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 Angel of Death
The James Brown Mystery
Nov 11, 2022
The circus singer tells Thomas Lake about other government men who turn up in her life, including a mysterious new guy she falls in love with named Steve. Jacque Hollander goes to South Carolina to report she’s been raped by James Brown. She also goes to Texas to visit Steve. The visit doesn’t go as planned and is made worse when she learns James Brown’s third wife Adrienne has died. Jacque is convinced it was murder and somehow her boyfriend Steve is involved. Lake calls the detective who investigated Adrienne’s death and together they discover a clue in a long-forgotten notebook that may confirm Jacque’s worst suspicions about Adrienne’s death.
Episode Transcript
Thomas Lake
00:00:02
Previously on the James Brown Mystery: Jacque confides in Adrienne after that awful night in the woods.
Jacque Hollander
00:00:09
And I told her everything that happened. That's when we decided that we were going to protect each other.
Thomas Lake
00:00:15
And Adrienne warns her about the machine. She says it's a shadowy criminal organization with government connections that surrounds the Godfather of Soul and is likely watching them too.
Jacque Hollander
00:00:27
She said, One of us is going to die or both of us.
Thomas Lake
00:00:30
And what did you think about that? Had that hit you?
Jacque Hollander
00:00:32
I believed her.
Thomas Lake
00:00:33
It all leads to a high speed chase that has Jacque and Adrienne afraid for their lives.
Jacque Hollander
00:00:38
And I said, We're here. Me and Adrienne. And somebody tried to shoot us and kill us.
Thomas Lake
00:00:47
In the mid-nineties, shortly after her divorce, Jacque Hollander dated a man who would never let her take his picture. The longer she and Steve dated the stranger, this became. She was in love with him. She thought they might get married, and still he refused to be photographed with her. Finally, after about nine months, Jacque asked herself some hard questions about this relationship. She began to wonder if the whole thing was a lie, which made her want a picture of Steve even more. So, Jacque got creative. One night they were in a bar together. This crowded room with dim red lights. A country band on stage. And peanut shells on the floor. Steve was drinking a scotch, and Jacque had a cherry coke.
Jacque Hollander
00:01:32
And I saw this girl walking around selling flowers and taking pictures. And I thought, Wow, this is it. This is my chance.
Thomas Lake
00:01:40
Jacque pulled this woman aside in the ladies room and offered her $20. If she could find a way to take a picture of Steve.
Jacque Hollander
00:01:48
She said, Okay, I'll do it. What I'll do is I'm going to just tell him that my camera is broke and that I can't get it to work and I just need a test picture and see if he goes for that.
Thomas Lake
00:02:00
So Jacque went back to join Steve and the woman walked up and asked if she could test her malfunctioning Polaroid camera.
Jacque Hollander
00:02:07
He goes, No, we don't want a picture. No pictures. Absolutely not.
Thomas Lake
00:02:11
But Steve had been drinking, so he was a little off his game and the camera woman was persistent. Finally, she pointed her camera at them and pressed the button. A photo slid out of the Polaroid camera.
Jacque Hollander
00:02:24
Then she walked away. Okay. And I went to the bathroom to pay her. And she handed me the picture.
Thomas Lake
00:02:35
I'm looking at this picture right now, Steve. He's got some size to him, some broad shoulders. He's wearing a denim jacket. He's got a beard that's reddish brown. Maybe more more brown than red. And it's going a little bit gray at the chin. And his hair's kind of long. But it's also I can see the hairline receding. He's smiling. And at least in this picture, his smile, it looks kind. You know, I look at him and I'm like, oh, that's a guy I'd like to talk with.
Jacque Hollander
00:03:06
Well, Saddam Hussein had pictures like that, too, and so did Theodore Bundy.
Thomas Lake
00:03:17
Jacque acquired her first and only picture of the mysterious Steve in January 1996, near the end of a very odd nine month relationship. Days later, Jacque learned something that shook her to her core. Her friend Adrienne Brown, had died while recovering from plastic surgery in California. Not long after that, Jacque became convinced that Adrienne had been murdered and that Steve had something to do with it. From CNN. This is The James Brown Mystery. I'm your host, Thomas Lake. This is episode four, The Angel of Death.
Answering Machine
00:03:59
Next message. Saved Tuesday at 1:08 p.m.
Steve on Answering Machine
00:04:05
Yeah, Hello Jacque, this is Steve.
Thomas Lake
00:04:07
That's Steve, Jacque's mysterious boyfriend from 1995. Decades later, she doesn't know where he is. She's not sure he ever told her his real last name. But Jacque knows he was real and that some very bad things happened when he entered her life. She has proof he was real. That Polaroid from the bar and this cassette tape recording from her old answering machine.
Steve on Answering Machine
00:04:31
It's 9:25, and I'm still at the Atlanta airport. I'll talk to you next week. See ya.
Thomas Lake
00:04:41
Like so many other stories from Jacque's life, this one is incomplete. Some pieces are missing. Some parts may never be explained, but there's no doubt it has something to do with someone who casts a shadow across the last four decades of her life. James Brown. About seven years after her horrifying encounter with Brown in his fan in the woods of South Carolina, Jacque made a huge decision. She wanted to have Brown prosecuted for rape. Jacque's credibility had been damaged in 1992, when a new book by the prominent music writer Stanley Booth came out saying she and James Brown had been lovers. Jacque vehemently denied this and sued Booth, but she didn't win the suit. Jacque admitted she'd told Booth more than one story about what happened in the woods, but said she eventually told him she'd been raped. And both confirmed this in an interview with me. When I asked Booth if he thought James Brown raped Jacque, he told me, Hell, I don't have any idea. He probably did. Jacque wanted her good name back. So in 1995, she hired a former FBI special agent named Richard Rackleff to administer a polygraph test.
