special
The James Brown Mystery
A strange phone call reveals a question from the grave – was The Godfather of Soul murdered? Almost 40 years ago, a songwriter found herself in musician James Brown’s inner circle. The relationship would nearly destroy her career. Decades later, she’s trying to solve the mystery of James Brown's death…and her own life. When she makes a call to CNN reporter Thomas Lake, the two stumble into a world of secrets, intimidation, and suspected foul play.
The Duffel Bag
The James Brown Mystery
Nov 25, 2022
Jacque Hollander suspects a backup singer for James Brown is involved in his death death. The singer vehemently denies this and says Jacque misunderstood a story she heard. Brown’s lawyer asks Jacque to pick up a duffel bag from a storage unit that contains things from James Brown’s final days. A man named Ghost asks if the duffel bag contains poison used to kill James Brown. Brown’s lawyer initially tells Jacque to throw the bag into a lake before telling her to contact authorities. Jacque makes an appointment to bring the duffel bag to a prosecutor.
Episode Transcript
Thomas Lake
00:00:01
Previously on the James Brown Mystery: the detective investigating Adrienne Brown's death gets a tip from an informant.
Rachel
00:00:09
I know he murdered James Brown's wife. I think it was part of the plan to make it look like an overdose. This was premeditated murder.
Thomas Lake, Recording
00:00:18
Did she ever talk with you about being involved with the doctor?
Lisa Gingrich, Recording
00:00:25
Yes.
Thomas Lake, Recording
00:00:26
What can you tell me about that?
Lisa Gingrich, Recording
00:00:28
He shot her with heroin.
Thomas Lake
00:00:30
And we actually go and visit this doctor and ask if he killed Adrienne. But that doesn't stop Jacque Hollander from getting threatening phone calls. It seems that someone wants her to keep quiet about James Brown's death.
911 Operator, Recording
00:00:43
Police Department.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:00:43
I've had two calls tonight, and they threatened my life.
Thomas Lake
00:00:57
In the five years I've known Jacque Hollander, there's this one question I've asked her countless times. She says Many other people have asked her this question, too. It goes something like this: If James Brown ruined your life, why do you care so much about proving he was murdered? Jacque has her reasons. They'll take a while to explain. First, you should know she sued Brown for rape in 2005, almost 17 years after that fateful ride into the woods of South Carolina. She wanted to face him in a public courtroom.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:01:30
I wanted to say to him, you took my soul. You took my trust. You took my ability to look at people and see them in a good light. You turned the beauty of life into a nightmare.
Thomas Lake, Recording
00:01:44
And how did you imagine that might go?
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:01:47
I was hoping he would say he was sorry.
Thomas Lake
00:01:55
In 2005, a federal judge dismissed Jacque's lawsuit because the statute of limitations had expired. She had filed the suit 15 years too late. But Jacque wouldn't give up. She argued that since Brown had told her to keep quiet or she would be killed, she deserved more time to file the suit. Jacque kept appealing, kept losing, kept refusing to give up. She was still pressing her case on Christmas Eve 2006, when James Brown was in the hospital. There was a chance her lawsuit against him would be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:02:27
I had this just eerie, eerie feeling that something was coming down the chute. I couldn't tell you what it was, but I felt like something was.
Thomas Lake
00:02:37
And then something did happen.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:02:39
About 3:00 in the morning, the phone rang and it was my lawyer. And he said, I have just received a phone call. James Brown is dead. And I passed out.
Thomas Lake
00:02:55
Jacque was in shock. She was finally ready to confront Brown, and now he was gone. Jacque tried to pull it together to think through the news of Brown's death, and the more she thought about it, the less she believed the official story. She had no evidence of foul play, just a vague sense that the story didn't add up. A hunch that someone had done something to Brown. And did this make Jacque happy? Did she celebrate the demise of the man who caused her so much pain? No, Jacque says, she was angry.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:03:26
They took my chance to face him in court from me. I wanted him to sit up there and sweat and apologize to me.
Thomas Lake
00:03:37
In Jacque's view, whoever killed Brown also took something valuable from her, a chance to hold Brown accountable in court. That was one reason she wouldn't let it go. One reason she kept digging for some deeper truth, some alternate explanation for his death. Yes, Brown was old and sick, and he could have died of natural causes. It's also possible he died of an accidental overdose after willingly taking illegal drugs in the hospital. But about ten years after Brown died, Jacque says she found a more disturbing explanation. Jacque says she stumbled upon some compelling evidence that Brown was murdered. And not only that, she says, someone actually confessed.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:04:19
And I mean, this was all explained to me in vivid detail, I wasphysically sick to my stomach and I wanted to get away from her.
