Jim Morrison: Who Killed Jim Morrison?

But wait, Jim Morrison overdosed on heroin because he was a drug addict rockstar just like Janis Joplin, right? Wrong. Who exactly was “the Count," the French aristocrat who was there at the scene of Jim’s death? The same man who was with Janis Joplin hours before she died? Was rumored to somehow be involved with Jimi Hendrix? The friend of Keith Richards and Gram Parsons? And why did Jim Morrison hate him so much? And why was Mick Jagger’s ex-girlfriend Marianne Faithfull so insistent that she knew how Jim really died? To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership https://disgracelandpod.com/membership. Visit www.disgracelandpod.com/merch https://cms.megaphone.fm/organizations/c83125d2-8508-11ed-bd28-ff0aff7ee233/podcasts/efca2ef8-85f9-11ed-8fe3-bb208936046f/episodes/d117e93e-5e36-11ef-8745-5373bae4c0ff/www.disgracelandpod.com/merch to see the latest Disgraceland merch! Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER https://mailchi.mp/doubleelvis/disgraceland-email-newsletter Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/disgracelandpod/ YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@disgracelandpod X https://twitter.com/disgracelandpod (formerly Twitter) Facebook Fan Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/491024204626127/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This is exactly right.

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  I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of Scam Goddess Podcast, the true crime comedy podcast, all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it. Each week, I bring on an amazing guest.

• 1:24Speaker 04

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• 1:43Jake Brennan?

  This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.

• 2:04Jake Brennan?

  This is the story of how Jim Morrison really died. It's not the story of a junky rock star overdosing on heroin, a drug Jim Morrison didn't use, a drug Jim's friends knew that he despised. And it's not the story of a singer dying from an innocuous heart attack. This story deals with what I believe to be the truth behind Jim Morrison's death and the shadowy figure from one of music history's darkest corners. A man whose name seldom gets mentioned, but who was known not only by The Doors' frontman, but by Janis Joplin, Keith Richards, Graham Parsons, and many others from the 60s and 70s rock scene

• 2:47Jake Brennan?

  who found themselves in need of hard drugs. This figure was an aristocrat, a French count by the name of Jean de Breton, and he was hated by Jim Morrison. But he was there, in Paris, on the scene at Jim's apartment the morning after he died. Why? What did this mysterious count have to do with Jim's common-law wife, his girlfriend Pamela Corson? And did he have something to do with Jim's death? Or did Jim Morrison, as conspiracy theorists would have us believe, ever even die at all? Did he fake his own death to escape the pressures of being in The Doors? Of being a rock star?

• 3:31Jake Brennan?

  Of making music? Great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called Misty Mountain Flop MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to "It's Too Late, I Feel the Earth Move Under My Feet" by Carole King. And why would I play you that specific slice of double A-side cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number-one song in America on July 3, 1971. And that was the day Jim Morrison supposedly died of a heroin overdose.

• 4:14Jake Brennan?

  Or, depending on who you talk to, faked his own death.

• 4:19Jake Brennan?

  But neither of those things are true. This is what really happened. This is the story of how Jim Morrison really died. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is DisgraceLand.

• 4:57Jake Brennan?

  Jim Morrison is alive. He's 82 years old and living a quiet life in a cottage somewhere in the south of France, reading Rimbaud and writing poetry. Actually, no, he's not. He's dead. But before he died, he was the Zodiac Killer. And then, after he faked his death, he was Rush Limbaugh. But those things aren't true either. But people do believe them. Ever since the moment news broke back in July of 1971 that Jim Morrison, the singer of The Doors, had died, a good amount of people, even people close to Jim, wouldn't accept the fact that he was actually dead. They just wouldn't believe it. Doors keyboard player Ray Manzarek was immediately skeptical.

• 5:43Jake Brennan?

  Jim's own sister, Anne, is on record saying that Jim is the exact type of guy who would fake his own death. And he was. Jim Morrison courted death. He drank himself into oblivion and ate acid like it was candy. He dangled himself from hotel balconies, stumbled through traffic, cut himself in occult blood sacrifices while blitzed on cocaine, and sang about breaking on through to the other side.

• 6:12Jake Brennan?

