♪♪
Our next guest is
an Academy Award-nominated
singer/songwriter.
Here's Elliott Smith.
Elliott Smith was groundbreaking
and absolutely talented.
Someone who had wild success
beyond anything he could imagine.
His most famous song,
"Needle in the Hay,"
became popular after it was used
by Wes Anderson
in "The Royal Tenenbaums."
Elliott Smith tapped into emotions
that a lot of people
have a hard time expressing.
That's a really rare talent.
It just doesn't make sense.
Music news...
singer Elliott Smith has died
in an apparent suicide.
I think the rumor is that
he either stabbed himself
in the chest
or that he was m*rder*d.
The death report gets into
some of the injuries
that were witnessed
at his time of death.
Who stabs themself in
the chest twice?
Like, suicide?
What are you talking about?
The imagery is just...
it gives me the chills.
The issue wasn't
the cause of death.
The problem is that
we had to assign
a mode or manner of death.
It's easy to kind of go down
the rabbit hole
that Elliott Smith was m*rder*d.
In terms of Jennifer Chiba,
the police have looked
at her so much.
If there was a problem,
they would bring her in.
Did Elliott actually stab himself,
or did somebody else stab him?
Everyone who knew Elliott
deserves to have the truth
known about how he died.
911 emergency.
The official narrative
doesn't tell the whole story.
You really have to
look at everything.
You still have to go down
that rabbit hole.
You still have to go
down that path.
When a celebrity dies,
the search for answers
moves online,
and the truth
may be one click away.
♪♪
At 12:18, on October 21, 2003,
a woman frantically calls 911
from a house in the Echo Park
neighborhood of Los Angeles,
California.
- 911.
- What is your emergency?
Her name is Jennifer Chiba,
and she tells the dispatcher
that her boyfriend,
34-year-old indie rocker
Elliott Smith,
is lying on the ground,
bleeding profusely from
two stab wounds in his chest.
At 1:00 P.M.,
paramedics arrive.
They rush Elliott
to USC Medical Center,
but it's too late.
At 1:36 P.M., Elliott Smith
is pronounced dead.
♪♪
Musician Elliott Smith
died yesterday
in an apparent suicide.
Elliott Smith's tragic
death shocks the music industry.
Rest in peace, Elliott Smith.
Early reports suggest Smith
k*lled himself,
which is based on a statement
given by the only other person
in the house
with him at the time,
his girlfriend, Jennifer Chiba.
Chiba tells police that
after a particularly bad fight,
she locks herself in the bathroom.
Minutes later, she hears a scream
and comes out of the bathroom
to find Smith
with a kitchen knife
sticking out of his chest.
But the violent nature
of his death
immediately breeds
suspicion by fans.
When Elliott turned around,
she saw that he had a knife
plunging to his chest.
I think the rumor is that
he either stabbed himself
in the chest
or that he was m*rder*d.
♪♪
In 1998, Elliott Smith
becomes a household name
when his song "Miss Misery" is
nominated for an Academy Award.
Smith's performance of
"Miss Misery" at the 1998 Oscars
is a defining moment
for the musician.
But his professional journey
started 15 years earlier in 1983,
when 14-year-old Elliott Smith
grabs his guitar
and leaves his home in Texas
for the burgeoning indie
music scene in Portland, Oregon.
Elliott Smith performed
in, you know,
a number of bands in Portland,
then, you know, turned some
heads and word of this guy
whose act was so different
from what the scene
was at that time
really started to get attention.
When you make up a song,
it's going to sound like
how you feel,
whether you want to shout
at the devil
or whatever you want to do.
♪♪
In the '90s, Elliott Smith
thrives in Portland
and establishes himself
as one of the city's most
successful and unique artists.
Smith's personal lyrics
of alienation
and self-doubt deeply
resonate with fans.
Elliott Smith was a tortured soul.
First time I heard his music,
it struck a chord with me.
Like, this is a kind
of moody sound.
This is how I feel sometimes.
My name is Nelson Gary.
I did spoken-word poetry
over a guitar track
on "Coast to Coast,"
"From a Basement on the Hill."
You know, he wrote from such an
open, vulnerable, and raw place.
He was very authentic as
not only a singer/songwriter,
but also as a person.
I don't really care
where I fit into anything
or if there's anything
to fit in to.
It's just...
I like music, you know?
That's... That's the thing.
Aside from being
a brilliant songwriter,
he was a tremendous intellect.
Oh, he was insightful.
He was smart.
You know, he could be funny.
