Screamin’ Jay Hawkins: Was Screamin’ Jay Hawkins Murdered?

He was an operatic vocalist made famous by his song “I Put A Spell on You,” a song he performed throughout the conservative 1950s while jumping out of a coffin on stage. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins will live on in infamy after it was discovered he fathered 57+ children over the course of his life as not only a singer, but a soldier, a boxer, and an actor. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins was a lot of things before he died in 2000, but was the man in the coffin actually the victim of a murder, as some have alleged? We find out in this special Halloween episode of Disgraceland. Disgraceland has been nominated for two Signal Awards! Vote for us here: Best Writing https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2026/shows/craft/best-writing Best Music Podcast https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2026/shows/genre/music To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a 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.

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• 0:10Jake Brennan?

  Double Elvis.

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• 2:12Jake Brennan?

  Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.

• 2:31Jake Brennan?

  This is a story about how rock and roll pioneer Screamin' Jay Hawkins may have been murdered. It's a story about an operatic boogeyman who freaked out America in the conservative 1950s by jumping out of a coffin on stage. And it's also about an unreliable narrator, an arrest for statutory rape, polygamy, and the 57-plus children fathered by the co-author of the classic rock and roll song "I Put a Spell on You," Mr. Screamin' Jay Hawkins, a man who made great music. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music.

• 3:13Jake Brennan?

  That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called "Caped Creepy Crooner MK1." I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to "I Knew I Loved You" by Savage Garden. And why would I play you that specific slice of unlikely Y2K cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on February 12th, 2000, and that was the day that Screamin' Jay Hawkins died at the age of 70, a death that officials said was caused by an aneurysm, but which some later alleged was actual murder.

• 3:55Jake Brennan?

  On this episode, the boogeyman, polygamy, fathering at least 57 children, murder allegations, and rock and roll pioneer Screamin' Jay Hawkins. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace Land.

• 4:23Jake Brennan?

  Some people think that Screamin' Jay Hawkins was murdered. Yes, that's right. The "I Put a Spell on You" guy murdered. The official cause of death was multiple organ failure following emergency surgery to treat an aneurysm. But some believe he was slowly poisoned and that the poisoning could have led to intestinal obstruction, which could have then triggered his aneurysm and the multiple organ failure and all the rest of it. Now, this is ironic as hell, by the way, because Screamin' Jay wrote and sang a song called "Constipation Blues," which literally sounds like a guy trying to dramatically pass a bowel movement for about four minutes straight.

• 5:09Jake Brennan?

  This murder theory is not widely talked about, but it's out there and not just in Reddit threads on the internet. There's a book about Screamin' Jay that was published in 2019, which mentions this theory a few times from a few different sources, albeit briefly and at the very end. I was completely floored when I first stumbled across these murder allegations while researching this episode. I've always wanted to tell Screamin' Jay Hawkins's story because it's weird and it's wild and it's mythic, like all the best stories about rock stars. And I always assumed that the angle of our episode would be how, when Jay died, it was revealed that he had at least 57 children out there, most of them illegitimate and most of them unknown to him.

• 5:55Jake Brennan?

  But then I read about how Screamin' Jay may not have died as we were told, how he may have been murdered, and suddenly, everything changed.

• 6:07Jake Brennan?

  On February 12th, 2000, Screamin' Jay Hawkins was 70 years old and living outside Paris, France. He continued to tour and perform his eccentric brand of rock and roll, mostly in Europe. And like a lot of 20th century jazz musicians, Jay found that he was appreciated more abroad than he was in the States. Audiences there liked his newer material just as much as they dug his biggest hit, his "Calling Card," the song I mentioned earlier, "I Put a Spell on You." You know this song. It's been covered hundreds of times by everyone, from Nina Simone to Creedence's Clearwater Revival. You've heard it in countless movies and TV shows and contestants on American Idol and The Voice regularly drag it out to sing it to the rafters.

• 6:51Jake Brennan?

  Because it's a song you want to remember. It's a song that will last forever. It's what the cockroaches will be listening to while they feed off Twinkies in the post-apocalypse wasteland. "I Put a Spell on You" is such a monster tune that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Jay's hometown of Cleveland selected it for its list of 500 songs that shaped rock and roll.

• 7:17Jake Brennan?

