Jimi Hendrix Murdered by His Manager

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Mitch Mitchell (d. 2008), Jimi Hendrix (d. 1970) and Noel Redding (d. 2003).

On 18 September 1970, Jimi Hendrix died at the Samarkand Hotel in the Notting Hill section of London. He was 27. Hendrix had spent the previous evening at a party and was picked up by his girlfriend, Monika Dannemann, who drove him to the hotel. It is estimated that he died within a few hours after midnight.

Dannemann claimed in her original statement that after returning to the hotel the night before, Hendrix had taken her prescription Vesperax (sleeping) pills. Unknown to Hendrix, the normal dose was half a tablet, but he ingested nine full tablets. Hendrix supposedly had asphyxiated on his own vomit, which consisted mainly of red wine.

Dannemann claimed she had discovered that Hendrix was unconscious and unresponsive sometime after 9.00 AM, and that he was still alive when she accompanied him in the ambulance after half past eleven. Dannemann's statements have been refuted by both the police and the EMTs; they state that Hendrix was alone in the flat when they arrived at 11.27 AM, and he had been dead for some time.

Adding more mystery to the performer's death, former Hendrix roadie, James "Tappy" Wright, claims the musician's manager was responsible for his untimely death.

Wright, who released the book, Rock Roadie, earlier this year, claims that Michael Jeffrey, Hendrix's manager, confessed to killing the musician while drunk a year after the star's death. (Jeffrey died two years later in a plane crash.)

Wright says in his book that Jeffrey was worried Hendrix was looking to replace 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." Wright claims Jeffery told him that a life insurance policy had been taken out on Hendrix worth two million dollars, with Jeffery as the beneficiary.

Wright stated, "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."

According to the physician who attended to Hendrix the night of his death, the possibility of homicide was definitely "plausible."

Doctor John Bannister, of St. Mary Abbots Hospital in Kensington (since closed), said "The amount of wine that was over him was just extraordinary. Not only was it saturated right through his hair and shirt but his lungs and stomach were absolutely full of wine. I have never seen so much wine. We had a sucker that you put down into his trachea, the entrance to his lungs and to the whole of the back of his throat. We kept sucking him out and it kept surging and surging. He had already vomited up masses of red wine and I would have thought there was half a bottle of wine in his hair. He had really drowned in a massive amount of red wine."

After Hendrix's death, Monika Dannemann kept his famous black Stratocaster (nicknamed Black Beauty). It was supposedly only taken from its case for three hours in 1993, when it was examined by Len Jones. In 1996, Dannemann was found dead in a fume-filled Mercedes-Benz near her cottage; she was 50. Her death was ruled a suicide, but her lover, Uli Jon Roth, believes she was murdered, since Dannemann had received numerous death threats regarding Hendrix's death. The exact location of Hendrix's black Stratocaster is unknown.

In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine named Jimi Hendrix the greatest guitarist of all time. The Jimi Hendrix Experience, with Noel Redding (see 2003) and Mitch Mitchell (2008; natural causes at age 61), were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.