Roadie claims manager killed Hendrix

Jim Hendrix did not die accidentally but was actually killed by his manager Michael Jeffery, it has been claimed.

A new book by Hendrix's roadie James Wright states that Jeffery killed Hendrix for £1.2 million in life insurance in September 1970.

The author writes that Jeffery admitted to the crime in a drunken confession at his apartment in 1971, two years before his own death in a plane crash, the Daily Telegraph reports.

Wright said: "I can still hear that conversation, see the man I'd known for so much of my life, his face pale, hand clutching at his glass in sudden rage."

He quotes Jeffery as saying: "I was in London the night of Jimi's death and together with some old friends...we got a handful of pills and stuffed them into his mouth...then poured a few bottles of red wine deep into his windpipe.

"I had to do it. Jimi was worth much more to me dead than alive. That son of a bitch was going to leave me. If I lost him, I'd lose everything."

Hendrix died in a west London hotel at the age of 27 after he choked on his own vomit.