Original subtitles

Sunday, July 4th.

According to the Max Fink transcript,

Los Angeles private investigator John O'Grady,

who'd worked for Jim since 1968,

arrived in Paris 48 hours before Doors manager Bill Siddons.

Monday, July 5th.

Two of England's major rock newspapers

called Elektra Records' offices in London,

wanting to know if Jim really was dead.

Clive Selwood called Elektra's offices in France,

but Elektra France hadn't even known Jim was in Paris,

let alone deceased.

Selwood also phoned the Paris police

and the American embassy in France,

but apparently neither had been contacted by any French morgue.

The plot thickened.

Selwood, who later went on the record with his belief

that Jim faked his death, called Siddons

at 4:30 a.m. Los Angeles time.

Siddons brushed Selwood off

because Jim had "died" a number of times in the press.

Siddons attempted to sleep, but when he couldn't,

he allegedly phoned Jim's flat around 2 p.m. Paris time.

No one answered.

He went back to bed and later redialed Jim's number.

Siddons maintained, on that attempt, Pam answered the phone.

Some sources have Pam telling Siddons Jim wasn't dead,

while others claim she told Siddons Jim had died.

In both scenarios, Pam apparently broke down in tears.

Siddons told Pam he'd be on the next flight from L.A. to Paris.

He arrived Tuesday, July 6th, at 6:30 a.m. Paris time.

He got coffee and waited until 9 a.m. to knock on Pam's door.

Siddons said he was met by Pam and Jim's personal assistant,

who's remained a shadowy presence

over the last half century.

Her name was Robyn Wurtele,

and she possessed the mind-boggling details I had chased for decades.

Robyn seemed desperate to alleviate her albatross necklace,

which she did by giving answers in the form of cryptic hints,

including this mind bomb.

Quote, "At one point, Pam had Max draw up a document

that made me power of attorney

in the event that anything happened to her."

If this were a game of Clue,

the main suspect would be Miss Wurtele in the study with the signature,

the opposite of murder.

I'd been trying to reach Robyn since 1996.

That search became its own two-decade-long odyssey.

Fortunately, the 20-year benchmark proved fruitful,

especially after hearing Robyn tell me things like, quote,

"Jim went off and did his thing, and we went to Sausalito,"

or, quote, "He had changed his whole way of thinking."

Robyn, in 2016, paved my way to Frank X.

Robyn agreed to appear on-camera,

but only in her sunglasses.

She admitted she knows far more about Jim's alleged death,

and told me, quote,

"If he asked me not to say anything to you,

then I can't say anything, can I?"

My jaw needed to be removed from the floor.

I asked Robyn if Jim faked his death.

She replied, "That's the secret I'm keeping to myself."

So I asked if she helped Jim fake his death,

and she told me she was hired to order furniture,

which never happened.

Robyn kindly gave me a collection of never-before-seen color slides

which show she and Pam giving Jim and Pam's dog, Sage, a bath in Sausalito.

The slides are stamped "August 1972,"

13 months after Jim's reported death.

When I pressed her about Jim,

Robyn said he was coming for dinner when he "disappeared."

And in lieu of a formal interview,

she provided, in her own voice, this quote by Oscar Wilde.

None knew so well as I For he who lives

More lives than one More deaths than one must die.

Robyn continued to blow my mind.

She even said, "You're so very close now, Jeff."

I replied, "You mean finishing the film

or proving that Jim faked his death?"

She laughed a nervous laugh.

I couldn't wait to get home

and take a closer look at the slides Robyn gave me.

Here is the shot of Robyn,

which I had enlarged by a professional photo lab.

Blowing up the vintage color slide

that Ms. Wurtele had gifted to me

revealed something fascinating

reflected in the left lens of her sunglasses.

The image is fuzzy,

but there appear to be two distinct human figures standing side by side,

a taller male with long hair

next to a shorter female, also with long hair.

When I asked Robyn about the figures reflected in her sunglasses

in the summer of 1972,

she flatly said, "I never should have given you those slides."

Long convinced of a cover-up,

I was reminded of another thing she told me

regarding Bill Siddons' claim that Jim's coffin was sealed.

Quote, "That was Bill's one mistake, wasn't it?"

Remember how a number of Morrison insiders were friendly with Frank X on Facebook?

Hervé Muller was one of Jim's few confidants in Paris.

For nearly five years, I did not receive a reply

to my private Facebook messages to Hervé.

Finally, I asked Frank if he'd put in a good word for me,

and he replied, quote, "I'll see what I can do."

Then, as if Frank had snapped his fingers,

Hervé messaged me the next day.

And then I found out you were Facebook friends with Hervé--

I don't know if it's pronounced "Muller."

- Muller. - Muller, right?

- Who knew Jim in Paris. - Right.

And I saw where he said, "Oh, I miss you so much,"

and you said, "Oh, I miss you too,"

and I put two and two together, and I thought,

"These guys are-- That must be Jim--"

We're really like-- Like soul brothers.

I was haunted by Robyn's revelations

about Jim's brief time in Paris,

and I remained convinced she and a few others,

possibly including Hervé,

helped Jim pull the Rimbaud.

She told me, quote,

"He hadn't broken up with Pam. He was planning the next step.

He and Pam had a lovely parting,

and what Jim decided to do after that was up to him."

I think he actually wanted to get back into some serious writing.

And maybe he'd outgrown--

Maybe the Doors thing had been enough,

and whether he was 100 percent done,

I think not, but I think he just needed a break.

I know he wanted to go to Paris. I know he loved Paris.

I know that that was where he could really feel like he could be free and be a poet.

It was like he transcended into all the poets that had ever lived in Paris,

and he could see himself in that-- Those cafés and things.

That was his feeling.

He could really relate to that. He could feel connected.

It is possible that he really did think he could get clean and dry

and be a poet when he went to Paris.

You know, I heard "Oh, you know, Jim's really getting it together in Paris.

You know, he's slimmed down and looking good again."

Had Jim engaged the final phase of his ten-year plan?