  Jay planned to keep playing this song to audiences for a long time because even at 70, despite some minor health issues that had begun to pop up, he remained in good spirits and he continued to perform enthusiastically to audiences like at the famed Olympia in Paris. That is, until one day in February 2000, when Screamin' Jay Hawkins suddenly fell ill and was rushed to a hospital in a Parisian suburb. A few days later, on February 12th, Screamin' Jay Hawkins was dead.

• 7:53Jake Brennan?

  The New York Times reported that Jay had been taken to the hospital for emergency surgery to treat an aneurysm and that he died in recovery, suffering from the failure of multiple organs. Okay, makes sense. Aneurysms can come out of nowhere and impact even the healthiest of people. And so this was accepted as fact, but not everyone was buying it. Two people, in fact, two people who were very close to Screamin' Jay, they had reason to believe that Screamin' Jay Hawkins didn't die simply of an aneurysm, but a foul play. And therein lies the million-dollar question: Was Screamin' Jay Hawkins murdered?

• 8:35Jake Brennan?

  Screamin' Jay Hawkins was on the front lines of rock and roll. He was part of the first wave of luminaries who mashed up rhythm and blues, gospel, jazz, and country music to create something new and exciting. But before he was making music alongside better-known names such as Little Richard, Big Joe Turner, and Chuck Berry, Screamin' Jay Hawkins was in the Army Air Force, and after that, he was a boxer. Although he was from Cleveland, Jay allegedly beat a Golden Gloves champion from Alaska to clinch the title in that state. And this could be a true story, but it's hard to know for sure because Jay just so happened to be one of the most unreliable narrators in rock and roll.

• 9:18Jake Brennan?

  He'd tell you he was born in a taxi as it was crossing state lines, or that he was left at an orphanage and taken in by a family of Blackfoot Indians. Not necessarily unbelievable stuff, just not backed up by any hard proof. At times, it is near impossible to separate fact from fiction when it comes to Screamin' Jay Hawkins. But this much is true. Jay's God-given singing style was by turn soulfully operatic and completely unhinged, punctuated by grunts and shrieks and guttural rumblings. It's right there in his name. Screamin' Jay was a force.

• 9:59Jake Brennan?

  But Screamin' Jay was also weird. People tend to forget that rock and roll was weird as fuck in the early days. Sure, Sun Records was home to Elvis and Jerry Lee, but it was also the label behind Billy Lee Riley's "Flying Salsa" rock and roll and Malcolm Yelvington's hillbilly take on Stick McGee's "Drinkin' Wine Spode Yode." To an American public lullaby by Pat Boone and the Everly Brothers, Screamin' Jay was beyond weird. He was downright disturbing. When OK Records, an R&B imprint of Columbia, released Jay's song "I Put a Spell on You" in 1956, audiences were so freaked out by his snorting and snarling at the end of the

• 10:43Jake Brennan?

  track that the label had a remix and repressed the single with the offending vocals removed. And even with those edits made, radio stations banned it. One DJ was fired for playing it. Screamin' Jay had seemed was some kind of rock and roll boogeyman.

• 11:03Jake Brennan?

  Alan Freed, the influential and disgraced DJ and concert promoter, was the one to suggest that Jay emerged from a coffin like a creature of the night onstage. This gimmick led to others: plastic snakes, mechanical severed hands, fuse boxes that produced fire and smoke, a human skull that appeared to smoke cigarettes while perched atop Jay's walking cane. If Screamin' Jay Hawkins could have peered into a crystal ball, he would have seen Iggy Pop, Frank Zappa, Alice Cooper, Kiss, The Cramps, and even Lady Gaga all staring back at him. But there was no crystal ball, and there was only this moment.

• 11:44Jake Brennan?

  And in this moment, Screamin' Jay was not only a weird and frightening force, the weird and frightening parts of him soon became a liability. In 1956, the National Casket Association complained that Jay's shtick made fun of the dead, so funeral homes stopped renting coffins to him. The NAACP took issue with the bone Jay clipped to his nose, accusing him of perpetuating racial stereotypes. Even worse, Jerry Lee Lewis thought Jay was nothing but a novelty act. And this hurt Jay because Jay and Jerry Lee shared the stage on Alan Freed's Big Beat Tour. And Jay considered Jerry Lee to be an equal, and Jay wanted a career like Jerry Lee's.

• 12:29Jake Brennan?

