As much as I don’t want to mention this book one more time, the fact that W. T. Schultz continues to give interviews and launch attacks on rock nyc makes me answer one more time. During the second part of the two-part interview with Paul Page, the author of ‘Torment Saint’ answered a few questions about the circumstances of Elliott’s death, and once again he did answered with the assurance of a guy who has become an authority regarding everything Elliott Smith. I don’t deny his research, but when it comes to his mysterious death, this guy has no right to state what he states! At the risk to repeat myself over and over, the police and the coroner could not determine if it was a suicide or a murder, but Schultz is certain it was a suicide? How pretentious it sounds, pretending to be better than anybody else on the only pretense to have talked to people who knew Elliott when he was living in Portland! At the exception of Jennifer Chiba of course, Schultz did not talk to the LA crowd: he didn’t speak directly to Autumn de Wilde, Jon Brion, Mark Flanagan and so many others, and I have very good reasons to believe these people have a totally different vision of Schultz’s narrative. I actually briefly talked to Autumn – she told me, ‘there’s only one person who knows what happened and she is not talking’ – and I know someone who talked to Brion. His only source for the last episode of Elliott’s life is Chiba and Schultz doesn’t even question his source… why? well, he just likes her.
But if I am writing about all this again, it’s because of his direct attack:
‘At one of my book events in LA, I was approached by the fiercest of the murder theorists, a fan of Elliott’s (though fan is the wrong word; she’s less a fan of Elliott’s, I feel, than a fan of the theory that Elliott was murdered). She hadn’t read my book, as she admitted to me. Still, she hated it, completely without reason, as she never tired of announcing on her shrill websites. She kept repeating to me, “No one ever stabs themselves through clothing,” as Elliott did. This is the quality of the thinking one encounters. It’s sad and laughable and it would be funny if it weren’t so destructive. True, stabbing through clothing is unusual. But so is driving off a cliff or falling from a tree. Yet those improbable things do occasionally happen. Unusual does not equal impossible.’
The fiercest of the murder theorists? Apparently Schultz hasn’t talked to a lot of fans, because I met quite a lot of them who are even more certain than me about what happened to Elliott! Saying that I am a murder theorist is so laughable, when he has developed an obsession with artists who have committed suicide, this is constantly what he writes about! He also seems so irritated by the fact I hadn’t read his book: of course I hadn’t read it at the time (I have since) I had just bought it! But I had read enough of it (especially the last chapters) to have formed an opinion about his intentions, and to know he had a deliberate desire to ignore certain facts and prove that it was a suicide. He continues in the interview:
‘I don’t want to review all the facts here. That would take too much time. And I cover them exhaustively in the book. After taking into account the totality of the case and thinking through every possibility as deeply as anyone could, do I believe Elliott committed suicide; do I believe a reasonable person would conclude the same thing? Absolutely yes. Am I certain he did, unquestionably certain? Of course not. No one can be that. Do I believe, after interviewing her for over 30 hours, on the phone and in person, and trying to get a sense of her as an individual, that Jennifer Chiba was capable of killing Elliott Smith? No. I believe Chiba’s therapist, who said the only person Jennifer would ever be capable of killing is herself.’
As deeply as anyone could? Yeah, once again, this auto-congratulation that he did such a great job whereas so many people weren’t included in his book. He was especially pissed off at me (and probably still is) because I said he didn’t talk to Elliott’s family. He had an exchange with Ashley Welch but she refused to be quoted in the book. On my side, I did communicate with Elliott’s family, and Schultz is still upset about the fact that they have talked to me and refused to talk to professor Schultz. He thinks I am lying but I am not a liar.
When he is asked about the cloud hanging over Chiba when she was ‘the person who looked after him and cared most about Elliott in his final years’, Schultz admits he really felt under her charm, there’s no other explanation for this:
‘I liked her. She’s very smart, open, insightful, interesting, artistic. She’s remarried to a super nice guy from the UK, she’s moved on with her life. She works as a therapist. Every story she told me that could be checked against other accounts totally checked out. And I found her to be exceptionally frank, spontaneous in her answers, willing to disclose facts that came at her own expense sometimes. These people who devote their lives to detesting and accusing Jennifer Chiba, a person they’ve never met, are deranged. I hate to even talk about them because I know it only increases their ridiculous hatred of me too. But at a certain point these sorts of attacks need to be called out and named for what they are.’
First I have met her, several times, and second, I could say so much about all this. This cloud of suspicion they are talking about could have easily disappeared if she had been willing to talk to the police. Contrarily to what she said, it is written in the police report that she refused to cooperate after the first interrogation. She even tried to leave the country for a very far away destination, then came back when she knew the police wasn’t prosecuting, and left again the US a few weeks after, Then, what’s not to like in Chiba? She is responsible for one of the meanest aspects of this sad story: I am talking about her lawsuit against the grieving family, which she launched not even a year after Elliott’s death! Conveniently, Schultz has never made any mention of it in his book or interviews. At the end, it’s quite interesting to see Chiba has managed to become this caring person when I have on record (and on tape) someone who told me she was providing heroin for Chiba, heroin that Chiba was passing to Elliott. She was his drug dealer, I have formal proof of this and the truth is far from being this rosy-caring-loving relationship that Schultz is describing in the book. Of course Elliott could have found drugs without her (I am anticipating some of his supporter’s replies) but this is really not the point.
Furthermore, Valerie Deerin didn’t deserve the treatment she received in the book. I can’t find any negative things said about J Chiba (although I could point you many people who had plenty of bad things to say about her, read this for example) whereas V. Deerin was the girlfriend who ‘had more or less barged into his life’, and that he had finally sent home,… like an unwanted package… I believe Schultz treats well people who accepted to speak to him and badly people who didn’t. Is this really the true nature of a good biographer? From start to finish, Schultz wanted Elliott to have committed suicide because this idea fits so well in his nice little Plath-Arbus book collection.