He was interesting to be around.
♪♪
In 1999, Smith relocates to
Los Angeles and signs a deal
with DreamWorks Records,
his first contract
with a major label.
It's a huge career success,
but Smith's apprehension with fame
and the mainstream music industry
is apparent from the beginning.
I don't know if being
as well-known as he was,
was what he had hoped it would be.
I know that there was an overall
sense of discontent
with a major label,
what he felt about
corporate rock, corporate music,
and how it was squelching
his creativity.
I'm not coming from
this little ghetto
of rampant sentimentality,
you know, that's associated
with, like, certain kinds
of singer/songwriters.
I'm just trying to be real.
He's wrestling with dual identity,
and I think, like
so many other artists,
he just didn't know how
to negotiate everyday world
of who he was as a normal person
and what it meant to have
that huge talent
that inspired people.
If you're living those
two worlds all the time,
you become confused
about your existence.
The way he carried himself
was generally very depressive
with a certain level of anxiety.
♪♪
On January 6, 2004,
the Los Angeles Coroner's Office
releases Elliott Smith's autopsy.
The cause of death isn't
surprising... two stab wounds
to Smith's chest.
But the manner of death
is surprising.
The police ruled it
a suicide prematurely.
♪♪
My name is Dr. Lisa Scheinin.
I was the medical examiner
who autopsied Elliott Smith.
The issue wasn't
the cause of death.
The problem we had is that
we had to assign it
a mode or manner of death.
This is obviously
not a natural death.
It's not an accident.
So our choices were homicide
or suicide.
In the end, without overwhelming
evidence for a suicide,
we could not in good faith say
that this was a suicide,
and we decided that the best
thing to do in this case
was to leave it undetermined.
Elliott Smith's case
remains open to this day,
and the ambiguity
of the coroner's report
causes a frenzy online.
If the coroner can't
definitively rule it a suicide,
then foul play
is a real possibility.
When I when I read that Elliott
Smith had two stab wounds
and that it was still an open case
and it hadn't been ruled
a suicide, I was like,
"What?"
I am what you would call
an Internet sleuth.
My work was featured
in a documentary called
"Don't F with Cats,"
where I hunted down a k*ller
that was uploading videos
to the Internet.
And my motto is, the Internet
is the new crime scene.
I'm attracted to
the Elliott Smith case
because I empathize with him in
really deep and meaningful ways.
I have my own mental health
struggles.
I was recently diagnosed
with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
I also have diagnosed depression,
and I've gotten to places
in my life
where I didn't see a pathway out.
So because I empathize so well
with him,
I really want to find
some answers.
♪♪
As an investigator,
I always want to find the truth
for each of my victims.
And every victim deserves
to have the truth
known about how they died.
I have a background in
military counterintelligence,
but I also have a background
in forensic science
and criminal justice.
So I'm going to sift through an
immense amount of information,
a lot of documents,
leads, and other tidbits.
This case fascinates me
because the manner of death
is still undetermined,
and so it's of great interest
to me to try to analyze
all the facts, evaluate them,
and see where they lead.
Investigators start piecing
together details
about the final day
of Elliott Smith's life.
Elliott Smith lived
with his girlfriend,
Jennifer Chiba, in Echo Park,
Los Angeles, in 2003.
He wasn't in the studio.
He wasn't touring.
He wasn't working.
But the morning of his death,
October 21, 2003,
him and Jennifer Chiba
are in their apartment,
and it's reported
by Jennifer to LAPD
that they started arguing.
They're arguing, and he's, like,
being melodramatic
according to Jennifer.
And she's just kind of had enough
and goes into the bathroom
to take a shower.
She's in there,
and she hears a scream
and she comes out of the bathroom,
and Elliott's standing there
with a knife in his chest.
She calls 911, and they
walk her through CPR.
And once they got him
to the hospital,
they actually took him
into surgery
and tried to repair the
perforations to Elliott's heart,
but, unfortunately,
it didn't work,
and, at 1:36 that afternoon,
he was pronounced dead.
With an inconclusive
cause of death,
the LAPD can't close the case,
leaving the possibilities
of both suicide
and foul play on the table.
What probably bothers me
most about Elliott's case
is that it's essentially unsolved.
We do not know how or why
he lost his life.
I think there's a lot more
investigation to be done
in order to try to determine,
did Elliott actually stab himself,
or did somebody else stab him?
Because it's open,
nobody in the public
can look at the evidence.
Many in the public believe
that Chiba was involved
in this m*rder,
but the facts are that the
police have never charged her
or named her as a suspect.