  In the evidence in the aftermath of his death, at least the evidence available to the public, was most definitely sketchy enough to lead people to believe that Jim's death was perhaps something else. Supposedly, nobody close to the Doors who knew Jim, besides his common-law wife Pamela Corson, aka Pam Morrison, saw the body. And by the time Doors manager Bill Sidens arrived in Paris three days after Jim's death, the coffin was sealed, and there was no autopsy. A day after Bill Sidens arrived, Jim Morrison was quickly buried in Paris, and his body was never returned to the United States. Jim Morrison died officially of heart failure,

• 6:57Jake Brennan?

  but no one believes that. Most believe that Jim died of a heroin overdose, but I don't believe that. And after listening to this podcast, you won't either.

• 7:12Jake Brennan?

  At the time of Jim Morrison's death in July of 1971, the Doors were one of the biggest bands on the planet. Embroiled in controversy because of Jim's antics, the band had just finished recording what would be their final album, "L.A. Woman." Though the band had experienced critical and creative highs and lows, the Doors were still a top-selling band, and with the completion of "L.A. Woman", the band was free from their recording obligations with Elektra Records and was now the subject of a new bidding war between other record labels. The word was that Atlantic Records was about to offer the Doors an unprecedented amount of cash to sign with them. All of this was happening at the same time

• 7:56Jake Brennan?

  that Jim Morrison was awaiting the verdict for an appeal of his conviction concerning an incident two years prior in Miami, where Jim had exposed himself to an audience onstage. Jim was facing six months in prison for the crime.

• 8:15Jake Brennan?

  1971 was a time of great creative and personal turmoil for Jim Morrison. He had just completed what he believed to be his band's greatest album. He no longer had a record label to answer to, and he wasn't sure he wanted a new one and a new set of headaches. His girlfriend, Pam, had left Jim in Los Angeles that spring to live in Paris. Jim suspected she was living with another man, one who indulged her heroin habit, a habit Jim Morrison hated. In addition to being separated from the one true love of his life and facing prison time, Jim was exhausted by the image he'd created, that of the Lizard King, a swashbuckling

• 8:58Jake Brennan?

  leather-clat Adonis, part rock and roll genius, part drunken buffoon. Jim had eaten all the acid, he'd slept with all the groupies, and experienced all the things, and now, he romanticized a quieter life, as a poet. So he traded Los Angeles, the city of night that he sang about in "L.A. Woman," for Paris, the city of light. To understand how Jim Morrison really died in Paris in 1971, you have to understand what happened in Los Angeles in 1970.

• 9:39Jake Brennan?

  Count Jean de Bratoy had one green eye and one yellow eye. He also had the strongest heroin in Los Angeles. The Count was young, handsome, mysterious, and hated by Jim Morrison. Which was an anomaly, as plenty of rock stars counted the Count as their friend: Keith Richards, Janis Joplin, Graham Parsons, members of the GTOs, and perhaps even Jimi Hendrix. But Jim hated the Count for the exact reason that these other rock stars appreciated the young foreign aristocrat: because he dealt heroin.

• 10:15Jake Brennan?

  To Jim's great annoyance, the Count shared his heroin with Jim's girlfriend Pamela. In fact, the two shared more than their love of the addictive opiate. Pamela and the Count had a romantic relationship that likely stretched back to the Count's first days in Los Angeles as a UCLA student, where he became the university's hashish supplier by using his family's French diplomatic connections to smuggle drugs into the States through the Moroccan Embassy and onto campus. The Count was rich, and Pamela Corson, despite her relationship with Jim Morrison, one of the most famous rock stars on the planet, was not.

• 10:56Jake Brennan?

  The Count took Pamela on extravagant jet-set shopping sprees all over the world. He spoiled her. Jim did not. The Count loved the fact that Pamela was friends with famous rock stars. Jim Morrison could care less about status. The Count used Pamela's connection to the LA rock scene to move not only hash, but heroin. And Jim Morrison, by every account from everyone who knew him, hated heroin. He had an extreme, lifelong fear of hypodermic needles. Pamela's heroin use was seriously frowned upon by Jim, and a regular source of tension between the couple.

• 11:35Jake Brennan?