♪ Bird of prey ♪

♪ Flying high ♪

♪ Flying high ♪

♪ Am I going to die? ♪

These are said to be the last photos of Jim.

They're from a day trip to Saint-Leu-d'Esserent on June 28th, 1971,

where Jim's Super 8 film camera made a final public appearance.

The pictures were taken by Alain Ronay,

Jim's closest friend from his UCLA days,

who lived with him in Paris during that month of June.

According to the official account,

four days later, on Friday, July 2nd,

Alain claimed Jim was ill with hiccups and spasms.

While the two were seated at a café,

Ronay claimed he saw a death mask on Jim's face.

This scenario is contradicted by Wurtele,

who told me, verbatim,

"Jim was no alcoholic when I knew him in Paris,

and Pam was no junkie."

Robyn claimed Jim was not sick on his last day.

She said Ronay lied.

As per Ronay's on-the-record account,

he left Jim to meet Agnès Varda for dinner.

As for what really happened in Paris,

an exasperated Robyn said, quote,

"I hope you can appreciate the position I'm in."

Pam stated she and Jim went to dinner

and a late-night showing of the movie Pursued.

They returned to their flat around 1 a.m.,

where Jim projected home movies.

They listened to music, including Doors albums,

and fell asleep around 2:30 a.m.

Around 4 a.m., Pam said she woke to find Jim having difficulty breathing.

In one version of her story,

she claimed she'd recently contacted a Paris doctor

who prescribed asthma medication for Jim.

That was contradicted by Andy Morrison,

who told me he had no recollection of Jim ever having asthma,

and there's no record of the doctor, pharmacy or prescription.

Pam stated she slapped Jim awake

and he vomited a small amount of blood into a saucepan.

Worried, she offered to call a doctor, but Jim declined.

He stated he was feeling better and wanted to take a bath.

Pam went back to sleep

while Jim remained in the bathroom.

She said she rose the next morning around 8 a.m.

to discover him unconscious in the bathtub,

which, according to various accounts, was tinged pink with blood.

Around 8:30 a.m., Pam called Agnès Varda,

an acquaintance she knew through Jim and Ronay.

Five men from the fire brigade,

including Lieutenant Alain Raisson,

presumably pulled the body from the bath

and laid it in the bedroom,

where their attempts to revive were unsuccessful.

So whose body was it?

Robyn Wurtele told me no police, fire brigade or coffin were present.

We turned the radio on and it said, "Rock star Jim Morrison's dead."

I mean, that's when we heard it.

We didn't even hear it from anybody that we should have heard it from, I think.

You know, it seems like there was hardly any publicity. They didn't have anything on TV.

I mean, I thought-- I thought, "Damn, how did I miss this?"

Whoever's in charge of handling deaths or public relations about a death,

they didn't handle it very well.

And part of that is the Doors and Elektra, I think.

But having to find out over the media,

where they could have called my parents up.

I had watched the circuses

surrounding the deaths of Joplin and Jimi Hendrix

and decided that we could not let this happen.

I figured we had 48 hours to get ahold of it.

And there were rumors: "He's dead," "he's not dead." We just let it all simmer down.

Do you recall your reaction when you learned he had allegedly died?

Were you shocked? Or what was your reaction?

No. It is possible that he really did think he could get clean and dry

and be a poet when he went to Paris.

But I was shocked in that way that you always knew something was gonna happen.

I can't say I was devastated because I wasn't surprised, really.

There are certain people who have a lifestyle, and, you know, I--

Friends that I had in the '60s who had really the kind of lifestyle where you think,

"Wow can they possibly still be alive?"

And he was certainly one of them.

You know, his lifestyle was deadly.

I don't think that anybody who has abused himself as deeply as Jim did,

um, could ever have rebounded from that.

I mean, the alcohol and some of the drugs and stuff were extreme, for sure.

I mean, anybody that knows Jim--

I mean, he took everything to the limit.

I mean, he invented and--

He invented pushing the envelope.

I mean, he wanted to see what would happen.

The doctor concluded, beyond any doubt,

the official cause of death was heart failure

due to an excessive consumption of alcohol.

Almost immediately following Jim's alleged death

on July 3rd, 1971,

an alternative story began to circulate,

casting doubt on the original report.

Many believe Jim died after snorting heroin at the Rock'n'Roll Circus,

a club not far from his Paris flat.

The story goes that Jim scored smack for Pam,

presumably from a street dealer,

sampled the product in a toilet stall in the club's men's room,

then passed out or died instantly.

The dealers were then kind enough to carry his body out of the club's back entrance,

into the street, into a car, and up the flights of stairs to his Paris residence.

Robyn Wurtele described the Rock'n'Roll Circus heroin theory to me

in one word: "ridiculous."

According to the translation of Jim Morrison's French death certificate,

dated July 6th, 1971,

Pamela Courson was the only one present at the time of Jim's apparent death,

but she described different versions of her story to different people.

There were problems with the police report.

Pamela Courson's stories are inconsistent.

There's no corroboration of various facts

that would be needed to prove deaths in a court of law.

The way that Ray kind of described her, you know,

at that point, just bursting into tears, she said,

"Gosh, I wish I had just awakened once, you know,

at the right time to go in there and it might have, you know, saved him or do something..."

I don't quite buy that.

There's something about that that just doesn't...

seem right to me.

Twenty-seven-olds don't-- Typically...

don't suddenly die.

I was puzzled by the mystery about it.

You ask a physiologist or a physician about this,

and they'll think, with Jim Morrison, it was a drug overdose.

But we don't know

because of the somewhat Byzantine way

in which the documents of Jim's death were created,

or not created.

You told me yourself,

he spoke to the following people

specifically about faking his death.

Danny, Frank, Kathy and...?

Me.

Can you please elaborate?

He just basically said that, you know, um,

"One of these days, I think I just might go to Africa."

But during the talk, he said, "You know, maybe I should use a different name."

And I said, "Well, do you have in mind?" He said, "Douglas James."

I said, "There are an awful lot of Douglas Jameses out there.

Be hard to track you down, wouldn't it?"