But why is it still an open case?
♪♪
Did I believe that somebody,
anybody could stab themselves
twice in the heart?
I had a really hard time
believing that.
You can easily jump
to the conclusion
that Elliott Smith was probably
a victim of a homicide.
♪♪
In October 2003,
musician Elliott Smith
dies in his Los Angeles home
from two stab wounds
in his chest.
When the manner of his death
comes back inconclusive
from the L.A. coroner's office,
many of Smith's fans become
convinced foul play is involved.
There are some pretty diehard
Elliott Smith fans
out there who have not accepted
that he actually
may have committed suicide.
My name is Justin Ling,
and I'm an independent
investigative journalist.
I spend a lot of time
trying to uncover and understand
conspiracy theories
and why people believe them.
I'm interested in Elliott Smith
just because of
the intensity around him.
His fans really, really loved him,
and for a lot of them,
they cannot accept the narrative
that he committed suicide.
There's a subreddit devoted
to Elliott Smith
with about 18,000 members,
and the question about whether
or not it was a m*rder
or a suicide pops up pretty often.
It's a grisly death, and the
thing fans and sleuths struggle
to accept the most is the idea
that somebody would take a knife
and plunge it
into their own chest.
Did I believe that somebody,
anybody could stab
themselves twice?
Not once, but twice in the heart?
I had a really hard time
believing that.
Suicide by self-stabbing is not
only savage and very painful,
it's also very rare.
Stabbing oneself as a mode
of suicide is very unusual.
I've certainly had suicides
where people slit their throats
or slit their wrists,
but I can't offhand recall
a person who had stabbed himself
as a suicide.
I'm Dr. Darria Long.
I'm a board-certified
emergency medicine physician.
In the Elliott Smith case,
he stabbed himself twice.
Once you've stabbed yourself,
can you override that pain enough
to stab yourself a second time?
As a criminal investigator myself,
who has been to countless
homicide scenes
and suicide scenes,
I've never seen one
where the person
stabbed themselves in the heart.
So it's very uncommon.
It's a far greater percentage
that if somebody is found
with a knife
sticking out of their chest,
there was a second person involved
who plunged that knife
into their chest.
One article on a website called
Rock NYC compiles the statistics
and shows that less than 2%
commit suicide by stabbing,
and, of those, most are in
the neck or the abdomen.
Online investigators
turn their attention
to the autopsy report sketches.
They immediately notice
something missing
that's usually present
in suicide by knife...
hesitation marks.
It hurts to cut yourself.
So the person will start
and they'll go,
"Ow, that hurts."
It makes you hesitate.
And eventually,
if you really want to do it,
you will get up the nerve
and you'll cut deep enough
to make it fatal.
But you'll have
all of these little,
smaller marks there first.
And Elliott Smith makes
another decision
in the moments before he dies
that's out of the ordinary.
He's stabbed himself
through his shirt.
Most people don't do that.
They will, if not take
the shirt off,
at least lift it up and look
at where they want to stab it
to make sure that they get it
in the right spot.
Maybe feel for ribs
to make sure
they're not going to hit bone.
But the one detail that catches
Internet sleuths' attention
is perhaps the most crucial.
In addition to the two
stab wounds,
Elliott Smith has other injuries.
One significant clue to suggest
that this may have been
a homicide are a pair of wounds
to Elliott Smith's hand and arm.
He has a laceration on his
left palm
and a significant cut on
the upper part of his right arm.
Given that Elliott Smith
was right-handed,
there's no real clear explanation
for how he may have cut himself
on that part of his arm.
One theory is that the cuts
are the result of Smith's
desperate final attempt
to stop an attacker...
defense wounds.
When I first read the autopsy
report, I was like,
"Yeah,
those are defense wounds."
So he could have been
struggling over the knife
with whoever
was coming at him with it,
and, during the struggle,
the knife got him in the arm.
Some fans are quick to dismiss
the wounds,
citing that Smith
is a known cutter,
someone who intentionally cuts
themselves to self-soothe
when they're
in psychological pain.
But in the eyes of the coroner,
that's not enough to explain
away the gash
in Smith's right arm.
I've autopsied cutters before,
and they tend to use
the same area.
It's easily accessible.
They do it over and over again.
He had evidence at autopsy
of having cut himself
and also possibly burned himself
with cigarettes,
but it was all in the same
place, all on the left forearm.
Elliott Smith was wearing clothes,
did not have hesitation marks,
and did have other cuts
which could potentially
have been defensive wounds.