  But that didn't keep the Count from creeping around Jim and Pam's Hollywood bungalow. During this time, in the fall of 1970, Jim Morrison was cooling his jets in Los Angeles awaiting sentencing for his indecency charges in Miami. The band was beginning work on their LA Woman album and dealing with the fact that their longtime producer and creative confidant, Paul Rothschild, no longer wanted to work with them over the direction their music had taken, veering into schmaltzy territory he said sounded like "cocktail music." So, Jim Morrison drank. A lot.

• 12:15Jake Brennan?

  And snorted a ton of cocaine and carried on relationships with various women not named Pamela Corson. Elsewhere in the city of Los Angeles, bodies were dropping. A spate of heroin overdoses in the first few days of October 1970 were overrunning LA County emergency rooms. Street dealers went on the lam when news began to circulate that their product was killing innocent addicts. Medical examiners to attack victims who unwittingly injected what was known as "the dealer's supply," uncut, highly potent, pure-batch heroin that had flooded LA streets that weekend.

• 12:56Jake Brennan?

  The lethal dope sent nine people to the morgue, all because some dealer screwed up and didn't dilute his illegal product with a cutting agent, an additive that would allow the drug to be injected without its potency stopping the user's hearts. It was the act of an irresponsible dealer. Either that, or someone who just didn't care. Someone who believed they were not only above the law, but who looked down on his customers, who put on a pedestal those with status. The beautiful people like him, the rock stars he coveted relationships with. Someone like the boyfriend of Jim Morrison's girlfriend Pamela. Someone like the Count Jean de Breton.

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• 15:38Jake Brennan?

  So, Jim Morrison had reason to fake his own death, to disappear. He was exhausted by his rock star image. He was potentially headed to jail because of the criminal sentencing in Miami. He was suddenly free from his obligations to his record label and to his bandmates. Los Angeles had become a hotbed of heroin use, a drug his girlfriend Pamela couldn't shake. Those were the reasons. But where could Jim Morrison, an internationally recognizable rock star, disappear to? For Jim, there could be only one answer: Paris. Paris was perfect. It was bohemian, romantic.

• 16:22Jake Brennan?

  It had a rich history of French poets like Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, who did some of their best work in the city. Plus, American expat writers like Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, and Ernest Hemingway had all left their marks on Paris back in the 20s. Perhaps now, 50 years later, the city would inspire Jim Morrison to do the same.

• 16:44Jake Brennan?

  So, how would Jim Morrison then fake his own death? Well, there would need to be a cause of death. Heart attack. That was believable. And he'd need an accomplice to help him with the faking of the death, and then, of course, with the disappearing act, and ideally, someone to disappear with. And that was obvious. Pamela Corson was the only answer. He and Pam would likely have to prevent authorities from closely inspecting the body. There would need to be a quick burial, of an empty casket, of course. And the burial would most certainly have to be in Paris. The body would have to be interred locally and not returned to the States in order to maintain their secret.

• 17:25Jake Brennan?

  And then, well, at that point, after the funeral, Pam could disappear with Jim. And they could go anywhere they wanted. They could retire to Vienna and live the life of bohemians. They could move to Tuscany and live off of the land. They could stay in Paris and lay low for a while until anonymously blending back into the rhythm of the city. After some time, they could even return to the United States. It was big enough to disappear in. They could head to Texas, or Florida, or the mountains in Colorado. Anywhere was better than Los Angeles. But no one here gets out alive.

• 18:04Jake Brennan?

  To pull off their scheme, Jim and presumably Pam would need friends to help. Enter Alain Ronet and Agnes Varda.

• 18:14Jake Brennan?

  Alain was one of Jim's friends, a photographer who was in Paris at the time. And Agnes Varda was another one of Jim's friends, the trailblazing French filmmaker who was at the time assisting Bernard Bertolucci with the script for Last Tango in Paris. Both were on the scene on July 3, 1971, in the immediate hours after Jim's death at Jim and Pam's apartment, summoned by Pam that evening to help her through the ordeal of dealing with the French authorities and the police and medical examiner and their nersey neighbors.

• 18:48Jake Brennan?

