The day Elliott Smith died was an unusually hot October day in Los Angeles, and I must have been finishing my lunch break when he passed away. I learned the news when I went home after checking some websites, and I could not believe it, as many other fans. We thought it was a hoax, a bad internet joke as they happen sometimes. It was not a joke, and when the details of his death were revealed, it was denial and consternation. I had just seen him playing 2 months before in a small club, he was doing well, he was looking healthy.
Reading online forums and message boards in the following days I was realizing that everybody was sharing the same dismay and confusion. Two years ago, it would have been more expected, if anyone can expect such a thing,… but now? After the Under the Radar interview which was explaining his long and painful rehabilitation and his passion for his new projects? It was not making sense… and then there was the way he died, the stabbing part that was so hard to imagine and visualize.
It was seven years ago, and unfortunately, the progress in the investigation is stagnant. We still don’t know all the details of the story. Right from the start, it was reported in the LAWeekly by Christine Pelisek that he had a fight with his girlfriend who allegedly locked herself in the bathroom, exited to find him standing with the knife in his chest, pulled out the knife and followed him just to see him collapsing.
This is what we knew seven years ago, and what we still know for sure today, as it was in the police report.
No other witness was there, so Jennifer Chiba is still the only person who knew what happened. Whoever she talked to afterward never spoke out for reasons that escape me.
After 7 years of investigation in limbo, if she has anything to do with his death, she has absolutely no reason to speak out now, she continues to live her life despite the cloud of suspicion around her, but she continues to live. On the contrary, if she has nothing to do with his death, she should have spoken years ago to clear out her name.
Elliott’s friends continue to avoid the subject, at the recent exception of Autumn de Wilde who was interviewed by NME and Q magazine this last year and said that the circumstances surrounding his death did not sit well with her at all. Larry Crane, who has called Elliott his friend, and took the time to leave a comment on this blog to contradict Iman when he wrote about ‘Elliott’s suicide’, never revealed much of his thoughts… as many other ‘friends’ by the way.
The police hasn’t still closed the case even after 7 years of non-investigation, nor turned it into a cold case… why? I still don’t understand.
Liam Gowing who investigated the case to write his article on Spin magazine is now convinced it was a suicide, without giving a clear proof of his decision. Only some circumstances led him to conclude that way, but we are always left with a gut feeling and no concrete evidence of what happened.
Elliott’s family had to fight Chiba’s lawsuit and it seems as if they have never recovered from the loss, they never fought aggressively to find out the truth, or if they did, their fight was very discreet. Ashley Welch, Elliott’s half sister, declared to Q magazine she did not want to get to the bottom of what happened… May be some members don’t really want to dig into this story as there are too many ugly skeletons in the family’s closet…
With nobody wanting to progress, not the police who probably butchered the investigation since the start, not the family, not the friends, we are left with the same unanswered questions than 7 years ago. The story is now between the hands of people like opportunistic documentary maker Gil Reyes and fans who are stuck with the nothing-we-could-do-can-bring-him-back mantra. So ridiculous and sad.