Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

Officers Kevin Grossman and Joseph P. Mahar of the Seattle Police Department arrived at the building at 5:50 P.M. Officer Brett J. Rogers authorized a forced entry into Layne’s fifth-floor apartment. Mahar kicked the front door in, causing approximately two hundred dollars’ worth of damage to the doorframe, according to a police report obtained by The Smoking Gun.5 Upon entering, McCallum and Elmer’s worst fears were confirmed.

“I think we knew. I knew this was not going to be a pretty scene, because the door was bolted from the inside, and nobody had heard from him for a week, or a couple of weeks at least, and no activity on the charge card, and that does not bode well for what you’re going to find,” Elmer said. “So once the officers had got inside and took a quick peek, and they said, ‘You don’t want to see this,’ and so Nancy knew immediately. I said to the officers, ‘You cannot take a mother away from her child, so you let her see what’s going on.’”

Layne was on the sofa, holding what appeared to be a loaded syringe in his right hand, lit by a flickering TV screen and surrounded by several cans of spray paint on the floor and a small stash of cocaine and two crack pipes on the coffee table. When the body was moved, it was discovered he had been “sitting on numerous other syringes as well,” according to the medical examiner’s report. The body was described as being in “an advanced state of decomposition,” and the skin had “a darkened leathery appearance.” According to documents obtained by Seattle Weekly, Layne had morphine, codeine, and cocaine in his system, and his body weighed eighty-six pounds. The medical examiner would later conclude that “Acute intoxication … Combined effects of opiate (heroin) & cocaine” was the cause of death. When police checked his answering machine, it had two weeks’ worth of calls from people trying to check on him.6 Despite the horrific state of the body, Elmer said he could still recognize Layne.

Drug paraphernalia was found throughout the apartment. Brown stains of heroin led from the bathroom floor—where $501 in cash was found next to the toilet—to the living room.7 Taken in conjunction with the fact that the door was bolted from the inside, this evidence suggests Layne died alone. If another person had been there, he or she might have called 911 or taken whatever cash or drugs they could find before leaving the scene.

The medical examiner concluded that Layne died some time on April 5, 2002—eight years to the day Kurt Cobain committed suicide.8 According to Jim Elmer, there was no note or any other evidence to suggest Layne had deliberately killed himself. The fact that he had just gotten his driver’s license renewed and was about to record vocals for the Taproot song further supports the view Layne did not commit suicide.

Amazingly, Sadie was still alive and very hungry, considering it had been as much as two weeks since she’d been fed. “It scared her to death,” when police officers broke down the door, Jim Elmer said, so she was “a little skittish” at first. Sadie was adopted by Jerry and lived out the rest of her days on his Oklahoma ranch until her death in October 2010.9

“When we found him, I walked into the dining area of his home. I walked over and I asked the police if I could move things off the couch, and they said, yes, I could,” McCallum would tearfully recall years later. “And I sat down with Layne, and I talked with him, and I told him I’m so sorry it turned out like this, because I always believed because he was smart, and he had the money, and he had the time, and he knew he’d been to treatment thirteen times, he’d been in the emergency [room] three times, he’d died three times—I knew he had what it took. And still it took him out.”10

According to Elmer, “We saw Layne on the couch and the needle in his leg, and he was certainly deteriorated in color. And Nancy went outside and just caved in to the corner of the room, and she was just devastated, as you can expect. I said my last good-byes to Layne, told him that Demri was waiting for him, and that was that.”

Chapter 27

What could I have done? What could we all have done?

KEN ELMER

WITH THEIR WORST FEARS confirmed, Jim Elmer and Nancy Layne McCallum began the process of notifying Layne’s relatives, friends, and bandmates. Jim spoke with Susan and wound up leaving messages for Liz and Jamie.

Jamie Elmer was in a movie theater in Santa Monica, California. After the movie was over, she saw her parents had called several times. Her mother left a voice mail saying, “Honey, you need to call me and your dad.” The fact that they were together was a sign that something was wrong, because they had been divorced for nearly fourteen years.