Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

During her final days, Demri was staying with an older man, the father of a friend of hers, at his place in Bothell. Demri had lived something of a nomadic existence, staying with different people for periods of a few days to a few weeks at a time. Toward the end of her life, it became very difficult for her to find a place to stay. “People were afraid to have Dem stay with them, because no one wanted her to die at their house,” Austin explained.

Austin alleges that the older man was isolating Demri, keeping her away from people to the point where nobody, including Austin, was able to contact her. At one point, Austin called and told him, “I want to talk to my daughter.” He made up some excuse why she couldn’t. Austin wasn’t having any of it. “If I don’t hear from my daughter within the next twenty minutes, I’m going to call the police, and we are going to show up at your door.”

“Well, I’ll see if I can wake her up,” he replied. Demri called her shortly after.

On the afternoon of October 28, 1996, the older man drove Demri into Seattle. She told him she wanted a few things from a Fred Meyer grocery store. When he arrived at the store, Demri was unconscious, and he couldn’t wake her. He went into the store to pick up her things, leaving the car engine running so she wouldn’t get cold. He came out of the store, drove home, and still couldn’t wake her. He left her in the car unconscious so he could do his laundry. He eventually realized something was seriously wrong. He drove to the home of Jim and Marlene—two of Austin’s patients—freaking out, saying, “She’s dead! She’s dead! What am I going to do? What am I going to do?”

Jim checked on Demri and felt a slight pulse. He got in the driver’s seat and told Marlene and the older man to follow him in another car while he drove to the hospital. Demri was eventually brought in to the emergency room at Evergreen Hospital in Kirkland at 7:30 P.M.—two and a half hours after she first lost consciousness.

Austin got a phone call from the hospital, telling her Demri was there. They told her that the older man—whom Austin said they erroneously identified to her in the phone call and in the medical examiner’s report as Demri’s boyfriend—had brought her to the emergency room. By the time she got there, the man had left the hospital. Eventually, he called Austin on the phone and filled her in on what happened that afternoon. Austin was dismayed. “I think, ‘What a dumb fuck. Why didn’t you take her to the hospital when you couldn’t wake her up?’”

Austin’s sister, Patricia Dean Austin, arrived at the hospital shortly after. At this point, Demri was still alive but unconscious. Kathleen asked the doctors if Demri could hear her. The doctors told her they thought she could. She clutched Demri’s hand and said, “Dem, if you have a choice to stay or to go, you don’t have to stay for me anymore.” During previous hospitalizations, she had always told her to fight, to survive. This time was different. “That was the only time that I ever gave her permission to go.” She found out later that Patricia had told Demri essentially the same thing. They stayed with Demri through the night, leaving only to get some sleep. Early the next morning, Patricia and Kathleen Austin walked into the room where Demri was. Kathleen turned to look at her sister, who immediately feared the worst.

“Oh my God, she’s gone,” Patricia said.

Kathleen went over to Demri, touched her face, and saw that her chest was moving. “I said, ‘Oh, her chest is moving.’ Then I said, ‘No, no. That’s the machine. She’s gone.’ I don’t know how to describe nothing, that feeling of nothing. The night before, I felt her presence.

“I believe she passed away when I went to sleep. She knew my family would be there in the morning. She knew my sister was there. She knew I wasn’t going to be alone. She knew I was okay, and I gave her permission to go. So when I went to sleep, she passed away.”

Demri was still on life support, but she was gone. After being with her a few minutes, Kathleen and Patricia left the room. The doctors came a few minutes later and asked her if she wanted to be present when they disconnected Demri from life support.

“There’s no reason for me to be there. My daughter’s already gone,” Kathleen responded.

A doctor came back and confirmed Austin’s conclusion that the life support equipment was keeping her alive. It was 7:40 A.M.—twelve hours after Demri was first admitted in the emergency room. She was twenty-seven years old. A coroner concluded that she died of acute intoxication caused by the combined effects of opiate, meprobamate, and butalbital.4