Elliott Smith died nine years ago today and some people still regard his death as if it were one of the biggest mysteries of the universe, they tell you that ‘we will never know what happened’, that ‘it will be forever a mystery’, condescendingly adding we shouldn’t even try to look for the truth!
First of all, with this kind of attitude, nothing would have ever been accomplished, then again this story shouldn't be considered as an impenetrable mystery for god’s sake! Scientists have figured out the Higgs bosom particle and solved other really complex problems, way greater than the average human mind, and people tell me I should not expect to know what happened between two people?
One other problem relies on the weird idea that truth is all relative; and I greatly disagree, of course someone's vision of the world is relative since we all have our own perception of the world, and everyone experience a different world. But, there are facts, events that happen, and they happen independently from the way people perceive and interpret them. What happened on October 21st 2003 is not relative, the reality of the events is not malleable,… people can say whatever they want about dinosaurs but it is a fact they walked this earth 65 million years ago.
In the case of events like Elliott’s death, time is an issue, but we have seen cases solved after decades of investigation, so the ‘we will never know’ dogma doesn’t apply. Plus, there is still one person who is still alive and who knows what happened, even though the different stories she has told people may have influenced retrospectively her vision of the events.
I have read that the more we remember an event, the more we try to assemble this little movie of what happened in our head the more our memory of it drifts away from reality. Memory is a strange animal, it actually doesn’t work like a movie, more like a puzzle we try to put together each time we remember an event, and we don’t necessarily get the same assemblage each time.
An event as horrific as this one is certainly in J. Chiba’s memory forever, but it is difficult to know if she remembers it correctly… did she say exactly what happened in Gil Reyes’ documentary? This is what she declared in the movie:
She locked herself in the bathroom, because she was ‘going crazy herself’, Elliott was knocking on the door, saying he was sorry and loved her, After she stayed there for 5 or 10 minutes, she heard a terrible noise coming from the kitchen. Elliott was standing at the kitchen sink, his back facing her and when he turned around, she saw the knife and pulled it out. Elliott was gasping for air and she was afraid he would jump from the balcony. Finally she called 911 after he had collapsed.
Still, why did other reports write she was taking a shower? Why did this disappear from her new narrative?
Why is she declaring in the movie that Elliott was saying that ‘he was sorry and loved her’ when it was reported elsewhere that she said he was threatening to commit suicide and she was ignoring him, as she was used to him making melodramatic threats! How could he have said 'I love you' and 'I want to kill myself' at the same time?
Why was she afraid he would jump from the balcony? This part had never made sense for me.
A neighbor saw her storming out of the house briefly after a loud screaming match, but how does this fit in the above scenario?
What was the terrible noise she heard coming from the kitchen about, if Elliott was still standing? If it was a scream, why did she describe it as ‘a thud’ to the immediate family?
Why is Jennifer Chiba’s report of the events so blurry and inconsistent… it may be her own perception of what happened, but in this case it should not change from taking a shower to lock herself in the bathroom to ignore her boyfriend’s behavior.
Despite our fragmented memory of any events, the elements of the puzzle should not contradict themselves, or there is a problem.
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