Thomas Lake
00:04:28
From CNN, this is the James Brown Mystery. I'm your host, Thomas Lake. This is episode six, The Duffle Bag.
James Brown, Singing
00:04:38
If I ruled the world every day would be the first day of spring...
Thomas Lake
00:04:44
In 1999, seven years before he died, James Brown played a show at the House of Blues in Las Vegas. Brown and his sidemen looked sharp in royal blue and his backup singers six women known as the Bittersweets wore black evening gowns. About halfway through the set, Brown invited one of the Bittersweets to center stage. The same woman Jacque would later come to suspect of being involved in James Brown's death.
James Brown, Recording
00:05:14
You're the first to see this. Candice? Come on out pretty lady. Uh-huh.
Thomas Lake
00:05:16
Brown introduces this blonde woman, Candice Hurst, to the Vegas crowd. On stage that night, Candice sways with the music and takes over the microphone, savoring her rare moment in the spotlight.
Candice, Singing
00:05:30
You had plenty money in 1922.
Thomas Lake
00:05:35
She toured and sang with James Brown for most of his final decade.
Candice Hurst, Recording
00:05:39
It was incredible touring the world, spreading positive message through music, meeting presidents, Princess Anne, you know, seeing the world. Getting to do something that you love. It was the best experience of my life, honestly.
Thomas Lake
00:05:54
Candice worked as James Brown's hairdresser to keeping that famous pompadour looking just right. Near the end of Brown's life, she says, they were also lovers.
Candice Hurst, Recording
00:06:04
It took seven years for our relationship to evolve in that he was my best friend and we got along in every other area and we just took it to the next level and he was a wonderful man. We had a blast together. We honestly did. We had so much fun.
Thomas Lake
00:06:17
Candice Hurst says she was nowhere near the hospital the night Brown died. Her daughter told me the same thing. But Jacque Hollander is convinced that Candice did play a role in Brown's death. Here's why. About a decade after Brown's death, Candice and Jacque met in Augusta, Georgia. They both say they were introduced by Buddy Dallas, James Brown's lawyer. This meeting would change both women's lives. According to Jacque, she and Candice were at a mexican restaurant in early 2016 and they started talking about James Brown.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:06:50
She said, I have something to tell you. And she started crying. And she said, I think I killed him.
Thomas Lake
00:06:59
Jacque struggled to understand. Here they were in a crowded restaurant, and she was giving Jacque a new account of James Brown's final moments. Jacque knew that Brown's right hand man, Charles Bobbit, was with Brown at the hospital when he died. And Bobbit said he was the only other person there in Brown's final moments. But now, according to Jacque, Candice was saying she'd been there, too. Then Jacque says, Candice added another shocking detail. For Jacque, it was confirmation of something she'd long suspected, that James Brown did not die of natural causes.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:07:33
She was in the hospital room with him, with Charles Bobbit, and that the drugs were on a tray and the, Brown freaked or something and the tray dropped and it hit her shoes and it went all over her clothes and he wouldn't die fast enough. And Bobbit came in, there was a glass of water, and he put these herbs in the water and they gave it to Brown to help him pass over because he wouldn't die quick enough.
Thomas Lake
00:08:04
I never got a chance to interview Charles Bobbit about this allegation. He died in 2017. Some people say he was loyal to Brown, while others have questioned his motives. Anyway, they're at the Mexican restaurant, Jacque was astounded by what Candice Hurst had just told her about James Brown's death. She wasn't sure why Candice was telling her this stuff. If Candice knew about that night in the woods in 1988, it's possible she thought Jacque would be sympathetic or even grateful. Also, Jacque says that at some point in the conversation, Candice seemed to realize that other people in the restaurant might overhear them. And Jacque thinks that's why Candice abruptly changed her story. She says Candice told her the anecdote she'd just relayed to Jacque that she and Charles Bobbit had been in Brown's hospital room and that Brown died after ingesting one or more toxic substances, this was only a vision she'd had. It didn't actually happen. Candice wasn't there in the hospital room the night James Brown died. But to Jacque, it didn't sound like a vision. It sounded real.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:09:07
I mean, it was a confession. I'm not going to sit here and say it sounded like it. It was a freakin confession that she had killed James Brown.
