Pamela Courson

Pamela Susan Courson (December 22, 1946 – April 25, 1974) was a long-term companion of Jim Morrison, singer of the Doors. Courson stated she discovered Morrison's body in the bathtub of a Paris apartment in 1971. She died three years after him, in 1974. Early life Courson was born in Weed, California. Her father, Columbus "Corky" Courson (1918–2008), had been a Navy bombardier (attaining the rank of Commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve) before he became a junior high school principal in Villa Park, California. Her mother, Pearl "Penny" Courson (1923–2014), was a homemaker who did interior design. After she died at age 90 in 2014, her New York Times obituary described her as a regular reader of that newspaper and a "connoisseur of the arts." Courson had one sibling, a sister named Judith, who died in 2018. She attended Orange High School in Orange, California. Involvement with Morrison Courson and Jim Morrison met at the London Fog nightclub on the Sunset Strip in 1965, while she was an art student at Los Angeles City College. In his 1998 memoir, Light My Fire: My Life with The Doors, keyboardist Ray Manzarek states that Courson and a friend saw the band during their stint at the London Fog. Morrison and Courson had an open relationship, at times very charged and intense, and also described as "on-again, off-again" as both maintained ongoing relationships with others, while also being strongly committed to each other in their own way. One of Courson's more significant, ongoing relationships was with the French nobleman and heroin dealer Jean de Breteuil. Morrison hated heroin and would become angry at Courson for using.