Richard Rackleff
00:05:54
Do you understand this test concerns whether you were forcibly taken across state lines and raped by James Brown?
Jacque Hollander
00:06:00
Yes.
Thomas Lake
00:06:01
For Jacque, the test was excruciating. It forced her to relive the worst experience of her life. As Radcliffe asked his questions. She stared at the white wall in front of her. The wall was like a movie screen on which she was watching herself in a horror movie. Except all of it was real.
Jacque Hollander
00:06:22
Why am I trembling? I'm telling the truth.
Richard Rackleff
00:06:26
I believe you, Jacque. Test shows you're being truthful.
Thomas Lake
00:06:29
I just wonder, like, how it felt to hear someone say, I believe you.
Jacque Hollander
00:06:33
The most wonderful feeling in the world.
Thomas Lake
00:06:36
After the test, Jacque was exhausted. She went home and went to bed. Rackless mailed a copy of her videotape to the prosecutor's office in South Carolina. And Jacque made an appointment to share her story. Rackleff wrote a note with the tape saying, In my opinion, the test clearly supported her credibility and there is no doubt the rape occurred. It was around this time that Steve entered Jacque's life at a Mexican restaurant in Atlanta where she was waiting tables.
Jacque Hollander
00:07:06
And then he said, What is a girl like you doing working in a place like this?
Thomas Lake
00:07:11
Jacque was 39 and recently divorced from Dean Daughtry. The restaurant didn't have many customers then. So it was pretty noticeable when three men in pressed suit started coming in every day around 5:00 and sitting at the bar for hours. They drank their drinks and stared at her. One of these men was Steve. One of those nights, Steve told her she looked like a rock and roll singer.
Jacque Hollander
00:07:34
He had a lighter in his hand and he was playing with the lighter. And he made sure that the side of the lighter with what was on it, White Beach, I was able to see. Because of my father and my father's career in the Navy, I was able to immediately identify the lighter. I said, Oh, well, you must be with the Navy. And he said, I am. I was. And he told me that he was a former Navy SEAL.
Thomas Lake
00:08:05
Jacque was intrigued. But she did have a sense that he was a little too friendly. It crossed her mind that he could be an investigator for the prosecutor's office in South Carolina sent to check her out. Jacque planned to visit the prosecutor soon to report that James Brown had raped her in the woods. And now this Navy SEAL was giving her lots of attention.
Jacque Hollander
00:08:28
I knew that the fishhook was going down. But I thought if they're going to this extent to make sure I'm okay, I'll play along with this. I thought he was cute. I did.
Thomas Lake
00:08:41
Jacque thought Steve was stylish and intelligent, too. When he asked her to dinner a few days after their first conversation, she said yes. She brought along her friend Kathy just to be safe.
Jacque Hollander
00:08:52
He looked at me and he said, Look, I asked you out. I didn't ask her out either. I said, Well, if you want to go with me, she's coming with me because I don't know if you're Jack the Ripper or who you are. I'm not going to be alone in a car with you. I don't know who you are. You could kill me.
Thomas Lake
00:09:07
So Steve took Jacque and Kathy to Cracker Barrel. A few minutes into dinner. The ladies went to the bathroom. Kathy said Steve seemed classy and educated, a really nice guy. This endorsement meant a lot to Jacque. After dinner, Jacque dropped Kathy off at home and took Steve to one of her favorite places, Dekalb-Peachtree Airport, where she and her father used to watch the planes take off and land.
Jacque Hollander
00:09:32
And I remember him watching my eyes with the planes coming and always watching my eyes and my movement. And he said, you know, I think there's a lot more to you than you're saying other than you're just working at this restaurant.
Thomas Lake
00:09:48
Jacque told him it was a long story.
Jacque Hollander
00:09:50
And he goes, Well, I've got all the time in the world. So I kind of said, you know, I'm in a problem with an entertainer and I'm going to stand up. And I had to take a polygraph test. And it was like he knew everything. He was just letting me say it. And then he kissed me and he told me I was pretty. And no one had told me I was pretty in a long time. And that was kind of nice to hear.
Steve on Answering Machine
00:10:16
Yeah Jaque, Steve. Just calling to say hello. Talk to you tomorrow. Bye.
Thomas Lake
00:10:23
After this, Jacque and Steve began seeing each other regularly, although she still knew very little about him. The last name he gave her may or may not have been real, so I'm not going to share it on the podcast. But here's what we do know. Steve smoked Marlboro Lights. He drank scotch and water. He said when he was a Navy SEAL, a bomb went off underwater and burned his hands. He had the burn marks to prove it. And there was something about the way Steve walked that made her believe he'd been in the Navy, slightly unsteady, frequently shifting his weight.
Jacque Hollander
00:10:56
And it's called sea legs. And sea legs come from years on a ship. And he had sea legs.
Thomas Lake
00:11:03
You could tell.
Jacque Hollander
00:11:04
Yes. He walked like my father.
