LONDON — British police said Monday they will review the death of Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones, whose 1969 drowning was ruled an accident but sparked decades of speculation that he was murdered.
Sussex police said they will examine hundreds of new documents received from an investigative journalist relating to Jones’ death. Police did not give further details.
Brian Jones, one of the founding members of the Rolling Stones, reportedly came up with the band’s name, taking it from a Muddy Waters song title. He died July 2, 1969, at age 27, his body found in the swimming pool at his 11-acre Sussex estate, just a month after he left the band.
A coroner said Jones drowned while under the influence of alcohol and drugs, but the ruling did not quiet speculation that Jones’ death was not an accident.
Two 1994 books claimed that Jones was murdered by a London builder who had been hired to help renovate Jones’ home: “Paint it Black: The Murder of Brian Jones,” by Geoffrey Guiliano and “Who Killed Christopher Robin?” by Terry Rawlings.
Both claimed that builder Frank Thorogood confessed on his deathbed in November 1993 to killing Jones.
“It was me that did Brian. I just finally snapped,” Thorogood reportedly said to Stones road manager Tom Keylock, Rawlings’ book quoted Keylock as saying.
It was not clear why British police did not reopen an investigation after the books were published.
Scott Jones interviewed Janet Lawson, the person who discovered the guitarist’s body, shortly before she died last year. Lawson claimed that Keylock, her boyfriend, had asked her to visit Brian Jones as he was worried about tensions between Jones and Thorogood.
She told the reporter that she saw Jones and Thorogood in the pool, and later saw Thorogood come into the house, shaking badly.
She told Scott Jones her original police statement did not mention any tensions between Jones and Thorogood.
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