How Did Jim Morrison Die? Inside The Doors Frontman's Sudden Death at Age 27 — and Why Some Believe It Was a Cover-Up

Jim Morrison’s sudden death at age 27 remains shrouded in mystery.

The singer-songwriter and lead vocalist for the rock band The Doors was at the height of his career when he moved to Paris with his girlfriend, Pamela Courson, in March 1971. At the time, he was struggling with drug and alcohol addictions and reportedly relocated to the City of Lights with the hopes of getting sober, according to The Guardian.

Despite The Doors' popularity, Morrison faced a tarnished reputation after exposing himself at a Miami concert in March 1969. Though audience members had conflicting accounts, he was convicted of indecent exposure and profanity and sentenced to six months in prison in September 1970, per the Miami Herald. (He was posthumously pardoned in 2010.)

Around this time, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin died from overdoses, and in response, Morrison joked about his own mortality. “You’re drinking with number three,” he told friends, according to The Independent.

The following spring, while Morrison's case was under appeal and he was out on bail, he traveled to Paris with Courson, who was addicted to heroin. Months after stepping away from his career onstage, Morrison was found dead in the bathtub of his Paris apartment in July 1971 — and the circumstances surrounding his death remain unclear.

Since then, different projects have tried to explore the singer's last moments, including the documentary Before the End: Searching for Jim Morrison, available on VOD on Jan. 13.

Here’s everything to know about musician Jim Morrison’s death and the legacy he left behind.

How did Jim Morrison die?

According to The Independent, Morrison's girlfriend Courson discovered his body in the bathtub of their Paris apartment, and she called Alain Ronay — a photographer and friend of Morrison’s who had recently moved to Paris — in hysterics, saying that the singer wasn’t breathing.

She explained that the previous day, the two went to the movies and ate Chinese food before returning to the apartment to snort heroin. In the early morning, Morrison was having difficulty breathing — but Courson left him in the bathtub and went back to sleep, only to find him dead a few hours later.

When firefighters arrived on the scene, they found Courson weeping over Morrison’s body in the bathtub, and he had blood around his nose and mouth and wasn’t breathing, per the publication.

French authorities ruled that Morrison died from natural causes — a heart attack “possibly aggravated by excessive drinking” per the official report — and because there were no signs of foul play, they did not perform an autopsy before Morrison was buried.

Despite this, the musician's friends and family, as well as fans, didn’t believe it was the true cause, speculating that it was a heroin overdose instead. The circumstances around Morrison’s death became more unclear as Courson’s account of what happened that night conflicted over time.

In some cases, she told friends that Morrison (who was open about his disdain for the drug) was regularly using heroin during their time in Paris. In others, the night he died was the first night he tried heroin. Sometimes, she’d say that Morrison had accidentally snorted the drug by mistake, believing it was cocaine — and in other instances, she’d say heroin played no role in Morrison’s death.

When did Jim Morrison die?

Morrison died in the early morning hours of July 3, 1971.

Where did Jim Morrison die?

Though authorities originally believed that Morrison died in the bathtub of his apartment in the Marais neighborhood of Pairs, witnesses later emerged to claim that he died elsewhere — and friends had a hand in covering it up.

Based on Courson’s account of the night of Morrison’s death on July 3, 1971, the couple went to the movies, then returned to their apartment to listen to some music, where he later died of a heart attack in the bathtub, per The Guardian.

Decades later, however, new accounts of Morrison’s final hours came to light. Instead, witnesses later explained that he died in the bathroom of the Rock & Roll Circus nightclub in Paris.

In his 2007 book, The End: Jim Morrison, Sam Bernett, a French-born former New York Times journalist and friend of Morrison, claimed that the singer arrived at the nightclub looking to buy heroin for Courson. After making the purchase, Morrison reportedly disappeared into the bathroom, and Bernett stated that he later found him slumped over the toilet, according to Rolling Stone.