Thomas Lake
00:11:10
Early in the relationship, when Steve told her he worked as a bank consultant, she didn't quite believe him.
Jacque Hollander
00:11:16
When I said, You look like you're government, you're probably FBI. And he started laughing and he goes, Don't insult me or us ever with those pieces of crap.
Thomas Lake
00:11:29
He wasn't denying that he was just the government, but he was basically saying like, whatever it is, like I'm better than the FBI, correct?
Jacque Hollander
00:11:35
So I knew he was somebody, but I didn't know what.
Thomas Lake
00:11:38
But Steve was a big, strong guy who made Jacque feel safe. This feeling was so powerful that it overcame any lingering doubts she had about Steve.
Steve on Answering Machine
00:11:48
Jaque is a real pleasure to hear your voice on your home answering machine. This is Steve just calling to say hello.
Thomas Lake
00:11:53
They kept seeing each other. One day, Jacque bought Steve a present, a piece of jewelry with a nod to his nautical history.
Jacque Hollander
00:12:01
I had gotten him this little gold anchor with a cross on it, and I was going to surprise him.
Thomas Lake
00:12:06
So she drove to his apartment complex without telling him in advance. And then she saw something really weird.
Jacque Hollander
00:12:15
I pulled in and there were all these white cars in the parking lot and they all said government on the tags. It was just this long line of them. There probably was ten government white cars. They all looked just alike. And I went to the door and I was knocking on it and I could hear all this, it sounded like chairs were hitting each other. And I mean, it was crazy.
Thomas Lake
00:12:38
Did you think that somehow you had caused that by knocking on the door?
Jacque Hollander
00:12:41
Well, obviously I had it wasn't doing it until I knocked on the door. It was totally quiet. And he opened it and there's still the chain across and he goes, you can't come in. You have to leave. Really stern. I mean, it was just a totally different person. And he goes, I'll call you later, but you can't come.
Thomas Lake
00:13:03
With that. Jacque left Steve's apartment complex and fast. She couldn't help thinking she'd accidentally busted up a secret meeting of government agents. But like Steve, she could play it cool. Later, when he called to invite her back, the government cars were gone.
Jacque Hollander
00:13:21
I didn't mention to him I'd seen all the cars. I just kind of said so, I have a present for you. And he was like, Oh, thank you.
Thomas Lake
00:13:30
Jacque didn't ask questions about this very strange thing she'd just seen. She and Steve had an unusual relationship. In their conversations, some things were just off limits. He insisted on keeping some parts of his story behind a locked door. And after a while, Jacque came to accept that. Jacque still wanted to believe the best about Steve. Maybe someone in the U.S. government knew Jacque was in danger because she was trying to have James Brown prosecuted for the assault. Was Steve here to protect her? Steve did nothing to dissuade her from this theory.
Jacque Hollander
00:14:06
He goes, You have the best bodyguard that is alive in this country. I had fallen madly in love with him.
Thomas Lake
00:14:16
About two months into their relationship, Jacque was scheduled to visit South Carolina and tell the prosecutors she'd been raped by James Brown. Just before her trip, Steve hit her with an emotional hand grenade. He told Jacque he had to move away. The company he worked for was transferring him to Dallas.
Jacque Hollander
00:14:34
Can you imagine what that does to a girl that is totally in love with you? I fell to pieces.
Thomas Lake
00:14:41
As Jacque tried to take in this bad news from Steve, other things started going wrong, too. Jacque's car broke down, so she asked her friend Kathy to drive her to South Carolina.
Jacque Hollander
00:14:51
And then the night before we were scheduled to leave, she called me, and somebody had gone and taken a baseball bat and busted out all the glass of her car.
Thomas Lake
00:15:02
I asked Kathy about this. She confirmed that her windshield had been broken right before the trip. Was someone trying to stop Jacque from getting to South Carolina?
Jacque Hollander
00:15:12
So she couldn't drive me. The only person I had left was Dean, and I called.
Thomas Lake
00:15:23
Dean Daughtry, remember, was Jacque's ex-husband. It was awkward to ask him for a ride from Georgia to South Carolina so she could accuse another man of rape. Still, Dean agreed to drive her. Kathy went with them. But something weird happened on the way there. Jacque says Dean's brakes started malfunctioning. This was the third vehicle related mishap leading up to her appointment with the prosecutor. But they still made it to Aiken on time. So Jacque went in and met with Barbara morgan, the chief prosecutor in Aiken County, South Carolina.
Jacque Hollander
00:15:58
She looked at me and she said, We have your package here sent by Mr. Rackleff, your polygraph test.
Thomas Lake
00:16:04
The polygraph test was not definitive proof of anything, but it did show that an experienced investigator had found Jacque's story credible. Jacque also had brought with her items she saved from her night in the van with Brown. Items that could be tested in a crime lab.
Jacque Hollander
00:16:20
The dress, the pillowcase, my boots, my shirt, my bandana. Everything that I had was there. I said, I have all of my evidence.
Thomas Lake
00:16:30
So even though she was too scared to go to the police after Brown raped during the woods, she had prepared for the day when she might come forward. Morgan, the prosecutor confirmed that she met with Jacque that day in 1995 regarding an accusation of rape against James Brown. She assigned an investigator to look into it. Although the incident had happened seven years earlier, it wasn't too late to press charges. There was no statute of limitations on criminal sexual conduct in South Carolina. During her meeting with the prosecutor, Jacque says she also brought up something else related to James Brown. Jacque talked about her friend Adrienne Brown, who had repeatedly called 911 to accuse her husband of domestic violence.
