In my quest to discover the truth, I sometimes try to get some help from outside. As you may know, we, at Rock NYC, have been pursuing a lost cause for about four years, as we have been trying to solve the mystery surrounding Elliott Smith’s death. I am well aware of two things: that we may never know what happened and that we are not going to be taken seriously by many people.
I haven’t counted the times people have made fun of me, telling me that I shouldn’t play some dilettante detective or that I should mind my own business! ‘Who are you to pretend to succeed where the police couldn’t’, ‘Who do I think I am? Some amateurish CSI detective wannabe’?… I am not sure why people can be so aggressive but they do. It’s true that I have hesitated to become involved in this story for a long time, after all I am not part of Elliott’s family, not even a friend, yeah, who am I to look into this? But despite the critics, I have pursued the search.
‘Searching for Elliott Smith’ director Gil Reyes once told me that the police could not close the case and declared it a suicide because of a technicality. If you have seen the movie, you probably know that he supports Chiba’s story and thinks Elliott killed himself, or at least makes us believe he thinks that way. I have always wonder about this technicality, what did he exactly mean and how did he get this information?…. I have talked to the detectives twice and they never said anything even close to this to me. Gil got very mysterious when I asked him about what he meant, he was probably jubilating he knew something I didn’t know, but what did he know exactly?
So I decided to ask some experts about what could be a technicality in a case like this one, a case officially still open, but obviously not investigated anymore. I found this forum called Expert Law, which had a part dedicated to police investigations, and I asked my question about the case not being close because of a technicality, not hoping they could tell me what this technicality was, but hoping to get a bit more information about the subject of cases left open for 11 years…
Let’s just say that it didn’t turn as expected, well I have even been banned from the forum!!! I have to say I did give some information about the case without revealing Elliott’s name. I am not sure these people had heard about him, but I wanted them to answer as objectively as possible.
First they said that the case is a cold case, even though it is open, but that the technicalities could be multiple. Then they started to point out that since I wasn’t a family member or even a close friend, it was not really ‘legally’ any of my business. And as I told them that the family could not get much information either, they said that it was normal procedure for the police to retain information in the case of an open case, and this is the most reasonable reply that I got:
‘1. If information regarding evidence and theories in a homicide are made public, it would give the guilty party a chance to fabricate an alibi or an explanation for their involvement, fabricate evidence to place blame in an innocent party, destroy evidence, kill or intimidate witnesses, or simply flee.
2. Most people are murdered by a friend or family member. If you share information about the crime with family, you could be providing information to the person who killed the victim.
3. Family members talk among each other, friends, neighbors and the press. What you tell them is usually repeated to others and if made public can hamper your investigation.
4. If you share information about the case with an unauthorized person such as a family member, you may no longer claim the confidentiality protections of the Public records Act . You must then release your investigative file to the press if they request it. In turn, they can publish your investigative information, damaging your case.
For these reasons, it is unlikely the police will share information with anyone until after the case has been closed or gone to trial.’
And note that I had just summed up what the police report says, and the guy naturally reached the conclusion: ‘The circumstances you describe suggest the possibility that this could have been a murder instead of a suicide.’ Another person said ‘due to how much information can be ascertained I suspect there is enough evidence to suggest it wasn’t suicide but not enough information to charge or prosecute any possible suspect. That leaves them with an open case.’
So I was satisfied with the answer, although unsatisfied that the police would not release information because of the above reasons… Then things turned very sour, I went into more details, questioning what forensics were done at the time and suspecting that the investigation was botched. I guess this didn’t please them and one of them took a very patronizing tone suddenly and wrote:
‘Alyson, stop.
There are undoubtedly multiple things the police know that you do not. It is not your business to be poking your nose into this situation. There could be a hundred different reasons why the police have handled things the way they did, and the fact that you do not understand everything does not mean that they “botched” it.
You also don’t know what kind of investigation may still be ongoing. The fact that they are not out there actively making it known does not mean they are doing nothing. There can be many, many reasons why they might care to keep the investigation quiet.
The police are NOT going to “release information” until the case is closed. If the family wants an update they -NOT YOU- can have their attorney inquire what information is available that will not compromise the case. YOU have no legal right to the information and WILL NOT receive it.
I think we’ve all tried to be very patient with your questions and explain to you what we can, but you are playing with things you do not understand and your unnecessarily involving yourself in the situation could end up hurting things for the family. Is that what you want?’
I told them I had communicated with a part of the family, that they were in total agreement with what I was doing, but the guy banned me and the last comment I got (from another person) was: ‘I think you watch too much TV, if you think you’re going to be of any help. You’re not listening to people who have experience, it’s time for you to go annoy someone else.’
What a bunch of pretentious pricks! First of all I never watch this kind of TV shows, and I guess they didn’t take well the fact that I said the investigation was botched! I don’t know who these people are, lawyers? Ex-cops? Detectives? But they sure reacted the same way than another bunch of people, on another message board, years ago. At the time I was posting on the defunct Sweet Adeline, Elliott Smith’s message board, and the animosity toward fans trying to get information was high. Probably many people think that this story is not my business, and that the police is quietly investigating, but I still think there is nothing wrong at looking for the truth. I was not rude, just asking a few things and what exactly is a help forum if we can’t ask questions? Getting banned from it was ridiculous, and may be it tells me I am doing something right.
Comments are closed.