I didn’t see this posted anywhere yet.
Cathy Smith, groupie, occasional backup singer and drug dealer, who served 15 months of a 3-year sentence for injecting John Belushi with his fatal dose of heroin+cocaine, died Aug 16 at age 73. Cause of death was not reported.
From the NYTimes:
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 1970s she spent almost four years in a volatile relationship with Mr. Lightfoot, the Canadian singer-songwriter.
Gordon Lightfoot wrote the song Sundown about her. He once broke her cheekbone in a fight. She was the “other woman” in his divorce, which at the time, was the most expensive divorce settlement in Canadian history.
She was arrested after giving a $15,000 interview to the National Enquirer where she admitted injecting Belushi with a fatal dose. She plea-bargained to a 3-year involuntary manslaughter sentence, and served 15 months. From Wikipedia:
She later met Belushi again through Wood and Richards, when Belushi contacted her to purchase the drugs that eventually killed him. Smith alleges that she injected Belushi with 11 speedballs (a combination of cocaine and heroin) at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood, California in 1982, and that this injection led to his death. According to [Bob] Woodward, Robin Williams was on the scene at the time and was “creeped out” by Smith, whom he deemed a “lowlife.”[23] Belushi had been battling cocaine addiction for years and combining it with occasional heroin use.[24]
From the NYTimes link:
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.
Pathetic woman, pathetic life. Not much else to say about her.
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