Female reporter
00:17:13
And in April, Brown was arrested for assault with the intent to kill after allegedly beating his wife with a pipe and firing shots into her car.
Thomas Lake
00:17:21
That year, 1988. Brown kept getting in trouble with the law.
Male Reporter
00:17:26
From an alleged drug gun and police chase incident over two days in September, Brown faces close to a dozen charges. Now, authorities claim they have enough evidence to put James Brown in jail for up to five years.
Thomas Lake
00:17:38
Later that year, a jury found Brown guilty of failing to stop for police. He was sentenced to six years in prison but got out on parole early in 1991. He went home to his wife, Adrienne. The violence continued.
CNN Host
00:17:52
Just this week, soul singer James Brown was arrested and charged with battering his wife. He's been charged with domestic violence twice before.
Thomas Lake
00:18:01
And this is why when she was at the prosecutor's office in South Carolina, Jacque remembers asking Barbara Morgan to look out for Adrienne. According to Jacque, Morgan said she would.
Female reporter
00:18:12
And then she said to me, I'm going to make you a promise that if I get one more call of James Brown beating Adrienne, I am going to bury him. And he will never see the light of day.
Thomas Lake
00:18:29
When I asked Morgan about this, she denied saying anything like that to Jacque. But the prosecutor did tell me she warned James Brown not to hurt Adrienne with words to the effect of Mr. Brown, I'm solicitor now, don't mess up. After the meeting between Jacque and Barbara Morgan was over and the mechanic had fixed Dean's car, Jacque, Kathy and Dean returned to Atlanta. But just a few months later, Adrienne was found beaten up at home in South Carolina with a swollen lip and a bloody nose. He hit me again, Adrienne told an officer. So James Brown was arrested again and charged with criminal domestic violence. Brown's company would later released a statement saying that Adrienne had retracted the domestic violence allegations. This time, though, the Aiken County Sheriff's Office would prosecute James Brown with or without Adrienne's testimony.
Kay Mixon
00:19:22
She, she had black eyes. She had bruises. And the last time I saw Adrienne was at the hospital.
Thomas Lake
00:19:31
This is Kay Mixon, a long time advocate for victims of domestic violence. In the eighties and nineties, she got to know Adrienne Brown quite well.
Kay Mixon
00:19:41
I went in to see her and talked with her. They gave her prescriptions for antibiotics because of the bruises and things. And she had no money to buy the prescriptions, I bought them myself for her. She said, I know everything about James, because they were together a long time. And she said, He's not going to let me ever leave because I know too much.
Thomas Lake
00:20:06
I asked Mixon if Adrienne told her what she meant by "I know too much."
Kay Mixon
00:20:12
No, she would not divulge that because she knew that if anything got out that she would be dead. I think other people that he was involved with also were probably guilty of a lot of stuff that she knew about.
Thomas Lake
00:20:31
What Mixon says here sounds a lot like Jacque's description of the James Brown machine. Jacque says Adrienne told her the machine was a secret criminal organization that surrounded and protected the Godfather of Soul. Adrienne was afraid of the machine, maybe even more afraid than she was of her husband. Anyway, after visiting her in the hospital, Kay Mixon tried to get Adrienne into a shelter for victims of domestic violence. But Adrienne insisted on going back to the country estate in Beech Island, South Carolina, where she lived with James Brown.
Kay Mixon
00:21:08
I drove her home but could not get close to the house because there was a great big iron gate. And I watched her squeeze herself through that iron gate and it was a mile down to the house and she walked in the rain to that house.
Thomas Lake
00:21:27
Adrienne forgot something in Mixon's car, something she'd thrown on over her other clothes to keep off the rain when the ambulance took her to the hospital.
Kay Mixon
00:21:36
Right now, in my closet, I have Adrienne's robe that she wore to the hospital that last time she left it in my car. It's a velour royal blue trimmed in gold.
Thomas Lake
00:21:50
A few weeks after she left Adrienne at the iron gate, Mixon still hadn't given back the robe. And then it was too late.
Kay Mixon
00:21:59
I was watching TV on Sunday night and they announced that she had died over an overdose. And my first thing was, no, she didn't. He killed her. I can't prove it, and I probably shouldn't say it, but I will take that to my grave. He either did it or he had someone do it.
Thomas Lake
00:22:32
We need to go back in time now to about seven months before Adrienne died. Jacque had returned from the prosecutor's office in South Carolina. Now, she was at home in Atlanta and mystery Steve was still in town. Change of plans, he said. He wasn't moving to Dallas after all.
Steve on Answering Machine
00:22:49
Hey Jacque, it's Steve. It's my pleasure to call you. Talk to you later. Bye.
Answering Machine
00:22:53
End of message.
Thomas Lake
00:22:57
Jacque was surprised at this news, but she didn't question it. She was glad her boyfriend was sticking around. But that good feeling didn't last. Now that Jacque's allegations had put James Brown at the center of a rape investigation, a bunch of scary things started happening. She says she got threatening phone calls, people telling her to back off the case. Someone left a dead animal outside her door. Around this time, Jacque was meeting with her psychologist, Larry Largent. The sound you hear in the background, by the way, is me typing notes on my laptop.