From Jim telling high-school classmate Bill Thomas in 1961

that someday he'd disappear,

to Robyn Wurtele, his personal assistant in Paris, telling me in 2016, quote,

"If he's out there, you may run into him at some point,"

a clear pattern emerged: escape.

With the would-be Dr. Max apparently having been Varda's friend,

perhaps her personal physician, did he also function as an actor

in the signing of Jim's death certificate?

This would align with what the son of fellow Paris player Alain Raisson told me

his father's post-fire-brigade life entailed:

stage acting in Brazil.

The doctor has never been located.

Even the pronunciation of his name has proven impossible to corroborate.

There are those who say it's "Vaseel,"

while others claim "Vassilé,"

"Vassilay," "Vassay," and so on.

The only ones that I was told that saw the--

Witnessed the death certificate were Bill Siddons and Pam.

Bill Siddons is 100 percent trustworthy.

What Bill says, I believe.

Jim was already in a coffin in the living room of the-- Wherever he was staying.

Unless Pam ran down to the Coffins"R"Us or whatever, where do you get a coffin?

How do you get a body in it that quickly?

Get loose.

Come on out to Coffins"R"Us.

We got coffins to fit every budget and lifestyle.

Act now and break on through to get the fully sealed Siddons model,

guaranteed not to leak for 50 years.

Every 27th customer gets a free James Phoenix action figure.

Hi-yah.

Only at Coffins"R"Us. Get loose.

"Paris is beautiful in the sun,

an exciting town built for human beings.

Speaking to Bill a while back,

I told him of our desire to stay on here indefinitely.

Will that be possible?

Could you write and give me an idea

of how long we can stay on living at our present rate?

A sort of financial statement in general.

Also a copy of the partnership agreement,

if it was ever completed."

But in 1971, did he have enough wealth

to have lived--? Faked his death?

It may have depended upon how much Pam was spending.

Uh, I think he certainly had enough wealth at that point

because the records were gonna continue to sell, whether the band was active or not.

He would have had enough money the rest of his life.

Pam Courson, Jim's longtime girlfriend, what's your take on her?

Pam Courson, I don't know, I have different feelings.

I think she probably helped him along in the beginning,

but I think her heroin addiction became a problem.

And he wa-- He had mentioned once

that he didn't like the whole idea of copping

and what that involved, and didn't wanna have anything to do with it.

- Scoring drugs, right? - Yeah.

And I mean, I guess she was shooting, wasn't she?

I've researched Jim's vintage interviews,

from college newspapers to Rolling Stone.

And in a 1971 piece for the L.A. Free Press,

he stated that he did not like scoring drugs.

I had the theory that what if the count, you know, Jean de Breteuil,

the guy who was Pam's dealer and her lover in Paris...

Many people think he killed Jim,

either accidentally or through murder

or it was his heroin or whatever.

You know, I said to you, "What if he helped Jim escape out of Paris to Africa?"

And what--? I can't remember, what was your take on that?

Well, I remember people saying so many nasty things about the guy, like he was evil.

Frank is the first person to have anything positive to say about the count.

But I wonder if I struck a nerve

when I suggested the count may have helped Jim fly out of Paris to Morocco,

a small country in North Africa, with a new passport in hand.

Pam was said to have seen the count on and off for a number of years,

he being not only her lover,

but also her main heroin connection.

Allegedly, his product also was the heroin that killed Janis Joplin.

You never saw heroin? You never saw that in the mix?

- No. - Backstage or wherever?

No, I never really did.

Um, we did a lot of other things on occasion,

but no, I've never seen that.

Immediately following Jim's reported death,

the Count Jean de Breteuil decided to leave France in a hurry.

His destination? Morocco.

If Jim did fake his death,

Africa appeared a likely candidate for his new home,

or at least his first destination.

I'm about 90 to 95% still in belief that he pulled the Rimbaud,

because he was obsessed with Rimbaud.

Rimbaud did vanish.

He disappeared into North Africa.

And, oh, gee, where did Jim talk about going?

He talked about going to Morocco.

He talked about going to the west coast of Africa.

He wanted to see where the slaves came from.

Uh, so that would be Senegal, Ghana, the Ivory Coast.

And where's that missing passport?

He lost his first passport.

The first one is the one he got in August of '68 for the European tour...

- Right - ...a few weeks after--

That's the one that went back to his parents.

Yes.

You know, I just wonder

because his family got his initial passport,

the one that was supposed to be lost in an airport.

And where was the new one? It's never surfaced.

I think this, along with the fact that, you know, when he was in Paris,

I told you, he was having a pair of boots widened.

I mean, he was making plans to live.

You know, there's the letter

right before Jim's alleged death.

Yeah, "Come to Paris and see me." Yeah.

He wrote the postcard to Max.

He wrote a letter to Bob Greene requesting money.

Yeah.

He wanted a credit card made out in Pam's name and his name separately.

And in the Max Fink transcript, it says that Jim was going to Paris to leave Pam.

After Jim's apparent death,

a distraught Pam returned to the United States,

where she stayed close to Diane Gardner and Ellen Sander.

I'm in San Francisco. I've got Pam with me.

She cannot face the press, so we need a place to hide out.

I was living in Bolinas, California, at the time.

Very quiet, small-village life. "Can we come and stay with you?"

And I said, "Sure, for as long as you'd like."

I was at that point absolutely certain that they had Jim in the trunk.

Alive.

Can you describe the letter you're reading? Or who it's from?

Yeah. Yeah. This is Diane Gardner,

who, for a while, worked at Elektra,

Jim's publicist, basically, in L.A., and Pamela, after...

Just a few weeks after Jim's death,

stayed with Diane in Sausalito,

and together, they wrote me this letter.

- And what is the date on it? - July 26, '71.

"So here's the story of how Jim did his last joke,

which is on us.

Jim was having a real good time in Paris

and going all over the world with Pam.

One evening, he had a nosebleed and said he'd probably feel better if he had a bath.

'He might have needed one,'" says Pamela.

"An hour later, Pam wondered what Jim was doing with himself for an hour in the bath.

And there he was.