  But it wouldn't be long before any semblance of a career was put in peril when Screamin' Jay Hawkins was arrested for a serious crime and faced decades behind bars. They found Screamin' Jay Hawkins inside one of the 250 rooms at Cleveland's Majestic Hotel with a young girl from Akron. Jay was 28, she was 15. It was the year 1958, and Screamin' Jay Hawkins was fucked. This was the same year that Jerry Lee Lewis was busy working up a scandal of his own with his 13-year-old cousin. It was the same year Buddy Holly would die, and it was the year that Elvis broke millions of hearts by putting his career on hold after being drafted into the Army.

• 13:14Jake Brennan?

  And it was the year that Screamin' Jay Hawkins was convicted of statutory rape and possession of narcotics. He was given a two-to-20-year sentence in an Ohio prison, where every day he wondered, "How much longer? How much longer will I have to sit here, alone, tormented by the demons and the devils of my mind?" The cell is small and smells of mildew and piss. It's also dark, and Jay doesn't like the dark. The dark is where the bad things creep from a shadow in the corner, like Jay creeps out of one of his rented coffins.

• 13:54Jake Brennan?

  He tries to think of something else to settle his nerves, but all he has are memories. He's not 28 anymore. He's 18, 19, give or taken. He's rotting on the floor of another cell just like this one. He's reliving one of the stories he likes to tell so much. The story of how his captors loomed large above him, boogeymen from another shadow in another corner in another part of the world. These boogeymen spoke Japanese, and they laughed at him, fucked with him, and beat him. He had no way of knowing how long he'd been there when the only door into this godforsaken hovel was at last knocked down, and when the rising sun pierced the veil of torture,

• 14:36Jake Brennan?

  and Jay's squad was at last liberated. Now the tables were turned. Now Jay had the upper hand. And with that hand, he shoved a standard-issue grenade down one of his captors' throats. Jay got some satisfaction from watching the man gag on the cast-iron pineapple, but the real thrill was in pulling the pin to see this boogeyman's head blow completely apart. Thinking of this memory in his Ohio jail cell gives Jay what he needs to endure another night, another week, another month in this hellhole. But when he finally gets out of this cell, when he's released back into the world, that world won't recognize him.

• 15:17Jake Brennan?

  And it's then that the story of Screamin' Jay Hawkins really begins.

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• 16:48Jake Brennan?

  Screamin' Jay Hawkins told variations of that POW story his entire life, but it's not true. Jay joined the Army Air Force in the Special Services Division as a musician. And there is no evidence to support that he was a prisoner of war. Understanding his proclivity for bullshit only complicates the question, was Screamin' Jay Hawkins murdered? Because as you sift through all these details, much of them offered up by Jay himself, you wind up asking yourself another question, and that question is, "What exactly do I believe?" Do I believe that Screamin' Jay Hawkins once kicked the ass of Atlantic Records honcho Ahmet Ertegun because he told Jay to sing more like Fats Domino in the studio? Do I believe that Screamin' Jay Hawkins

• 17:33Jake Brennan?

  took on all five members of The Drifters and roundly kicked all their asses as well after they locked him in his stage coffin? Perhaps, but do I believe that Screamin' Jay Hawkins' first wife left him for another woman, as he once proclaimed? No, I do not. But when it comes to that last one, what actually happened was that Jay left his first wife, Anna Mae, and their three young children. I do believe that Anna Mae was so upset, so insulted, that every time Jay came back to Cleveland, she called the cops to have him arrested for not paying child support. And I further believe that when Jay was granted parole and released from prison in November 1960, two years after his arrest for statutory rape, he needed to get as far away from Ohio as he could.

• 18:16Jake Brennan?

  He also needed to go where there was work and opportunity. And in the early 1960s, opportunity came calling for Screamin' Jay Hawkins in Hawaii.

• 18:30Jake Brennan?

  1964, Honolulu. Jay didn't see that Pat had a knife. He didn't notice the steel catch the light from a nearby lamp as she raised the blade into the air. How could he? He had his back turned to her. Besides, he never would have expected Pat to do something so dramatic. Pat Newborn, aka Shoutin' Pat, was a lot of things. She was 15 years younger than 35-year-old Jay Hawkins, and she was a singer, hence the wild stage name with the apostrophe, just like Jay. She had recently recorded a song called "Ashes" with Jay for Chancellor Records. Shoutin' Pat was also just as sexually adventurous as Screamin' Jay.

• 19:14Jake Brennan?