Was it homicide or suicide?
Honestly, I still don't know.
One thing I kept reading
about online
was that Elliott
would never k*ll himself,
he was getting ready to go back
in the studio,
and he was full of life,
he was trying to get
his career back.
If Elliott Smith didn't k*ll
himself, online investigators
are left with two theories
about what happened that day.
One is from Chiba's own account,
which is that Elliott Smith
attempted suicide.
The second is that someone else,
in fact,
stabbed him twice in the chest.
Here you have somebody who
you've been arguing with loudly
with a knife in their chest.
What does that look like?
Investigators look into Smith
and Chiba's relationship
for clues.
As an investigator,
it's important to know
and learn about
a victim's personal life
because that may hold clues
as to what was going on
at the time they died,
and it may hold clues
as to how they actually died.
Basically, all accounts,
their relationship
was really unstable.
It seemed like a very
codependent relationship
from all angles, from what I saw.
Their relationship
has been described
as not unlike Sid Vicious
and his girlfriend, Nancy.
To me, the way their relationship
has been characterized,
to me, sounds unhealthy.
It does not sound like they had
a loving relationship
all the time.
They would be lovey-dovey
and everything's great,
and then the next, they would be
throwing bottles at each other.
Sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll.
Investigators uncover one fan
who's convinced Smith
did not k*ll himself,
Alyson Camus.
She wrote a book on
Smith's death, and her website,
Justice for Elliott Smith,
is a repository
for anti-Chiba content.
She's a fan of Elliott Smith,
and she has collected evidence,
done interviews,
she's talked to investigators,
and she's curated it all
onto her website.
She's a little obsessive,
kind of like me,
but she has collected
a lot of information
about the death of Elliott Smith.
And she spends a lot of time
fixating on Chiba.
She writes posts with titles like
"The Numerous Knife Tales
in Jennifer Chiba's Life"
and "Many people in
Elliott Smith's Circle
Were Very Suspicious Early On
and Still Are."
If you only read
the autopsy report
and Alyson's investigative work,
you can easily jump
to the conclusion
that Elliott Smith
was possibly k*lled.
♪♪
I would've been much happier
if the girlfriend
had been interviewed again,
because we do have all of these
other factors that suggest
that it was a homicidal
rather than a suicidal death.
We have one person
with a story, and that's it.
And that is Elliott's girlfriend
at the time, Jennifer.
♪♪
In October 2003, the acclaimed
musician Elliott Smith
dies in his Los Angeles home
from two stab wounds
to his chest.
The only two people in the house
at the time are Elliott
and his girlfriend,
Jennifer Chiba.
Chiba claims Smith k*lled himself.
So in this case,
we have one person with a story,
and that's it.
And that is Elliott's girlfriend
at the time, Jennifer.
Although Jennifer Chiba
isn't charged
with any crime in connection
with Elliott Smith's death,
many of his fans believe
that's not the full story.
His girlfriend definitely
k*lled him.
And the cops are just like,
"Yeah, sure, suicide."
I challenge everyone.
Go to the Reddit,
you know, r/elliottsmith
and then say something about it
not being suicide
and see how long you survive.
The website Ranker has a post
entitled "Elliott Smith Death
Conspiracy Theories
That Might Be Crazy
Enough to be True."
Not exactly in-depth,
but it has like 140,000 views.
The number one...
"He Had A Big Fight
With His Girlfriend
Right Before He Passed."
And on the Web, the story
of the couple's fight
takes a dark turn.
Reportedly during the argument,
the neighbors overheard
Jennifer scream,
"I don't give a sh*t.
[Bleep] die."
All of a sudden, it just
went dead silent.
Yeah, me and my friend
looked at each other like,
"Oh, man.
Did someone just get k*lled?"
The history was, he had a fight
with his girlfriend
on the day of the death,
and sometimes something like
that can precipitate people
just getting very extreme.
The immediate cause of death
listed on the autopsy report
is exsanguination
or bleeding to death,
according to Chiba,
she pulls the knife
out of Smith's chest
when she comes
out of the bathroom.
Is it possible that Jennifer
Chiba made the unfortunate error
in removing
that knife from his chest
and may have resulted
in his death?
Listen, I'm not a medical expert,
but I know enough
first aid to know that,
if the knife had remained
inside his chest,
it could have
stopped the bleeding.
It could have given him a chance
to keep that heart beating
- and to survive.
