James Brown’s Widow Tomi Rae Brown Thinks He Could Have Been Murdered

The widow of soul legend James Brown is making some frightening claims about the music icon’s death in her first comments since the battle over his death. Brown died in 2006 from heart failure according to The Daily Mail but his widow feels that there might’ve been some foul play before his demise.

Tomi Rae Brown is making accusations against the late singer’s closest partners according to The Daily Mail. The widow is saying that her late husband was given “dangerous drugs” that essentially murdered him. In response, she is hoping to spark a police investigation.

According to The Daily Mail, Brown says her former husband was provided with cocaine before his death on Christmas Day in 2006. The cause of death is officially listed as heart failure but no autopsy was performed under orders from The Godfather of Soul’s daughter, Yamma Brown Lumar.

“I think he could have been murdered. They were feeding him drugs and not paying him. You don’t give somebody drugs when you are looking out for them,” Tomi Rae Brown said to the Mirror. “It was crack cocaine and Phencyclidine. Everywhere I looked there was this stuff. I’d throw it away and more would come.”

Brown’s widow continued, discussing how Brown had once been fiercely anti-drug early in his career but was later given drugs during the middle portion of his career.

“People gave it to him. He was never into drugs until he got to his 40s. He was into education, stopping the race war,” the widow reveals. “When I was there I would keep him away from that. We would dance, make love, go for rides, do whatever we had to do. He had so much energy, more than I had.”

Brown’s disagreements over the way her former husband’s death was handled should be no surprise. There was a fierce battle over James Brown’s estate following his death, with his chauffeur William Murrell telling The Guardian in 2014 that the singer had yet to be buried and was actually mummified.

“He’s been dead since 2006 but he still hasn’t been [properly] buried – he’s at his daughter’s house,” alleges Murrell in The Guardian. “They muminized [sic] his body so he would never rot, at $140,000 cost. Why? When you got almost 20 kids and six wives it’s hard to get you in the ground.”

The singer had been previously housed in a crypt on his daughter’s property according to The Daily Mail, though it has reportedly been moved into the home since his service in 2007.

The outlet adds that Brown’s legs were removed from his cadaver for DNA testing.

Tomi Rae Brown later reveals that she has been turned away from the Brown family and kicked out of their mansion after the family claimed her marriage to the singer was “fraudulent.” A judge ruled this wasn’t the case in 2018, but that was far from the end of the legal disagreements with the singer’s family.

The two had a child together in 2001, James Brown II, though they did have a rocky road in the years that followed. The Daily Mail adds that after being cut off, Brown’s widow was kept afloat through loans and donations. This includes a helpful sum from Michael Jackson before his own death.

“Michael was so nice to me. He was a sweetheart. He said ‘I’m so sorry what they are doing to you.’”