  She brought other women home to their place in Honolulu. And then Jay would have sex with that woman while Pat watched, or Pat would have sex with Jay while the woman watched, or more often than not, all three of them would just go at it all together. Shoutin' Pat was also Screamin' Jay's fiancee, even though Jay was still legally married to his first wife, Anna Mae. Like all the women in Jay's life, Pat was on a need-to-know basis, and Pat didn't need to know about Anna Mae. And she also didn't need to know that Jay had gone and proposed to yet another woman, Ginny Sabelona, even though he was already engaged to Pat and still married to Anna Mae. In Jay's experience, it was best not to let everyone know everything. But Honolulu talked.

• 19:59Jake Brennan?

  The doormen, the barbacks, the maids' men, the strippers, everyone talked in Jack Seon's nightclubs. Jay liked to tell people that the reason he'd come to the island in the first place was because his life was on the line. That he'd gone to a music publisher to insist upon receiving a higher royalty rate for "I Put a Spell on You", seeing that it was quickly becoming a popular song that other artists liked to cover. His demands were so strong, his tone so threatening, that the publishing company had no choice but to respond with intimidation. And before too long, mafia goons were on his trail. Or so Jay said. In reality, Honolulu entrepreneur Jack Seon had caught wind of this rock and roll animal recently out of the clink, looking for work, and who worked for a rate

• 20:44Jake Brennan?

  that wasn't as high as your Iacantinas or your Fats Domino's. And so Jack Seon brought Jay Hawkins to the island with the promise of a steady gig. The island was exiled for Screamin' Jay. He had quickly become rock and roll's forgotten outlier, Jerry Lee's punchline, a cape-wearing ghoul climbing from a coffin on a Honolulu stage for $250 a week and a percentage of that night's liquor sales.

• 21:13Jake Brennan?

  It was exile, but it was also where Jay's resentment really began to build up. Imagine you co-wrote a song, a great song, a song that will go down as one of the greatest of all time, a song that defines rock and roll and other people in bands cover that song like it's going out of style. Nina Simone, The Animals, Manfred Mann, Alan Price, the list goes on, and yet here you are, doing your Halloween act for whoever stumbled into Jack Seon's joint that night. Surfers, stoners, riffraff. Chicks, man, the chicks, the chicks, according to you, Screamin' Jay, are hot. You've never seen women like this before, so you compartmentalize, you close the door

• 21:54Jake Brennan?

  on resentment, you let it fester like mold in a damp closet, and you party. Shoutin' Pat brings home a new girl every night, and every night she earns that epiphan and you earn yours, shouting and screaming to beat the band. It's almost as if you could go on like this forever, and at one point, you resign yourself to the idea that Honolulu was forever. It was forever with a nice beach and a decent sunset, but then, then, Pat found out about Ginny. Pat found out because Jay told her, and Jay told her because the wanderer and philanderer that Jay was, he decided he was done with Pat and he went ahead and pulled the trigger and made it official, he married Ginny Sabalona.

• 22:38Jake Brennan?

  Never mind that he was engaged to Shoutin' Pat, and never mind that he was still married to Anna May. Pat was beside herself. She went in and got the knife in the kitchen, nine inches long, more than enough to fuck Jay up, and she chose to strike when his back was turned because fuck him. Jay's arms shot out at his sides when he felt the blade sink into his flesh. Sounded like he was singing the outro of his big hit song as Pat gave the handle a twist and then ran the knife down the length of his back. Perhaps getting stabbed by one of the many women he was sleeping with and proposing to had at last opened Jay's eyes and given him perspective, or perhaps opportunity had packed its bags and flown east.

• 23:21Jake Brennan?

  Whatever the case, shortly after he was attacked by Pat, Jay Hawkins left Hawaii and Jack Seon's nightclubs for New York, and then for London, where he hoped at long last to receive the respect he deserved. It was the notorious gangster and music impresario Don Arden, father of Sharon Osbourne, who provided Jay Hawkins the opportunity to tour the UK and to record at famed Abbey Road Studios. This was in 1966, around the same time Don Arden walked into the office of his rival and threatened to toss him out the window if he ever tried to poach one of his bands again.

• 24:04Jake Brennan?