Jim was just reclining like a little sweetheart emperor

in the old Parisian tub with his head back

and a smile, a fucking smile, on his face.

Pamela tried to wake him up, but no, nothing doing.

'He must think it's very funny

to play dead like this in the bath.'

It was another hour almost before Pam finally realized that Jim wasn't playing

because he didn't even turn blue or anything.

He just laid back with a grin on his face.

So Pam tried to get him out of the tub,

and the police came, and it's a good thing she didn't think of letting the water out,

because they wanted to check it.

There he was, just reclining like the Pope,

and the only thing different about him

is that he had something like a little red rash right over his heart.

So that was Jim's joke.

And there's a few creeps walking around still pissed off

because he did it au naturel.

By the time the Paris cops had checked out Jim's joke

and declared him dead of natural resources,

the Paris morticians had split for the weekend,

and they weren't gonna come out of the woodwork to pick up anybody's discarded body.

And this turned out to be a stroke of luck

because whoever is in charge of bodies in Paris

just laid him out right there in the apartment.

They didn't bother Pam and Jim except to change the ice.

Pamela says that when somebody you love dies, whatever you do,

don't let them cart the body off to some crummy mortuary.

Keep the body right in your home until it's time to get buried,

because the spirit still hangs around as long as the body is there.

Because of the mortician's holiday,

Pam and Jim had one last weekend together,

and he was right there with the whole scene,

and they listened to some music

and Pam even smoked a little.

As soon as they took the body away,

his spirit went away.

We wish we had a picture of him there in his last moments,

except that Pam was too busy being with him.

And then at the funeral, it was just too much of a hassle,

what with other people there and all that."

So does this sound, you know, so mundane that it's true?

Holy shit. I...

I've just been sitting here frozen the entire time you were reading it.

Diane Gardner knew. She knew what the heck happened.

And she wouldn't tell me.

So I tried to squeeze it out of her,

and she never would tell me.

You know, there's obviously a secret around his death.

And she said, "There is a secret,

and you're never gonna get it out of me."

In the transcript he dictated to his wife, Maggie, in 1986,

Jim's attorney, Max Fink, suspected Pam may have killed Jim.

Jim's lover Linda Ashcroft maintained the same suspicion

in her 1997 book, Wild Child,

in which she claimed Pam admitted to her that Jim died from her heroin

after he assumed it was cocaine.

Diane told Mirandi Babitz,

who I interviewed for this film almost three years ago already.

She-- Mirandi is on the record saying that Diane told her

there is a, quote, "secret about Jim's death,

and you're never gonna get it out of me."

You know, what's that, right?

Okay. We all know the heroin scenario.

Was that a cover story? So, what's the secret?

I know that secret, and you're not gonna get it out of me either.

Because the parties involved did not allow

for an American or French autopsy,

the endless questions will remain.

And in your opinion, do you--?

What do you feel killed Jim?

His lifestyle.

Uh, obviously, he drank too much.

I think, by that time, he was overweight,

and, you know, if you're not in good health

and you drink too much and dabble in some drugs,

it's not that hard to do.

By the time I had last seen him, he was all bloated.

And, you know, he had a thin little attractive layer of bloat, you know,

back when I had first known him,

but, you know, here we are just a few years later, you know, and he's fully--

You know, so his liver is not functioning.

These are some of the last photos taken of Jim,

in Paris in May 1971.

Does he appear to be significantly overweight?

And to such a degree that his health was at risk?

We may never know.

These intimate photos were taken by one of Jim's close French friends, Hervé Muller.

Like soul brothers.

From biographers to police reports,

even Jim's physical height has remained an ongoing topic of debate.

While conducting my interviews for this docuseries,

I asked everyone how tall they thought Jim was.

Their answers were fascinating.

I'd say 5'8", 5'9", something like that.

Somewhere between 5'10" and 5'11", maybe.

How tall would you say Jim Morrison was in the time you knew him at UCLA?

Hmm...

I'd say he was about, mm, 5'8".

5'10".

Confident. 5'9".

He was exactly my height.

We looked eyeball to eyeball in 1963.

So I was 6 feet then. He had to have been 6 feet

or not more than a quarter of an inch higher or lower.

5'9", 5'10", max.

I'm 5'7", so he was certainly taller than I am, at least by two inches.

So I'd say he was 5'9", 5'10".

He probably wasn't 6 feet tall, but he was plenty tall.

He was about...

He was about my height, and I was 5'10".

I'd say 5'11".

Maybe 5'9" at the most. Or...

You know, and the other thing was,

he rarely really stood up straight.

You know? He was more--

I always think of him more slumped a bit, you know?

He slouched a lot. He was a sloucher. He was--

He had desert boots on, and he was slouching around, you know?

I mean, so he looked shorter. And I said he was my height,

which would have been about 5'8" or 5'9" in high school.

Well, I actually know the answer to this question

because of the thing when we stood in front of the mirror, and we were--

He was going, "Are you actually taller than me?"

And we had to measure. He was that neurotic.

He was actually taller than me.

And at that time, I was about 5'9.5".

So I'd say he's probably 5'10" to 5'11".

He was not 6 feet.

My dad was 5'8", Jim was 5'9", and I reached 5'10.5".

And that's how tall-- He liked to wear the boots,

and he always said he would like to be six-foot tall.

He'd like to have been taller.

According to the enigmatic Bob Seymore

in his one and only book,

Jim's corpse was listed among French documents

in the metric equivalent of 6'1",

as opposed to Jim's reported actual height of...

- 5'9". - ...to 5'11".

Seymore's information doesn't track with the official Morrison narrative

and so supports the notion that Jim or someone close to him

may have acquired a medical cadaver or John Doe body.

An internist told me corpses do not grow in height.

If anything, the opposite holds true.

Um, so let me ask you this.

This is a fun question, as you were just standing up next to me.

I think I was going to ask you at one point when I thought you were Jim, how tall are you?

5'7.5".

Okay. So, now-- Now, were you always 5'7.5"?

- Yeah. - Okay.

Jim apparently was 5'11".

- So there you go. - Oh, okay.