- It's always better,
if you have any foreign body
in the body,
in your chest, anywhere,
that you don't move it
because if it's left where it is,
it can either partially or fully
plug up the hole that it made.
If you take it out, the person's
going to bleed freely.
Most people who get stabbed
in the heart die
within a minute or two.
They only have about
a 15% chance of living as it is.
Every second counts
when someone's
been stabbed in the heart.
For years before Smith's death,
Chiba had been working
as a therapist
at a family counseling center
called Five Acres.
According to Five Acres,
everybody who works there,
including their therapists,
would've been trained
in first aid and CPR.
Another detail fans point to
is the delay in calling 911.
So according to this
one YouTube channel,
they've actually heard from
a relative of Elliott Smith.
And according to this unnamed
anonymous relative,
they spoke to Jennifer Chiba
after Smith's death,
and Chiba claimed
that her cellphone
wasn't working that morning
when Smith died.
They point out that this is odd
because they spoke to Smith
on the apartment landline
just a couple days prior.
This is 2003.
I don't believe we had gotten
to a point
where people were just ditching
their landlines for cellphones.
When police arrive,
unverified reports state
that Chiba is once again
locked in the bathroom.
She locked herself
in the bathroom,
and she refused to come out
and talk to the police.
It took quite some time before
they could finally coax her out
and to actually do an interview.
People have pointed to this
as evidence that she was guilty
or that she was hiding something
or trying to cover up evidence.
I'm Dr. Michael Arntfield.
I'm a professor and criminologist
at Western University,
where I founded
the Cold Case Society,
which is an unsolved-crimes
think tank.
There is any number of things
that could be
going on behind a locked door
during an active investigation
that is going to raise
red flags with investigators.
And when detectives are finally
able to speak with Chiba,
she produces a short suicide
note written on a Post-it Note.
Found inside the apartment
was a handwritten note
That said, "I'm so sorry.
Love, Elliott.
God forgive me."
First thing to know
about the suicide note
is that it wasn't dated,
meaning it could have been
written at any point in time,
not necessarily the morning
of Elliott Smith's death.
On top of that,
in the autopsy report,
it transcribes the note
as misspelling
Elliott Smith's name... only one
"T" in Elliott instead of two.
Now, we don't know if that's an
error the medical examiner made
or if that was an actual error
in the suicide note,
but if it was an error
in the suicide note,
it definitely contributes
to the idea
that it may have been a homicide.
People don't tend to misspell
their own names.
Since the case is still open,
the original Post-it Note
is locked away in a police file,
leaving unanswered questions
about one of the most
important pieces of evidence.
I wanted to know if they
dusted it for fingerprints.
I wanted to know if they brought
in a handwriting expert,
but if any of that was done,
those results have been
kept confidential
and never released publicly.
A one-liner suicide note
written on a Post-it Note...
I've admittedly never heard of.
Most suicide letters
are deliberated.
In many cases,
there's multiple letters
left in multiple locations
for multiple people.
As the investigation
into Smith's case continues,
they discover another fact
that is quite alarming.
Although Chiba gave a statement
to police at the scene
of Smith's death,
she's never called in
for a more formal interview.
When I learned that Jennifer Chiba
never was officially interviewed
by police, I was astounded.
She is, at a minimum, a witness
to a horrific suicide,
and she's never
officially interviewed.
I don't understand why.
I think there are so many gaps
in her story
that need to be explained.
I would've been much happier
if the girlfriend
had been interviewed
again another time,
because how do we know
that's exactly what happened?
Maybe what she said was the truth,
but maybe it wasn't,
because we do have all of these
other factors that suggest
that it was a homicidal
rather than a suicidal death.
With rising suspicion that
Jennifer Chiba is involved
in Elliott Smith's death,
she makes a statement
to "MTV News"
shortly after the coroner's
report is released.
Number one, that she wasn't
a suspect,
and she felt that she wasn't
because investigators
had not reached out to her,
tried to contact her.
But secondly, she also stated
that Elliott's family
knew the truth,
and so she wasn't
worried about it.
While doing some research
on this case,
I pulled up a statement from
the Smith family lawyer.
In 2004, he said very bluntly
and very publicly
that the family does not know
what happened
and that any indication to the
contrary is completely baseless.
Online investigators also question
Chiba's choice of words.
Jennifer's language choice
in this statement
is common for people who are
trying to cover something up.
I also pulled up a 2004 lawsuit
filed by Chiba
against Smith's family,
particularly his stepmother.
The lawsuit is asking for 15%
of Smith's earnings
or around $1,000,000.
