Doctor: 'Hendrix murder theory is plausible'

Rex Features

The doctor who attempted to revive Jimi Hendrix on the night that he died has suggested that it is "plausible" that the guitar legend was murdered.

Rumours about the icon's death emerged last month, after former roadie James Wright claimed that Hendrix's manager Michael Jeffery had admitted killing him in order to claim a £1.2 million life insurance policy.

Doctor John Bannister, who was the on-call registrar at the hospital where Hendrix passed away, has now stated that medical evidence is consistent with the allegation that Jeffery hired a gang to force sleeping pills and wine down the star's throat.

Speaking to The Times, he said: "The amount of wine that was over him was just extraordinary. Not only was it saturated right through his hair and shirt but his lungs and stomach were absolutely full of wine.

"We kept sucking him out and it kept surging and surging. He had already vomited up masses of red wine and I would have thought there was half a bottle of wine in his hair. He had really drowned in a massive amount of red wine."

Hendrix's cause of death was recorded as choking on his own vomit following a drugs overdose, but Wright has supposed that Jeffery confessed to masterminding the alleged murder before his own death in a plane collision.

Hendrix was just 27-years-old when he died in West London. His girlfriend Monika Dannerman, who was with him on the night, took her own life in 1996 amid reports that she knew more about his death than she let on.