  If anyone could strong-arm Screamin' Jay Hawkins back into the cultural consciousness, it was Don Arden. But the album that Jay made at Abbey Road, The Night and Day of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, released on the Planet Records label, was an attempt to mainstream Jay, or at least drain some of the weirdness from his sound and turn him into a crooner. It didn't work. Neither did the other albums and singles that Jay made for so many other labels. Over the years, Jay recorded for Decca, Roulette, Hotline, Red Top, Koala, Blue Phoenix, Mercury, and Rika, the list goes on and on. He bounced between record labels like he bounced between wives and girlfriends in

• 24:46Jake Brennan?

  one-night stands, until all that bouncing around from city to city, country to country, woman to woman, finally caught up with him. And perhaps, as some will tell you, it all eventually led to murder.

• 25:07Speaker 06

  We'll be right back after this.

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• 26:15Jake Brennan?

  Screamin' Jay Hawkins always believed that he deserved better. In his mind, R&B singer Chuck Willis started wearing turbans because Jay wore turbans. When Little Richard began to wear capes, Jay said it was because he had worn capes first. He saw himself reflected in the culture from 70s blaxploitation films like Shaft and Blackula, to the tens of thousands of white hippie kids dancing to Creedence's Clearwater Revival as they performed his signature song at Woodstock. But seeing this gave him no satisfaction because he felt that the culture refused to see him in return. And what did Jay refuse? Jay refused to be second best.

• 26:57Jake Brennan?

  So when he thought that his one-time agent, Don Arden, was paying too much attention to another artist, John Lee Hooker, Jay called up Don pretending to be John Lee. Jay had the voice down and everything and convinced Don that John Lee Hooker was in jail in the UK. Don Arden literally sent a guy to bail out John Lee Hooker, who of course, was not in need of bailing out. Now, you do not fuck with a man like Don Arden like this. Most people would also piss themselves if Don Arden stuck a pistol in their face, but when he did so to Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Jay simply took it as his cue that their professional relationship was coming to its natural conclusion.

• 27:37Jake Brennan?

  A few years later, Jay wound up in New York City as punk and disco were slugging it out in the trenches. In the early 1980s, he played places like The Mud Club while Basquiat nursed a margarita somewhere in the crowd. He befriended younger musicians out on the margins like Rudy Pertrudy, whose garage rock band The Fuzz Tones would sometimes back Jay up. And then the indie filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, a former member of the New York no-way band The Del Byzantines, used Jay's original recording of "I Put a Spell on You" in his acclaimed 1984 film Stranger Than Paradise. A new generation heard this song for the first time because of Jarmusch's movie, and

• 28:18Jake Brennan?

  soon that song, as well as Jay's whole shtick, was being adopted by a new crop of indie musicians. Down under in Australia, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds were performing their own unhinged cover of Jay's immortal song. But Jay was unmoved by the tribute, because when Jay flew to Australia to tour and discovered that he would be opening for Nick Cave and not the other way around, Jay was outraged. "Nick Cave hadn't paid his dues," he said. Actually, what Jay really said was, "My records are being sold here before his daddy knew how to get an erection." And Jay had no choice but to upstage Nick Cave. The coffin, the severed hand, the plastic snakes, the fire, the cigarette-smoking skull.

• 29:01Jake Brennan?

  As a performer, Jay Hawkins was impossible to follow, but by doing so, Jay Hawkins was also biting the hand that wanted to feed him, so to speak. And Jay found nothing wrong with this approach, of course, because that's what the boogeyman does. He bites. The cultural impact that artists like Nick Cave and Jim Jarmusch had by elevating Screamin' Jay Hawkins cannot be overstated. It was similar to how British Invasion bands in the 1960s shone a light on American blues and R&B. And for his fourth feature film, Mystery Train, instead of simply using Jay's music, Jarmusch cast Jay to portray a Memphis hotel night clerk.

• 29:45Jake Brennan?

  It was around this time that Jay began to record for the bizarre and straight record labels, which were originally co-founded by Frank Zappa in the late 60s. In 1991, Jay released the album Black Music for White People, in which he remained as uncompromising as ever with songs like "Ignit" and "Shit" and "I Want Your Body." On the album's cover, Jay is wearing the same getup that the NAACP took offense to decades earlier, the bone in his nose and all that, while draped across his left arm is an unconscious white woman. Suddenly, Jay found himself creatively rejuvenated. He was seeing more money than he had in a long time, and he was finally able to purchase his first house in Los Angeles.

• 30:28Jake Brennan?

