Everybody Loves Our Town

by Mark Yarm

  ELIZABETH DAVIS-SIMPSON 7 Year Bitch was about to go on tour with the Gits, and I remember Mia and the rest of the band were there. We’re excited about the tour. We’re drinking, having a good time …

  STEVE MORIARTY We had six months of touring planned, in Europe and the U.S. and Canada. We were supposed to tour with L7 and 7 Year Bitch, all together. The pope was visiting the U.S., and we were going to play all the cities the same day that he was visiting them and have a pro-choice, anti-pope tour.

  I went home at about 9 or 10 from the Comet, and Mia was just getting there. I was tired. Had to be in the studio the next day. I said, “Don’t stay out too late. I gotta go. Okay, bye.” And, yeah, that was it. And then the next day, when she was supposed to show up in the studio, she wasn’t there.

  VALERIE AGNEW I remember Steve calling me and one of Mia’s best friends called, looking for her, and they were like, “Piecora’s called”—Mia also worked there—“she didn’t show up at Piecora’s.” I was like, What the hell? No way, this can’t be happening again! Mia’s not using drugs. Immediately the thought went to that, of course. And then Mia’s roommate called me and told me that they had found her and that she had been strangled, and that’s when the walls came tumbling down.

  STEVE MORIARTY So we were looking, looking, looking, and then later that night, someone got up the courage to call the morgue, and they found that she was there. She was wearing her Gits hoodie when they found her.

  MATT DRESDNER Obviously my viewpoint is a bit myopic, but it all ended on that day. Innocence was lost. With Stefanie’s death and Kurt’s death and Andrew’s death, they had done it to themselves. Mia was taken from us. But like Stefanie, she was a real magnet for people to come together around. I don’t know if the scene ever recovered from losing Mia. There was so much attention given to “Who the fuck did this?” and it took us 11 years to figure it out—and no one was beyond suspicion.

  BEN LONDON The nature of the crime—the fact that she was brutally raped and murdered—and the fact that historically with these kinds of crimes it’s usually somebody that the victim knows that does them, put everybody, not really in our core group but in the larger group—the second, third circles of our group—under suspicion. Her boyfriend at the time was considered a suspect by the police.

  DANIEL HOUSE A lot of people were looking at each other and wondering if that was the person who killed Mia. Suddenly, everything was tainted.

  STEVE MORIARTY There was a huge amount of rage at the police for not disclosing that she had been raped. If they released all the information about what happened and it was public knowledge, then it would ruin their line of questioning for suspects. Because the cops hadn’t said that this person had raped her, people in the community thought that made them more vulnerable to it. That and the fact that the cops seemed really bumbling, and dismissive and judgmental at first because Mia was a rocker, she had dreads, she was wearing cut-off jeans, and she had been drinking.

  DANIEL HOUSE The Gits kept a lot of the details from us. In the same way that they were always mistrustful and paranoid, they knew more details about the case than they were sharing with the label. It took a long time before I found out that Mia had also been raped.

  SELENE VIGIL-WILK There were so many different reactions to it. From being totally fed up with the police not being able to find the murderer to friends saying, “Oh, my God, I got hauled into the police. I got taken down and questioned.” It was just crazy. Nothing was the same anymore. Not that things were ever particularly safe, but it wasn’t dangerous. And now you’re gonna walk out of the Comet and get frickin’ strangled and left for dead in a frickin’ field?

  ELIZABETH DAVIS-SIMPSON We developed way more of a hardcore attitude, about not just being feminist through the words we were saying and the way we were acting, but really adapting this fierceness in our own personal lives. Mia was a fierce, street-smart person, so if someone tough like Mia can have that happen to her, it really made all of us feel vulnerable.

  I actually got a gun. I had a Lorcin .22, though you probably would have to have someone stand in place and not move for you to do any damage with this little, tiny gun.

  STEVE MORIARTY People were buying guns and weapons and carrying them around. They wanted to find the guy and kill him. People were raging.

  VALERIE AGNEW One of the things that came out of that tragedy was Home Alive, this collective that I cofounded with eight other women. It was a nonprofit to raise awareness about violence against women, but primarily to offer training for people so there was a tangible thing you could do: street-fighting skills, how to deescalate conflicts, weapons training.

  Home Alive got its most significant support from Eddie Vedder. He basically set us up with Epic Records. They agreed to release a benefit compilation that raised over $200,000 for the organization and gave us a lot of press. He was always very humble about it, and at some point we stopped thanking him all the time, but he really did make an enormous impact. We were able to teach a lot of ass-kicking with that money!

  ELIZABETH DAVIS-SIMPSON I was blown away by the support. All these different bands, from garage bands to Soundgarden, contributing to the Home Alive comp.

