Janis Joplin's former lover denies she's to blame for the rocker's death
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Janis Joplin died of a drug overdose in Los Angeles at age 27. (Getty Images)
The on-again-off-again lover of the late rocker Janis Joplin is trying to set the record straight on singer’s death.
Peggy Caserta said in an interview Thursday she's been blamed for Joplin’s death since revealing in her ghostwritten memoir she and Joplin would shoot heroin constantly and that she and Joplin’s fiancée stood up the singer for a planned threesome. Caserta told Vulture she didn’t turn Joplin onto heroin.
“Janis and James Gurley and Sam Andrew were shooting heroin from the beginning of Big Brother and the Holding Company, the three of them,” Caserta said of Joplin’s then bandmates, adding that Joplin was her “dope-shooting pal.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Caserta believes being gay has something to do with people assigning blame to her over Joplin’s death.
“Sam certainly shot as much dope with her as I did,” she said. "It has to be the gay thing.”
Joplin had been clean in the days leading up to her overdose death, Caserta told Vulture. However, Joplin ran into a drug dealer delivering dope to Caserta in a hotel lobby where she later died, Caserta said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“She just happened to walk out to get cigarettes and ran into George in the Landmark lobby,” Caserta said. “That started her thinking about it, and she came up to my room to get high.”
Caserta, though, believes Joplin didn’t die of an overdose, and instead tripped and fell and later died.
“She tripped and fell, honey. I'm positive of it.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Joplin was 27 when she died at the Landmark in Hollywood.