In December 2006, James Brown, “The Godfather of Soul,” died from a heart attack and fluid build-up. Now CNN has posted a shocking investigative series titled “Lost in the Woods with James Brown’s Ghost,” which alleges that Brown was murdered.
The startling claims are a result of a two-year investigative report by CNN. It all started with an unsolicited phone call from circus singer and performer Jacquelyn Hollander, 61, to CNN contributor Thomas Lake. Hollander had a close personal friendship with Brown and told her story through a series of face-to-face interviews. She told CNN that there are persons who act as shadowy enforcers within the James Brown network.
Hollander told CNN that bad things happened to people who ran afoul of the James Brown organization. She is quoted as stating: “I’m sure you know that Adrienne Brown was my good friend. That’s a very long story when I tell you about it. There’s no doubt she was murdered.”
At least nine people died under mysterious circumstances and those deaths were part of a wider conspiracy according to Hollander. This includes the 1996 death of Adrienne Lois Brown, 47, his third wife, who died after complications of plastic surgery.
Further bolstering the suspicious nature of Brown’s death, is the doctor who treated him at an Atlanta hospital. According to CNN, the doctor felt that Brown did not die of natural causes and at the time an autopsy should have been performed. The doctor surmised that Brown was a victim of a fatal drug overdose that could have been accidental or intentional. In addition, he suggested that at least 11 people associated with Brown at the time, should be investigated by police.
So great was the suspicion that Brown was murdered, that his close friend, Andre Moses White, who checked Brown into the hospital, removed a vial of his blood from an IV tube shortly after he died. White told CNN he hoped that even now the blood would prove that Brown was murdered.
This is not the first time that someone has publicly expressed suspicions of foul play. Darren “Chip” Lumar, Brown’s son-in-law, stated to Atlanta news outlet CBS 46, that he believed his father-in-law was murdered. Lumar was shot dead outside his home in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood in 2008. At the time, some questioned whether Lumar’s shooting was a targeted murder, because he had $4,000 in cash on him when police investigated the crime scene.
As part of its special series, CNN interviewed 140 people and reviewed more than 10,000 pages of documents. This includes police reports and medical records. According to Lake, if Hollander’s story is true, authorities should open at least two death investigations and exhume James Brown’s body for an autopsy.