  STEVEN MORIARTY One of the last shows Nirvana played in Seattle was a benefit that I organized to hire a private investigator to find Mia’s murderer. TAD was scheduled to headline it, and they told Kurt they were playing it. So Kurt called me and said, “I heard you’re doing this benefit. Is there any way we can get on and play?” I was like, “Fuck, yeah!”

  KURT DANIELSON The show was at the King Cat Theater, which is a fairly small venue in downtown Seattle. There weren’t the greatest backstage facilities, which meant that all the bands and family and friends were cramming into this very tiny room. There was a lot of sitting very close together and there was a lot of tension. And, basically, Courtney and Tad’s then-girlfriend Barbara had a little tussle.

  You should’ve seen: There’s Tad sitting slumped in his chair, there’s Kurt sitting next to him slumped in a chair, those two girls going at it, pulling each other’s hair—total catfight—scratching each other’s faces. They knocked over a lamp, the carpet catches on fire, nobody gets up to put the fire out, so I put the fire out.

  STEVE MORIARTY I remember Courtney Love was high out of her mind. Courtney was walking around and saying there wasn’t enough light backstage and she wanted more light. Probably because her eyes were pinned, and she couldn’t see in the dark. Tad’s girlfriend told her to shut up. Then: “Don’t tell me to shut up!” It was just one of those really stupid schoolyard things. It was about, We’re trying to be the center of attention, when we’re clearly not supposed to be the center of attention.

  BENJAMIN REW These are two chicks that fight like dudes, okay? It’s no fuckin’ hair-pulling and scratching, this is straight-up fuckin’ fisticuffs.

  JEFF GILBERT I heard screaming. I heard some crashing going on. Kurt comes out, and he’s just exasperated. He goes, “Everybody out! This is not cool. Everybody out!” I saw a little bit of it. There were some really funny insults being hurled back and forth, alluding to one or the other’s drug habit.

  That’s when you knew the scene was starting to fall apart. When you’d start having drama queen fights like this. Really? The girlfriends are fighting now? It was retarded.

  KURT DANIELSON Some months later, we were on tour in Europe. We had a show the night before, and we hadn’t slept much and we did interviews all day. Tad hadn’t had a chance to eat—he had very low blood sugar—and the English journalist took advantage of the situation by asking Tad some very leading and pointed questions about this incident that occurred at this benefit. And so Tad responded with some rather harsh remarks about Courtney, something to the effect of “That bitch slapped my girlfriend.”

  And they took this remark and put it in bold-print headlines in the NME and I think Melody Maker, and Courtney saw these things. We were slated to open for Nirvana in America, along with the Butthole Su
rfers. But because Courtney saw this, she said to Kurt, “You’ve gotta kick those guys off your tour.” And so Kurt turned around and told Krist to tell me that we were off the tour. Which he did.

  COURTNEY LOVE Great, is this Blame Courtney Week? I had a role in removing TAD from the In Utero tour? Is this some Yoko shit? I didn’t have anything to do with who Kurt took on tour. I remember my physical altercations. I certainly didn’t get into a fight with Tad’s girlfriend. I didn’t know he had a girlfriend. People like to make things up about me: “Oh, she set a fire, and then we did dope … and she stole my grandmother’s ring.” I get that kind of thing a lot.

  KURT DANIELSON I was furious. It’s like, Jesus Christ! I didn’t blame Tad for it, because the reporter pushed his buttons. No matter what we did, it turned out wrong or fucked up or turned into a nightmare where we got sued or we got dropped. It seemed almost pathological, almost like we were doing it on purpose. “How could they have such bad luck?” I heard this many times: “You must have bad karma.” Great, I feel better now. I got bad karma. That explains everything.

  JOSH SINDER If saying the truth gets you kicked off the tour—oh well, I guess that’s how it goes.

  STEVE MORIARTY The Gits actually played one of our first shows in Seattle with TAD and Nirvana, at the HUB Ballroom at the University of Washington. There were like 2,000 people there, and we played brilliantly. So they kind of welcomed us to town and showed us out of town. The benefit was great. We made like five grand.

  I always knew that we would find the guy who killed Mia eventually. That’s how I maintained my wits, really. So when we did, I was obviously really psyched, but it also brought back a lot of repressed and horrible memories. And having to go through the trial was like reopening all those wounds, and I knew that I had to be there and to testify as a witness.

  At the time they gathered the DNA from the crime scene, the technology was not created to test it. It wasn’t until 10 years later, but the medical examiner who did the autopsy had the foresight to save particular samples, thinking that maybe the technology would catch up one day, and lo and behold, it did. It was the first case in the state that a conviction was made using DNA from saliva from teeth marks.