There's proof right there, right?

'Cause I know the fans will probably wanna know.

I asked all of Jim's lovers and his friends and Andy Morrison...

I gotta ask you a question.

...Jac Holzman, "How tall was Jim?"

And I got all kinds of different answers.

- Oh, really? - They would say he's 5'7",

they'd say he's 6'1",

they'd say he's 5'11"...

So how'd you find out the real truth?

The consensus seems to be about 5'11".

5'10", 5'11".

"Okay," you say to yourself, "Jim was about 5'10" or 5'11",

and Frank is 5'7.5"."

But the human body shrinks as it ages.

You can lose two to three inches of height as you get older.

I don't know if you want this on the camera, but I had a good friend at one time...

- Sure. - ...told me that--

He was from Boston, but he lived up this way for a while,

and I got to know him really well.

Frank Higgins from Boston.

He was a little toughie Irishman.

He told me that they were--

That they had a homosexual relationship in New York

when he was in New York.

I'm sorry, who did?

#### and Jim.

Wow. I've never heard this story before.

It's not printed anywhere, to my knowledge,

and it's not in any documentary.

There hasn't even been a rumor of Jim and this particular person having been together.

So how did Frank know this?

See, I learned something new. People think I'm an expert on Jim Morrison.

Yeah. Well, he told me this, and he's--

I don't know how he knew, but he wasn't a bullshitter.

Yeah. And what's your friend's name?

Frank Higgins.

I did a search for Frank Higgins of Boston

and found only one person by that name.

But when I spoke with him,

he said he did not live in Boston during that time period.

Maybe he was loaded and had one--

You know, didn't know what was going on.

I've heard that Jim was either bisexual or experimented with that,

as, you know, many young people do.

What's your take on that?

Do you think Jim was straight or bi or...?

I can't imagine him being bi.

You think he was straight and maybe just had some experiences?

Well, having been under the influence

and being interested in experimentation,

I don't think he was in his "right" mind when--

If it might have happened.

Jim certainly was known to have had intimate sexual relationships with other men.

Two things come to mind.

One is the line from...

Oh, gosh, I think it's on "Soft Parade", yeah.

"Till his wife gets home"?

"Until his wife gets home."

And it was done so tongue in cheek

that I just considered it kind of funny.

Until the last time that Jim and I were together,

he actually had me take him to where he was staying in--

I wrote it down as Bungalow B.

It may not be Bungalow B, but that's how I wrote it.

at the Chateau Marmont.

And as we were getting out of my car

and walking in that direction,

um, a very pretty, very gay young man approached him,

kind of sidled up to him, and was, you know,

"Hi, Jim, how you doing? Blah, blah, blah."

And it struck me at the time that he was certainly not put off by it.

It didn't seem-- He didn't miss a beat.

It wasn't like, you know, you know,

"Oh, you queer, get away from me."

He was congenial, and he was just--

You know, he was fine with it.

Because, you know, Ji-- It was the '60s, the late '60s, and Jim said, "I want"-- Quote,

"I want the freedom to try everything once."

So you've gotta figure maybe-- Why wouldn't you?

Well, and in all the reading he did about all the writers

from the 1700s, 18, there was a lot of that rampant.

And if he might have-- He might have been fucked up or on drugs,

and if he tried something with somebody,

I don't think it was a lasting thing.

And I'm sure it wouldn't bother him

if it was made public.

To me, he was sort of homophobic.

- You know? - Really?

Yeah.

Loved the girls. Not so much the guys.

I don't remember ever really talking to him about it,

but just being in certain situations with him,

um, I saw a comfort level that didn't surprise me.

It was very evident to me

that there was a relationship there with McClure and him.

No, I mean, I just don't believe it. He wasn't gay.

The guy was not gay, and I don't think he was bi. I don't think--

I think that bi people are so rare,

are so thin on the ground,

the chances of people being bi, I think, is really quite unusual.

And I really don't think he was that.

He was very interested in women.

He was completely interested in females.

He was really obsessed with women.

I would find it hard to believe that he never did,

just out of the willingness to try everything.

And when I asked him about it, he was very, um, snippy

and said, "No, not me."

But I didn't entirely believe him,

and I was surprised by his vehemence

because at that point in time,

it was relatively not a big deal.

So it seemed strange that he was so insistent that, no, never.

And then that-- Actually, that same evening, he said,

"I want to be with every woman in this room, even her."

And he pointed to this woman that didn't seem like a likely candidate.

So... yeah.

There was something going on there, yeah.

There was a big fight between Pam and Jim.

And, uh, overnight, and we were staying in a bedroom across the hall from them.

And the next day, when Jim went out to the studio,

Pam, you know, just gathered up all of his stage clothing

and started cutting it up with scissors.

She was, like, just enraged,

and she wouldn't be straight with me

about what she was so angry about.

But one of the things that she did was,

we had to go across the street to the cleaners

to get the rest of his stage clothes,

'cause she wanted to destroy every scrap of it.

So we got it out of the-- Out of the cleaners,

and it was a vest that he liked to wear onstage,

and she wrote "fag" across the back of it

and underlined it

and then... chopped it up with her scissors.

And, you know, I tried to talk to her about it, and, you know--

'Cause I said, "Well, he's with you, isn't he?"

You know, "What are you talking about?"

And she-- You know, she just would cuss and scream at him

and, you know, yell his name and, you know...

So she wasn't clear, but it did...

You know, at the time, I thought-- I didn't-- You know, I had no idea.

I didn't know anybody who was bisexual,

so it didn't come into my radar as a possibility.

Being gay was kind of okay in the crowd we were in, you know,

but it just--

So it was like, I didn't know what to make of it.

I really didn't understand, but I think, looking from this perspective in life,

I would say I think it's a possibility,

you know, that he would be,

but he was predominantly with women.

In June 1970, Jim took a trip to France

with the Doors publicist, Leon Barnard,

where Jim just so happened to run into his dear friend Alain Ronay.

Given that it was Jim's first time in Paris, Alain showed him the ropes.

Was this Jim's reconnaissance mission

to pre-plan and map out his ultimate escape?

