New Twist in Mystery Morrison Death

This is the end of Jim Morrison as you may have heard it: the Doors front man expired in a bathtub in his Paris apartment on July 3, 1971, supposedly of heart failure. He was 27.

The circumstances surrounding the mysterious death of the Lizard King have spawned countless conspiracy theories over time, from CIA assassination plots to the suggestion that Morrison may have faked his own demise.

Now, 36 years after the fact, a former Paris nightclub manager has come forward with new information about how Morrison’s final moments may have really gone down.

Sam Bernett, the onetime manager of the Left Bank’s legendary Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus club and a personal friend of the singer, claims that contrary to popular lore, Morrison was actually found dead in a toilet stall at the nightclub after overdosing on heroin.

In his forthcoming book, Jim Morrison: The End, Bernett tells of his shock at discovering Morrison’s body in the stall after he instructed a bouncer to break down the locked door.

“For a few seconds our eyes were glued to the unmoving corpse. We were mesmerized by the baffling spectacle,” he writes.

“The flamboyant singer of the Doors, the cool and good-looking Californian guy, was now a collapsed and inert lump lying in a nightclub toilet.”

The foam and blood on Morrison’s lips indicated to Bernett that he had been snorting heroin, which he always did instead of injecting the drug because he was afraid of needles.

The manager rushed to track down a regular club patron he knew was a physician and had him examine the body.

“It was a quick and professional examination. His diagnosis was very confident: ‘This man is dead. Apparently the victim of a cardiac arrest.’ The doctor was not stupid and spoke of a lethal overdose,” he recalled.