The Death of Brian Jones: What Really Happened at Cotchford Farm?

Jul 3, 2024
6 min read

Black-and-white photo of Brian Jones performing onstage before a packed cheering crowd in a grand hall.

On the night of July 2, 1969, Brian Jones threw a small party at his Sussex estate. There was food, there was alcohol, there were hash cakes. At some point after 9 p.m., he was found at the bottom of his swimming pool. By the time an ambulance arrived, he was dead. He was 27 years old.

The coroner recorded a verdict of "death by misadventure" and cited drowning under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Most people accepted it, at least at the time. The man who'd founded and named the Rolling Stones, who'd played sitar on Paint It Black and dulcimer on Lady Jane, and who'd been fired from his own band less than a month earlier, had apparently drunk himself into a pool and drowned. Case closed. Except it wasn't, and still isn't.

Brian Jones, The Rolling Stones guitarist, iconic blonde bob haircut. — Brian Jones

The Man Who Built the Rolling Stones

Brian Jones was a middle-class kid from Cheltenham who moved to London in the early 1960s and did something nobody else had done: he assembled the Rolling Stones. He chose the members, named the band after a Muddy Waters song, booked their early gigs, and drove their initial direction. He also played a remarkable range of instruments across their early recordings, including sitar, dulcimer, harmonica, Mellotron, and recorder, often more convincingly than the musicians for whom those instruments were native.

By the mid-1960s, though, the band's creative centre had shifted decisively to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Jones grew increasingly marginalised, and his drug and alcohol use spiralled in proportion. He accumulated six children with six different women, starting when he was sixteen. He was convicted twice on drug charges, in 1967 and 1968. His liver, by the time of his death, weighed twice the normal size. On June 8, 1969, Jagger, Richards, and Charlie Watts visited him at Cotchford Farm and told him he was out. He'd been making plans for a new band, reaching out to fellow musicians including John Lennon and Mitch Mitchell. Whether those plans were serious or hopeful is hard to say. Twenty-four days later, he was dead.

Cotchford Farm and Frank Thorogood

Jones had bought Cotchford Farm in November 1968 for £35,000. The 11-acre East Sussex estate had previously been the home of A.A. Milne, the Winnie-the-Pooh author, and Jones was genuinely delighted by that connection. He'd had the property's Christopher Robin statue restored and placed prominently in the garden. He saw the farm as somewhere to start over.

What he got instead was Frank Thorogood. Thorogood was a builder brought in by Tom Keylock, the Rolling Stones' driver and fixer, to carry out renovation work on the property. Thorogood moved into the guest apartment with his girlfriend Janet Lawson, a nurse, and proceeded to do very little work while helping himself to Jones's pool, his hospitality, and his money. Jones grew increasingly frustrated with the pace of the job and the cost. On the day of his death, Jones sacked Thorogood and told him he wouldn't be paid for the work done until he'd vacated the property. The exact amount in dispute varies by source, but one account puts the total at around £18,000 already paid, with Thorogood pressing for a further £6,000.

That evening, Jones, Thorogood, Lawson, and Anna Wohlin, Jones's Swedish girlfriend, were all present at the farm. Accounts of what happened between dinner and the moment Jones was found in the pool differ in almost every detail, depending on who's telling the story and when.

Elegant stone house, backyard swimming pool, lush green garden, and small dog. — The pool in which Jones drowned

The Night of July 2nd

The most cautious version of events, the one that produced the misadventure verdict, goes like this: Jones had been drinking heavily and had also consumed drugs, including barbiturates and amphetamines. He went for a late swim. He drowned. Lawson discovered his body. Thorogood and Wohlin pulled him from the pool. Resuscitation attempts failed. He was declared dead at the hospital.

What complicates this are the specific things the autopsy found and didn't find. Jones's blood alcohol was significant but not exceptional for someone with his tolerance. His lungs contained fresh water, which matters because the pool at Cotchford was filled with chlorinated water, not fresh. The autopsy report also noted that the condition of the tissue and the heart showed signs consistent with a struggle. Biologists who later reviewed the death record for the 2019 documentary concluded that Jones appeared to have known he was being killed.

There's also the question of the drugs found on Thorogood. When the police searched the scene, drugs squad officer PC Mike Harvey found five capsules of Durophet, a restricted amphetamine known as Black Bombers, inside Thorogood's coat. Thorogood told Harvey he was keeping them safe so Jones wouldn't take too many. Harvey later said a caution was issued rather than prosecution, an unusual decision for the era, made on the instruction of a senior officer.

Janet Lawson, the nurse who found Jones in the pool, gave inconsistent accounts over the decades. In 2008, months before she died of cancer, she changed her story significantly, saying she believed Thorogood had killed Jones following the dispute over payment, and that a physical confrontation had taken place that evening. Wohlin, Jones's girlfriend, later said she believed Jones was alive when he was pulled from the pool, and that she could feel a pulse that the others on the scene dismissed.

The Deathbed Confession

Frank Thorogood died in November 1993. According to Tom Keylock, in the hours before his death Thorogood said: "It was me that did Brian. I just finally snapped." The confession was first reported in Terry Rawlings' 1994 book Who Killed Christopher Robin? and became the basis for the 2005 film Stoned, which dramatised the murder theory.

Keylock later denied the confession ever happened. Given that Keylock himself was a significant figure at the scene that night, having arrived at Cotchford shortly after Jones was found, and given that he was accused separately of burning documents at the farm and leaving with a number of Jones's possessions including his Rolls-Royce, his credibility on all sides of the story is questionable. Keylock died on July 2, 2009, forty years almost to the day after Jones.

Sussex Police reviewed the case in 1984 and again in 1994. In 2009, investigative journalist Scott Jones submitted new evidence including previously unseen police documents from the National Archives and testimony from individuals present at the farm that night. Sussex Police reviewed the case a third time and in 2010 declined to reopen it, stating there was no new evidence to suggest the coroner's original verdict was wrong.

What the Family Believes

Jones's daughter Barbara Marion, who only discovered who her father was in 2002, has been vocal about her belief that his death was not properly investigated. Around the 50th anniversary in 2019, she told Sky News: "I think he was murdered, and I think the police did not investigate it the way they should have." She appeared in the 2019 documentary Rolling Stone: Life and Death of Brian Jones, which supports the murder theory and draws on the biological evidence from the autopsy.

Jones's son John has also said he believes his father was killed. Their position is consistent with Anna Wohlin's account, with Janet Lawson's recanted testimony, and with the physical details that don't quite fit the official verdict. What it isn't consistent with is any prospect of prosecution.

Thorogood is dead. Keylock is dead. The witnesses who might have filled the gaps are dead. As with so many cases of this era in British rock history, the full story probably died with the people who knew it. Jones's death marked the beginning of what became known as the 27 Club, the grim coincidence that claimed Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison within two years, all at the same age.

The tiles from the Cotchford Farm pool were sold off when the estate was later renovated, at £100 each, the proceeds covering half the cost of the work. Jones's fans bought them all.