What if, in an excerpt from Ronay's published 1991 article,

"Jim and I: Friends Until Death,"

Ronay revealed he and Jim had physically practiced Jim's alleged July 3rd, 1971, demise?

Did Alain help Jim achieve his goal

of the Rimbaud vanishing act?

Here, then, are Ronay's own words:

"I felt as if I had entered a state of déjà vu

made possible by years of rehearsing the same script."

The French-born and -fluent Ronay was one of Jim's most trusted confidants,

dating back to 1964, when they were UCLA roommates.

No One Here Gets Out Alive described Alain as one of Jim's "mystery friends."

Ronay's own words from his 1991 article

not only riffed on marriage vows,

but also could be interpreted to suggest he and Jim rehearsed the staging of Jim's death

during that 1970 Paris trip.

Jim trusted Alain implicitly.

There are those who've long believed they were lovers.

Based on my December 7, 2012, meeting with Alain,

where a death mask, incredibly, thumped against the wall of his Hollywood apartment,

which was like a Morrison shrine,

I've maintained hope that he helped Jim find the anonymous peace he craved.

And are you sure that it was ####,

and maybe the guy's not confusing him with some other dude

that #### with Jim, being together in New York?

I could be confusing it,

but it was somebody on ####'s level.

Yeah. Was it a guy named Todd Schiffman?

- No, no, no. - No?

- Or Michael McClure, the poet? - No.

I've heard that McClure and Jim--

It was somebody involved with the recording process.

If you would be so kind as to let us see you without your hat

so we can see your face better, 'cause the--

You know, the bill on your cap covers your eyes like-- Just like mine does.

Yeah. You're gonna be surprised.

So there's a shadow. There's a shadow.

- You thought I was about 31, 32. - Right?

Oh, you lost it pretty early?

- Yeah. Pretty much. - Yeah. Right on.

- And then-- - Little more each year.

And then the other thing, and I know this is absurd, so if you're offended,

please don't-- You don't have to do anything, but we were wondering if--

You know, because I thought for the longest time you were wearing brown contact lenses...

Mm-hm.

...if we could do a close-up of your eyes without your hat?

- Oh, of course not. - Right?

Awesome. Yeah, there's your brown eyes, right?

- Fantastic. - All right?

- All right? - Thank you so much.

I feel like I'm viewing blue eyes covered by brown contact lenses.

The pupils seem murky,

and the brown edges are too perfect,

with a blue ring encircling the outside of the contacts.

Do you see blue eyes?

I flew back to L.A.

with this absurd phrase on a loop in my brain:

"Tell me you're Jim Morrison without telling me you're Jim Morrison."

I needed to talk with Cheryl

about the possibility that Frank actually could be... Jim.

One of the sticking points when first meeting Frank

was that he had brown eyes.

But he also had a blue ring around the iris of his eyes.

Ask any hardcore Morrison fan

and they'll tell you Jim had blue eyes,

possibly even blue-gray.

So I took a low-pixel, a low-res, photo

to an eye doctor here,

- ophthalmologist. - Mm-hm.

She took one look and said, "That's arcus senilis,"

which is a condition some older people have related to cholesterol.

So again, it's like, you think you got it lying right there,

and then it's always-- You're always just... You know?

Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of coincidences,

a lot of coincidences,

and a lot of just really bizarre things.

But I don't know. I...

I can't, like, neatly wrap it up,

which really bugs me.

When I first traveled to interview Frank,

we met at a diner.

After talking for a while,

he said he needed to smoke a cigarette.

I expected to watch him bolt and disappear forever,

but he didn't.

So when he wasn't looking, I grabbed his water glass.

And then Frank walked back in.

Time to have it looked at by a professional.

My funding, like my energy, is running on empty.

So this may be my last hope for a positive ID.

The forensic identification specialist is Kurt Kuhn,

who has over 40 years of experience

in civil and criminal casework.

The first part of the process is to actually look at the evidence item

and make a determination

if there's any actual visible fingerprint ridge structure there.

If there is, that needs to be photographically documented from the start

because we don't know what's gonna happen

in regards to the actual superglue process itself.

Visual examination on this piece of evidence:

I can see some smudges.

I didn't see anything that was actually usable fingerprint ridge structure.

So the next process we're gonna do is we're gonna prep the superglue chamber.

We're gonna use a superglue pouch,

which is a pouch that has superglue,

which technically is cyanoacrylate esters,

and it's combined with kind of a petroleum-jelly product.

And we're going to attach it to part of the superglue chamber.

And the fumes then will basically...

for lack of a better word, I guess, fall down

on the evidence item.

Let me get the evidence item and the control card in here.

The control card puts some impressions on the card,

and again, this is going to allow me to make a determination

as when there should have been adequate development.

Now, the superglue process itself,

the cyanoacrylate-ester fumes adhere to an impression

that may be on the evidence item itself.

Now, that impression is typically either perspiration or sebaceous oils,

leaving kind of a translucent semipermanent impression on there.

At that point in time, if there is a fingerprint that's developed

we'll start doing some photographic procedures on it.

The process itself can be anywhere from a minimum of 45 minutes,

and it could even take longer than that.

The fuming process has been going on for about an hour and a half.

So I'm gonna go ahead and shut that down.

I checked the control card at 45 minutes.

There was development.

At about an hour, there was development.

And the last time I checked it,

at an hour and 15 minutes and an hour and 30 minutes,

there was fairly significant development on the control card.

So now we'll see what the evidence item actually looks like.

And with a little bit of just oblique lighting, you can see

that the control card has got at least some kind of usable fingerprints on it.

So let's take the back-- The glass back over under a little better lighting.

Well, there's a lot of chemical reaction,

or polymerization.

The problem with a drinking glass

could very often be in the fact that if it was damp...

whatever... fingerprint residue,

which would be either perspiration or sebaceous oils,

that was transferred to the surface

mixed with whatever dampness was there.

And I can see a lot of reaction,

I can see a lot of areas where it's been handled,

but there is no usable friction ridge structure

or fingerprint detail or fingerprint minutiae present on the glass.

