Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

Demri told Russell about her health problems—that she had bacterial endocarditis and that her heart valves had been replaced. She showed him the foot-long scar going up the center of her rib cage. Russell was worried about her continued use of cocaine. He told her, “I don’t care about heroin and stuff—I’ll give it to you. You don’t have to worry about it. But why do you have to do coke? It’s bad for your heart.” Russell got the impression that “she was sort of feeling resigned that it was going to kill her anyway.”

At one point that summer, James Burdyshaw ran into Demri while riding on a bus near Pioneer Square. “Hey, how’s it going?” Demri asked Burdyshaw, whom she hadn’t seen in several years. Burdyshaw was dismayed at the sight of his friend. “What made her look older was she was skinny, really skinny. Her face was kind of sunken in. She used to be really fresh-faced, really kind of full-faced.” He could see her bones through her skin. She showed him the scar on her chest, telling him it was from when doctors had to massage her heart and that she almost died. It was the last time Burdyshaw saw her.

Demri had been gone for several days and Russell hadn’t heard from her, so he called Austin’s home because he was worried and thought she might be there. She wasn’t, Austin told him. When Demri finally came back to Russell’s apartment, she was livid. “What are you doing trying to check up on me? I don’t want you ringing my mom’s house!”

Russell was developing a cocaine addiction, which affected his ability to make ends meet. He applied to go to a rehab clinic in California in early August 1996. “I used to only ever use heroin, and it wasn’t until I met Demri that I started using coke, and I think that’s what actually drove me to rehab, so it was probably meeting Demri that saved my life,” he said.

By late August, Russell was getting ready to leave. Demri had left a suitcase in his room, and he unsuccessfully tried to get ahold of her to tell her he was leaving and still had some of her stuff. “I can only assume she went back and got it once I left. I don’t know.” He thinks the last time he saw Demri would have been in August 1996 before he left for California. In retrospect, he said it was a bit upsetting he never had the opportunity to say good-bye to her.

Not long before her death, Demri had checked out of a hospital and spent about a month in a nursing home, where most of the patients were senior citizens. “She had these little old people doing tricks for her,” Austin recalled. While she visited one day, an older woman with no teeth came up to Demri and said something to her.

“Hey, I’m talking to my mom right now. But I’ll talk to you after a while. Show my mom one of your tricks.” At that point, Austin said, “She took her tongue and stuck it out between her eyes. Dem cracks up, and I cracked up, and this lady cracked up.”

Another patient, who had been a prominent architect in Seattle decades earlier, took off one night in his motorized wheelchair after taking his medication. He went into a Red Apple supermarket to buy donuts, soda, and potato chips. On his way back, he crashed his wheelchair and broke his glasses. When they took him in after the accident, he said, “I’m going to have a party with Demri—leave me alone!”

At some point in October 1996, Mike Starr and Jason Buttino were walking into Harborview Medical Center when they saw Demri walking out. According to Buttino, she came over to say hello, and they talked for a few minutes before going their separate ways. That was the last time they saw her. Austin did not dispute this account, noting it would not have been unusual to see her at Harborview. “She lived there two and a half years, and I worked there, so she was in and out.”

About a week before her death, Demri went over to Austin’s apartment and brought her a card. She spoke to her mother’s roommate, Sam, whispering something to him, which Austin could not hear. She assumed it was about his eleven-year-old daughter, who was missing at the time and was later found murdered by a serial killer. It was the last time she saw Demri alive.

After Demri left, Austin asked, “What did Dem want?”

“Oh, I’ll tell you later,” was his response. Austin didn’t want to push it and dropped the subject. After Demri’s death, Sam revealed to Austin the subject of that conversation, saying, “She told me something was going to happen. She didn’t know when, but it was going to happen, and I needed to be here because you were going to need me.”

“Dem knew,” Austin said in retrospect. “Before she died, she was reaching out and touching base with people, and after she died, she was reaching out and touching base with people.”