40 Years since the Death of Brian Jones

Guest post from The History of Rock Music

40 years ago saw the first of many rock and roll deaths in the shape of The Rolling Stones' Brian Jones. Sure there had been other musicians that had died, but he was the first to really die a rock and roll death and was the founder member of the 27 club. Within a few years he would be joined by several more.

The Night of Brian Jones Death

Brian Jones died sometime just before midnight on July, 2nd 1969 after drowning in his pool at Cotchford Farm (the former home of A A Milne, creator of Winnie The Pooh) The coroners report was accidental drowning and many assumed he simply drowned having been either drunk or stoned.

Subsequently many people have come forward and made many claims about the death of Brian Jones, but the most believable are those that he was killed, accidentally or otherwise, by his builder, Frank Thorogood. They had fallen out over payment and workmanship.

Both Anna Wohlin (Brian's girlfriend at the time) and Janet Lawson (the mistress of Rolling Stones tour manager, Tom Keylock) were known to have been at the house when Brian died and have both made claims that he and Brian were alone in the pool and the acted very strangely when the body was discovered. Tom Keylock, in an interview in 2004, said that Frank Thorogood even confessed as much on his deathbed in 1993.

The Police Investigation

More disturbing are the issues surrounding the police investigation following the death. There is lots of evidence of leads that were not followed up, issues with the interviews of the people at the house, the information provided to the coroner and even a case of attempted murder that was known to have been connected to the death of Brian Jones, but was not investigated as such (at least not publicly)

The police found Frank Thorogood with unprescribed Durophet ("black bombers") but only warned him, something that was rare in the 1960s. They also did not pass this information onto the Coroner. The Coroner stated that Brian had the equivalent of a 3-4 pints of beer in his system and low levels of some kind of stimulant.

The police also suspected and had some evidence that there were more people at Cotchford Farm than the four that were officially acknowledged, however they did not follow these up properly.

There were also reports that a taxi was seen leaving the farm before the police or ambulance arrived. The time taken for the ambulance to arrive would not have been enough for a taxi to be called, get to the farm and leave again. But what if a taxi was already there?

A few weeks after Brian Jones death, on July 26, 1969, Joan Fitzsimons was the victim of a vicious assault near Chichester which left her in a coma with a fractured skull and blinded for life. Her boyfriend, Jordanian Michael Ziyadeh, pleaded guilty to attempted murder and spent four years in Broadmoor Prison before being deported. Despite his guilty plea, Ziyadeh always claimed he did not carry out the attack. The police case against him concluded, "The motive for this is a mystery"

However Fitzsimmons was the some-time mistress of Frank Thorogood and worked for her family's taxi firm in Chichester, only about 40 miles from Cotchford Farm. She was also a friend of Suki Poitier, a former girlfriend of Brian Jones. In fact in the days following Brian Jones death, both Poitier and Fitzsimmons stayed at Cotchford Farm.

Joan Fitzsimmons died in 2002 and since then certain information has become available under the freedom of information act. One of these pieces of information was a statement made to police by her brother claiming she was scared of Frank Thorogood. Irene Russell, Joan Fitzsimmons mother even made a statement to police stating she was at Cotchford Farm the night of Brian's death and that Frank Thorogood had been making her life awkward.

A newspaper at the time made a claim that the police were looking to find out whether she was at Cotchford Farm was strenuously denied by police, but the information we now have shows that they knew there was a connection between herself and Thorogood and that they had a claim from another witness that she was there.

So if the police were not interviewing people about this connection, then they should be asked for the reason why? There are so many obvious holes in the investigation that it would seem an investigation into these events is well overdue.

Where are they now?

After seeing Joan Fitzsimmon's injuries, Janet Lawson vanished from public view and changed her name. She only resurfaced a few years ago, many years after Thorogood's death, when traced by a reporter. She has since died from cancer.

Anna Wohlin, Brian's Swedish girlfriend found herself back in Sweden, claiming she had been spirited away by the Rolling Stones management. She was not able to attend his funeral and miscarried the child that neither she or Brian Jones knew she was carrying when he died. In the 1990s she wrote a book on her time with Brian Jones and was a consultant on the film Stoned, the film on the life and death of Brian Jones.

Tom Keylock died on July 2nd, 2009, exactly 40 years after Brain Jones died. He was 82.

This is the link to the full story on the events surrounding the death of Brian Jones on The History of Rock Music.