A headline on the cover of The National Enquirer in June 1982 became the defining element of Cathy Smith’s life.
“‘I Killed John Belushi,’” it read, alongside a large photograph of Mr. Belushi, the boisterous comedian. Below the picture another headline added, “World Exclusive — Mystery Woman Confesses.”
The headline and accompanying article were the catalyst that ultimately landed Ms. Smith in jail.
Before the Enquirer article, the circumstances surrounding Mr. Belushi’s death the previous March, at 33, had remained murky, and it was simply labeled an accidental drug overdose.
Mr. Belushi, who became a television star on “Saturday Night Live” and a movie star in “National Lampoon’s Animal House” — and whose heavy drug use was later documented in Bob Woodward’s book “Wired” — went on a days-long drug binge in a bungalow of the Chateau Marmont Hotel in West Hollywood with Ms. Smith, who had been a fringe figure on the music scene first in Toronto and then Los Angeles.
Ms. Smith would admit to injecting Mr. Belushi with a combination of heroin and cocaine during her interview with The Enquirer, for which she was paid $15,000. The article resulted in a renewed investigation and, in 1983, her indictment by a grand jury in Los Angeles County on one count of second-degree murder and 13 counts of administering a dangerous drug.
Ms. Smith, one of pop culture’s most notorious footnotes, died on Aug. 16 in Maple Ridge, British Columbia. She was 73. (...)
“It should have been me in the pine box, with a tag on my toe,” she said in a documentary made for CITY-TV of Toronto in the mid-1980s. “My name is Smith, who cares?”
Catherine Evelyn Smith was born on April 25, 1947, in Burlington, Ontario, on the western end of Lake Ontario. She dropped out of school at 16 and found her way to the Yorkville section of Toronto, which was then a magnet for bohemian musicians and literary figures. A 1982 article in Rolling Stone quoted Bernie Fiedler, owner of a folk club called the Riverboat Coffee House, as calling her “absolutely beautiful, one of the ladies who had everything a man always wanted but was afraid to confront.”
Mr. Lightfoot took up with her in the early 1970s. It was a tempestuous relationship. His song “Sundown,” a 1974 hit about a dark sort of possessiveness (“I can see her lookin’ fast in her faded jeans/She’s a hard-loving woman, got me feelin’ mean”), was inspired by her.
In 1978 Ms. Smith left Toronto for Los Angeles “to graduate from folk-music groupie to the more dangerous world of rock ’n’ roll,” as Rolling Stone put it. She sang backup for Hoyt Axton for a time, and also hung out with Keith Richards and other members of the Rolling Stones. And she began using hard drugs, and sometimes providing them.
by Neil Genzlinger, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Cal Millar/Toronto Star, via Getty Images
[ed. Seems like a sad life, tarnished too early.]
“‘I Killed John Belushi,’” it read, alongside a large photograph of Mr. Belushi, the boisterous comedian. Below the picture another headline added, “World Exclusive — Mystery Woman Confesses.”
The headline and accompanying article were the catalyst that ultimately landed Ms. Smith in jail.
Before the Enquirer article, the circumstances surrounding Mr. Belushi’s death the previous March, at 33, had remained murky, and it was simply labeled an accidental drug overdose.Mr. Belushi, who became a television star on “Saturday Night Live” and a movie star in “National Lampoon’s Animal House” — and whose heavy drug use was later documented in Bob Woodward’s book “Wired” — went on a days-long drug binge in a bungalow of the Chateau Marmont Hotel in West Hollywood with Ms. Smith, who had been a fringe figure on the music scene first in Toronto and then Los Angeles.
Ms. Smith would admit to injecting Mr. Belushi with a combination of heroin and cocaine during her interview with The Enquirer, for which she was paid $15,000. The article resulted in a renewed investigation and, in 1983, her indictment by a grand jury in Los Angeles County on one count of second-degree murder and 13 counts of administering a dangerous drug.
Ms. Smith, one of pop culture’s most notorious footnotes, died on Aug. 16 in Maple Ridge, British Columbia. She was 73. (...)
“It should have been me in the pine box, with a tag on my toe,” she said in a documentary made for CITY-TV of Toronto in the mid-1980s. “My name is Smith, who cares?”
Catherine Evelyn Smith was born on April 25, 1947, in Burlington, Ontario, on the western end of Lake Ontario. She dropped out of school at 16 and found her way to the Yorkville section of Toronto, which was then a magnet for bohemian musicians and literary figures. A 1982 article in Rolling Stone quoted Bernie Fiedler, owner of a folk club called the Riverboat Coffee House, as calling her “absolutely beautiful, one of the ladies who had everything a man always wanted but was afraid to confront.”
Mr. Lightfoot took up with her in the early 1970s. It was a tempestuous relationship. His song “Sundown,” a 1974 hit about a dark sort of possessiveness (“I can see her lookin’ fast in her faded jeans/She’s a hard-loving woman, got me feelin’ mean”), was inspired by her.
In 1978 Ms. Smith left Toronto for Los Angeles “to graduate from folk-music groupie to the more dangerous world of rock ’n’ roll,” as Rolling Stone put it. She sang backup for Hoyt Axton for a time, and also hung out with Keith Richards and other members of the Rolling Stones. And she began using hard drugs, and sometimes providing them.
by Neil Genzlinger, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Cal Millar/Toronto Star, via Getty Images
[ed. Seems like a sad life, tarnished too early.]