Larry Largent
00:23:29
I had some concern for my own safety at times with her. My office looked in the parking lot. And I usually knew the cars, except for when I got a new client or something. But I became aware there were some strange vehicles arriving. Usually an hour or so before she was due. Uh strange people coming by trying to peer in my door.
Thomas Lake
00:23:52
So that was unsettling enough, and it got worse from there. Largent worked alongside another therapist who counseled Jacque named Mark Polkosnik. One day, something crazy happened to Jacque's psychological records after Polkosnik left them in his vehicle.
Larry Largent
00:24:07
It was broken into. The only thing they took was the records.
Thomas Lake
00:24:12
Polkosnik confirmed the story when I asked him about it. Jacque's confidential records had fallen into the wrong hands. They were out there somewhere visible to someone who had no business reading them. No one was charged with the break in or the theft of the records, but Largent put the blame on the James Brown machine.
Larry Largent
00:24:30
Their objective was to neutralize you either by getting her labeled as crazy or a liar. Or if all else failed they'd probably go to other things.
Steve on Answering Machine
00:24:42
Yeah, Jacque, Steve. Just calling to wish you a happy birthday. Hope you're having a good time tonight. I'll give you a call tomorrow afternoon, bye.
Thomas Lake
00:24:52
The week after her birthday, Jacque and Steve watched the 4th of July fireworks at Lenox Square in Atlanta. They left early because Steve said he couldn't handle the sound of explosions. Jacque chalked this up to some kind of combat related trauma. She and Steve continued to see each other until right around Labor Day when he really did leave town. And he didn't just leave. He cut off all contact.
Jacque Hollander
00:25:19
There was no way to reach him. And I actually thought that I was going to get married because when he left that time, he said, I'm sending you a ring. And I went to the mailbox every day because I thought a ring was coming and never did.
Thomas Lake
00:25:33
Jacque was crushed. She'd thought she might get married soon, and now she was alone and confused, and she was getting more and more worried about her friend, Adrienne. About two months after Steve disappeared, James Brown was arrested again after Adrienne called 911 and was found with a bloody nose and swollen lip. Jacque heard about the arrest and the violence and it terrified her. She and Adrienne hadn't seen each other in years because Jacque was afraid of Adrienne's husband. And Jacque didn't want to talk on the phone because Adrienne had told her the phones were tapped. But Jacque fondly remembered Adrienne. She kept thinking about their secret meeting at the steakhouse seven years earlier, when Adrienne told her they were in it together. Up against the machine. Now, Adrienne's warning felt truer than ever. Both women had accused James Brown of violent crimes that could send him back to prison. Jacque considered herself and Adrienne major threats to James Brown, which meant they were both in grave danger. Around this time, out of the blue, Jacque got a surprising phone call from Dallas. It was Mystery Steve.
Jacque Hollander
00:26:43
He said, How are you? And I said, Where have you been? And he said, I've been real busy. And I thought, Yeah, right. And I said to him, They're going to kill Adrienne or they're going to kill me. And he said, I want you to come to Dallas.
Thomas Lake
00:26:58
You might think Steve was calling to get back together with Jacque, but he had a different request. Steve wanted the tape of the polygraph test Jacque had taken, in which she was asked about being raped by James Brown in the woods. Steve said he knew an investigator in Dallas who wanted to watch the tape of her test. And he said this investigator could help with Jacque's case against James Brown. Back then, Jacque didn't have a copy of the videotape. She didn't get that till later. But she wanted to see Steve, so she flew to Dallas without the tape. Steve was waiting for her at the airport. She hadn't seen him in almost three months. With Steve was another man she didn't recognize, a guy named Brian. He was the investigator Steve had been telling her about. Brian was also Steve's new housemate, which was news to Jacque. Brian was covered with tattoos. He was loud and profane. Jacque took an instant dislike to him and the feeling was mutual. But still, Jacque was thrilled to see Steve. So they went back to Steve and Brian's apartment. Jacque brought her luggage into Steve's bedroom. Then the phone rang. Steve picked up and the voice of the caller on the other end was loud enough for Jacque to hear.
Jacque Hollander
00:28:14
And I heard this girl say to him, So is she here? And he said, Yeah, she just got here. And she said, So when is this project over? He said, Well, you know, you got to give me some time. I got to get this finished. When he got off the phone, I looked at him and I said, I'm a project. And he goes, What are you talking about? And I said, I heard what she said. And he goes, Your mistaken. You didn't hear that.
Thomas Lake
00:28:42
Who was this guy? To Jacque, the whole situation was getting more and more suspect. And Steve wasn't too happy either when he found out Jacque hadn't brought the videotape. He asked her to go back to Atlanta and get a copy of the tape. Why should she go to all this trouble? Steve told her if she returned with the tape, he would help arrange an interview for on the TV show Hard Copy. Jacque liked the idea. She thought telling the world what James Brown did to her might publicize Brown's history of violence against women and potentially save Adrienne Brown's life.
Jacque Hollander
00:29:16
Because I felt like if it got out about him, then people would quit looking at her like she was crazy when she was talking about all of his abuse and his insanity.
Thomas Lake
00:29:26
So Jacque went back to Atlanta with a plan. She called the former FBI agent who'd given her the polygraph test and asked for a copy of the tape. He sent it just before Christmas.
