Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

At about three or four o’clock in the morning, Florida time, Joseph H. Saunders woke up to a phone call from Gallagher informing him of the bad news. Joseph called his mother and sister to tell them. “It was shocking and heartbreaking and it made sense, because he had not been communicative, and I know that when he wasn’t communicative, that meant something was wrong,” his sister, Henrietta Saunders, said of her reaction.

She had normally spoken with her brother about once a month, but noted that in the final months of his life, he had become more difficult to get ahold of. “He was very unhappy in the last few months of his life, and he was casting about for meaning, in my view,” she recalled. The last time they spoke was during the Christmas holiday of 1998.

“I think there’s an aspect of suicide in Baker’s death,” Henrietta said, citing the uncertainty of his relationship with De Baere, the financial pressures, and Mad Season’s being on hiatus. She noted that at some point in the early 1990s, he had told her, “If I use heroin again, I will die.” There is no evidence Saunders intentionally committed suicide. He had plans to meet Barrett Martin the next day. His sister acknowledges there was an element of self-destruction in his decision to use heroin again.

Kim De Baere was at home in Brussels when Dan Gallagher called. De Baere had occasionally worked as a nanny for Gallagher’s children. Because, in her words, “I’m not good at good-byes,” and because she had every intention of returning to Seattle, she had not said her farewell to Gallagher before she left town. When he got her on the phone, the first thing he told her was “Hey, you didn’t say good-bye.” After some lighthearted conversation, he told her Saunders had died. De Baere was shocked. “My first reaction was disbelief and anger. Shortly after, I realized it had to be true, because no one in the world would make a sick joke like that, especially not Dan,” she wrote. “[I] did stay angry, first at Baker but mostly at myself, for not seeing that coming and feeling like my departure was the main trigger (of several other triggers) for what he did, not that I think he wanted to die. I think he just wanted some relief.” In the days after getting the news, she was hoping to get a letter from Baker. No letter ever came.

Evan Sheeley was at his store when he got a phone call from somebody asking, “Have you heard about Baker?” Sheeley didn’t even know he had a drug problem and thought back to the events of the previous day. “It was the money, unfortunately, and I’ve always carried this a little bit heavy on myself. It was the money that I supplied to him that ended up paying for the heroin overdose that killed him,” he said.

Barrett Martin went to the restaurant the next day to meet Saunders as planned, but he never came. “When Baker died, that was it. The band was done,” he told Mark Yarm.5 His brother, Joseph, and his mother went to Seattle. Joseph assumed responsibility for taking inventory of Baker’s things and clearing out his house. He and his mother also met with Williams.

“We tracked down the guy that he was shooting heroin with and met with him to find out about what happened. The guy was kind of a younger guy and he said, ‘Oh my God.’ The guy called 911, so they came, but the guy said, ‘Baker was like the most experienced amateur pharmacologist I’d ever seen, so I totally trusted him with the dosages, quality, and everything, and I couldn’t believe that this happened,’” Joseph recalled. He and his mother wanted to talk to him because he had been with Saunders at the end. He described Williams as a “misguided young kid” who may have “idolized” Baker as a musician.

A memorial service was held in Seattle, attended by approximately two to three hundred people. Representing the family were his brother, mother, and stepfather. Joseph spoke first, followed by Mike McCready, who wrote an editorial for The Rocket in his friend’s memory.6 Dan Gallagher spoke next. Barrett Martin was the final speaker. According to Gallagher, Martin lamented the demise of Mad Season in his speech. Layne did not attend the service.

Saunders’s body was cremated, and the ashes were interred at the Crown Hill Cemetery, located a few blocks from the house where he spent the final years of his life. “Really little, tiny, out-of-the-way cemetery that I think he had mentioned [liking] to his mom … He used to go there and just chill by himself,” Dan Gallagher explained.

On the tomb is a series of small plaques listing the names and dates of all the people whose remains are contained there. Midway down the list of names on the right-hand side, one plaque reads, BAKER SAUNDERS 1954–1999 with a bass clef symbol next to the year of his birth.

Chapter 24

Layne was still inside that shell. The humor and his wit were in there.

JIMMY SHOAF