  Jay was also continuing to add to his list of sexual conquests and continuing to rack up ex-wives. But Jay was addicted to more than sex. Jay was addicted to something else which threatened to completely upend his good fortune. Robert Duffy, the producer who worked with Jay on his bizarre and straight albums, said that by the 1990s, Jay had become a full-blown codeine addict. He was taking codeine all the time, whether he was in the studio or not. According to Duffy, Jay took so much that by 4:00 PM every day, he was completely out of it. Jay claimed that the reason he took so much codeine was because of the PTSD he suffered

• 31:09Jake Brennan?

  from his time as a prisoner of war, but that's not true. Jay took codeine for the same reason that a lot of people take codeine, or take any drug for that matter. Jay took codeine because it made him feel good, it made him forget about the things he didn't want to think about, like skinny Aussie punks named Nick Cave who were headlining the shows that Jay should be headlining. But there were things that Jay could not ignore, no matter how much codeine he took.

• 31:39Jake Brennan?

  In the mid 90s, Screamin' Jay Hawkins left LA in the first house he'd ever bought and moved to France. According to Jay's fifth wife, Colette, the reason for this was because they were an interracial couple and Jay had grown tired of casual racism in America. He had always felt more comfortable in Europe and had always felt more appreciated as an artist there. Colette had only been married to Jay for three years, but even after they split and Jay married his sixth and final wife, Monique, Jay and Colette remained tight. Colette helped Jay kick codeine and Colette kept all of Jay's secrets. Colette knew everything when it came to her ex, Screamin' Jay Hawkins.

• 32:22Jake Brennan?

  She knew about how he did time for statutory rape. She knew about all the children he fathered and all the child support payments he failed to make. But the biggest secret Colette knew had to do with Jay's health and how that was seemingly connected to Jay's new marriage. In Steve Bergman's book, I Put a Spell on You: The Bizarre Life of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Colette alleges that Jay would call, write, and fax her well after the divorce than Jay had remarried. And in these calls and letters, Colette says, Jay complained about his current wife, Monique. He would tell Colette about how Monique's cooking was making him sick and that he needed help getting Monique and her family out of his life.

• 33:06Jake Brennan?

  And she talks about this in Bergman's book. She wonders out loud, quote, "Did she kill him?" unquote. And then answers herself with this: "That's what Jay thought was happening." February 12, 2000. Screamin' Jay Hawkins was dead at age 70 and his widow, Monique, was going through his things. She'd changed the locks on the apartment. No one was allowed inside. No friends, no family, no lovers, no lawyers, and no ex-wives. The apartment was full of Jay's costumes, capes, jewelry, and photographs. But there was something else here, too.

• 33:48Jake Brennan?

  Copies of the letters that Jay had faxed to his fifth wife, Colette. The ones in which Colette alleged Jay complained about getting sick from Monique's food and asked for help getting Monique out of his life. Monique suspected that Colette had copies of these letters and she wanted them back so that no one else would see them because they were unflattering at best. But when she called Colette to propose a trade, copies of the letters in exchange for a bunch of Colette's things that had been left in Jay's apartment, Colette refused. The tension between the two women remained high at Jay's funeral, where not one of Jay's 57-plus children were present. In their place were rumors, now coming to a boil like a kettle left too long on a hot

• 34:33Jake Brennan?

  stove. And the rumors weren't coming from Colette alone. There was Jay's friend, concert promoter, Dimitri Mizuka, who said that Jay was afraid of Monique. And there was another friend, John Lang, an animator who went even further alleging that Monique was physically abusive to Jay. There was Rudy Petrucci, the guy from the Fuzztones, the New York garage rock band that sometimes backed up Jay. Rudy Petrucci said that one of Jay's bandmates, quote, "insinuated that Monique killed him", unquote. And then, there was Jay Hawkins' will. Jay's will had gone missing for years and only now had it resurfaced. And there was hope that the will would provide clarity, that it would answer outstanding

• 35:18Jake Brennan?

  questions. But the will did the opposite. It raised new questions and it made the death and legacy of Screamin' Jay Hawkins as murky as one of his tall tales.

• 35:51Jake Brennan?

