John Belushi's Final Party : Part 3

Around dawn on Friday March 5th, 1982, John Belushi was fading fast. His body for the last few days had been running on ''speedball'' shots of cocaine and heroin. Up and down both of his arms, there were tiny marks from the needle pricks from Cathy Smith, as she shot him up. Now, it was just the two of them at the bungalow. John took a shower and climbed into bed. Cathy made a gesture of sexual intimacy but John turned away, not interested. Cathy then gave him one last shot of coke and smack......... What follows next is the series of events that Cathy Smith told the police happened after that last shot........ After John took his last shot, he laid down in his bed, turned on his right side, and went to sleep. Cathy Smith then went into the living room of the bungalow and wrote a letter to a friend in Canada. The letter took some time. As she was writing, she heard some strange, wheezing sounds coming from John's bedroom. Concerned, she walked into the room and shook John awake and asked him if he was ok. John replied he was fine but his lungs felt congested. Cathy gave John a glass of water, which he drank, and then John went back to sleep. Cathy ordered room service  and a few minutes later, the food arrived. She ate the breakfast and checked on John. He appeared fine and was snoring loudly. Cathy decided to not wake John and to take his car to run some errands. She left the bungalow around 10:30 am......... Between 11am and Noon, two hotel employees---- one of which was a security guard, the other a maid---- observed an LAPD police car outside of the bungalow. The car was empty. Both employees were sure that the police were inside Bungalow 3 during this time. In fact, the maid tried to enter the room from the outside walkway and was denied entry by the cops....... Around 12:15, Bill Wallace, a close friend and physical trainer of John Belushi, entered the bungalow. He was there on an errand for John to deliver a typewriter that John had requested the previous day. Wallace walked into the unlocked hotel room and was immediately uneasy with the scene. The room was very hot and eerily quiet. Wallace called out for John but there was no answer. Bill looked down the hall and noticed a body form lying in bed. Bill called John's name again and still received no answer. It was odd, thought Wallace. John was a heavy snorer. If he was the body lying in the bed, there would be the familiar sounds of John and his snoring. Bill Wallace walked into the bedroom and, sure enough, it was John lying there on his right side. Wallace shook him and got no answer. He shook him a second time. Nothing. Finally, Bill pulled the body towards him and saw the horror. John's tongue was hanging out of his mouth, the right side of his body a ghastly dark section of settled blood. Immediately, Bill Wallace went into action. Being a physical trainer and professional kickboxer, he knew what to do. He attempted mouth- to- mouth resuscitation. He also started chest massage. With each attempt, Bill was getting more and more frantic. John was not responding. Finally, Wallace called John's manager, Bernie Brillstein, screaming that John was not moving. Brillstein had his secretary call 911 and Bernie dashed out of the office to go to the emergency room if the paramedics decided to bring John to the hospital........ Meanwhile, back at the bungalow, Bill Wallace continued to try to bring John Belushi back to life. When the paramedics arrived, they, too, tried mouth-to-mouth and chest massage. They were unsuccessful. Finally, at 12:45 pm, John Belushi was declared dead........ The LAPD came to the Chateau Marmont soon after the paramedics. Bungalow 3 was sealed off from the public. Bill Wallace was interviewed by the police. He explained what had happened. The police then called the coroners office. By this time, the media got wind of a big story at the Marmont and descended on the scene. rumors swirled that the body in the hotel room was the world famous comedian, John Belushi. The cops confirmed that it was. But, no one from the LAPD let Belushi's family know that he had died........ Bernie Brillstein, at the hospital waiting for John, got the word that his friend had died. Stunned, Bernie immediately called Dan Aykroyd in New York. Dan happened to be writing the script for ''Ghostbusters'' at the time when he heard about his friend's death. Shocked to his core, Dan also realized that he had to tell Judy Belushi the news. Being John's best friend and partner, Dan owed it to John that Judy hear it from Dan. As he ran to Judy's house, the thought occurred that this was the day when he was gonna go to L.A. to save John.......... Cathy Smith returned to the Chateau Marmont shortly after 2 pm. According to her future statement to the police, she was out running errands. Rumors have swirled that she was also seeing her police contact in the LAPD. Cathy was stopped by police at the scene going the wrong way down a one-way street. When questioned why, Cathy replied that this was the way John Belushi always did it. The police at the scene asked her to step out of John's car. Without telling her about John's death, Cathy was handcuffed by the cops and driven to the police station......... Inside John Belushi's bungalow, the coroners office was viewing the body and the scene. Almost immediately, Head Coroner Thomas Noguchi noticed cocaine residue on the nightstand by the bed. Examining John's arms, he also noticed several small red welts. Squeezing the arms, Noguchi got a small drop of blood to drop. Being the expert that he was in his job, he told the officers around him that he thought it might be an overdose. All he would need to know would come in the autopsy, planned for the next day. After Noguchi was done, Belushi's body was zipped up in a body bag, loaded on a stretcher, and taken out of the bungalow, where hundreds of cameras and reporters were waiting to record the action. The head of the police investigation, Dan Cook, addressed the media. He stated that the death of John Belushi appeared to be by ''natural causes''.......... At the police station, Cathy Smith still did not know why she was taken in, so she later claimed. The cop who interviewed her, Detective Richard Iddings, told her that John Belushi was dead, Cathy was shocked. Iddings, on the record, asked Smith who she was and the connection she had to Belushi. Naturally, the detective knew who Cathy Smith was, she had many run-ins with the law and the LAPD knew her quite well. Iddings also asked her about drugs. He examined her arms and noticed the holes, clearly, she was shooting up. Cathy Smith admitted shooting drugs and produced the spoon and syringe from her purse, which was still dripping fluid, that she used. Iddings asked a few more questions, took the syringe and spoon------ AND RELEASED HER!!! Cathy Smith walked out of the LAPD station stunned. She had admitted that she was using and had drug paraphernalia on her----both violations of her parole. But, they were letting her go scot-free. Clearly, the LAPD did not want to know anything further  about the death of John Belushi...... The next few days events were at rapid speed. John Belushi's body was examined by Thomas Noguchi on Saturday, March 6th. Noguchi noted the poor physical condition of Belushi. Years of food and smoking and drug abuse had turned this 33 year old man's body into a body that looked old. Bloated organs and lungs filled with fluid indicated self-abuse. Noguchi noted the arms again and thought that the red welts were fresh, within the last few days. Noguchi concluded that Belushi was not a long-term needle user because his arms did not have track marks. Samples were taken of his blood and urine and sent to the lab. But, Noguchi already knew it was an overdose. Any first-year student could see that. The question was whether there was any foul play involved...... Cathy Smith fled town. She first went to St. Louis in the days after John's death, then, back to L.A., then, finally, to Canada. The media was chasing her mightily but she wasn't talking. She hired a lawyer and keep mum........ John Belushi's body was flown home to his house on Martha's Vineyard. He was buried on March 9, 1982. Two days later, there was a public memorial for him. Hundreds came, mostly, family and friends. There were celebrity sightings galore. Notably, Robert De Niro and Robin Williams were absent....... They were in seclusion. Both, when informed that John had died, broke down in tears. They loved John. But, they also knew that they were now part of a media circus. It was leaked that they were with John before his death. Both made the decision to not say anything......... On Friday March 12th, one week after John Belushi's death,  Thomas Noguchi released the findings on the autopsy of Belushi. He concluded that John had died of an overdose of heroin and cocaine. There were a dozen needle marks on both arms, all of them tied into the last five days of Belushi's life..........