Thomas Lake
00:09:18
When Candice Hurst sat down with me for an interview. One thing that struck me was how much Candice and Jacque agreed on when I compared their accounts of their various interactions in 2016, the details were mostly the same. How they met, what they talked about, the unusual sequence of events that led Jacque to acquire what she believed to be evidence of criminal activity related to James Brown's death. But Candice said Jacque was wrong about the most important thing. Candice told me she had nothing to do with James Brown's death.
Candice Hurst, Recording
00:09:50
I did not kill James Brown. I wanted the best for him. I loved him. I wouldn't hurt a hair on his head.
Thomas Lake
00:09:57
Candice said she did tell Jacque about a vision she had. A vision about James Brown being poisoned. She even suspected foul play in Brown's death. But Candice told me she never confessed to Jacque that she murdered James Brown. Despite what Jacque says, Candice told her in the Mexican restaurant, Candice said she never even visited Brown in the hospital.
Candice Hurst, Recording
00:10:17
I love Jacque D. I think she's a wonderful person. She helps children, you know, anyone that helps children cannot be a bad person, you know? So just a little miscommunication, I talk really fast, too, and very passionate at different times. And so maybe things could be a little misconstrued.
Thomas Lake
00:10:35
So I asked Jacque about this again.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:10:38
You don't misunderstand when someone is confessing a murder to you. You don't misunderstand when someone is breaking down, trembling and crying over it.
Thomas Lake
00:10:53
In the weeks after she first met Candice in early 2016, Jacque would find more reasons to suspect that Candice was involved in James Brown's death. Soon after the meeting at the Mexican restaurant, Jacque went to see Buddy Dallas, James Brown's lawyer. He's the one who connected Jacque and Brown in the eighties. They drifted apart in the nineties, but after Brown's death, they reconnected. Buddy was kind to Jacque. He texted her Bible verses and even paid for her thyroid medicine when she ran out of money. Now, Jacque needed to talk to Buddy about Candice.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:11:30
I went to him and I said, this woman just confessed to killing your client. And he just sat there staring at me.
Thomas Lake, Recording
00:11:37
He just looked at you?
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:11:39
He didn't make any face at all. He just stared at me. And I stared at him.
Thomas Lake
00:11:45
We'll get back to the strange story of Jacque and Candice in a moment. But first, we need to take a slight detour into the background of Buddy Dallas, the lawyer who introduced Jacque and Candice, and later orchestrated the sequence of events that led Jacque to believe she had evidence that James Brown was murdered. By many accounts, Buddy Dallas is a brilliant man, and when I looked into his background, I learned that more than 30 people had accused him of unethical behavior in business ventures related and unrelated to James Brown. Most of these allegations against Buddy have something to do with lying, cheating or stealing. Although he denied any wrongdoing and he's never been criminally charged or found civilly liable in the cases I've reviewed. Buddy he says he served Brown faithfully for 22 years. But after Brown's death, Buddy was fighting some of Brown's children for control of an estate worth nearly $100 million. They were suspicious of a strange provision in Brown's will. The three trustees Brown appointed to run his estate were authorized to spend up to half the estate's gross income on management. Even a judge noted this was an unusual arrangement. One of those appointed trustees was, you guessed it, Buddy Dallas. All through the battle over Brown's estate. But he said he was just honoring James Brown's wishes. Some colleagues and friends told me Buddy was good to Brown and all three trustees said they'd done nothing wrong. But Brown's daughter, Deanna, told me she had her doubts about the men in charge of her father's estate.
Deanna Brown Thomas, Recording
00:13:18
I love my father. I wish he would have organized with some different people, trustworthy people, people who wouldn't steal from his hard work.
Thomas Lake, Recording
00:13:26
And do you believe any of them were working in your father's interest? Were, were, were honest men? None of them? All of them were cheating or stealing from him in some way?
Deanna Brown Thomas, Recording
00:13:38
Yes, sir.