“He had his head between his legs,” Bernett told PEOPLE in 2021. “He had white fluid around the lips and the nose, and his eyes were closed. I saw that something was very wrong.”

After another person in the club, who was a medic, proclaimed that Morrison was dead, two drug dealers allegedly moved Morrison to his apartment to cover up the overdose and protect their boss, Count Jean de Breteuil, per Rolling Stone.

De Breteuil was an aristocrat and heroin dealer to many celebrities and wealthy individuals — and was also having an affair with Courson while she and Morrison were living together in Paris. De Breteuil sourced particularly strong heroin from Morocco, dispensing it to his high-profile clients around the world, including Courson — and subsequently, Morrison.

The two drug dealers placed Morrison in the bathtub to try and revive him, Bernett wrote, per The Independent.

How old was Jim Morrison when he died?

When he died, Jim Morrison was 27 years old.

How did the public react to Jim Morrison’s death?

Fans were devastated by news of Morrison’s sudden and unexpected death at age 27.

Morrison’s funeral occurred on July 7, 1971, and only five people attended, per The Independent. After an eight-minute ceremony, Morrison was buried at the Pere-Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

The news of Morrison’s death was not publicly reported until six days after he died to avoid media attention.

The Doors’ manager reported that it was a result of natural causes and nothing more, but fans and friends of Morrison were immediately suspicious of the circumstances surrounding Morrison’s death — and did not believe it was due to solely natural causes, Esquire reported in 1972.

In the wake of his death, Morrison’s grave has become a pilgrimage site, and Paris has celebrated the late musician with film showings, photo exhibits, concerts and radio and television specials, per The New York Times.

Fans by the hundreds have come to visit his grave to mark important occasions, from the 20th anniversary of his death — which turned into a riot when guards tried to close the cemetery — to his 50th birthday, according to the outlet.

Was there anything else said about Jim Morrison's cause of death?

Years after the frontman's death, more witnesses came forward to corroborate Bernett’s account of what happened to Morrison.

Singer Marianne Faithfull — who was De Breteuil's live-in girlfriend at the time — gave an interview to U.K. magazine Mojo in 2014, during which she claimed to know the truth about Morrison’s death. Faithfull stated that Morrison overdosed on heroin provided by de Bretueil.

She told the outlet that she could “intuitively feel trouble” when de Breteuil went to visit Morrison on the night of his death.

“[De Breteuil] went to see Jim Morrison and killed him. I mean, I’m sure it was an accident," Faithfull said. “The smack was too strong ... and he died. Everybody connected to the death of this poor guy is dead now. Except me.”

The only two other people who could confirm what really happened to Morrison both overdosed following Morrison’s death. De Bruteil died in June 1971, and Courson died in 1974, per The Independent.

Faithful still maintains that De Breteil had a hand in Morrison’s death by selling him the drugs that killed him.

What kind of legacy did Jim Morrison leave behind?

After Morrison’s death, his band and family carried on his legacy as a talented songwriter, singer and poet.

The Doors — which was once made of four members — continued as three, creating two more albums before dissolving in 1973, per The Doors website. However, they later reconnected to record music for some of Morrison’s poetry, which was released in 1978 as the album An American Prayer.

His life and career was also documented in the 1991 film, The Doors, based on Doors drummer John Densmore’s 1990 memoir, The Guardian reported.

Decades later, in 2021, Morrison’s sister, Anne Morrison Chewning, released a collection of Morrison’s writing, poems and unreleased songs in the book The Collected Works of Jim Morrison. The 600-page book contains excerpts from more than 28 notebooks spanning from his childhood to his final weeks in Paris.

“I just really wanted this to be a whole collective of what he'd done and what he was,” Chewning told PEOPLE in 2021.

After discovering Morrison’s journals over a decade prior, Chewning — the executor of Morrison’s estate along with their brother Andrew, decided to publish them. “We didn't want [his journals] to just sit there in the vault,” she added.

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