Peggy Caserta, Former Lover of Janis Joplin, Dies at 84

Caserta wrote two memoirs about her time with the rocker, including 1973's 'Going Down with Janis' and 2018's 'I Ran into Some Trouble'

Peggy Caserta, a former lover of Janis Joplin, has died. She was 84.

Nancy Cleary, her friend and the publisher at Wyatt-MacKenzie, which released her 2018 memoir I Ran Into Some Trouble, confirmed to Deadline that Caserta died on Thursday, Nov. 21, of "natural causes at her cabin on the Tillamook River on the Oregon Coast."

Born on Sept. 12, 1940 outside of New Orleans, Caserta moved around from Louisiana to Mississippi, Alabama to Georgia and Texas. By the mid-1960s, Caserta, who was living openly as a lesbian in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury community and opened Mnasidika, one of the nation's first hippie clothing shops. During that time, she dressed the Grateful Dead and met Joplin, who was her neighbor.

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In 1973, Caserta published her memoir Going Down with Janis, which chronicled her friendship and romance with the "Me and Bobby McGee" musician. In the years since its publication, Caserta claimed the memoir was penned by her ghostwriter on the book, Dan Knapp. "I didn’t write that trash," she told Vulture in 2018. "I sold out for drug money, and I’ve lived in the shadow of it for 40-some-odd years."

She also alleged the book fueled her drug habit. "I’m not going to make excuses for using, because a drug addict really needs no excuse, but every time that I thought I could get clean or tried to get clean, I would think about that book, and all I’d want to do is numb out again," Caserta told the publication.

In 2018, Caserta released another memoir, I Ran Into Some Trouble, which alleged that the "Cry Baby" singer didn't die from a drug overdose in 1970. Instead, the author claimed she tripped, broke her nose and died of asphyxiation from blood, per Rolling Stone.

“I saw her foot sticking out at the end of the bed,” Caserta told the outlet. “She was lying with cigarettes in one hand and change in the other. For years it bothered me. How could she have overdosed and then walked out to the lobby and walked back. … I let it go for years, but I always thought, ‘Something is wrong here.’”

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Caserta returned home to the New Orleans area from California in 2005 when her mother was showing signs of dementia. For the next 12 years, she was her caregiver.

Caserta, whose parents Sam and Novelle died before her, leaves no survivors.