  And from Alain Ronay's depiction of the death scene, it doesn't appear at all that either he or Agnes Varda were in any way in on any sort of scheme to help Jim Morrison fake his own death. Now remember, the evidence that conspiracy theorists use to support the theory that Jim Morrison didn't die is that number one, nobody saw the body, and number two, there was no autopsy, and three, he was buried very quickly in a sealed coffin. But Alain Ronay and Agnes Varda did see the body, and so did a whole lot of other people. More on that in a minute. And there may not have been an autopsy, but that's because Pamela Corson was hell-bent on making sure that that didn't happen, and Alain Ronay and Agnes Varda had a front-row

• 19:31Jake Brennan?

  seat to the decisions made by the medical examiner. More on that in a bit, too. Sure, the body may have been buried quickly in a sealed coffin without anyone from America seeing it before it was interred, but that was because Pamela Corson was, according to Alain Ronay, determined to make sure that authorities didn't discover that Jim Morrison, the American rock star, had died of a drug overdose. Pamela didn't want their apartment searched. She didn't want to be detained by authorities either. She also didn't want Jim's reputation tainted by a cause of death having to do with illicit drugs. So a quick burial without an autopsy was necessary.

• 20:14Jake Brennan?

  And if this meant that Jim's family and friends wouldn't have the chance to see him in the flesh one last time, then from Pamela Corson's perspective, so be it. But to the conspiracy theorists, I say, Alain Ronay did see the body, as did a whole lot of other Parisians, including a Frenchman whom Alain saw on the scene at Jim and Pam's apartment in the hours just after his death. And that Frenchman, the Count Jean de Bretoy.

• 20:47Jake Brennan?

  Back in Los Angeles, a few months earlier, in the fall of 1970. Over that weekend, the emergency rooms were overrun with heroin fatalities. The Count, Jean de Bretoye, sat nervously in Mercy Fontenot's Hollywood apartment. Mercy was known around the L.A. rock scene as "Miss Mercy." She was a protege of Frank Zappa, part of the all-girl rock group, the GTOs, and like most of the L.A. scene at the time, she was friendly with the Count. The Count told her, "I have something for you." Mercy had a habit of saying yes to any drug put in front of her. The Count had a new batch of dope.

• 21:29Jake Brennan?

  The Count wanted to see the effect the drug had on one of his clients. He'd just dropped off a few baggies with another client an hour or so ago, and had a weird feeling about it. He was worried. Was this dope too strong? The Count could shoot up Miss Mercy, and if everything was okay, then he'd know, and he could stop worrying. And if the dope was too strong, well, it was too late to cut it. Too much of it was already out on the street. But at least the Count would know. And he could make arrangements to fly out of the country before anything bad came back on him. The Count sat back and watched Miss Mercy shoot his heroin. Immediately, something was wrong. Miss Mercy felt it.

• 22:13Jake Brennan?

  She started struggling, panting, waving her arms, and trying to speak, but the words wouldn't come. It was exactly like one of those dreams. The monster is there with you, in the room. You can see him, but no one else can. He's gonna kill you, but you can't get your voice to work. You're trying to scream, but nothing comes out. Miss Mercy was trying to say something. Her eyes rolled back into her skull, and her head fell backward against the chair. She then pulled her head back up in the struggle, and it rolled loosely around her shoulders as she managed to somehow get out the words, "I'm going down, I'm going down." The Count could see that, and was already working to solve the problem

• 22:56Jake Brennan?

  by loading a syringe with cocaine dissolved in water. He then jammed the needle into Mercy's other arm, a direct hit with a vein. Mercy shot up out of her seat with a gasp. She was going to be okay. But the Count had his answer. The heroin was not okay. This heroin was too strong, and yes, it most certainly needed to be diluted. He thought of his other client, the one whom he just left with numerous baggies of this lethal heroin. He remembered that she wore an amulet around her neck and that she kept it filled with cocaine for occasions just like this. A precaution, to snap her back to life if heroin ever sent her into an overdose.

• 23:39Jake Brennan?

  Except, what she didn't know, and what the Count also didn't know, was that his client had a friend, and that friend had decided that cocaine wasn't as useful to have around as heroin was, so that friend emptied the cocaine from the Count's client's amulet and stuffed it with heroin. That same night, when the Count's client injected his dope and had the same reaction Miss Mercy had, she reached for the cocaine in her amulet and quickly snorted it in an effort to save her own life. Except what she ended up snorting instead was more heroin. So, Janis Joplin died of a double dose of Count Jean de Bretoy's lethal heroin on October

• 24:22Jake Brennan?