  Before I get into Screamin' Jay Hawkins' will, let's recap what we've uncovered so far. We have numerous friends who are on the record saying that Jay was afraid of his final wife, Monique. We have a bandmate who insinuated that Monique murdered Jay. And we have an ex-wife who alleged that Jay believed that Monique was killing him. We also have Monique changing the locks on Jay's apartment and bargaining with Jay's ex, Colette, to get copies of letters or faxes back from her, letters in which, as Colette has said, Jay may have made claims that Monique's cooking was making him sick and that he wanted out of the marriage. But there's something else here, too. And I didn't catch it until much later in my research.

• 36:35Jake Brennan?

  As I said at the top of the episode, the official cause of Screamin' Jay Hawkins' death was multiple organ failure following emergency surgery to treat an aneurysm. That's what was reported in The New York Times and other major news outlets. But the French press gave a slightly different cause. In an article published in the newspaper, Le Monde, just two days after Jay's death, the reason given is not multiple organ failure. Instead, the cause of death was occlusion intestinale. In other words, intestinal blockage. Which makes me wonder, let's say hypothetically that Jay was being poisoned, could that have led to an intestinal blockage? Yes, it can. I looked it up.

• 37:18Jake Brennan?

  And more curiously, why were the words "intestinal blockage" not in The New York Times' obituary, which was published on the very same day as the article in Le Monde, February 14? Honestly, I don't know. Even in death, it's hard to separate fact and fiction in the Screamin' Jay Hawkins story. Harder still when you find out what was in his will. A single copy of Screamin' Jay Hawkins' will was found in the possession of one of his former managers, Seth Greenkey. With its discovery came the revelation that the will had not been updated since the 1970s. So it won't come as a surprise to you to learn that Jay left this estate not to his

• 38:01Jake Brennan?

  widow, Monique, but in the hands of one of his many ex-wives. But which ex-wife was written in Jay's will depends on who's telling you. In Steve Bergman's 2019 biography of Screamin' Jay, he writes that Jay's ex-wife, Ginny Sabalona, was named the beneficiary. Remember Ginny? She was the woman Jay married while also engaged to Shoutin' Pat Newborn, a treacherous act that got him the knife in the back. But numerous articles written at the time of Jay's death and reputable outlets like NPR and The Guardian say that the estate was left to another ex-wife, a woman named Mary Lou Ahuna. These articles refer to Mary Lou Ahuna as Jay's fifth wife, yet Bergman's book says that Colette was Jay's fifth wife.

• 38:46Jake Brennan?

  But, hold up. If the will was written back in the 70s, then how could Jay's fifth wife, whoever she was, be in it? The fifth wife hadn't happened yet. You confused? Here's something else that you probably already picked up on. The name, Mary Lou Ahuna, is never mentioned in Steve Bergman's book, which appears to be the only real biography out there on Screamin' Jay Hawkins. Again, Bergman names Colette as Jay's fifth wife, the woman Jay had been confiding in near the end of his life. I don't know. Maybe Colette and Mary Lou Ahuna are the same person? But Bergman's book curiously leaves out another important piece of information.

• 39:29Jake Brennan?

  Immediately after Jay died and the will was located, Jay's widow, Monique, launched a legal challenge against the will in order to get what she thought was her fair share of Jay's estate. And so now you're asking yourself two questions. One, how much was Jay's estate actually worth? And two, how does this get us any closer to finding out whether or not Screamin' Jay Hawkins was murdered? Let's tackle the first question first. Maybe you'd think that Screamin' Jay Hawkins had a lot to leave behind. After all, he was the co-author of a song that will be forever enshrined at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But if you've been actually listening to this episode, you know better than to think that Jay left behind millions of dollars. Jay was a working musician.

• 40:12Jake Brennan?

  He continued to tour and perform at age 70, not only because he knew of nothing else, but because he had bills to pay. He had long since sold away the rights for I Put a Spell on You, so while he still earned income from performance royalties, he did not see a dime from the more lucrative publishing royalties, which are royalties that songwriters earn. And it's hard to know exactly when Jay sold his publishing rights, for a pittance, by the way, if Jay himself is to be believed. But we know that he'd done so at least by 1984, when Jim Jarmusch made his film Stranger Than Paradise. Jarmusch remembers paying a licensing fee to use the song and being saddened to find out the hefty sum was not going to Jay.

• 40:56Jake Brennan?