In the lawsuit, Chiba claims
that Smith had promised to
take care of her financially
for the rest of her life.
She goes on to say
that they were basically living
as husband and wife.
And what's more, she'd actually
worked as his manager and agent
for years prior to his death.
He told his friends, like,
"You'll probably never
see me again
'cause I'm going to
k*ll myself."
He just fell further
and further into a dark place.
I found some information
that he was spending
like $1,500 a day on his habit.
When I heard that he possibly
had stabbed himself, I thought,
"Well, plenty of forecasts
of that in his music."
♪♪
♪♪
On October 21, 2003,
Elliott Smith,
the acclaimed singer/songwriter
best known for writing
the song "Miss Misery,"
dies from two stab wounds
to the chest.
One of them pierces his heart.
When the coroner's report
is released in January of 2004,
many are shocked that
the manner of death
is listed as undetermined.
However, some fans are convinced
Smith took his own life despite
the violent nature of his death.
It is incredibly rare
that somebody would stab
themselves in the chest
as a way of committing suicide,
but it's really important
to note it's not zero.
It does happen.
Suicides by self-stabbing
are incredibly rare
and typically have
one of two explanations.
This is either some ritual purpose
or someone being
in an acutely psychotic state
with a complete disregard
to the pain
and to the trauma
that it's going to cause.
This isn't somebody who has
developed a well-laid-out plan
as to how
to mercifully end their life.
This is somebody acting
in a state of mania.
Most fans who think
Elliott Smith k*lled himself
point to what they widely consider
to be his first
suicide attempt as proof.
When I was trying to find
information about Elliott Smith,
I wanted to know if he had
other suicide attempts.
A Spin article popped up,
and it talked about how...
when Elliott Smith
jumped off a cliff
in North Carolina in 1997,
and he made it sound
like no big deal.
He was like, "Yeah,
I was running, I saw the cliff,
I jumped, and, like,
the ground was coming up.
Whatever."
He just seemed very nonchalant
about the whole thing.
Many people call that
his first suicide attempt.
Friends said he had been blunt
with them
about his previous
attempts at suicide.
As one writer put it,
"You can't say
that Smith didn't warn you."
He told his friends, like,
"You'll probably never
see me again
'cause I'm going to
k*ll myself."
He told everybody he knew that
he was going to k*ll himself,
or he told them things
that led people to believe
he didn't care about living.
The stories of suicidal ideation
spill over
into his professional life,
as the sleuths find a report
involving his producer,
Larry Crane.
Crane recounted a story
where Smith lifted up his shirt
and showed him a pretty bad scar
on his chest.
So it's possible that Smith
had attempted suicide
by the exact same way previously.
Anyone who listens to
Elliott Smith's music
feels his pain
and suffering in it,
and his lyrics tell the story
of a man haunted
by the demons of his past.
That aren't really that many
people who know truly
who Elliott Smith was privately.
I believe Elliott did have
a history of suicidal ideation.
It's certainly in his lyrics.
I know that it's well-documented
that Elliott cut himself.
When I heard that he possibly
had stabbed himself, I thought,
"Well, plenty of forecasts
of that in his music."
One of the songs is called
"The Biggest Lie."
"You spent everything you had.
Wanted everything
to stop that bad."
Smith was pretty open about
his struggle with depression,
and his music includes a lot
of content about depression,
but also about
self-harm and suicide.
I mean, he wrote a song called
"Suicide Machine."
To better understand
Smith's state of mind,
online investigators
research his childhood,
and they find stories
of a hurt and abused child.
Elliott Smith had
a pretty rough childhood.
His parents split when
he was pretty young.
He went to live with his mother
and his new stepfather.
And he claims that his stepfather
was a*usive
throughout his childhood.
That likely fed into some of
the mental-health struggles
he had later in life.
He said that he received
different kinds of abuse,
and his stepfather denied it.
I think there was abuse there,
you know, from what he did say
in terms of verbally
and physically, that really did
hurt Elliott psychologically.
Elliott Smith was haunted
by his past,
and that influenced
his mental struggles.
I remember there was an article
in Spin.
That article, you know,
articulated quite well
that Elliott was troubled
by this relationship
with his stepfather.
In this interview,
he goes on to talk about,
you know, how you can mask your
emotions with drugs and alcohol.
If you think about
Elliott's childhood
and the accusations that he's
made against his stepfather
and, you know,
this history of ADHD
and depression
and self-medicating,
like, was Elliott trying to hide,
like, from his emotions?