  4th, 1970, along with eight other victims in the Los Angeles area that weekend. This happened just two weeks after Jimi Hendrix died in London, officially, from choking on his own vomit after taking too many barbiturates and drinking too much wine. But there were already rumors that authorities had it all wrong, that Jimi had been murdered, something to do with his manager and an insurance policy and a debt to the mob, and being injected with a hotshot of heroin. Either way, a couple days later in Hollywood, when Jim Morrison got word that Janis Joplin had died, he sat at the bar at Barney's Beanery, stared into his whiskey, raised his glass

• 25:07Jake Brennan?

  to the barflies, and said, "You're drinking with number three."

• 25:17Speaker 07

  We'll be right back after this word, word, word.

• 25:23Speaker 07

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• 25:54Speaker 06

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• 26:39Speaker 06

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• 27:00Jake Brennan?

  Jim Morrison was right. Less than a year later, he would indeed become number three. He was dead. And he most certainly did not fake his own death and disappear. Again, to recap. The conspiracy theorist case that Jim faked his own death relies on the claim that nobody saw his body after he died. Nobody besides Pamela and perhaps a crooked Parisian official or two who were bribed. But this is categorically false. According to Alain Ronet, Agnes Varda, and many others, there were numerous people who streamed in and out of Jim and Pam's apartment in the hours after he died, trying to make sense of the situation. And Jim's body was on full display to all.

• 27:45Jake Brennan?

  Jim's heart stopped sometime in the early morning hours of July 3, 1971. His body was discovered by Pamela, she claims, a few hours after that, in the bathtub, lying in the water, dead.

• 28:01Jake Brennan?

  And that's where the body was when Alain and Agnes arrived a few hours later, after Pamela had called them to come over to help assist with the ordeal that was unfolding around her. When Alain arrived, there was already a police investigator on the scene who had taken charge. He obviously saw the body. Alain, being a French expat, helped the inspector translate the information that he needed from Pamela, who only spoke English. Pamela, according to Alain, was determined not to let the inspector or anyone else know the truth of Jim's identity, that he was a rock star. She wanted them to believe he was an ordinary American citizen. Alain assumed that this was to head off any unwanted attention from the press, which

• 28:45Jake Brennan?

  is understandable. Along with the police inspector, there were now paramedics on the scene, and they also saw the body, still in the tub, still submerged in water. More policemen arrived and more eyes on the body. The front door to the apartment was open. Alain saw a curious neighbor from the building just wander inside the apartment, and the neighbor later recounted that he too saw the body. The apartment was a hive of activity in those morning hours. And during all of this, at some point, Alain and Agnes pulled Pamela aside to get the story. Pamela explained that earlier in the evening, she and Jim decided to sniff some heroin.

• 29:27Jake Brennan?

  She went to bed, and he then, apparently, according to Pamela, snorted more heroin, drew a bath, got into the tub, and never got up. Alon was immediately skeptical. He was close with Jim Morrison. He knew that Jim hated heroin. And that Jim hated when Pamela used heroin. The idea that he would use heroin with Pamela was highly suspicious. There was now a doctor on the scene. He saw the body as well. And he wanted to know from Alon what Jim's story was.

• 30:04Jake Brennan?

  The phone then rang. Pamela answered it and spoke in hushed tones. Alon knew who she was speaking with. Her Parisian friends, the ones Jim hated so much. The ones Jim wanted Pamela to break free from. The heroin addicts. Jim said to Alon recently about Pam in regards to her and her friends and her heroin habit. Quote, "You and I are on the side of life. She is on the side of death." Pam told Alon that she had gotten rid of all the drugs in the apartment. But Alon also saw Pam inside of Jim's desk while the authorities were preoccupied, locking away his papers, his poetry.

• 30:48Jake Brennan?

  She then made for the fireplace with another stack of papers. Letters. Letters that she had written. Musings, she told Alon, about her drug use that she didn't want the authorities to find. She set fire to the letters in the fireplace. And she also grabbed the Newsweek magazine Jim was reading. And the cover story on that magazine? "The Plague of Heroin." Pamela then grabbed a fur coat. It belonged to one of her friends, and it was seemingly worth a lot of money. She told Alon that she had to call her sister in Los Angeles, and that she wanted her sister to head to the Elektra Records office to steal the latest earnings from the doors before it was too late.