  In reality, Jay's estate consisted of a modest annuity plus about $100,000 in accrued royalties. The 57 or more suspected children of Screamin' Jay Hawkins did not know what their father's estate was worth, because they did not know their father. They didn't know Jay. Even the three children he was aware of from his first marriage hardly knew him. But when Jay was on his deathbed, he supposedly asked a new friend of his, an investment banker named Maral Nagolian, to track down all 57-plus of his kids, so they could, I don't know, get together and shed a tear over their dearly departed deadbeat dad whom they'd never known? Stay with me here, because I'm going somewhere with all of this. Jay was unfazed by fatherhood.

• 41:41Jake Brennan?

  When Honolulu nightclub owner Jack Seon asked Jay if he ever sent his children money, Jay responded, "That's the mother's problem." But here we are, being told that his dying wish was to round up the kids he ignored his whole life? And he asked this of a third act character in his life, Maral Nagolian, an investment banker who is routinely referred to as Jay's biographer, but who has not written a biography on Jay in the 26 years since he died? Anything's possible. This all just strikes me as a little strange. Maral Nagolian went ahead and set up a website, jayskids.com, and did receive upwards of 2,500 submissions from people claiming to be Jay's progeny.

• 42:25Jake Brennan?

  We can only assume that the majority of those were bogus claims, scammers looking to make a buck. But then again, who the hell knows? Here's what we do know. Approximately one year after Jay's death, a total of 36 legit children have been identified. But we don't know what happened beyond that first year, because, well, because the papers stopped printing stories about it. Just like the papers stopped printing stories about what eventually happened with Jay's estate. Did it go to his ex, Ginny Sabalona, as Steve Bergman's book said? Did it go to Mary Lou Ahuna, another alleged ex-wife, who was never even mentioned in that book?

• 43:07Jake Brennan?

  Or was Jay's widow Monique successful in her challenge of the will? And speaking of Monique, if she murdered Jay, as Collette and others have suggested, then why? For money? We've already established that Jay didn't have a fortune. But then perhaps $100,000 in royalties and a modest annuity was good enough. All we're left with are questions. Questions, allegations, and suspicious behavior. But there is simply not enough evidence to prove that Screamin' Jay Hawkins was murdered, despite what has been said about him.

• 43:46Jake Brennan?

  Here's a few more things that we do know. For one, Screamin' Jay Hawkins fathered more children than anyone in rock and roll history. And also, in his hotly contested will, Jay left his three legitimate children, the children he had with his first wife, Anna May, $1 each. $1 each. Imagine that. Imagine you're one of Jay's kids, one of his only kids that he acknowledged in his lifetime. Imagine that your dad walks out on the family when you're little. You barely remember what he looked or smelled like. All you remember is how it was like that stupid cliche, how he actually went out for cigarettes or milk or whatever and never came back.

• 44:27Jake Brennan?

  But he was out there, wearing his capes, playing with his skulls and his plastic snakes, climbing out of coffins, rubbing elbows with Thats Domino and Jerry fucking Lee Lewis and Jim Jarmusch and Nick Cave, sleeping with countless women, while back home, you and your siblings and your mom struggled to keep food on the table. And you try to reach out to your dad, to find him, to hear it directly from his mouth, that he's happier without you, that he doesn't miss you, that he doesn't think about you, because honestly, you simply can't believe that to be true. But you never find him, because he's a boogeyman, and the boogeyman doesn't want to be found. And when he finally does die, you find out that it's not just you and your two siblings,

• 45:09Jake Brennan?

  but that you have 57 or possibly more half-brothers and half-sisters all over the world. And all you get out of it is a buck! That's a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace Land.

• 45:46Jake Brennan?

  All right, thanks for hanging with us in this incredibly weird episode on Screamin' Jay Hawkins. My god, what a character. What do you think? Was Screamin' Jay Hawkins murdered? Let me know. You know, I actually tend to think he was. We couldn't find all the facts to say definitively, but I gotta say where my gut goes on this. I'm not gonna tell you here who I think did it. We can talk about that in the after-party. We can talk about that on the socials. You can hit me up at @disgracelandpod. You can hit us up 617-906-6638. Leave us your opinion on voicemail and text. You might hear yourself in the next bonus episode of Disgrace Land. Here comes some credits.

• 46:24Jake 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. Rocker roll.

• 47:08Speaker 03

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• 47:41Speaker 07

  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. Ooh, I scam them. What? I could talk to you for an hour. You're a generational yapper, like me. That's why I had to make yapping a job. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube. Start listening to Scam Goddess on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.