As Jim once said on a New York stage,

"Well, everything is fucked up as usual."

Still, I plowed ahead into DNA testing

via the Jean Genet novel

that Robyn Wurtele, Jim's assistant, had given me.

Robyn told me it had been Jim's personal copy in Paris

and had hardly been touched in all the ensuing years.

Forensic DNA expert Marc Taylor had come highly recommended

by Kurt Kuhn, and vice versa.

Taylor's professional reputation spoke for itself.

Back in 1994,

he declined involvement with the O.J. Simpson murder case

after he sensed corruption and wanted no part of it.

The DNA that comes off of your hands gets on there because you touch yourself.

You rub your eyes, you scratch your head,

you rub the sides of your mouth.

You pick up cells that way.

That gets mixed up with the oils

and the perspiration that's on your hands.

As we perspire, the perspiration comes out to the surface,

the water evaporates,

and you end up with a gooey kind of protein,

this proteinaceous goo that's on there.

Then you transfer it to other things that you touch in that way.

And so the-- Probably the most common way we transfer our DNA around is off of our hands.

What we're looking for in a case like this is that material

that's basically the same material that would form fingerprints.

We lift it off and can isolate the DNA from it if it's present.

There was some stuff-- Maybe some sticky stuff

that looked like it was attached to the front of it.

And then there were some streaks of things.

It may be that something got on there

and it got shoved into the bookshelf

and had smeared it.

Anytime we see something that looks different,

we collect that as a separate swab,

because the best thing you can get

is to get a single-source profile off of something.

And if you've got something that got stuck on there from one person's hands

and we can see that and swab it up,

we might be able to get a single-source profile from that.

I'm not seeing anything that indicates to me that there is--

"Oh, somebody's handled this particular area,"

how they would touch the pages or anything like that.

As Marc and his assistant, Ann,

bagged my DNA evidence,

I went home feeling anxious but cautiously optimistic.

A few weeks later, I returned to Marc Taylor's DNA lab,

ready to learn the results.

To say I was a jumble of nerves would be an understatement.

What we're seeing at this point is we're seeing

that there is what appears to be a major donor on the book here.

Now, clearly what we see is the individual whose DNA is on the glass

is not the individual who's a major donor on the book.

When we look at the minor donors,

we see some consistency there.

But it's very difficult to determine

because, again, we do have degradation here.

Now, degradation is not unexpected on something like a book

because we're dealing with a situation

where this has been just sitting around for a long, long time.

And just the oxygen in the air will degrade DNA with time.

But as I said, the individual from the glass

is not the major donor on the book.

Okay.

It gets confusing when you get down to these low levels

because you have low-level donors,

and some are gonna disappear at this level because it's so degraded.

This is sort of the opposite of a match, like a non-match, right?

It's a non-match, but again, I emphasize it's a non-match

with regard to the major donor on there.

And that's where we would be very curious whether that would be your own DNA on the book, so.

Oh, yeah, you wanna get the--? My name on there?

Hey, kids, it's me.

To eliminate me as the major donor,

my DNA was swabbed for a comparison.

I once again headed back to Los Angeles and waited.

Finally, Marc called and told me the results were ready.

I was depleted, emotionally and physically,

but I had to know if the major DNA donor

on the Jean Genet novel was Jim,

Frank, yours truly, someone random,

or all of the above.

- Hello. How are you? - Pretty good.

- It's been a week. - Thanks.

Yeah.

- Thank you. - Hi. You're welcome.

Give it to me straight, doc.

- Well-- - How long have I got to live?

Well, we have a mixture of DNA on the book,

which isn't surprising at all.

And we have what is one primary profile

that's the major profile,

and that's consistent on the different samples.

This is your reference sample

that we collected from you, and this is your profile.

Everybody that we're talking about here is male.

So the major profile that we see on the book

is consistent with your profile.

And if you had picked up the book and handled it,

especially in a more recent time,

closer to when we actually sampled it,

that makes sense

that we're seeing you as the number one.

And so the issue that we're seeing

is we've got low-level alleles

that could come from the individual on the glass,

but we also have low-level alleles that could not come

from the individual on the glass.

We do see areas where we've got fairly sensitive genetic locations,

where we would expect to see his alleles showing up,

but they're not there on-- At some locations.

So when we're looking at this, we end up in this area

where we've got an inconclusive result.

Some alleles from this individual are seen in the background here,

but we know that there would have to be at least one other individual

to give us the alleles that do not come from the individual on the glass.

She said the chain of custody is basically next to none.

In other words, he gave her the book

when they were in Paris in 1971.

So I don't know if you have further to go, or do you have a final determination or...?

The final determination is we see your DNA on this glass.

It's quite--

- On the book. Yeah. - Excuse me, on the book, yeah.

We do not see any foreign DNA on the glass--

That we can identify as being foreign DNA.

And what we're looking at on the book is a profile

which I suspect is a profile from at least three people.

One major, yourself,

and at least two minor donors.

Could be even more than that.

There's no way to determine that.

And that makes it much more difficult, then, to interpret what we've got.

We can't reasonably make assumptions

that would allow us to give a statistic for it.

Yeah.

So there's a chance--

You know, there's a chance for everything or anything, I guess.

But there's a chance-- Obviously I'm the major donor on the book.

Right.

There is a technical chance

that the woman who gifted me the book is underneath me

as the second donor, minor donor,

and then Jim potentially, possibly, could be the third donor below her.

That's possible.

Inconclusive again.

Fifty-year-old DNA as a minor donor

unfortunately did not yield the result I wanted.

Although nothing can be ruled out,

scientific evidence, at this point, seems unlikely.

The fact that photos of Jim and Frank contained numerous matches

left my mind reeling.

But I also recognized that my vantage point had become clouded

once I began to care for Frank as a friend.

After a half century, anyone can undergo vast changes

in their physical and psychological makeup,

especially if they spent that time

living out Jim's answer to Salli Stevenson

when she asked, during one of his final interviews,

what his life would entail if he had the whole thing to do over.

