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“Lady, you shot me!”
Those were the final words of Sam Cooke, whose song A Change is Gonna Come became a civil rights anthem after his passing.
Conspiracy theorists have long-disputed the official version of events that unfolded before the popular singer’s body was found lifeless at an LA motel.
Sam, aged 33, was enjoying his last night alive with his close friend and longtime producer Al Schmitt, sipping on Martinis at an Italian restaurant named Martoni’s, which was frequented by the who’s-who in Hollywood’s music scene at the time.
The You Send Me singer unabashedly waved around a wad of cash, worth $5,000, as spoke to his famous friends at the bar.
He was later spotted chatting with 22-year-old Elisa Boyer, whom he later took 15 miles south to the Hacienda Motel and checked in just after 2:35 a.m. on December 11, 1964.
The singer was known to be a serial adulterer, even to his wife Barbara Campbell, who shared children Linda and Tracey with him.
Sam and Elisa checked as Mr. and Mrs. Cooke at the motel, known at the time as a hub for pimps and adult workers.
As per Elisa’s account, she was “dragged” into the room before the singer tore her clothes off.
“I knew he was going to r*** me,” she later told the cops.
She claimed that she escaped when Sam entered the bathroom. In the rush to leave, she said she grabbed his clothes as well, which contained his wallet and the wad of cash he was flaunting around earlier.
After fleeing the motel, she found a phone booth and called the cops to report that she was kidnapped.
Meanwhile, a drunk Sam threw a sport coat on himself and burst into the office of the motel manager Bertha Franklin.
In his fit of rage and intoxication, he thought Bertha was hiding Elisa and broke down her door.
“He grabbed both of my arms and started twisting them and asked me, ‘Where was the girl?’” Bertha said as she narrated her version of events.
“I started kicking. I tried to bite him through the jacket. I was fighting, biting, scratching, everything,” she continued.
The motel manager then grabbed her .22 pistol and fired three shots, one of which pierced the singer’s chest and left him bleeding on the floor.
Many have poked holes in Bertha and Elisa’s story, with conspiracy theorists saying he was targeted by music moguls with mob links.
Some theories claim the FBI had the singer under surveillance due to his connection to the civil rights movement and might have been involved in his passing.
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Analice Couto
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