Thomas Lake
00:13:38
I talked to Buddy Dallas in 2020. He wouldn't let me record our phone call, and I didn't get a chance to ask him about everything. But on that call, Buddy did share a few thoughts about Jacque. He said she's an attention seeker who can't be trusted. He told me if Jacque says the house is on fire, that probably means there's a candle burning in the dining room. That didn't square with my experience over the years. As strange as Jacque's stories often sounded, at first, I'd found corroboration for them again and again. And I verified the odd sequence of events I'm about to relate to you. It involves Jacque, Buddy Dallas, Candice Hurst, and something Candice called the James Brown duffel bag. It's the story of how Jacque acquired what she believes is evidence of James Brown's murder. The story is so bizarre that I'm not sure anyone would believe it unless there was proof. Well, not long after I first met Jacque, she reluctantly let me do something no one else has ever let me do before or since: download all the text messages from her iPhone.
Thomas Lake, Recording
00:14:41
I'll show you how the program works.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:14:43
It says taking everything: my messages, everything. My call log, my voicemail, my contacts. Oh, my gosh.
Thomas Lake
00:14:54
Jacque's text messages run from 2015 to 2017 and add up to more than 1300 pages. Many of them are conversations with Buddy Dallas. I know this because the messages are to and from the same phone number on which I've spoken to Buddy many times. And these messages confirm Jacque's story about what happened after her meeting at the Mexican restaurant with Candice Hurst. In one exchange, Buddy forwarded Jacque an intriguing text message from Candice. In it, Candice asked Buddy for help. She needed to retrieve some important items from a storage unit. The rent on the storage unit was overdue, and the items inside were about to be auctioned off if the bill wasn't paid. These items had something to do with James Brown. Candice wrote, It will not be good if they do this Buddy with the first thing is a James Brown duffle bag with a lot of stuff, including the dope he was doing the last week of his life in there. When I sat down with Candice, I asked her about this text message.
Candice Hurst, Recording
00:15:55
There was a duffel bag when he passed away and it was what I was wearing the last week of his life.
Thomas Lake
00:16:01
Candice said the duffel bag in her storage unit was from the time she spent with James Brown at his house in South Carolina in late 2006, right before he died. She said the bag contained undergarments and shoes that had cocaine and marijuana residue on them.
Candice Hurst, Recording
00:16:15
And the shoes on the bottom of the shoes had cocaine from putting in the marijuana, little crack rocks.
Thomas Lake
00:16:23
Candice told me she and Brown used these drugs at his house in the final month of his life.
Candice Hurst, Recording
00:16:28
What he would do was- or I would do it, he'd take a cigarette and then just unroll it like that and the tobacco would go in the trash can, I'd have it right there and then load up the cigarette with marijuana and some little crack rocks would be in there and then twist the end, so when he would do it, some would fall on the floor. I mean, because there'd stuff all over the floor every morning. Mr. Washington had to come in there and sweep, and it would be tobacco and little rocks.
Thomas Lake
00:16:52
Besides the underwear and shoes. The duffel bag also contained James Brown's combs and hair rollers.
Candice Hurst, Recording
00:16:57
And I kept all of this in this bag. I mean, it was my bag I took over to the house every night. I kept everything, his DNA, everything to prove my innocence. For years, the rumors have been flying around that he was murdered. But I was accused of it because I was with them the last week. So this would prove my innocence if he was. But see, I was smoking with him and I'm alive. So the dope didn't kill him. I didn't kill him.
Thomas Lake
00:17:23
Candice was in a jam. She had these items in a duffle bag that she thought could prove her innocence. But she also knew they could be incriminating and she didn't want to lose control of them. If the managers of the storage facility decided to auction them off. So Candice asked Buddy Dallas for help. And the text messages make it clear that not only did Buddy Dallas help Candice, he got Jacque involved, too, but he texted Jacque, Find out when they are going to sell the stuff. Buy it cheap. Why would Buddy Dallas and Jacque Hollander on an errand like this? At the time they were friends and he obviously trusted her. For her part, Jacque was curious about what she'd find in the storage unit. So the next morning, Jacque picked up Candice and they drove to the storage unit. Around this time, Jacque texted Buddy that Candice was afraid she'd be arrested for what they'd find there, but he didn't reply to that message or the next one. Jacque wrote about Candice. The message said she must have done something really wrong to Brown. She is panicking.
Candice Hurst, Recording
00:18:32
Yes, I was panicking because this whole murder conspiracy and like I said, I didn't want to look guilty like I had done anything and this bag might have made it look like- because I was the last one with him that last week.