Like many who experience
childhood trauma,
Elliott Smith struggles with
the after effects
throughout his adult life,
eventually leading to
serious drug addiction.
So when you add in
this possible abuse,
he became very addicted
to heroin and crack cocaine.
In Spin magazine,
I found some information
that he was spending
like $1,500 a day on his habit,
and he drank to the point where
he would get drunk and not stop.
And so this sort of bounces
back to Elliott's relationship
with his stepfather.
Like, I think the child abuse
and the low self-esteem
is part of it, but, you know,
Elliott was a drug addict.
Let's face it.
When somebody has
a substance-use disorder
and they are misusing substances,
that places them at higher risk
for having suicidal behavior.
And oftentimes when people
actually go through the act
of suicide,
substances may be involved.
Drugs and alcohol certainly
added fuel to the fire
of Smith's suicidal tendencies,
but they weren't directly
at play when he dies.
In the time leading up
to his death,
Smith is on the road to sobriety.
The toxicology report confirmed
that, at the time of his death,
he was clean.
So that would, on the surface,
appear to rule out
this being a substance-induced
state of psychosis and suicide.
His drug abuse got so bad, so bad,
finally, he checked himself
into a rehab center in Arizona.
He was trying something new,
getting clean and sober.
I think there is hope.
I think there is strength in that.
But for most long-term addicts,
getting clean and sober
is only a first step in the
journey toward mental health.
He'd abruptly gone sober,
cold turkey,
and this previous
coping mechanism was removed.
Whether this might have
some bearing on his ability
to keep thoughts, maybe
it had for some time, at bay.
Without replacing
those coping mechanisms
with something
more productive and positive,
he just fell further and further
into a dark place.
He was diagnosed with ADHD
as well as depression,
and later, while he was
working on his last album,
that manifested into some
pretty particular paranoia.
He was convinced
that his record label
was paying someone
to follow him around
and that they were looking
to steal his music.
He had said that DreamWorks
was breaking into his house
and stealing songs from his
computers and not paying him
and that he was threatening
to k*ll himself
if they wouldn't let him
out of his contract.
He thought that they were
following him in a white van.
And this white van appears
throughout
for, like, the next year or so
until he died.
Is it possible that he had
some sort of psychotic break?
Was Elliott's paranoia enough
to push him over the edge?
When somebody does k*ll
themselves intentionally,
the reaction is always like
"There's no way
he k*lled himself."
Jennifer Chiba has been a
secondary victim in all of this.
She basically witnessed him
die in front of her.
Instead of blaming Elliott
and his mental illness,
they're just going to blame
the girl he likes.
♪♪
In October 2003,
Elliott Smith dies from
two stab wounds in his chest.
Los Angeles police
initially call it a suicide,
but later, the L.A. coroner's
office rules it undetermined.
Many of Smith's fans agree
with the police report.
They think he k*lled himself,
and they blame a history
of childhood trauma and addiction.
Told me that he was
an abused child his whole life
and never really got over it.
But some fans continue to blame
Elliott Smith's death
on his girlfriend, Jennifer Chiba,
even though she's never been
a person of interest.
Naturally, when a lot
of these theories,
you know, turn on somebody
who was with him
at the time of his death,
his girlfriend, Jennifer Chiba,
they're going to focus on her
as the prime suspect,
and that can be really difficult
for somebody,
particularly if they're not
actually responsible.
You know, instead of blaming
Elliott and his mental illness,
they're just going to blame
the girl he likes.
A prevailing theme that I ran
into was, like, woman-blaming.
The women are going to take
the brunt for...
you know, every time a man kills
himself, it's her fault.
Jennifer Chiba has been a
secondary victim in all of this.
She basically witnessed
him die in front of her,
and that's extremely traumatic
to begin with,
but, secondly, she's been
under scrutiny
for nearly two decades now.
She's never been named a suspect,
but she's never been
officially cleared.
So she deserves the truth,
as well.
In terms of Jennifer Chiba.
The police have looked at her
so much
that, after this many years,
if there was a problem,
they would bring her in.
People obviously are going
to believe
what they want to believe.
The people who believe
there was foul play
typically reference
Chiba's actions
as proof that she had
something to do with it.
According to her own story,
she pulls a knife out
of Smith's chest
and, according
to unconfirmed reports,
locks herself in the bathroom
when police arrive.
But investigators
come to understand
the situation differently.
There's a host
of possible explanations
why Jennifer reacted
the way she did.