Steve on Answering Machine
00:29:39
Yeah hi Jacque, it's Stee. I won't be back into Dallas until Wednesday morning. I will call you then. I hope your Christmas was better than mine. Miss you. Talk to you later. Steve.
Thomas Lake
00:29:50
In early January, Jacque went back to Dallas to see Steve again. This time she had the tape. When they got to his apartment, she saw Brian, the investigator she didn't like. Jacque and Steve went out one night and came home to find Brian watching something on TV. There was a tape in the VCR. It was rolling. Jacque recognized herself on the screen and quickly realized Brian was watching her polygraph test. Brian had gone into her suitcase without permission to find the tape.
Jacque Hollander
00:30:22
All of a sudden, Brian started screaming, This will never fly. This will never fly.
Thomas Lake
00:30:30
A word here about Brian. After hearing this story, I was able to confirm his identity through a business card Jacque found in the apartment. His full name is Brian Donahue, and he had a company called Emerald Services. The business card said consulting investigation process serving. I checked his address history and it matched the apartment where Jacque stayed in Dallas with Steve. Back to that night when Steve and Jacque came home to find Brian watching the polygraph tape. Though you'd think it would be Jacque getting upset at Brian for going through her luggage without permission. Brian was the one getting really angry. He seemed to think the tape wouldn't prove any of Jacque's claims about James Brown to the media or to prosecutors looking to put him back in prison. Then the situation escalated.
Jacque Hollander
00:31:21
He's screaming at me and he started pushing me. And I grabbed the bar stool and I was going at him with the bar stool. I was going to knock him through that glass plate door.
Thomas Lake
00:31:36
Eventually Steve got Brian and Jacque to stop fighting and calm down. But this wasn't the end of it. Apparently, a maintenance worker had heard the commotion and called the police.
Jacque Hollander
00:31:46
I went to the room. I was crying and I heard this banging on the door and it was Brian. And he's like, Steve, man, you got to come out. The police are here. And the police came in and said, You come outside. And he told them to back against the wall.
Thomas Lake
00:32:02
Were you glad that the police were coming to this? Feel like someone coming to your rescue?
Jacque Hollander
00:32:06
No, I was in shock. I didn't know what was going on. And they took me out in the hallway and started asking me all these questions. And they asked me if I drank. They asked me to walk, you know, the line. And they said, Who's hurting you?
Thomas Lake
00:32:21
Jacque says she didn't tell the officers what Brian had done to her because she was afraid of Brian and what he might do to her.
Jacque Hollander
00:32:27
And I said, Nobody's hurting me. He said, You wait here. And they went back there and got the IDs of Steve and of Brian.
Thomas Lake
00:32:36
The police stayed at the apartment until they were convinced that Jacque was no longer in danger.
Jacque Hollander
00:32:42
Once the police left, I remember Steve looking up and he goes, This has to be taken care of immediately. If this gets back to the agency, we're in a lot of trouble. And he said, you better get up in the morning and get this whole thing erased.
Thomas Lake
00:32:57
The agency. Which agency where Steve and Brian working for? Jacque was too afraid to ask, but she filed this information away. The next morning, Brian got up early and left.
Jacque Hollander
00:33:10
When he came back, he told Steve, It's taken care of. Everything's taken care of.
Thomas Lake
00:33:14
Everything's taken care of. What did that mean? Was this long haired, tattooed, annoying guy a government agent? I wasn't able to talk to Brian Donahue. He died in 2012, but I did talk to his wife, who confirmed he'd been in Dallas in 1996. But she said he was a banking consultant who wouldn't have taken part in an operation like the one Jacque described. Could Steve's roommate really get the previous night's police report erased? It was another piece of the puzzle that could help me solve the mystery of James Brown. So I asked the Dallas Police Department for copies of all reports related to Steve's address. The Dallas PD said it had nothing on file, but I figured if anyone could get a police report erased, it would have to be someone with very particular credentials. I filed a request with the CIA for any documents they had on Brian Donahue, but the CIA said they could neither confirm nor deny having any. Steve and Brian's behavior got even stranger after Brian watched Jacque's videotape. One night at a bar, Steve urged Jacque to drink some whiskey. She said she didn't drink. Steve insisted. So Jacque gave in.
Jacque Hollander
00:34:26
And I took a sip of it.
Thomas Lake
00:34:30
Ever since then, Jacque has wondered what was in that drink, because when she woke up, her sense of time was off. It was a full day later than she thought it would be.
Jacque Hollander
00:34:41
When I woke up, I was in my boots and clothes laying on top of the bed, which is totally not me. I would never do that. And I got up and I walked into the room and Steve was sitting on the couch. It's probably three or four in the morning. And I said, What are you doing up? And his eyes were all red and glassy. And he goes, Brian went down to get the paper. And Brian walks in and the first words out of his mouth was, You're too late. She's dead. And he threw the newspaper at me.
Thomas Lake
00:35:17
This was the morning of January 7th, 1996, and Brian had thrown a copy of the Dallas Morning News at her. Jacque showed me the newspaper. She still has it all these years later. Near the bottom of page 25A is a story that says Adrienne Lois Brown, wife of singer James Brown, died in Los Angeles while recovering from cosmetic surgery. The cause of death was unknown.
Jacque Hollander
00:35:43
I lost it. I thought she was murdered.
