Chelsea Wildness - This Ain't no Holiday Inn: Down and Out at the Chelsea Hotel 1980-1995 - page 39

Also, Danneman testified that on the pillow next to Hendrix's head, there was a spot of
vomit. The ambulance drivers said it was not a spot but a flood. She said she rode in the
ambulance with Jimi—the ambulance driver said she never set foot inside. She told Eric
Burdon that Jimi was still alive in the ambulance, and said the hospital staff told her they
mightbeabletosavehim.ButhospitaladmissionsrecordsstatedthatHendrixwasdeadon
arrival. She said she viewed the body at the hospital morgue, but hospital employees said
the only person who showed up to identify the body was Gerry Stickells, the roadie.
Danneman'soverallreputationdidn'tmakeherthemostcrediblesource.Later,in1995,
another of Hendrix's lovers, Kathy Etchingham, sued her for alleging that Etchingham lied
about her sex life with Hendrix in her book The Inner World of Jimi Hendrix. Etchingham
won the suit. Nevertheless, Danneman persisted in calling Etchingham a liar. For this, she
was convicted of contempt of court. Two days later, Monika Danneman was found dead of
asphyxiation in her Mercedes, most likely a suicide.
Nonetheless, parts of Danneman's story about Hendrix that fateful night at the
Samarkand Hotel are probably true. Nothing in her testimony contradicts Devon Wilson's
claim that she accidentally overdosed Jimi Hendrix by slipping heroin into his coffee.
Hendrix's death shattered Wilson. According to Sharon Lawrence, “Devon felt un-
shakeable guiltaboutthevariouswaysshe'dlethimdown.” 31 Shelamented nonstopabout
how she'd taken advantage of him. And authors McDermott and Kramer both affirm the
sadfactthatatHendrix'sfuneral,Devon,“inafitofhysteria,triedtothrowherselfintothe
open grave.”
Exactly what happened at Kit Lambert's early evening party? Devon Wilson may very
well have spiked his coffee, as she claimed, so Hendrix would make love with her. Des-
pite her cheating heart, she loved him with a wild passion. Two nights before his death,
whenWilsonfoundHendrixandDannemansittingtogetheratRonnieScott'sclubinSoho,
Wilson literally kicked Danneman out of her chair.
Some questions: at Lambert's rock and roll party, would Hendrix have really been
drinking coffee? Was he trying to sober up? If Devon Wilson had made up the story,
wouldn'tslippingitintoanalcoholicdrinkbeamoreplausiblelie?Sometimesthetruth,or
at least its appearance, lies in quirky particulars. As Mark Twain said, a good lie depends
on the details.
And finally, if, two years later, someone pushed Devon Wilson off her balcony at the
Chelsea Hotel, who was it and why?
Monika Danneman went out of her way to insist she had no idea Jimi was dead early
that morning. Did it really take three hours to realize it? A good guess is that after she
phoned Burdon and Stickells around 8:00 a.m., she commenced to freak out, flush drugs
down the toilet and clean the apartment of incriminating evidence before the cops ar-