The legendary rockstar was found dead in a flat in Notting Hill, London on September 18 1970 aged just 27.
Tests on his body found he had choked to death on his own vomit after consuming a mixture of red wine and sleeping tablets.
But an inquest recorded an open verdict – with the official cause of Hendrix’ death remaining a mystery.
Over the past 47 years, some of Jimi’s friends and colleagues have spoken out about his final hours – with some pointing the finger at his British manager Mike Jeffery.
And one band roadie even insists the suspected former CIA man even confessed to the murder a year after the guitarist’s death.
Hendrix was one of the highest paid musicians in the world by the end of 1969 after Woodstock festival – reportedly with a net worth of $175m (£141m).
But after months of hard drug abuse and failing gigs, there was more pressure than ever on the Seattle-born star to perform.
The Hey Joe singer had split with his band Jimi Hendrix Experience and joined up with with old bassist Billy Cox and drummer Buddy Miles to record a “live” album – forming the Band of the Gypsys.
Manager Jeffery was unhappy with Hendrix’s work ethic and was trying to secure long-term deals to pay off heavy outgoings.
At the new band’s third gig in January 1970, Jimi – looking subdued – walked off stage after just three songs.
Bandmate Miles later claimed Jeffery had given Hendrix LSD in an attempt to sabotage the new band.
Jeffery fired Miles and Cox quit immediately after.
Hendrix was then forced to reform his old band and abandoned more gigs in Denmark and Germany by September 6 1970.
He returned to his home in London and told of how he was going to drop Jeffery as a manager.
According to Sharon Lawrence, Henrix’s journalist friend and confidant, he told her: “Michael Jeffery told me from the beginning that he’d handle it, but he’s selling me out. “
Rumours of a secret tax haven in the Bahamas emerged that Jeffery had allegedly been dropping funds into.
And in a segment of Alex Constantine’s 2000 book The Covert War Against Rock, it reads: “Friends of Hendrix confiscated financial documents from his New York office and turned them over to Jimi: ‘One showed that what was supposed to be a $10,000 gig was in fact grossing $50,000.’”
According to historian R. Gary Patterson: “Jimi Hendrix was upset that large amounts of his money were missing.”
On September 18 1970, the guitarist was found unresponsive by his supposed girlfriend Monika Dannemann in her flat in Notting Hill.
He was taken to St Mary Abbot’s hospital by ambulance, but was later declared dead.
She’d claimed the two had shared a bottle of wine before both taking sleeping tablets and going to bed in the early hours of the morning.
Speaking five years after the incident, she told Caesar Glebbeek, a Hendrix biographer, she had woke at 9am to find Jimi not breathing.
Despite initially telling cops she believed he had overdosed on the pills, she allegedly told Glebbeek: “I believe that he got poisoned, that he actually got murdered.
“There is something really behind the whole thing, and there’s quite a powerful group behind all that. I think it is the Mafia.”
Reg Jones, a paramedic who attended the scene, told later of how the door had been “flung wide open” and they had known he was dead “as soon as they walked in the room”.
While John Bannister, the on-call registrar, also told The Times in 2000: “The amount of wine that was over him was just extraordinary. Not only was it saturated right through his hair and shirt but his lungs and stomach were absolutely full of wine.
“I have never seen so much wine. I would have thought there was half a bottle of wine in his hair. He had really drowned in a massive amount of red wine.”
Coroner results earlier only revealed a small amount of wine in his bloodstream and liver.
At the time, many asked the question “Who killed Jimi Hendrix?”.
According to Constantine’s book – Chas Chandler, Hendrix Producer, said after his death: “I don’t believe for one minute that he killed himself. That was out of the question.”
While Ed Chalpin, Proprietor of Studio 76: “I believe the circumstances surrounding his death are suspicious and I think he was murdered.”
And in May 2009, James “Tappy” Wright claimed Hendrix’s manager Jeffery had murdered the guitarist.
Wright told US show Autopsy: The Final Hours in 2016: “Mike Jeffery told me how he did it.
“He and a couple of friends used an old army trick – it’s called waterboarding now.
“You can pour liquids straight into the lungs and drown them.”
The roadie for the Animals – who Jeffery also managed – claimed he confessed to him a year later to having Hendrix killed to claim the guitarist’s $1m life insurance.
There is little evidence to find out if a claim was lodged or returned on.
Jeffery died in an air accident in 1973, aged 39, just three years after Hendrix passed.
One biographer and theorist claims on his blog Ready Steady Gone: ”Those who believe that Mike Jeffery was directly responsible for Hendrix’s death argue that he was financially better off with Hendrix out of the picture.
“They say that Mike Jeffery would have received a pay-out on Hendrix’s life insurance and that his income from Hendrix was due to end within months because of the expiry of the Hendrix-Jeffery contract or because Hendrix was about to sack him.”
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