'Jimi Hendrix: A Perfect Murder?': Did manager Mike Jeffrey kill Hendrix to claim insurance and pay off debts?
On September 18, 1970, rock guitar virtuoso Jimi Hendrix was declared dead after a short and very illustrious career. Hendrix was one of the four musicians who died at the age of 27 between 1969 and 1971 — including Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Brian Jones — and his death sparked many conspiracy theories. Among the people in his life at the time, there were a few who were under scrutiny over his death. One of them was his manager, Mike Jeffrey.
A new special from Reelz, 'Jimi Hendrix: A Perfect Murder?' brings to viewers the accounts of Hendrix's career and his last days, giving special focus to Mike Jeffrey and Hendrix's girlfriend at the time of his death, German figure skater Monika Dannemann. The reason Jeffrey has cropped up in multiple theories is that it was known that Hendrix had believed Jeffrey was ripping him off and was looking forward to ending his contract with him, which was due to expire only a couple of months after Hendrix's death.
The Reelz special takes a deep look at a bombshell claim that came out in the 2000s — that Jeffrey had Hendrix murdered and he enlisted Dannemann's help to do so. The main perpetrator of this claim is Tappy Wright, a groupie for the British music group The Animals who were managed by Jeffrey before he went on to become Hendrix's manager. According to Wright, Jeffrey had confessed to him in 1971 to having murdered Hendrix by plying him with pills and a bottle of wine in order to kill him and claim the guitarist's life insurance.
It was true that Hendrix had been growing tired of Jeffrey. The music manager was reportedly a former special services agent who turned to music to make money. It is this aim that led Jeffrey to overwork Hendrix. He would claim 40% of all of Hendrix's earnings, leaving Hendrix and his bandmates with just enough for sustenance. This was not exclusive to Hendrix alone — Jeffrey had pulled the same tactics with The Animals, leading to the breakup of the band. Hilton Valentine, the lead guitarist for The Animals, stated in the Reelz special that Jeffrey owed him 45,000 pounds at the time, which would amount to over a million dollars today — compensation that Valentine has still not received to this day.
As Hendrix grew more popular, he was surrounded by more doting fans — especially women. This would lead to Hendrix's recording sessions to grow longer and more expensive. This was when Jeffrey decided to build his own recording studio, taking loans to build the Electric Lady Studios. Jeffrey had Hendrix tour America for four months straight without a break to help pay for the studio.
When an exhausted Hendrix refused to go on tour after an argument with Jeffrey over Hendrix's band members, Jeffrey reportedly enlisted the mafia to kidnap Hendrix and force the latter to admit that he needed Jeffrey's help more than he thought he did.
Following the kidnapping incident, Hendrix would go on to tour incessantly and in the months before his death, he was drained, depressed, and suffering from a chronic lack of sleep. Jeffrey would die three years later in a mid-air collision over Nantes, France, on 5 March 1973.
Wright's claims that Jeffrey orchestrated Hendrix's murder was refuted, however, by Trixi Sullivan De Linick, Jeffrey's personal assistant at the time. In fact, De Linick said in the Reelz special that Wright was the "biggest, conniving idiot of all time" and that he would do anything for publicity. Valentine and Kathy Etchingham, Hendrix's former girlfriend, also admitted that Wright's claims were untrue. Wright passed away from heart failure in 2015.
'Jimi Hendrix: A Perfect Murder?' airs on Reelz on Saturday, September 19, at 8/7c.