James Brown death: Was the 'Godfather of Soul' murdered in 2006?

James Brown, the “Godfather of Soul”, was 73 when he died in Atlanta, Georgia, on Christmas Day 2006.

Two days previously, the superstar had arrived several hours late for a dental appointment, scheduled for routine implant work.

His dentist was alarmed at the “weak and dazed” condition he found Brown in and advised him to visit a doctor rather than go through with the treatment for his teeth.

On Christmas Eve, Brown was admitted to the city’s Emory Crawford Long Memorial Hospital for observation, his conditioned worsening throughout the day and he finally passed away from what proved to be congestive heart failure in the early hours of Christmas morning.

His manager and friend Charles Bobbit said he had been struggling with a heavy cough since returning from a trip to Europe, where he had been inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame in London, but had been determined to make two New Year’s Eve shows he was booked in to perform: at New Jersey’s Count Basie Theatre and the BB King Blues Club in New York City. He didn’t consider himself the “hardest-working man in show business” for nothing.

In the days that followed, the Reverend Al Sharpton presided over a series of memorial events for the late star in New York, Augusta in Georgia and North Augusta, South Carolina, attended by Brown’s family and the cream of African-American civil rights and music royalty. Everyone from Jesse Jackson and Prince to Stevie Wonder, Ice Cube and Little Richard paid their respects.

“One era had a Bach, another era had Beethoven. We had Brown,” the Reverend told mourners at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, an event the deceased's casket had been ferried to through the streets in a horse-drawn carriage.

A series of protracted legal disputes subsequently erupted in 2007 between Brown’s partner, Tomi Rae Hynie, the singer’s six adult children and the three executors of his estate over his $200 million fortune and final resting place.

Hynie disputed his last will and testament, which she and her son Joseph Brown II were excluded from, on the grounds it was written before she and Brown had married in secret in 2001. A judge eventually ruled she was indeed his widow.

The question of James Brown’s burial site was finally settled in favour of Aiken, South Carolina, thwarting Hynie’s plans to have him laid to rest at their Beech Island home in the same state and turn the property into a Graceland-style museum.

Or so it appeared. In 2010, LaRhonda Pettit – one of nine illegitimate children Brown is thought to have fathered outside of his three marriages – alleged his body had been stolen from a Georgia funeral home to prevent an autopsy being carried out. The story was rubbished by another of Brown’s daughters, Deanna Brown Thomas.

William Murrell, Brown’s former chauffeur of 15 years, gave an interview to The Guardian in 2014 in which he revived the matter, claiming: “He’s been dead since 2006 but he still hasn’t been buried – he’s at his daughter’s house.”

“They mummified his body so he would never rot, at $140,000 cost. Why? When you got almost 20 kids and six wives it’s hard to get you in the ground.”

The story has now taken an even stranger twist, with CNN reporting allegations by Jacque Hollander, a singer in a travelling circus, who says that James Brown was murdered.

Hollander says she worked with Brown as a songwriter in the 1980s, that he raped her, threatened to have her killed if she told anyone and had her covertly surveilled for years afterwards.

The report quotes Dr Marvin Crawford, who signed Brown’s death certificate, as saying: “He changed too fast. He was a patient I would never have predicted would have coded... But he died that night, and I did raise that question: What went wrong in that room?”

Dr Crawford says a nurse told him drug residue was later found in a tube helping Brown to breathe in his final hours: “Somebody perhaps could have given him an illicit substance that led to his death”.

He added that he recommended an autopsy but the singer’s daughter, Yamma Brown, refused. She would not offer an explanation when approached by CNN.

The report also suggests Adrienne Brown, the singer's third wife, might have been murdered in January 1996 while recovering from plastic surgery.

Her official cause of death was an accidental drug overdose but a friend, Linda Bennett, told a detective Ms Brown had sought out a divorce lawyer just days before her death and that a doctor unrelated to her cosmetic treatment had altered her prescription to ensure fatal quantities were administered. The doctor in question denied the allegation.

Eleven people are now calling for a criminal investigation into James Brown's death, including Tomi Rae and Reverend Sharpton.