by Patrick Sills

Created on: February 11, 2010   Last Updated: February 12, 2010

Long before Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll, died in 1977 and was followed up with subsequent “sightings” that still occur to this day, we lost another rock icon: Jim Morrison. On July 3, 1971, the controversial lead singer for the Doors was found dead in his bathtub in Paris. He was 27 years old. The cause of death was said to be a heart attack.

Since then, there has been much speculation that Morrison faked his death to get out of the limelight and is still alive today. He was born on December 8, 1943, and as of this writing would now be 66. Allegedly a year before his death, Morrison showed Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek a brochure for the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean and commented on what a great place this would be to live if you were presumed dead. Whether this is true or not, one can’t dispute the fact that numerous “sightings” of the Lizard King (as Morrison was dubbed) simililar to those of Elvis have been reported since 1971.

Morrison’s death remains a puzzle to this day. His girlfriend, Pamela Courson, is said to have found his body in the bathtub at around 5:00 AM on July 3, but instead told reporters that he was extremely fatigued and resting in a hospital. Despite this, rumors spread that Jim Morrison had died from either a heroin or cocaine overdose; depending on who was telling the story. Since both Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin had died the year before of drug overdoses, it would seem as no surprise that another rock star would suffer the same fate. No autopsy was performed; however, and his coffin was sealed before both the American Embassy and Morrison’s family were notified. A cover-up was suspected because only Pamela Courson, a couple of French medical examiners, and a few police officers supposedly ever saw Morrison’s body. Courson died in 1974.

Still another theory is that Morrison’s death was listed as a heart attack in order to deny that yet another rock figure had succumbed to drugs. The fact of the matter is that a fatal heart attack occurring in a 27-year-old is highly unlikely, but then again; it wouldn’t be impossible. What is of particular interest is that Morrison’s grave was unmarked for several months before a tombstone was finally placed there. It should also be noted that when Doors drummer John Densmore finally managed to visit the gravesite at the Pere-Lachaise cemetery, he said that the grave was too short, as if it were constructed

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