On May 3, 1969, after disembarking from his flight, James Marshall \u201cJimi\u201d Hendrix was arrested at Toronto\u2019s Pearson International Airport.\u00a0 Customs inspectors found a small quantity of hashish and heroin in his luggage.\u00a0 As authorities pulled the vial out of his bag, Jimi shook his head in disbelief and categorically denied they were his.\u00a0 Jimi was released in time for his evening concert in Toronto.\u00a0 He was arraigned two days later and, after posting $10,000 bail, was allowed to continue the tour.\u00a0 During that waiting period, he lived with the very real fear of conviction \u2013 he faced as many as 10 years in prison.<\/p>\n

On June 19, Jimi flew to Toronto, where he appeared in court for a preliminary hearing.\u00a0 His actual trial began in December 1969.\u00a0 Jimi argued in court that the drugs were slipped into his bag by a fan back in LA and that he didn\u2019t notice them.\u00a0 Privately, he blamed a disgruntled groupie who, he said, had planted the drugs and called ahead to the Canadian police.\u00a0 He was acquitted of the charges.<\/p>\n

When Jimi Hendrix was busted for trying to bring heroin into Canada on May 3, 1969, by far the most extraordinary aspect of the event was how little press it generated.\u00a0 Jimi was arguably the biggest rock star in America at this juncture, yet his arrest only made a few Toronto papers.\u00a0 When news of the bust finally did break, Jimi suggested the arrest was emblematic of a larger battle between youth and authority.<\/p>\n

Hendrix\u2019s brief and meteoric career was marred by both legal disputes and substance abuse allegations.\u00a0 On September 18, 1970, Hendrix was found dead at his girlfriend\u2019s flat in London under mysterious circumstances. He had asphyxiated on aspirated vomit\u2014largely red wine. Inconsistencies in the recollections of Hendrix\u2019s close associates, confusion over his time of death, his surprisingly low blood alcohol content, and other oddities surrounding the circumstances of his death have fueled speculation about whether Hendrix\u2019s death may have involved foul play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On May 3, 1969, after disembarking from his flight, James Marshall \u201cJimi\u201d Hendrix was arrested at Toronto\u2019s Pearson International Airport.\u00a0 Customs inspectors found a small quantity of hashish and heroin in his luggage.\u00a0 As authorities pulled the vial out of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-view-all-rockandroll","category-most-wanted-actors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hollywoodmostwanted.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hollywoodmostwanted.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hollywoodmostwanted.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hollywoodmostwanted.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hollywoodmostwanted.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.hollywoodmostwanted.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1458,"href":"http:\/\/www.hollywoodmostwanted.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions\/1458"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hollywoodmostwanted.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hollywoodmostwanted.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hollywoodmostwanted.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hollywoodmostwanted.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}