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James Brown died in 2006, but he has yet to rest in peace. His
children and advisors spent years fighting over his colossal
fortune. A daughter claimed his crypt was empty. A court ruled that
his fourth wife was not really his wife.
And more than a dozen people who knew the Godfather of Soul have
called for an autopsy or criminal investigation of his death.
The story keeps getting stranger. In recent weeks, the Fulton County
District Attorney’s Office in Atlanta said it found potential
evidence related to Brown that had somehow been missing for more
than a year.
And a lawyer for the woman who turned in the evidence says he’s
asked the FBI to look into the matter.
The controversy with the DA’s office began in 2020, when a former
associate of Brown named Jacque Hollander submitted a green plastic
bin full of potential evidence — including a black stiletto shoe and
a handwritten note — and said it could help prove that Brown had
been murdered.
Paul Howard, then the district attorney, said his investigators
would speak with half a dozen potential witnesses named by Hollander
and decide what to do from there. But in internal case documents
obtained by CNN via the Georgia Open Records Act, there is no
indication those interviews ever happened.
Howard lost an election later that year to challenger Fani Willis,
who closed the Brown inquiry in 2021 without taking action. When
Hollander asked the DA’s office to return the green plastic bin and
the items therein, she got a mysterious response.
“We have shipped the items requested,” assistant chief of evidence
William Chris Clark wrote to her.
But instead of the green plastic bin, officials sent her a cardboard
box that contained mostly old newspaper clippings — as well as two
old mobile phones that she did not remember seeing before. Despite
repeated inquiries from both Hollander and CNN, no one would explain
what had happened to the green bin and the potential evidence.
Early this year, Hollander sued the DA’s office, seeking answers
about the missing items. When the DA failed to respond to the
lawsuit, Hollander filed a motion for default judgment. In May,
attorneys finally responded to that motion, blaming “excusable
neglect.”
The motion and the lawsuit are still pending — Hollander’s attorney
says the DA’s office has yet to turn over all the documents he’s
seeking under the Georgia Open Records Act — but in September, the
DA’s office finally shipped the green plastic bin and the items in
evidence bags back to Hollander’s attorney.
No one explained where the items had been for the previous 18
months, or how they were found. A spokesman for the DA has not
returned numerous inquiries for multiple stories regarding James
Brown dating back more than two years.
A CNN reporter listened via speakerphone on the day Hollander and
her attorney, Michael Iasparro, opened the green plastic bin and
catalogued the items. They said documentation in the bin made it
appear the bin had remained sealed since February 12, 2020, the day
Hollander turned it over.
“You can tell that no one ever, ever even looked at this evidence,” Hollander said.
While the DA’s office has not publicly explained why the inquiry was
closed without action, Assistant DA Michael Sprinkel wrote in an
internal email in 2021 that after he’d spoken with Jacque Hollander
for “probably 10+ hours,” he didn’t have “reasonable suspicion that
a crime occurred.”
Some people think Brown was murdered. But the full truth surrounding
his death remains unknown
Iasparro, Hollander’s attorney, worked closely with the FBI during
his six years as a federal prosecutor. After the green plastic bin
turned up again, he requested an appointment with the FBI regarding
Brown’s death and the conduct of the DA’s office.
Iasparro said he met with a supervisory FBI agent October 10 at the
Rockford, Illinois, office of Hinshaw & Culbertson, where he is a
partner. He said he told the agent what happened and handed over a
stack of documents related to Hollander’s lawsuit against the
district attorney.
“That referral’s been made,” Iasparro said. “We’ll see what they do with it.”
A CNN reporter asked the FBI about the meeting and what would happen
next.
“Unfortunately,” Chicago-based Special Agent and Public Affairs
Officer Siobhan Johnson replied in an email, “Department of Justice
policy prevents the FBI from commenting on the existence, non-
existence, or nature of any investigation that may be occurring.”
Those who have asked for more answers regarding Brown’s death
include his son Daryl and Brown’s manager, Frank Copsidas, who told
CNN in a 2022 interview that Brown “was murdered” and that “somebody wanted him dead.”
But law enforcement authorities have yet to conduct a full
investigation, and the DA’s office has never publicly explained why
it ended its limited inquiry in 2021 without seeking an autopsy.
Sandy Monroe, a county attorney representing the DA’s office in the
lawsuit, spoke to CNN briefly by phone in early October.
“I can’t discuss the case with you,” she said.
She was asked how the potential evidence had been lost and how it
was eventually found.
“I am not at liberty to tell you that,” she said.
All these years after Brown’s death, the full truth remains unknown.
In a 2017 interview with CNN, Marvin Crawford, the doctor who signed
Brown’s death certificate, said he wanted an autopsy to find out how
Brown really died. That autopsy has not been done.
In a 2018 interview, Brown’s daughter Deanna declined to confirm or
deny whether Brown’s body was in the crypt.
In 2020, Brown’s friend Andre White died, taking his secrets to his
grave — including the whereabouts of what he claimed was a vial of
blood that might have shed light on what killed Brown.
Almost seven years after she first called CNN to report her
suspicions, Jacque Hollander’s conclusions remain the same:
“What happened to James Brown is, he was murdered for money.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/missing-evidence-has-turned- up-in-the-james-brown-case-a-lawyer-is-asking-the-fbi-to- investigate/ar-AA1iPgQn
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