(July 11, 2007)--A new book is telling a different story about how Jim Morrison, the frontman for The Doors, died in Paris in 1971.

In the new book, former nightclub manager Sam Bernett says Morrison died in a toilet stall of his club after what he believes was a heroin overdose.

The official story has always been that the rocker went to a movie, listened to records, fell ill and died of heart failure in his bathtub at the age of 27.

Bernett writes about the shock of finding Morrison's body in "The End: Jim Morrison."

Bernett has been pestered for years by reporters investigating Morrison's death, but kept his story quiet until his wife suggested writing a book last year.

Rumors have long suggested that Morrison died of an overdose and that he had fallen ill at the nightclub, but witnesses did not come forward.

Bernett says two drug dealers Morrison met with in the club that night sold him the heroin, which he believes the singer sniffed in the bathroom, triggering the heart attack.

When the singer didn't emerge from the bathroom, Bernett recalls having the door smashed and seeing Morrison slumped on the toilet.

Despite his appeals to call the police, Bernett claims the two dealers dragged Morrison out of the club saying that he was actually alive merely unconscious and that they would get him home safely.

Afterward, Morrison's girlfriend Pamela Courson apparently told the French police that Morrison died in their apartment and the doctor's report said it was from natural causes.

Bernett feels that Courson wanted to cover up the fact that Morrison died of an overdose and the police and doctor alike did a very perfunctory job filing the report.

Whether the French police will reopen the case after more than three decades is an open question.

The Associated Press had no way of independently verifying the claims made by Bernett in his book.

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