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The official story is that on the last night of Jim Morrison's life, the rocker went to a movie in Paris, listened to records, fell ill and died of heart failure in his bathtub at the age of 27.
But rumours have always swirled around the death of the Doors frontman and, 36 years later, a former Paris nightclub manager is telling a different story. In a new book, Sam Bernett claims Morrison died in a toilet stall of his nightclub after what he believes was a heroin overdose.
He writes of his shock on finding Morrison's body: "The flamboyant singer of the Doors, the beautiful California boy, had become an inert lump crumpled in the toilet of a nightclub." Bernett, whose French-language book is called The End: Jim Morrison, says he believes two drug dealers brought Morrison's body back to his apartment.
Bernett, who was in his early 20s when Morrison died in 1971, went on to become a radio personality, rock biographer and a vice president of Disneyland Paris. Though he was pestered for years by reporters investigating Morrison's death, he kept his story quiet until his wife suggested writing a book last year. The Paris prosecutor's office said it was unlikely the case on Morrison's death would be reopened because the statute of limitations - the time limit on legal proceedings - had run out.
Stephen Davis, the author of Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend, believes Morrison did overdose at the club, but that it was shortly before his death - not the same night - and that he survived. "It just seems likely that if he died in the toilet of a nightclub it would have come out before now," Davis said.