Thomas Lake
00:18:47
When Candice says murder conspiracy, she's referring to allegations from others that she says are false. She and Jacquie arrived at the storage unit, and Jacque paid the overdue rent. They retrieved two plastic storage bins of Candice's things.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:19:01
And I put them in the back of my Jeep, and I said, Let's get out of here. I dropped her off, but before I could drop her off, she's trying to go in the storage bin. And she goes, No, I need to check something. And I said, Absolutely not. It's not your property anymore. We just bought it. So get your hands out of our property. And I was vicious. I mean, I was not playing with her.
Thomas Lake
00:19:25
Jacque had done what Buddy Dallas asked her to do. With financial help from Buddy, she had basically bought the items in Candice's storage unit. Jacque says she imagined bringing Buddy the James Brown duffel bag and the other items. She thought she and Buddy would go through all the stuff together and then, if necessary, called the police with some new information about the death of James Brown. But that's not what happened. When Jacque called and said she would bring him the items they'd just paid for.,She was astounded by Buddy's response.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:19:58
And he is like, Don't you f*** come into this county, don't even come close to here with that evidence. And I'm thinking, what the hell am I going to do? And I called him back. I said, Buddy, hey, I need to drop this stuff off. It's all in my car. It's taking up the whole car. And he said, I want you to go dump it at a dump site or go dump it in the lake.
Thomas Lake
00:20:35
Did Buddy Dallas really ask Jacque Hollander to throw the James Brown duffel bag into a lake? On the phone about four years later, I asked Buddy about this. He wouldn't give me permission to record. But he confirmed what Jacque said. He told her to get rid of the stuff she got from Candice's storage unit. When I asked if he was curious about what was in the bag, he said, Mr. Brown is deceased. Mr. Brown is buried. The medical authorities took no action, and thus when it came to Candice's stuff, he said, I didn't even want to see it, and I damn sure didn't want to have anything to do with it. I believe, Buddy Dallas, when he says this, it helps explain why he sent Jacque on a mission he could theoretically have run himself. Jacque thinks Buddy didn't want to touch anything that might have a link to James Brown's death. She's convinced he wanted to keep his hands clean and let Jacque deal with it. But Jacque was taken aback by Buddy's command to dispose of what she believed to be evidence. And now she wasn't sure she could trust Buddy.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:21:39
That was when I kind of was like, Something's wrong here. And I got very, very nervous.
Thomas Lake
00:21:48
The day of the storage unit run had been a long one. After Jacque dropped off Candice. She drove back to her motor home outside Augusta. As she weighed her options, she brought the plastic bins from Candice's storage unit into her motor home for safekeeping. What was in there? Given the story Candice had told her, Jacque wondered if some of it was toxic. This suspicion grew after she got a text message that night from the man she calls Ghost. You might remember this name from an earlier episode. Ghost, a.k.a. Christian Saint John or Van Saint John is the guy who called me five times on a no caller ID number late one night in 2017.
Ghost, Recording
00:22:29
Hi, Tom. This Van Saint John, friend of Buddy Dallas. I have some information for you.
Thomas Lake
00:22:36
Ghost first reached out to Jacque after James Brown died. He originally told her he was a journalist, interested in telling her story as it related to the Godfather of Soul. And over time, Ghost won Jacque's trust. They texted regularly about things related to James Brown. And on the day Jacque got Candice's items from the storage unit, she talked to Ghost to let him know she'd found the James Brown duffel bag. On the phone, Ghost had a lot of questions. She says the longer they talked, the more he seemed to be panicking about what Jacque had found and what she might do with it. It was clear to Jacque that he wanted it kept secret. And in this conversation, Jacque says Ghost accidentally gave her useful information in a text to Jacque that I've seen. Ghost asked if the duffel bag from Candice's storage unit contained, quote, the lace poisoning that she used to poison him. I asked Jacque if she knew what ghost meant by that.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:23:35
She had already told me that that the dope had been laced ten times higher and that they had laced it.
Thomas Lake, Recording
00:23:41
Your answer to that question is yes. Candice did tell you-
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:23:46
Yes, she did.
Thomas Lake, Recording
00:23:47
That the bag contained lace poisoning that she used to poison him?
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:23:50
Yes.
Thomas Lake
00:23:52
To clarify here. Candice told me she thought there were traces of marijuana and cocaine in the James Brown duffel bag, the one she'd been keeping in storage. But Jacque says Candice told her this was no ordinary cocaine. It was ten times more potent than usual or laced with a chemical that made it lethally poisonous. That's the lace poisoning that Ghost mentions in his text to Jacque. So I asked Candice about this.
