NEW YORK (CelebrityAccess) CNN reporter and author Thomas Lake has published a long and fascinating yarn that has, somewhere near its epicenter, the supposition that the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, may not have died of natural causes – but the tale itself is about a woman who was in the circus, who lives in a mobile home, and talks of foreign spies and violence in the woods.
And, according to the story, as many as 12 people agree with her, one way or the other.
“I spent nearly two years checking out Jacque (Hollander)’s story,” Lake writes. “I traveled through nine states, read tens of thousands of pages of police and court records, interviewed nearly 140 people, questioned Jacque for hundreds of hours, mined the depths of her three storage units for records stretching back more than 30 years, analyzed more than 1,300 pages of text messages from her iPhone, and sent an item from her green plastic bin for testing at a forensic laboratory.”
Hollander who once sang in the Carson & Barnes Circus, was married to Atlanta Rhythm Section’s Dean Daughtry in 1985 when she wrote a song celebrating the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons. That led her to a recording session with James Brown. Jump-cut to a story about rape and a trip to the woods. Lake writes many times that the story is hard to follow but, unlike many so-called sources, Hollander has kept every scrap of paper, VHS tape and audiotape (and a green bin) to back up her story, which basically claims that Brown went into the hospital in 2006 under the understanding he would be leaving a few days later, not dying in his hospital bed.
“I found the doctor with whom Jacque claimed to have spoken, the one who treated James Brown at a hospital in Atlanta before his death,” Lake writes. “Much to my surprise, he agreed to an interview. He told me he doubted Brown had died of natural causes. He suspected that Brown died of an overdose, accidental or otherwise. He said he wanted an autopsy all along.”
Eleven other people told Lake that the deaths of Brown and former wife Adrienne Brown 11 years earlier were suspicious. One person, Andrew Moses White, an old friend of Brown’s who checked the performer into the hospital, was so suspicious of the death that he took a vial of Brown’s blood from an IV tube shortly after Brown’s passing.
“In examining the deaths of Adrienne Brown and James Brown, I also discovered many things Jacque did not know when she called me,” Lake writes. “At least three other people believe the death of Adrienne Brown was not an accidental overdose, despite what the authorities said in 1996.
“There are legitimate questions about James Brown’s death that can only be answered by an autopsy and a criminal investigation.”
The expose is available here. Clear your calendar.