This is a traumatic situation
that would induce anxiety
and panic
in even the most
well-adjusted of people.
Is it possible
that she was so distraught...
she just pulled a knife
out of her boyfriend's chest.
You know, there's going to be
blood on her hands.
She's performing CPR.
There's going to be blood
from spray.
I mean, she's going to be...
have some blood on her.
Is it possible that she went
into the bathroom to clean up?
You don't know
if he's dead or not,
but your boyfriend's blood
on your hands, literally,
like, the imagery is just...
it gives me the chills.
There may also be
another explanation
as to why Smith
kept his shirt on when he died.
There was a friend of Elliott's,
and he said
Elliott wouldn't be caught dead
with his shirt off.
He never took his shirt off.
He didn't like
taking his shirt off.
He didn't sleep
with his shirt off.
He did not want to...
ever want to take his shirt off.
And when online investigators
look into the misspelling
of Smith's name
on the suicide note,
a coroner's spokesperson confirms
this was merely
a typographical error.
Online, many fans see Alyson Camus
as the expert on Smith's death,
but sleuths question
Camus' motivations.
Her being such a super fan,
she's a little too
invested in Elliott Smith
being, like, the hero.
As far as I can tell,
they never met.
They didn't hang out.
She very, very intensely
loved Smith
and seems to be incapable
of accepting
that he committed suicide.
It's important to rely
on facts, not feelings,
and when you're looking
at things online,
you really have to learn how
to filter out all that noise.
And in this situation,
those feelings are that noise.
When people look at this death,
they think,
"How can somebody
stab themselves?"
And the reality is suicide
by self-stabbing is rare,
but it's not nonexistent.
When somebody does k*ll
themselves intentionally,
the reaction is always like,
"There's no way
he k*lled himself,"
and it's, like, suicide
is always a surprise.
If people knew
something was coming,
you wouldn't be shocked
when it happened.
♪♪
In the tragic death of famed
indie singer Elliott Smith,
the L.A. coroner
is unable to determine
if the two stab wounds
in his chest
are the result of a homicide
or a suicide.
Investigators and fans alike
are still trying to figure out
what happened.
For me personally, I definitely
want the truth, right,
I want justice,
and I want peace.
If I had to answer today,
I would say Elliott Smith
committed suicide,
but I am open to the possibility
that he is the victim of homicide
because we just don't know
what we don't know.
There's too many
unanswered questions.
Without a real, new investigation,
unless new information surfaces,
it's unlikely
we're going to find anything
that gives us a conclusive
and satisfying answer
about how exactly he died.
It still looks like,
at this point,
Elliott Smith died of suicide.
The fact is the case remains open,
so even though Elliott Smith's
fans disagree on what happened
that day in Echo Park,
they all agree on one thing...
the case needs
to be reinvestigated
and closed once and for all.
Elliott's case deserves
to be reexamined
by the investigating authority,
by law enforcement.
If it's considered a cold case,
it deserves to have
a new investigator
put on it with fresh eyes.
There is a lot of information
out there which we uncovered,
and law enforcement has even
more access to records
and documents
and people and information.
Closing this case is important
for Jennifer Chiba
and Elliott Smith's family.
I mean, I'm sure Jennifer Chiba
would like to move on
with her life
and put aside any doubt that she
had anything to do with this.
And then Elliott's family,
I'm sure,
just want some peace
with the death, as well.
So it's important that
we get some answers.
Elliott Smith was
a complicated guy.
I mean, he was a musical and
a lyrical and a poetic genius,
but he also lived
really intensely,
and he clearly struggled.
At the end of the day, I think
people cope with this idea
that there must be
some other explanation
for how he died to deal
with their own complex feelings
about the fact that he's gone.
♪♪
Elliott Smith's legacy
is, of course, his music,
but it's also important to know
that, after he died,
his family donated
a large sum of money
to the Free Arts
for Abused Children.
They knew it was Elliott's goal
in life
to start a nonprofit
for abused children.
He was a very compassionate
and thoughtful artist.
His lyrics were meaningful,
they were heartfelt,
and he meant a lot
to a lot of people.
I think Elliott's soulfulness
has to do with his struggle,
but I think the music
is best speaking for itself.
I want to make sure that what
we remember most about him
was who he was as an artist,
and that's what lives on.
♪♪
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01x10 - Elliot Smith
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Internet sleuths and professional investigators re-open some of Hollywood's most notorious and controversial celebrity deaths.
Internet sleuths and professional investigators re-open some of Hollywood's most notorious and controversial celebrity deaths.