Thomas Lake, Recording
00:24:19
Jacque Hollander tells me there's been several conversations you had with her and that this drug, crack cocaine, sometimes called Cocoa Puffs, that the Cocoa Puffs were laced this week. And the dealer said to you, this time they're ten times stronger than usual, they're poison.
Candice Hurst, Recording
00:24:40
No, that's incorrect. That's not. She said- that she misunderstood, no.
Thomas Lake
00:24:45
Once again, Candice and Jacque disagree. Candice recalled the conversation Jacque is talking about, but said Jacque misinterpreted her words. She told me something pretty amazing that a drug dealer told her Brown was smoking too much crack cocaine. Candice said she told the dealer.
Candice Hurst, Recording
00:25:03
And I said, Well, lighten it up then. Meaning, if he's smoking that much, then make it not as potent, is what that meant. So Jacque might have just misunderstood what I meant by that.
Thomas Lake
00:25:14
In a later interview, I asked Candice about the text message Ghost sent Jacque.
Thomas Lake, Recording
00:25:19
On the day Jacque Hollander recovered your black duffle bag from your storage unit. A man known as Christian Saint John texted this message to her, quote, Did Candice tell you the contents in the bag is the lace poisoning that she used to poison him? What's the poisoning? Did you James Brown?
Candice Hurst, Recording
00:25:44
No, I was hoping you could tell me you hadn't gotten anywhere. You just stopped at me and didn't even go look. You need to go ask some of the other people that hooked me up with you and all these other people that are talking down about me, you know, ask them some questions.
Thomas Lake
00:26:00
So that's how Candice responded to my question about the text message from Ghost. Meanwhile, as Jacque mulled over what to do with the storage bins sitting in her motorhome, she kept getting more text messages from Ghost. He seemed to be getting more and more agitated. He told her in one message that she could be arrested for James Brown's death. He wanted to answer this question. Did Buddy get the bag with the chemicals that were used to lace JB's Cocoa Puffs? Jacque says Ghost and Buddy Dallas were making it clear they did not want her to go public with what she knew.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:26:35
Buddy was basically crying on the phone to me and he goes, I am begging you not to do this, not to let it get out.
Thomas Lake
00:26:42
When I asked Buddy Dallas about this, he said these were baseless comments and called Jacque untrustworthy and totally unreliable. Anyway, Jacque says she agreed to stay quiet, but she didn't get rid of Candice's stuff. She kept the bins hidden in a compartment under her motorhome and covered them up with blankets. And as Jacque considered her next move, she thought about James Brown and what, if anything, she owed the man.
Thomas Lake
00:27:12
Nine years earlier when she first suspected he'd been killed, she was angry that someone had taken away her chance to confront him in court. Now, she thought of another reason to keep pushing for answers about his death and to speak out no matter the cost.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:27:27
I felt compassion. I felt there's a right and a wrong. Am I going to take the wrong road and cover up James Brown's death just because he violently hurt me? Am I going to go to the right and walk the right road and get justice for the man? Which turn am I going to take?
Thomas Lake
00:27:55
Jacque didn't throw the stuff away and she didn't keep quiet. She drove her motor home out of Georgia, taking the James Brown duffel bag and the rest of Candice's stuff with her. Later, when she was in Illinois, she says Buddy told her once again to throw the stuff away. Jacque refused, and eventually he told her to talk to his lawyer, which Jacque did. She says that after she told Buddy's lawyer she had evidence relating to James Brown's death, the lawyer told Jacque she should turn the items over to law enforcement. Jacque went back to Buddy, who agreed with the lawyer, even though this was, in Buddy's words, a non prosecutable case. Jacque says that ever since the eighties, when she said James Brown raped her Buddy Dallas had been telling her she had a credibility problem. And for many years, he was right. When Jacque called the Atlanta Police Department to say she had information on James Brown's death, she says no one would listen to her.
Thomas Lake
00:28:52
A few months after Jacque tried and failed to get the police interested, she called me for the first time. She said James Brown had been murdered and there was some evidence she wanted to show me. It took me a while to understand her story, but once it started to make sense, once I realized that Jacque had items in a black duffel bag that might be covered in drug residue and might be relevant to James Brown's death, I talked to my bosses about it and we agreed whether or not the police were investigating, there was nothing to prevent CNN from paying a lab to conduct some independent forensic tests.
