Door Opens In Morrison’s Death

There’s a new theory that Jim Morrison died in a nightclub – not in his bathtub. Rumors about the famous singer’s death (or alive-ness) are nothing new but this time it’s the person who’s telling it that gives it credibility.

A new book by a former Paris nightclub manager claims Morrison died in a toilet stall of his nightclub after a heroin overdose.

Sam Bernett was in his 20s at the time. He became a prominent radio personality, rock biographer and, eventually, vice president of Disneyland Paris.

Bernett’s story is nothing new. That rumor has been out there since The Doors’ frontman died 36 years ago at age 27 but nobody was willing to come forward as a witness at the time for fear of police involvement.

The former nightclub manager writes of finding Morrison’s body in his French-language book called "The End: Jim Morrison." He claims he has kept quiet all these years but is writing about it now at the behest of his wife.

Bernett said Morrison came to his nightclub, the Rock and Roll Circus, at 1 a.m. on July 3, 1971, where the frontman spent "practically every night," and met two drug dealers who sold him heroin for his girlfriend, Pamela Courson.

The next time he saw Morrison it was after a bouncer broke down the door of a locked toilet stall and found that "the flamboyant singer of ‘The Doors,’ the beautiful California boy, had become an inert lump crumpled in the toilet of a nightclub."

A club customer and doctor examined him and determined it was an overdose of heroin, after finding him with foam and blood on his nose, Bernett said.

Bernett wanted to call the paramedics and authorities but the club’s owner wanted to avoid a scandal so the two drug dealers took him away, saying Morrison was just unconscious. He thinks the dealers tried to revive him by taking him back to his apartment and dropping him in the bathtub.

Stephen Davis, the author of "Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend," doesn’t believe it and said, "It just seems likely that if he died in the toilet of a nightclub it would have come out before now."

Davis said Morrison did overdose at the club but survived it on a night shortly before his death.

Courson, who died of an overdose three years later, told police she found Morrison dead in the bathtub and that he took a hot bath after waking in the night and feeling ill. She said they spent the evening at the movies, eating dinner and listening to records.

Morrison was buried in Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris July 7th, 1971, without an autopsy.

Because the statute of limitations has run out, an official at the Paris prosecutor’s office said it was unlikely the case on Morrison’s death would be reopened or that any prosecutions could come out of it.