• 31:30Jake Brennan?

  Alain Ronay is on record recounting this statement from Pamela Corson. Alain suggested that instead of focusing on stealing money, that they called Jim's lawyer in Los Angeles to help arrange the necessary affairs of the deceased. Pamela did not like this idea. She then explained that she wanted Jim's body cremated. Alain protested. Cremation in France was something that criminals did to the deceased when they didn't want to answer questions about the recently departed. But Pamela didn't want Jim's body flown back to the United States. She was suspicious of the process. The body would be inspected. She didn't want it known that Jim overdosed, so cremation was necessary.

• 32:12Jake Brennan?

  Alain protested again, and convinced Pam that a proper burial could take place there in Paris quickly, at Pere Lachey Cemetery, the eternal home of great artists befitting of Jim's postmortem company, including Frédéric Chopin, Eugene Delacroix, Edith Piaf, and Oscar Wilde. In the meantime, Jim's body would remain in the apartment, in the tub, on ice, with Pam sleeping next to him, keeping guard throughout the end of the weekend and into Monday. A highly unusual move, something that authorities told Pam was nearly never done. But Pam wouldn't allow the police inspector, or the medical inspector, or the doctors to prevail against her wishes to keep the body in the apartment until the funeral.

• 32:57Jake Brennan?

  For reasons I still don't understand, authorities allowed Pam to keep the body there in the apartment. Dry ice was delivered, the bathtub was packed, and Jim Morrison's dead body remained under the watchful eyes of his girlfriend Pamela Corson. A month earlier, in June of 1971, in the south of France on the French Riviera at a decadent hideaway known as Viennel Co., the Rolling Stones had begun recording what would become their masterpiece, Exile on Main Street. They were outlaws, on the run, hiding out from UK tax collectors. In addition to their financial problems, the Stones had another problem: where to procure

• 33:39Jake Brennan?

  heroin to satiate the habits of Stones guitarist Keith Richards and his friend and visitor to Nell Co., the cosmic American songwriter Graham Parsons. To solve this problem, the Stones had another visitor: the Count, Jean de Britoy.

• 33:59Jake Brennan?

  Keith Richards was so impressed by the Count's product that he offered the Count use of his home in London. The Count took Keith up on the offer. He left the French Riviera for Keith's place. And when he settled into Keith's digs in the tony neighborhood of London's chainwalk, he made some new friends. New friends with similar habits. Talitha Getty, heiress to the Getty fortune, an actress-songwriter, Rolling Stones muse and ex-girlfriend to Mick Jagger, Mary Ann Faithfull. The Count was especially keen on Mary Ann. Mary Ann was rock and roll royalty. Mary Ann co-wrote the Stones' song Sister Morphine. She was famously part of the Stones' bust at Redlands.

• 34:44Jake Brennan?

  She was the infamous naked girl in fur who was plastered all over the front pages of the newspapers back in 1967. And she loved heroin. So in June of 1971, while Count Jean de Bertois took advantage of Keith Richards' offer to use his home in London, he also took advantage of his new neighbor's heroin habit and used his supply to begin a relationship with one of London's hippest young women, Mick Jagger's ex, Mary Ann Faithfull. The pair quickly decided to split from London for Paris. The Count had another girl there, another girl who relied on his heroin, another girl with a rock star boyfriend,

• 35:26Jake Brennan?

  Pamela Corson, aka Pam Morrison.

• 35:58Jake Brennan?

  In the early hours of July 3, 1971, Mary Ann Faithfull and Count Jean de Bertois awoke to the sound of the telephone. They were in bed in a five-star Paris hotel.

• 36:13Jake Brennan?

  According to Mary Ann, Pamela Corson was on the other end of the line and she was frantic, begging the Count to come to her apartment immediately. Mary Ann was not jealous, anything but. She wanted desperately to meet the notorious rock star Jim Morrison. The Count wouldn't allow it, though. After hanging up, he quickly dressed and left Mary Ann behind for Pamela. Jim Morrison was dead by that time on the morning of July 3rd, 1971. His death was not faked. We know this because of the many, many people who saw his body over the span of many hours later on that morning. The more interesting question isn't, "Did Jim Morrison fake his death?"