Thomas Lake
00:29:40
About a year after Jacque's first call to me, she drives back to Georgia, bringing the James Brown duffel bag with her. Just as Candice Hurst said, there's a pair of shoes in the duffel bag, black stilettos with what appears to be drug residue on the soles. Candice already told me that if drug residue were found, it would be from her time using marijuana and crack cocaine with James Brown at his house. Jacque thinks the residue will confirm a different story that Candice Hurst went to the hospital and played a role in giving Brown a fatal drug overdose. Jacque gives me one of Candice's black stiletto shoes for chemical testing. The results come back a month later. The shoe tests positive for cocaine and marijuana, just as Candice predicted. But there's a surprise. Another drug shows up too. The shoe, shows traces of Diltiazem, a prescription drug taken for high blood pressure and chest pain. I ask Candice Hurst how Diltiazem got on her shoe.
Candice Hurst, Recording
00:30:44
I have no idea. Well, that's impossible for it to be on the bottom of my shoe. I wasn't at the hospital. Those shoes were worn in his bedroom. I'm sure there's video footage of it. Of him and I in his bedroom. He had security.
Thomas Lake
00:30:59
I wonder about this. If Candice wasn't in Brown's hospital room, did she step on a Diltiazem pill in his bedroom at home? When I look up Diltiazem I find out that traces of this drug have also turned up in cocaine. Looking for guidance, I go see Marvin Crawford, the doctor who treated Brown right before he died. He's the one I interviewed a few months earlier at the church with Andre White, the friend who thinks Brown was murdered. Dr. Crawford already told me he wanted an autopsy for Brown. Now, when I tell him about the shoes and show him the lab report, he recognizes the drug Diltiazem, and he recalls prescribing it for Brown in his last hospital visit. In other words, Brown was taking this drug right before he died, and Candice could have stepped on the Diltiazem in Brown's hospital room.
Marvin Crawford, Recording
00:31:49
The Diltiazem on her shoe, the marijuana and the cocaine. It fits our picture of being highly suspicious that somebody perhaps could have given him any substance that led to his death.
Thomas Lake
00:32:05
Remember, Crawford is the doctor who signed Brown's death certificate, and he said all along he wanted an autopsy. Now he's saying the test results suggest the owner of the shoe could have been at the hospital and that James Brown's death could have involved cocaine. The test results aren't definitive. There's a chance Candice stepped on the Diltiazem at Brown's house, and this question remains open. Why is Candice Hurst at the hospital when James Brown died? She says she was at home in Augusta that night, 150 miles from the hospital, spending Christmas Eve with her family. Candice's daughter told me the same thing, but there was something else Jacque found in the duffel bag that seemed to indicate otherwise: a handwritten note. Candice admitted writing this note to herself. The note had a list of questions for Charles Bobbit, Brown's personal manager, who was there the night Brown died. Candice had written, How did Mr. Brown know I was going to be with him when he died? This note could mean any number of things. When I asked Candice about it, she said no. It did not mean she was with Brown at the hospital when he died.
Thomas Lake
00:33:19
But it wasn't just Jacque who thought Candice was at the hospital that night. I interviewed Tony Wilson, a singer who knew James Brown, and he told me that Candice told him she'd been at the hospital. And not only that, Wilson said Candice told him she partied with Brown before he died and, quote, maybe that killed him. Candice denied telling Wilson those things. On the phone with her, I went down the list of reasons to believe she was there that night. The lab tests showed Diltiazem on your shoe and the doctor gave James Brown Diltiazem at the hospital. Plus, there was your note to self wondering how James Brown knew you were going to be with him when he died and he died at the hospital. When you add them all up, a reasonable person might conclude that you were, in fact, at the hospital.
Candice Hurst, Recording
00:34:10
Well, I wish I was so I could have said thank you and I love you and God bless you. But I was never in Atlanta, never at the hospital.
Candice Hurst, Recording
00:34:23
By late 2018. I'm nearly done with the reporting for an investigative series on the deaths of James and Adrienne Brown. As I work with CNN's editors and lawyers to get the stories ready to publish on our website, weird and bad things keep happening. Three people close to James Brown die in a span of three weeks, including one whose death from a shotgun blast is ruled a suicide. I keep getting calls from unknown numbers. When I finally answer the phone, it's Ghost on the line asking me a bunch of questions. I ask him for his real name and Social Security number, and when he won't give it to me, I end the call. On February 5th, 2019, two years after Jacque, the circus singer, called me, my series is finally published on CNN's website. I fly to Washington, DC and go live on air to talk about what I found.