Thomas Lake
00:35:46
Jacque went to the bedroom and cried so hard that her body shook. She and Adrienne had been like sisters. They had promised to keep each other safe. And Jacque couldn't help thinking that she'd failed. The way Jacque saw it, Adrienne stood in the path of the James Brown machine, and the machine had rolled over her. Soon, the pending domestic violence case against James Brown would be dismissed for lack of a living victim. Jacque would eventually find out what happened with the rape investigation she had set into motion. That case would soon be closed without any charges against James Brown. And the reason made no sense to Jacque. The prosecutor in South Carolina said they couldn't be sure where exactly Jacque had been in the van in the woods, and thus they couldn't prove a crime happened in their jurisdiction. But Jacque didn't know any of that yet. She was stuck here in this Dallas apartment with two men who didn't seem the least bit sorry that Adrienne was dead, including Steve, the man she had thought she loved, but who was getting scarier by the day.
Jacque Hollander
00:36:50
He stopped me under the door of that entrance into the bedroom. And he said, Yeah, Jacque. Have you ever met the Angel of Death? And I said, Yes, in Aiken, South Carolina, in the woods. And he said, No, you're looking at him now. And I never saw as cold of eyes in my whole entire life. They were like shark eyes. I didn't know him anymore. And he said, I want you to know that for the rest of your life, every day you need to look in the mirror and say to yourself, I am one lucky girl because I let you live. I think he kept me alive. And they went for Adrienne. They were going to take one of us down, and they chose her. I knew I was in serious trouble, and I knew I needed to get out.
Thomas Lake
00:37:42
Steve seemed to be telling Jacque he could have killed her and that he still could if she didn't stay in line. Jacque felt trapped. She was 800 miles from home with men she suspected of drugging her and plotting to kill her friend. And getting back to Atlanta wouldn't be easy.
Jacque Hollander
00:38:01
My plane ticket was stolen, and it was inside my suitcase. I didn't have any money with me because there was money missing from my wallet.
Thomas Lake
00:38:10
This trip had started as a getaway to Dallas to reunite with the man she loved. But it had all gone unimaginably wrong. Jacque had no plane ticket back to Atlanta and no way to buy another one. She thought of going to the police, but she no longer trusted them. So when Steve and Brian weren't paying attention, she made several phone calls. She called the Beverly Hills Police Department in California, which was handling the investigation of Adrienne Brown's death, and told the detective that Adrienne had been murdered. She says she also called Hard Copy, the TV show where Steve said he'd help her get an interview. The producers at Hard Copy had no idea who Steve was, which made her think this was one more lie he'd told her. But they were intrigued by Jacque's story. So later they called her back at the apartment to get more details.
Jacque Hollander
00:38:59
And Brian answered the phone. And Steve was standing there, and Brian looked at Steve and he goes, It's Hard Copy. And his face just changed, really funny. And he goes, She can't come to the phone. She's mentally ill. She's just gotten out of a mental institution and she doesn't know what she's saying and she can't come to the phone.
Thomas Lake
00:39:21
So Hard cCpy was out and now Jacque felt more alone than ever. It would be hard to explain all she'd been through with Steve in the last nine months, much less prove it. Then again, she did have that Polaroid picture of him, the one she'd tricked him into taking with her at the bar. She had it in her suitcase. But here's the catch.
Jacque Hollander
00:39:42
They had gone into my stuff and they had found the picture. And he got very mad at me and he said, They will kill you over this picture of me. You had no right to take this picture. You deceived me.
Thomas Lake
00:39:55
According to Jacque. Steve didn't say who "they" were.
Jacque Hollander
00:39:58
No, he just said, if they come into your house and find this picture, you're dead.
Thomas Lake
00:40:02
But Jacque wasn't going to let go of that snapshot without a fight. She'd seen Steve put it in his coat pocket. Other than the answering machine messages, the picture was the only tangible piece of evidence that Mystery Steve existed. Steve finally agreed to let Jacque return to Atlanta. It seemed he and Brian had no more use for her in Dallas, so he bought her a new plane ticket. And when they were leaving the apartment together for the last time, she made an excuse to go back inside.
Jacque Hollander
00:40:33
And I had seen him put it in his coat pocket, and I went in the closet really quick and I looked in that jacket and the picture was there and I stuck it in my pants and ran out the door with him.
Thomas Lake
00:40:46
Jacque pulled off this little heist a few days after Adrienne's death, just before she left Dallas. She still doesn't know why Steven and Brian let her go. These guys had stolen her belongings, fought with her, and possibly slipped something into her drink so she would pass out. They'd taken her plane ticket and held her against her will, all while she was grieving for the death of her best friend. It had been a traumatic visit, to put it mildly, and she was relieved at the prospect of returning home to Atlanta. So when Steve bought her a new plane ticket and took her to the airport, she didn't ask questions. She and Steve sat in a restaurant at the airport waiting for her flight to board.
Jacque Hollander
00:41:27
He looked up at me and he said, So, Jacque, what do you think people that work for the CIA would wear? And I said, clothes. I would hope they wear clothes. And he goes, No, what type of clothes do you think they would wear? And I said, I would think they wear all kinds of clothes. Are you asking me do they have some kind of little cloak and dagger and hat and all that that they wear with an umbrella? And he looked at me and he said, I'm with the CIA, Jacque.
Thomas Lake
00:41:56
By now, Jacque didn't know what to believe.
