DID COPS STEAL THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS OFF OF OTIS REDDINGS DEAD BODY? on a cold and cloudy morning in december of 1967, world famous Stax Records soul vocalist Otis Redding, his backing band the bar-kays and pilot richard fraser boarded a private, 11-seater airplane to fly from cleveland, ohio to madison, wisconson to perform a concert at the factory nightclub. unfortunately, shortly after being granted permission to land at madisons truax field, the beechcraft H18 plummeted into the icey waters of nearby lake momona. strangely, an explanation for the crash was never determined although otis reddings friend and fellow georgia native James Brown claimed, in his autobiography, that he once looked over reddings aircraft and warned him that it wasnt up to snuff. whether or not this was true, the crash killed everyone on board except for trumpeter ben cauley who, despite being unable to swim, survived by desperately clutching a buoyant seat cushion (hold on, im coming) and staying afloat until help arrived. a local farmer named chris dickert and his neighbour bernie reese heard the plane go down and, within 10 minutes, set off on reeses boat to help rescue workers who were also heading out on the lake. during the effort, dicket claims that he pulled, among other things, a briefcase with the initials O.R. out of the water and gave it to the police. years after the incident, dickert recalled the discovery, at first, I wondered who O.R. might be. the next day, the plane was lifted, by crane, from the lakes bottom and the remains of the deceased were found inside the wreckage. madison county coroner clyde chamberlain inspected otis reddings body and found that the singers face had been badly cut and his right leg broken on impact but offered no information about his briefcase. despite an early police report which listed a small, dark attache case among the found items at the crash site, reddings bag was never officially recovered. reddings wife zelma has since noted that otis used that particular, missing case to carry his concert earnings and because he had just completed three shows in clevleland, it is likely that there would have been up to $10,000 (over 70 grand in todays money) inside. at the time, the average annual salary for a police officer was just over $5,000 so one can draw their own conclusions about motivation for a mishandling of evidence. when ted mell, a momona sergeant who helped oversee the investigation was asked about the lost property in 1983, he responded, to be frank with you, I dont even remember any attache case. that same year, william diebold, another officer who worked the case (no pun intended) said, if you want something for the record on that attache case, you wont get it. ten days after the accident, Steve Cropper, a close friend and label-mate of otis redding, finalized the mix on a song he had co-written and recorded with redding only weeks before the tragedy. (sittin on) the dock of the bay, released in january of 1967, became the soul legends only number-one single and earned redding two posthumous grammy awards. the infamous attache case mystery remains unsolved which either means that certain immoral and insensitive madison policemen looted the corpse of a dead man OR theres an old briefcase full of very soggy cash lying somewhere in the depths of lake momona. Wax Poetics Soul (musical genre)Otis ReddingOtis Redding IIIThe World of James BrowneSoundCloudFunkThe CommitmentsUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 17:00:01 +0000
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