of the Electric Lady studios in New York, bought himself a house in Woodstock, invested a fortune in clubs in Majorca. Where did this come from?"

[rickg]

So there is some validity to this.

There has to be some nay-sayers to this assertion; what are they saying?