Jacque Hollander
00:41:59
I was just cold. I was numb. There were no emotions coming out of me.
Thomas Lake
00:42:04
When she heard the announcement her flight was boarding, Jacque grabbed her luggage and headed to the gate.
Jacque Hollander
00:42:09
I felt like a numb ghost walking away. That's the best way I can explain it. All I knew is something had gone horribly wrong in Dallas, Texas.
Thomas Lake
00:42:22
Jacque walked toward the jetway, taking one last look at Steve. This man she once loved who called himself the Angel of Death and said he worked for the CIA. It was the last time she ever saw him.
Jacque Hollander
00:42:34
And I turned around and I said, Hey, Steve. And he goes, Yeah. And I held up the picture and I said, I have the photo. And he was livid. And I went towards the plane and I did not look back.
Thomas Lake
00:42:57
In January 1996, while Jacque was stuck at the apartment in Dallas, a police detective was getting to work on a new case in California. Coincidentally, he was also a Steve. Steve Miller, a former Army Ranger and a 15 year veteran of the Beverly Hills Police Department. Detective Miller was at roll call one Monday morning when the boss told him to head to a place called Hidden Garden. Miller knew it well. The plastic surgery industry was booming in Southern California in the nineties, and the Hidden Garden was a place where patients went to recover.
Steve Miller
00:43:29
I went out to the location and with my partner and the place was locked up tight. There was nobody there. We couldn't get any response.
Thomas Lake
00:43:39
Adrienne Brown had died two days earlier. A patrol officer made a report at the scene, but Miller didn't have much else to go on.
Steve Miller
00:43:46
At this time, there was no reason to think that there's anything wrong other than people don't usually die from plastic surgery. The coroner said there was a lot of painkillers that were, were taken in as evidence. She had some bottles on the bedside. So did she overdose? That's the first thing we think of. You know, there didn't seem to be anything there that was apparent from the surgery that would have caused her death. There was no bleeding, so on and so forth.
Thomas Lake
00:44:11
An autopsy found that Adrienne Brown had died of PCP intake and heart disease. The coroner's report said no foul play or sinister purpose was suspected. So it seemed like a pretty straightforward case of a drug overdose. Except Miller did find it odd that no one involved in Adrienne's surgery or recent medical care would talk to him. It was around this time when he started getting calls from Jacque.
Steve Miller
00:44:35
And she said she was from Atlanta and she was Adrienne Brown's best friend and that she had been murdered. Of course, that opened my eyes. And so I talked to her at length. How do you know this and what are you basing it on? And she was all over the place. She was really shook up and really hard to talk to. I asked, you know, what's going on with you? And she kind of dodged around that for a while and said she was in Dallas, Texas.
Thomas Lake
00:45:00
Jacque tried to lay it all out for Miller. Adrienne had a pending domestic violence case that could have sent James Brown back to prison. She knew too much about Brown and his associates, and someone wanted to silence her. Plus, there was all that stuff that had just happened to Jacque in Dallas, which also seemed related to James Brown somehow. Jacque tried to explain about Steve and Brian and the drugging and the newspaper and Brian taunting her about Adrienne's death.
Steve Miller
00:45:29
At that point, I'm going, these guys are involved in this. There's something going on there. This was not just an overdose death, there's something going on. This is strange.
Thomas Lake
00:45:38
Miller says he tried to find out more about what happened in Dallas, even called the Dallas Police Department looking for that report from the night Brian yelled and fought with Jacque and the cops showed up. This was the report that Brian told Mystery Steve he'd taken care of.
Steve Miller
00:45:54
Was there any report written? Doesn't look like it. Because they couldn't find anything.
Thomas Lake
00:45:58
Without anything firm to support Jacque's story and no other leads on Adrienne Brown's death, miller moved on to his other cases, and about five years after Adrienne died, Miller retired from detective work without finding any proof of foul play in Adrienne Brown's death. Fast forward to 2017. This was the year that Jacque called me for the first time. She told me I should ask Detective Miller about the Adrienne Brown case, so I emailed him. His reply got my attention. "I think I have one piece of the puzzle that I kept because it was only made available to me just before I retired." After sending me this email, Detective Miller retrieved a box from his closet. It contains some old documents related to the Adrienne Brown case. And now when he looked at them again, he noticed something he'd never noticed before. Valuable information about the case of Adrienne Brown had been there all along. In a box, in the closet, deep in an unread notebook. The notebook came from a woman Jacque Hollander had never met. And it seemed to corroborate Jacque's suspicions about Adrienne's death.
Steve Miller
00:47:10
I became crestfallen. I could not believe that this is here. That I never saw it. That if I had seen this 16, 17 years ago, I would have been standing on that jackass's front porch. This is like the smoking gun.
Thomas Lake
00:47:40
On the next episode of The James Brown Mystery:
Thomas Lake
00:47:43
Do you ever lie awake at night thinking about this case?
Steve Miller
00:47:45
I do now. I do now.
Andre White
00:47:49
Things I'm telling you now. No one has ever told. His children don't even know it.
Rachel
00:47:55
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
00:48:06
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 Lai. 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. Celina Urabe is our assistant sound engineer and Dan Dzula is the CNN Audio 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, Dalila Paul, Andrea White, Anissa Gray, Johnita Due, Ram Ramgopal, Lisa Namerow and Jon Dianora.
