 Police officers claimed that they found Settles hanging in his jail cell from a noose created from a mattress cover, from which they cut him down; however, Police elected not to take photographic evidence of the hanging, and instead only took photographs of Settles on the floor, and officers refused to testify—pleading the fifth, in what continues to appear to some to have been a conspiratorial 'smokescreen' or cover-up for police brutality.In 1981, a jury in a Los Angeles coroner's inquest ruled that Settles had died 'at the hands of another, other than by accident'.A furor erupted afterwards over the nature of his death, as the police said the death was a suicide.