In 1962, Brian Jones connected with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards as he was forming a blues-based band and came up with the name The Rolling Stones, which he pulled from Muddy Waters’ 1950 song “Rollin’ Stone.”
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A few years in, there was friction within the band as Jagger and Richards began taking control of the Stones’ musical direction and Jones’ role was steadily dissipating. By 1969, Jones had fallen so deep into drug and alcohol addiction that his live performances suffered and he became unreliable in the studio that he was dismissed from the band, and guitarist Mick Taylor replaced him.
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On June 9, 1969, Jones released the statement: “I no longer see eye-to-eye with the others over the discs we are cutting. I want to play my kind of music, which is no longer the Stones’ music. The music Mick [Jagger] and Keith [Richards] have been writing has progressed at a tangent, as far as my own taste is concerned.” Less than a month later, on July 3, 1969, Jones was found dead at the bottom of the swimming pool at his 11-acre estate Cotchford Farm, in East Sussex, England. He was 27.
“Death by Misadventure”
Joining the notorious “27 Club,” Jones’ death was ruled “death by misadventure,” and he drowned due to heavy intoxication. At the time of his death, Jones also had a heavily enlarged liver. The autopsy revealed that Jones died “while under the influence of alcohol and drugs,” and that his liver was twice the normal weight.
The night he died, he had held a small party at his house with copious amounts of alcohol and cakes baked with hashish. By 9 p.m., Jones was found lifeless in his pool where everyone was partying just hours earlier. Though the case was closed around Jones’ death, some friends and associates suspected foul play and that he was possibly murdered.
Frank Thorogood and Tom Keylock
Construction worker, Frank Thorogood, who had been living at the musician’s home—one owned by Winnie-the-Pooh author A.A. Milne—and doing some renovations on the property was allegedly in a financial dispute with Jones on the day he died.
Along with Thorogood, police reports stated that there were two other people present the night of Jones’ death—the guitarist’s girlfriend, Anna Wohlin, and manager and former Stones chauffeur, Tom Keylock’s girlfriend, Janet Lawson. Thorogood helped Wohlin pull Jones’ body out of the water.
Keylock, who died on July 2, 2009, nearly 40 years to the day of Jones’ passing, was also considered another possible suspect but was never formally questioned. He was also one of the first to arrive on the scene when Jones was found in the pool.
“It was me that did Brian, I just finally snapped,” Keylock said Thorogood allegedly confessed on his deathbed in 1993.
His statement was reported in Terry Rawlings’ 1994 book, Who Killed Christopher Robins? The Truth Behind the Death of a Rolling Stone, and the book opened more questions about Jones’ death and later inspired the 2020 Netflix documentary Life and Death of Brian Jones, directed by Danny Garcia. Keylock later denied that Thorogood’s confession ever happened.
Case Closed?
Decades after Jones’ death, the manner in which the case around his death was closed by police in Sussex and never investigated further in 1969 has been questioned. In 2009, the case was reviewed by police after the new information, pointing toward Keylock, was presented by investigative journalist Scott Jones, but it has not been officially reopened since 1969.
“The death of Brian Jones was investigated in 1969 and was also the subject of two reviews by Sussex Police, in 1984 and 1994,” said the Sussex Police in a 2019 statement. “From time to time over the past 49 years Sussex Police have also received messages or reports from journalists and other individuals about the death. Each is considered on its individual merits and reviewed wherever appropriate.”
The police added, “No such report has been received since 2010 and no new evidence has emerged to suggest that the coroner’s original verdict of ‘death by misadventure’ was incorrect. The case has not been reopened and there are no plans for that to happen.”
A number of other theories, conspiracies, and mixed reports have arisen in numerous books and films, and now that many of the people who were with Jones that fateful night have died, the true events around his death may continue to remain a mystery.
Brian Jones’ Daughter
Around the 50th anniversary of her father’s death in 2019, Jones’ daughter Barbara Marion, who only learned the identity of her real father in 2002, said that his death was not properly investigated and she believes he may have been murdered. She called his death a “bit of a mystery” and added, “I think he was murdered, and I think the police did not investigate it the way they should have.“
Marion added, “I would love to have them reopen [the case] and get some answers.”
Photo by Georges Chevrier / INA via Getty Images
