Was James Brown murdered?
James Brown’s doctor has claimed that the Godfather of Soul could have been murdered – 12 years after he signed the death certificate saying the singer had died of natural causes.
Brown died in Atlanta on Christmas Day 2006, aged 73. The official cause of death was a heart attack and fluid in his lungs. But Marvin Crawford, his doctor, said he had long suspected that the singer died under suspicious circumstances.
Brown’s condition ‘‘changed too fast’’, the doctor told CNN, as part of the network’s three-part documentary on the soul singer. ‘‘He was a patient I would never have predicted would have coded,’’ he said, using a term to -refer to heart trouble.
‘‘But he died that night, and I did raise that question: What went wrong in that room?’’
Crawford and a dozen other witnesses, interviewed by CNN for the documentary, believe there was more to Brown’s death than meets the eye.
When Brown was brought to the hospital on December 23, Crawford thought he had pneumonia, which was widely reported after his death. He found signs of a mild heart attack. The doctor also found traces of cocaine in Brown’s urine, but was confident his patient would be fine.
‘‘He improved fast,’’ he said. ‘‘Boom, boom, boom. By five o’clock on the 24th he probably could have walked out of the hospital if he had wanted. But we wouldn’t let him go. We wouldn’t tell him to go yet.’’
At 1 am on Christmas Day, Crawford was awakened by a telephone call from the hospital, telling him that Brown’s heart had stopped. His personal manager, Charles Bobbit, who said he was the only one with Brown, heard the singer complain that his ‘‘chest was on fire’’ before he lay down ‘‘and died’’.
By the time Crawford got to the hospital, the singer was dead. He now suspects that his death was through an overdose, deliberate or accidental.
A nurse reportedly told a friend of Brown’s, Andre White, who brought him to the hospital, that ‘‘Brown had been visited by a male stranger she didn’t recognise.’’
‘‘After that visit, White says the nurse told him Brown’s vital signs rapidly declined,’’ the CNN report said, adding that the nurse pointed to ‘‘residue’’ left in his IV tube.
CNN heard from Brown’s associates that some believed the death of his third wife, Adrienne, was also suspicious. She died in 1996, in botched plastic surgery, but Brown reportedly told friends he thought she was given a drug overdose.
Crawford, who at the time believed Brown had willingly taken drugs in his hospital room, never went to the authorities. White, however, took a vial of Brown’s blood from a hospital nurse in the hope of proving that his friend had been murdered. It was not clear what happened to the blood.
Nick Ashton-Hart, managing director of Intrigue Music’s European territory, told CNN that weeks before his death, Brown revealed that he wanted to separate from his two lawyers, Buddy Dallas and David Cannon.
Cannon died in October last year and Dallas did not respond to The Daily Telegraph’s -request for a comment.
– Telegraph Group
‘‘He was a patient I would never have predicted would have coded. But he died that night, and I did raise that question: What went wrong in that room?’’ Dr Marvin Crawford