I love a good mystery. Nothing intrigues me more than a conspiracy theory. I get all hyped up thinking about a second shooter on the grassy knoll, a cult behind the Summer of Sam killings, Diana and Dodi's engagement coverup, true or (most likely) not. So the news of the reopening of the investigation into Brian Jones's death 40 years ago got me going.
Brian Jones was one of the founding members of the Rolling Stones, and from what I gather, the force that really set the Stones in motion. He came up with the band's name and pushed them into their first gigs. He pushed them to rehearse and negotiated with the venues. He played multiple instruments, not just guitar, and sang back up vocals on many tracks. He was, for all intents and purposes, the band's leader.
His estrangement from the band in the late 60s came from a combination of creative difficulties, a stolen girlfriend, the shifting of the limelight onto Mick Jagger, money and drugs. About a month after announcing his departure from the Stones, Brian Jones was discovered dead at the bottom of his pool at his home in Sussex, England.
His death was ruled as "death by misadventure" (seriously), but Jones's girlfriend at the time, Anna Wohlin, claimed he was murdered by one of the builders who was working on their house at the time of his death. Here's where it starts to get interesting. A woman named Janet Lawson claimed she saw Jones and the builder, Frank Thorogood, fooling around in the pool. A while later, she saw Thorogood enter the house, visibly shaking. She found Jones in the bottom of the pool soon after. Hmmm...
Documents have recently come to light that police on the scene at the time concluded that Jones died after an argument with Thorogood, yet the man and several other key witnesses were never interviewed. Hmmm....
Frank Thorogood died in 1994. He supposedly confessed, on his deathbed, to killing Brian Jones, telling the Rolling Stones's driver, Tom Keylock, that he did Brian in. Keylock died last month. Janet Lawson also passed away, in 2008. So all the key players are now gone. Hmmm...
Two separate books were published in 1994 that named Thorogood as Jones's murderer, but there was no investigation then. Hmmm...
There was no comment from the Rolling Stones's publicist after the story came out yesterday. But I, for one, will be following it closely.
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