[msb-alumni] Cathy Smith, 73, Groupie Who Told The Enquirer That She Killed Belushi Dies on August 16, 2020
- From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2020 13:29:12 -0400
BlankCathy Smith, 73, Groupie Who Told The Enquirer That She Killed Belushi. By
Neil
Genzlinger.
After giving an interview to The National Enquirer, she was convicted in Mr.
Belushi's overdose death and served time in prison. 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. The British Columbia Coroners Service
confirmed
her death but said it had not yet determined a cause. The Canadian newspaper
The
Globe and Mail reported that Ms. Smith had been in failing health for several
years.
Before Mr. Belushi's death, Ms. Smith occasionally sang backup on records and
traveled in the hard-partying orbit of groups like the Band and the Rolling
Stones.
The Globe and Mail once described her as a "rock 'n' roll courtesan to the
likes of
Levon Helm, Gordon Lightfoot, Keith Richards et al."
At 17 she had a child, whom she gave up for adoption, and whose father she said
was
Mr. Helm, best known as the drummer and singer for the Band. (Mr. Helm, who
died in
2012, did not acknowledge paternity.)
In the 1970's she spent almost four years in a volatile relationship with Mr.
Lightfoot, the Canadian singer-songwriter.
"It was one of those relationships you get a feeling of danger comes into the
picture," he said in "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind," a recent
documentary by Martha Kehoe and Joan Tosoni.
(Steve's Note: The documentary is available on-demand for $5.99 to rent on
Comcast.)
Ms. Smith tried to escape that Enquirer headline. "I didn't kill John Belushi,"
she
wrote in "Chasing the Dragon," a memoir published in 1984 while her case was
still in
progress. "I do suffer guilt, but it is the guilt that comes from not being
aware of
what was really going on."
That explanation, though, never earned her much sympathy. Nor did her efforts
to
express remorse.
"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-1980's. "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. The Enquirer said she was known as "Cathy Silverbag" because
she
carried a metallic purse filled with dope -- or "poison," as the judge who
sentenced
her in 1986 after she pleaded no contest to involuntary manslaughter and three
drug
counts called it.
The judge, David A. Horowitz of Los Angeles Superior Court, said Mr. Belushi's
own
recklessness did not absolve her.
"You were brought into the action with Mr. Belushi's circle of friends because
you
were the connection, the source of that poison," the judge said. "You knew how
to use
the needle."
Ms. Smith was paroled after serving 15 months of a three-year sentence and
deported
back to Canada. The Globe and Mail said that in prison Ms. Smith taught
computer
skills to fellow inmates.
After her release, she stayed largely out of the public eye. The newspaper said
she
sometimes spoke to teenagers about the dangers of drug use but also continued
to have
substance abuse problems, citing a 1991 charge of heroin possession.
Information on Ms. Smith's survivors was not available.
When Ms. Smith's memoir came out in 1984, before she had been sentenced, Mark
Breslin
gave the book a harsh review in The Globe and Mail. But he also found a sadness
in
her account, underscored by the fact that, though the book contained various
pictures
of the famous and semifamous men she had been involved with, she appeared in
just one
of them.
"In all the rest, she is noticeably absent," Mr. Breslin wrote. "The message is
clear. Stars are forever blessed by the beat, while fans are expendable,
ephemeral
commodities best suited to holding the bag and taking the rap."
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