Brooke Baldwin, Recording
00:35:15
I want to get now to this exclusive CNN investigation that raises questions about the death of James Brown, who's the godfather of soul. Why won't these questions of his death go away?
Thomas Lake, Recording
00:35:25
Well, here's what I learned in my reporting. There are at least 13 people who knew James Brown...
Thomas Lake
00:35:30
After the live hit on CNN I head home to Atlanta. At the airport. I called Jacque to see how she's doing.
Thomas Lake, Recording
00:35:37
Hey, Jacque. Okay, if I record this call?
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:35:39
Yes, you can.
Thomas Lake
00:35:40
There were so many delays on this project. So many times, Jacque didn't believe any of this would come to light. Now, against all odds, her story is finally out in the world.
Thomas Lake, Recording
00:35:50
I just wanted to have a little record of how you were doing on the day everything came out.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:35:58
Um, it's just been to the point that I finally just finished reading the story because my phone keep just ringing off the hook.
Thomas Lake
00:36:08
All along, she's told me that she's felt trapped in the woods since 1988, forced to endlessly relive that horrific night with James Brown. But now she's getting closer to breaking free.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:36:20
Thomas, I don't know how you did it. I don't know how you hold up through this with me. I just know you are helping me come out of woods.
Thomas Lake
00:36:41
After my story is published online, I'm wondering if it will lead the authorities to open new investigations into the deaths of Adrienne and James Brown. But that doesn't happen. Jacque calls the district attorney's office in Atlanta, but no one calls back. Months pass, she tells me. Strange men are following her and suspicious vehicles are parked outside her apartment. Still chasing the story. I email a list of questions to the DA's office in Atlanta, including one about why no one ever called Jacque back. The DA's spokesman tells me they have no record of Jacque calling, so Jacque goes through her old phone records and finds proof that she called the DA's office. I asked the DA's spokesman about the phone records proving Jacque called, and the spokesman emailed me to say, the district attorney is willing to sit down with Jacque if she would like to set up a meeting. I call Jacque and share the news.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:37:35
The first words I said is, Let's go, let's go, let's rock.
Thomas Lake
00:37:40
On February 8th, 2020, I fly to Illinois and meet Jacque. The next morning we get on the road before dawn. In the back of her Hummer is a green plastic storage bin full of Candice's stuff, including the James Brown duffel bag. Instead of throwing it in a lake, she's bringing all this stuff back to Georgia so she can turn it over to the district attorney, no matter how dangerous it might be, she intends to walk into the courthouse in Atlanta and tell prosecutors that James Brown was murdered.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:38:11
I feel good doing this, yes I do. I'm on my way. I'm going to take back my life. I might get killed. I really may. But, by God, I'm going through those doors.
Thomas Lake
00:38:38
On the next episode of the James Brown Mystery.
DA Paul Howard
00:38:41
So as I understand it, this concerns the death of James Brown.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:38:45
That is correct.
DA Paul Howard
00:38:46
If it was not a natural death. Do you know what caused the death?
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:38:51
I believe I do, sir.
Shana Quinones
00:38:53
Bobbit knew something suspicious had happened. He knew it.
Roosevelt Johnson
00:38:57
He would always use the words "they." They are watching, they this, they that. That's just the way he felt up until the day he died.
Jacque Hollander, Recording
00:39:07
The James Brown Mystery is hosted and reported by me, Thomas Lake. Our executive producer is Abbie Fentress Swanson. Our senior producer is Felicia Patinkin and our producers are Rachel Cohn, Anne Lagamayo, Lori Galaretta, and Jennifer Lawrence. Our associate producers are Emmanuel Johnson, Nathan Miller and Sonia Htoon and our production assistant is Eden Getachew. Our story editor is David Weinberg and our production manager is Tameeka Ballance-Kolasny. Liz Roberts and Kyra Posey lead audience strategy for our show and Jamus Andrest and Nichole Pesaru designed our artwork. Erica Huang is our mix engineer and sound designer. Celena Urabe is our assistant sound engineer, and Dan Dzula is the CNN Audio's Senior Manager of production operations theme and original music composed by David Steinberg and Nathan Miller. Special thanks to Mia Taylor, Courtney Coupe, Katie Hinman, Lindsay Abrams, Robert Mathers, Delila Paul, Andrea White, Anissa Gray, Johnita Due, Ram Ramgopal, Lisa Namerow, and John Dianora.