• 36:57Jake Brennan?

  No, the more interesting question is, "How did Jim Morrison die?" Officially, a French medical examiner determined that Jim Morrison died of heart failure. This is what Pamela Corson wanted. She did not want it known that Jim died of a drug overdose. But he did, clearly. She'd admitted that on the scene to Alain Ronet. This information was corroborated by Agnes Varda, who was also there with Alain and Pam. And it's been confirmed over and over again by others close to Jim and Pam. But Jim Morrison dying of a heroin overdose doesn't make sense because everyone who knew Jim Morrison, including Pamela Corson, knew that he despised heroin. He didn't use heroin.

• 37:42Jake Brennan?

  Jim Morrison drank and he used cocaine. Furthermore, he was in Paris to clean up, to get healthy. So it strains credulity to believe that he chose this time in his life to develop a heroin habit, especially after, according to his close friend, Alain Ronet, he'd recently described the drug and his girlfriend's and her friend's usage of the drug as "deathly."

• 38:07Jake Brennan?

  But wait, there's more. In the police report filed by the Paris Police Superintendent, Pamela Corson stated to him that Pam found Jim's body in the tub, submerged in water sometime between 8:30 and 9:00 a.m., and then she called authorities shortly thereafter. Pam further claimed that she last saw Jim alive sometime around 4:00 in the morning before she went to bed. However, in the report filed by the Paris Fire Brigade detailing the evidence as witnessed by the lieutenant on the scene that morning, when he arrived on the scene at 9:21 a.m., the water in the tub was still lukewarm.

• 38:49Jake Brennan?

  Now, would the water still be warm if Jim drew his bath hours earlier? Or perhaps was the bath drawn later? After, perhaps after Jim died? Perhaps after Jim died somewhere other than the tub? Perhaps after Jim was placed in the tub? What happened between the hours of 4:00 a.m. when Pamela last saw Jim and 9:21 a.m. when authorities arrived at her apartment? According to Mary Ann Faithfull, Pamela called the Count, and the Count went to Pam's. Did Pamela and the Count move Jim's body? Why would they do that?

• 39:30Jake Brennan?

  Was that move part of a larger cleanup effort on behalf of the two? Mary Ann Faithfull has claimed that earlier that evening, Pamela Morrison was snorting the Count's heroin. It was the type of heroin with the street name "cotton candy." Heroin isn't like cocaine or marijuana. It doesn't have a signature color. There's black heroin, brown heroin, and there was cotton candy heroin, called such because of its light color. It was pinkish, nearly white. And because of this, Mary Ann Faithfull claims that Jim Morrison mistook Pamela Corson's heroin for cocaine, snorted too much of it, overdosed, and died.

• 40:14Jake Brennan?

  We know the Count was at the apartment that morning. Remember the phone call Pamela Morrison received from her Parisian friends? The one that agitated Alain Ronay? After that phone call, Alain claimed he saw the Count outside on the street, and that he himself let the Count into the apartment to see Pam. Later that morning, when the Count returned to Mary Ann at the hotel, Mary Ann claimed he was agitated, and that he beat her. Afterward, he told Mary Ann to get packed. He was clearly scared to death, afraid for his life. Jim Morrison had taken his heroin and died. And now, he and Mary Ann Faithfull needed to leave for Morocco immediately.

• 40:58Jake Brennan?

  Or so goes the story by Mary Ann Faithfull. This story, the story that Jim Morrison mistakenly snorted heroin, thinking it was cocaine and died. If we're to believe Mary Ann Faithfull, this story makes far more sense than the idea that Jim Morrison was just another junkie rock star who overdosed on smack. But wait, there's yet another story. In Paris in 1971, there was a nightclub that Jim Morrison hung out at called The Rock and Roll Circus. It was a hotbed for drug use of all kinds, including heroin. In 2007, the manager of that club, Sam Benet, published a book, in French only,

• 41:42Jake Brennan?

  in which he made the claim that Jim overdosed on heroin that night at The Rock and Roll Circus, and that his body was moved out of the club, back to his apartment, and placed in the tub. Conspiracy theorists love this theory, but I don't. First of all, why would they take the body all the way back to Jim's apartment and carefully stage a scene with him in the tub? Why not just take him out of the club and leave the body in the street? Or in somebody's car? Or anywhere, really? Why go through all the trouble of having to sneak the body through the streets of Paris, into an apartment, and then presumably convince the dead dude's girlfriend to get behind this fantastic lie with you? A lie that would clearly complicate her life?

