‘Yet, around every Internet corner I found them. They are militant, watchful, obsessed, adamant. The handful of people—and I do, now, believe them to be no more than a handful—who insist Elliott was murdered,’ wrote W. T. Schultz in the Seattle News to promote his book ‘Torment Saint’. And I want to begin with this ‘no more than a handful’ because our group Justice for Elliott Smith has just gone beyond 500 members! So is 500 more than a handful?? I bet it is! In comparison his Facebook page for ‘Torment Saint’ has 572 likes, which is not much more, and this is one of the reasons why I despise the guy, he refuses to report the facts.
There are many pages about Elliott on the internet, there are many fan pages, but Justice for Elliott Smith has another purpose, and if you belong to this group you must have some doubts regarding what happened on October 21st 2003. The group was founded by Rock NYC in April 2010 and we have been clear since the beginning: We want the truth and we request the LAPD to either close the Elliott Smith murder inquiry or resuscitate it after more than 11 years of negligence. Since that time, we have tried so much, we have contacted people who knew him with more or less success, some have come forward, others have preferred to stay anonymous, but we have tried to cover Elliott Smith’s actuality as much as we could. And when I say actuality, we went beyond the usual album, book or documentary release, we have tried to get new information, talked to people such as Dr. Scheinin who did Elliott’s autopsy, Jerry Schoenkopf who was Elliott’s drug counselor, and numerous people who knew him.
We have challenged Liam Gowing who wrote the 2004 Spin article, Gil Reyes who made ‘Searching for Elliott Smith’, W.T. Schultz who wrote ‘Torment Saint’, as the three of them have tried very hard at spreading misinformation in the mainstream media. I certainly think we don’t have a definitive answer regarding what happened to Elliott, despite what these three individuals want us to believe. Above everything, we have challenged Jennifer Chiba’s narrative and I even think that she may have altered her story because of the articles posted on Rock NYC. For example, she never mentioned any DUI in Gowing’s article or Reyes’ documentary, but suddenly this DUI story pops up in Schultz’s book? Was this because we exposed it here first? Otherwise, was there any good reason for her to talk about it? Similarly, the small cuts that Elliott had on his right biceps and palms have been the subject of many explanation, and if Chiba and Robin Peringer went to say (In Gowing’s article and Reyes’ documentary) that these cuts could be explained by the fact that Elliott was a ‘cutter’, the term is not even used in Schultz’s book. Although he makes an allusion to Gowing’s interpretation, Shultz just dismisses the ‘possible defensive wounds’ by saying there are ‘very small’ and located, for one of them, in an odd location. But the road to self-injury is not totally endorsed by Schultz whereas Reyes said to me, during a private conversation, that Elliott could have got these small cuts while falling on the balcony. Right! Another explanation, another story, how many other ones do they have exactly? And could this sudden new scenario have appeared in his head because the explanation of self-cutting had been blown out by one of our posts? Scheinin told me these cuts were absolutely not due to intentional self harm. These are small victories, but they have been forced to change their story, and this says a lot about their conception of the truth.
I just wanted to thank the 515 of you (so far but we are growing every day!) for being part of this, in particular the members who are always interacting when we post a new article! Thanks to (in no particular order) Alaska Monaco, Juanita Ignacio, Lisa Tyson Dunham, Esajoli D. Jones, Ellie Lowthere , Ro Smith, Local Stigmatic, Heidi Bridget Knight, Brian Cobehr, Yrlic Music-IIc, Hannah Everage, Crystal Jeffrey, William Holbrook, Luiz Felipe Marinho, Grace Moore, Kali Eli, Jade Wood, Amber Smith, Matt Clairmont, Emily Sipiora, Johnny Dalle, Sarah Norden, Damasca Lovecraft, Antony Stevo, Mahmoud Fawzy Khalil, Michele Dena, Micelle Moore, An Mir, Taylor Thomas Barnett, Holly Fields Sesco, Deb Croghan, Alex Rafael Rose, Dave James, James Delahunty, Emily Harp, Emily Smith, John Stanley, Ben Sherwood, Kyle McGill, Mil Reyna,…
I can’t name everyone, sorry if you are not on the list but I know a lot of you read these posts. And remember, as Iman told me one day, the only causes worth fighting for are the lost causes…
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