His reply, quote, "A quiet, undemonstrative little artist

plodding away in his own garden."

In any case, so many of Jim and Frank's traits dovetailed

that finally, three of Jim's former girlfriends

agreed to take part in

an experiment in facial recognition.

So, my dear, you're going to be opening...

- This one. - ...this side first.

- The right. Your right. - Okay.

Oh, dear. What are you up to now?

So we're gonna have you open up the right side first.

- And then the left side. Okay? - Right side first. Okay.

That's John Densmore.

Uh, it's John.

- Oh, my gosh. - So who is that?

John Densmore.

Looks a little startled.

Looks pretty good, though.

Oh, my God.

Wow.

- Okay, left side? - Yeah. Right.

And, oh, my goodness, who is that?

Um...

Who do you think it is?

Oh, my God.

Now, do you know who that might be on the other side there?

It's not Robby.

It's gotta be Ray.

And the chimes go on cue.

Um...

It's not. I don't...

Nice beard.

Give me a hint.

I'll just ask you, do you think there's any chance...

- It could be Jim? - ...that it could be Jim?

I-- I-- Wow.

I was gonna say that, but it can't be.

- Well, could be? - It can't be.

Those eyes look-- And so does the nose.

Um, that could be Jim.

Where in the hell did you find this?

Really?

Like that? Oh, my gosh.

That's the Jim I remember, right there.

That's how he looked when you knew him?

Yes.

Okay.

Oh, my goodness.

Definitely the nose looks that way.

Same thing with the cheekbones.

This guy has brown eyes.

Jim's eyes were blue.

Oh, my God. Where did you guys find this?

Gosh.

That's really strange.

That literally could be Jim.

I mean, that is ridiculous, but yes.

Do you think that's a 73-year-old Jim Morrison?

It could be.

I mean, look at the eyes.

And what is John hanging around with this guy?

Really hard to tell with the hat, um...

Ooh, it kind of, like, brings the tears to my eyes.

Wow.

What about the mole?

I believe that was the first thing to go.

Easy outpatient removal.

I don't-- I thought it might be him, actually,

but then I didn't wanna say anything,

'cause I thought, "That'll sound so stupid."

Well, there is some match. I mean...

But this guy really looks a lot like Jim.

Just base on-- Based on the intensity of the eyes...

- When was this taken? - Roughly about 2014.

The reflection in the eye...

doesn't seem like the reflection that you would see

in a human being's eye.

It seems like it could be a lens.

Sorry, I know this is a lot to throw at you,

but now you know why I couldn't tell you on the phone.

Because I would have ruined the surprise.

Surprise?

Surprise! We wanted to--

"Surprise" is putting it mildly.

The first thing that I thought was the nose, definitely,

and then the cheekbones.

Ear, yes. Nose, not so sure.

God, I wish I could see his mouth.

- That's really uncanny. - Yeah.

That's what the nickname of this movie's become, Uncanny.

Would you say it's uncanny?

Very uncanny.

And the very idea that John's standing next to him.

It's like, "Okay, guys, what's going on here?"

It's still-- It's absolutely fascinating.

Yeah, I wouldn't put it past the old bastard to do it.

How did you not just jump out of your skin?

- I still don't-- - How did you hold it together?

I still don't know.

After 50 years,

the expert ladies each saw what I saw,

a haunting resemblance between Jim and Frank.

- Are you okay? - I can't swallow.

- You okay? - Yeah.

You want some water or something?

- No, I'm fine. Uh-huh. - You sure?

- How about that shot of tequila? - Yeah, take that. Absolutely.

- I really need it now. - There you go.

Oh, God.

Do you, Frank ####, think Jim Morrison is dead or alive?

- What's your opinion? - I have no idea.

And, you know, if anybody would pull it off,

it would be him.

I don't think he needed adulation.

I feel like this is a confession from Jim,

who's been hiding in plain sight for decades,

where no one would expect a maintenance man

to have been the front man

for one of the most important rock bands of the 1960s.

Could this really be Jim Morrison?

For the record here, for the fans,

as part of my research into you,

I have to ask you formally: Are you Jim Morrison?

I am not Jim Morrison, except I am in the--

I love the song by Jimmy Cliff:

"We all are one. We are the same person."

- Right on. - That's one way to look at it.

Frank's response haunted me to my core.

I felt totally in sync with Jim's legendary mind games,

but with a more mature and optimistic twist.

In Jimmy Cliff's song "We All Are One,"

Cliff references the "universal world."

Jim famously sang of the "universal mind."

Was Frank's answer his way of letting Jim have his cake and eat it too?

Whether he slipped into anonymity

or died, as per the official account,

my goal is to reveal new facets

of the black diamond that is Jim.

Wherever he is, I hope he's found peace.

And while I may not have convinced you that Frank is Jim,

I hope you've come to appreciate James Douglas Morrison,

the timeless artist and human being.

And yet, if Frank is not Jim,

how do you explain all of these coincidences?

I am not Jim Morrison.

We all are one. We are the same person.

I've studied Jim Morrison's life

and reported death

for nearly 40 years,

since I first read No One Here Gets Out Alive .

When I add that knowledge to what I learned

from the nearly 1000 people I contacted

and the hundreds I interviewed, my personal assessment:

James Douglas Morrison, amazingly, did fake his death

in Paris, France, on or around July 3rd, 1971.

Of course, as grim as it may sound,

exhumation of the Père-Lachaise grave

and DNA testing is the only way to prove the real truth.

But as Jim's grave has long been one of Paris' top tourist attractions

and one of the keys to his enduring following,

the Morrison powers that be apparently plan to stay complacent

while Jim's reality remains... a mystery.

♪ Our electric friends Just pretend ♪

♪ Our electric friends Just pre-- ♪

♪ Tell me again why, where, when ♪

♪ Should I delete Or hit send? ♪

♪ Element bend See how you trend ♪

♪ Shall we deny or unfriend? ♪

♪ Tell me again why, where, when ♪

♪ Should I delete Or hit send? ♪

♪ Goodbye last band See how you trend ♪

♪ Shall we deny or unfriend? ♪