• 42:26Jake Brennan?

  What incentive would Pamela Corson have to support this lie? And even more interesting question is, why was Pamela Corson behaving so dishonestly in the hours after the body was discovered? According to Alain Ronay, she was allegedly busy making arrangements to get her hands on Jim's money back in LA. She was hiding papers, burning letters, squirreling away expensive furs, and making plans to have the body quickly cremated. And when that didn't work, she moved to have the body quickly buried instead. She didn't want Jim's lawyer involved, so she settled on dealing with his manager, Bill Siddons, who, once he was informed in Los Angeles of Jim's death, dropped everything and flew to Paris.

• 43:10Jake Brennan?

  According to John Denzmore, the Dors drummer, Bill Siddons told him that when he arrived at the scene, he found heroin in the apartment in a carved wooden box, and that it was his belief that Jim snorted that heroin by accident and died.

• 43:33Jake Brennan?

  When I look at stories like this, where multiple people are saying different things, each with their own relationship to the truth, I look for incentives. What incentive does the person making the claim have for making that statement? Why would Bill Siddons lie to John Denzmore, the drummer for the band that he managed, his client, his friend? I can't think of a reason why. Why would Alain Ronay, Jim Morrison's close friend, lie about what he saw that morning, about the way Pam was acting? It seems to me that doing so would make his life more complicated, more painful. And why would Agnes Varda back up his lies as well? I have no answer for that. Why would the manager of the Rock and

• 44:18Jake Brennan?

  Roll Circus publish a book with wild claims about where and how Jim Morrison died? Well, I can think of a couple of reasons, and none of them speak to the author's credibility. Mary Ann Faithfull's comments strike me as the most credible. She had no incentive to lie, and no incentive, financial or otherwise, to say what she said. She started talking immediately after Jim's death, and later published her depiction of her involvement with the Count and the Count's involvement with Jim's death in her autobiography. Mary Ann's comments never- Elevated or relegated her status in pop culture. They were just part of her own wild rock and roll story and her story that Jim Morrison

• 44:58Jake Brennan?

  died by mistakenly snorting her boyfriend, the Count Jean de Bretois's heroin, an act that was then covered up by Pamela Corson and the Count. That story is the story that's supported by more evidence than any of the other claims surrounding Jim Morrison's death. We know who the Count was and what he did for a living. We know others died from his heroin. And after Jim died, after the Count split from Morocco with Mary Ann, they soon broke up. And then his life spiraled out of control. He died in 1972 of a heroin overdose. Some who were close with him believed that he committed suicide over how he felt about

• 45:41Jake Brennan?

  the deaths that he caused, most notably the deaths of Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison. And in 1974, Pamela Corson also died of a heroin overdose, but not before telling many, many different versions to friends about what happened the night that Jim Morrison died. Pamela Corson was the last person alive who truly knew how Jim Morrison passed away. A death at just the age of 27, that no matter the cause, was most definitely a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgrace Land.

• 46:42Jake Brennan?

  All right, guys. Thanks for checking out this episode of Disgrace Land. Listen, question of the week this week, super simple. How do you think Jim Morrison died? Was it heart failure, as officials have said? Was it a heroin overdose by his own accord because he was a junkie? Or was it heroin overdose by mistake? Let me know your theories. Perhaps it was something else. 617-906-6638. Voicemail and text at disgracelandpod on the socials, [email protected] on email. Hit me up and let me know how you think Jim Morrison died. And perhaps you'll hear yourself on this week's after party coming up right after this. All right, here comes some credits.

• 47:20Jake Brennan?

  Disgrace Land was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis, The Exactly Right Network, and iHeart Podcasts. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgrace Land All-Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com/membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgrace Land ad-free. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook @DisgraceLandPod and on YouTube at youtube.com/AtDisgraceLandPod. Rock-a-roller.

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• 49:05Speaker 03

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• 49:16Speaker 04

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• 49:20Speaker 03

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