On October 21, 2003, Elliott Smith, who was known for writing depressing songs, allegedly killed himself. This would seem completely plausible, especially considering the fact that Smith was a heroin addict. Except, the case is still open 20 years later, and has yet to be solved. 

The first real friend I ever made was because of Elliott Smith. I spent the beginning of my music listening career completely in the dark. I didn't know anybody else who knew about him, other than me and my dad. Middle school was tough, so finding somebody with similar sensibilities was a huge revelation for me. My friend was in the grade above me, and graduated before me. Going to an Elliott Smith tribute show together helped secure our friendship. It is rare to meet a genuine Elliott fan, but when you do, it's a deep connection. 

I stumbled upon the controversy surrounding Smith’s death only about a year ago. I immediately dove in and adopted the theory that his girlfriend had murdered him. I became an Elliott Smith truther. 

For those who are unaware of the different theories about how Smith died, a brief review may be in order. The official autopsy claims that Elliot Smith died after stabbing himself in the heart with a knife, twice. There were no hesitation wounds, but there were cuts on his arm that could have been from self-defense. 

The evening that Smith died, he and his girlfriend, Jennifer Chiba, had a low-grade fight, after which Chiba supposedly locked herself in the bathroom. She then heard a loud scream and saw her boyfriend on the ground, slumped against a wall, with a knife through his chest. Chiba, a licensed therapist who had gone through CPR training — which explicitly tells you not to pull out a knife — pulled out the knife. Smith died an hour later in the hospital from blood loss.

So, when a new investigative book came out about Smith’s death, titled A Question Mark (the title of an Elliott Smith song), my heart leapt. What if the author Alyson Camus has found all of the answers? Being the narcissist I am, I figured that maybe I would be able to solve the mystery of Elliott Smith’s death with the help of this book. That didn’t happen. 

A Question Mark is a dreadful book. It is boring and detail-obsessed while inducing feelings of dread. Camus goes on for pages and pages about the kind of shirt Smith was wearing, his position in the room, and other trivial things without connecting them to any larger theory of events. She also writes endlessly and invasively about Elliott and Jennifer’s relationship and speaks to a long list of doctors and mental health professionals about every detail. Even I, who had spent days trying to find as many details about his death as possible, could not stomach it. 

If I ever die mysteriously, however famous I become, I would never want the public to know that much about me and my circumstances. And Elliott Smith was a guy who famously did not want to be famous, and hated publicity. So the least somebody could do was respect Elliott’s privacy, at least a little bit, especially as Camus was a big Elliott Smith fan who got the chance to meet him multiple times. Thinking about his death and how it makes you feel is one thing, but publishing an analytical book that considers every single calculation is a completely different task.

Camus tries to combat the ickiness of her project in her introduction, when she describes how death is part of life, and how we will never truly have peace until we find out who did it. However, this peaceful, gentle approach turned out to be complete fluff. The book reads like a continuation of the new crappy investigative Vice documentary about Elliott, but for people who work in forensics. It was completely insensitive. 

For all of my own obsessive research, I haven't come to any concrete conclusions about Elliott Smith’s death. On one end of the Elliott Smith Death Spectrum, there is the average media consumer who was alive and conscious in the 90s, and then, on the other end there are people who are determined to believe that Jennifer Chiba is a cold-hearted killer — a side that probably includes Alyson Camus and her fans. I'd say I'm generally homicide-leaning. But really, the ESDS is a concept that should not have to exist. Even if new information is revealed one way or another 20 years from now, my place on the ESDS would probably not change. 

As an Elliott Smith fan, I think it is important to educate yourself on one position or another, but it is also important to accept that there might not be an answer. Elliott Smith and Kurt Cobain are both seen as people who were majorly depressed. Also, both of them allegedly killed themselves. In fact, I can't really think of any band or singer-songwriter alive or naturally-dead that is known for being as sad as either of them. The way we perceive Elliott and Kurt’s deaths can change the way we think about their lives. Camus has done the most intense deep dive that I know of into Smith’s death, but she did not come up with an even remotely satisfying answer. 

Elliott Smith fans have gone to great lengths to make sure that people know that Elliott wasn't “Mr. Misery,” but that he was in fact a very funny, lively guy who liked Star Trek. The real distinction between people who think of Elliott as lively versus people who think of him as pure melancholy is the level of being in touch with who he was and the music he wrote. The people who are impacted by him can look at him as a whole person, and not just pick and choose what we want to think about in his character arc. But on the other hand, we also can't just ignore his demise entirely, because like Alyson Camus said, his life also includes his death.