  The guy had gotten a felony assault on his girlfriend who was pregnant. He kicked her in the stomach and gave her a bloody nose. That’s when they entered his DNA sample into the database. I think the only reason the cold-case detectives picked up the case—there were only two detectives for the entire region—is because of all that media attention and all those bands and all the organizations, the self-defense group. Joan Jett really went out of her way to help us out. It was a movement.

  The guy was as far away from Seattle as you could get—he was in the Florida Keys. He disappeared just as quickly as he appeared in Seattle. He wasn’t anyone that anyone knew. He had stalked other women, who came forward during the trial. He was a sociopath and felt no remorse.

  ELIZABETH DAVIS-SIMPSON I remember going online to look at a picture of him and thinking for a long time, Do I click the site? Do I do this? Do I look at this fucker’s face, the last face that Mia saw? And I did. I looked at his face, and I looked at his eyes. That was pretty intense. He’s a monster, huge.

  VALERIE AGNEW I wasn’t there for the trial because I was out of the country, but Selene ended up testifying. I was there for the sentencing. I accidentally walked into the courtroom behind him at one point. They had him shackled out in the hallway. We were on his heels right behind him. It was totally an intense experience. Man, he’s enormous. It was very emotional. I think he got like 36 years. It was so frustrating to know that the amount of time is never enough to compensate for what your friend or her family goes through. But it was at least no longer a question mark.

  STEVE MORIARTY The trial was the first time I’d seen the pictures of the crime scene, and it was blown up to the size of a door: where she was laid out and the blood dripping from her mouth. Like horrible, horrible shit in the courtroom, and it sure didn’t seem like it was 10 years earlier. It seemed like yesterday.

  MIKE INEZ I flew over to London with my girlfriend at the time, and Alice in Chains are coming from Brazil, and we scheduled three rehearsals in London. The first day we didn’t do anything but smoke hash together. And here is my jumping in the pool for Alice in Chains—I think it was 27 gigs in 32 days and 16 countries. It’s so funny, like Layne would say, “All right, here’s a song called ‘Rain When I Die,’ ” and then I’d run up to Layne and whisper in his ear, “Which one’s that?” He’d sing me a little of the song. “Okay, I got it. Go.”

  We finished that cycle and I was still thinking it was temporary, and then we got an offer to do this Arnold Schwarzenegger movie soundtrack, which was the first time I ever wrote with Jerry, Sean, and Layne. And then the guys asked me, “Hey, do you want to stick around and be our guy?” Those times things were still going good, and it was just such a pleasure. We used to laugh our way around the world.

  SEAN KINNEY I thought a lot of people were gonna be freaked out by the change. But then a lot of people really didn’t notice, because they’re both Mikes and about the same height. People just thought Mike Starr got tanner and grew his hair more. They didn’t even notice. It’s like, Goddamn, I don’t even have to be here! I was sort of looking around for guys that look like me. (Laughs.)

  MIKE INEZ We did Lollapalooza ’93, with Tool, Rage Against the Machine, Primus, Dinosaur Jr. Babes in Toyland were great. It was just so nice hearing the Fishbone guys reciting poetry on the tour bus or Jerry jamming with Fishbone or those guys jumping up onstage with us. Arrested Development would come up and jam, and Layne loved this German industrial band called Front 242; you’d be backstage getting some catering and kinda waking up and then you’d hear Layne singing with Front 242. That’s another one of those tours where lifelong friendships were made.

  MAUREEN HERMAN Lollapalooza was very tough, because my picture was on the cover of Entertainment Weekly for the Lollapalooza issue, along with pictures of Layne and the guy from Arrested Development. People said, “Oh! You must be doing so well.” But I had to borrow money from my mom for the rent that month. Our record company was really pushing us to take a tour bus, but we preferred to drive ourselves. We were told that no other band on the tour would be traveling in a van and we had to “grow up.”

  Finally we relented, and because all tour costs are paid by the band or charged against future record sales, and our primary source of tour income, merch, was jacked by Lollapalooza, we walked off with only a couple hundred bucks each.

  LORI BARBERO Lollapalooza was really, really fun. All my friends, all together, day after day. I already knew the Fishbone guys, and that was really fun to hang out with them again. Alice in Chains were so great. Layne really liked us, and so he was always hanging out in our backstage room.

  MAUREEN HERMAN Layne was so meek and mild-mannered and quiet in person that it was really hard to believe that he was a rock singer. He seemed like a child, and everybody else in the band kind of seemed like a man. He seemed like he didn’t fit in. He really didn’t hang with his band socially.

  NICK POLLOCK Layne got me passes to a Lollapalooza show. I hung out with him all day. There was a guy on the bus who made sure he didn’t get any drugs. There was a marked change in Layne’s personality then. He was kinda melancholy and really disappearing. We still had a lot of the same conversations and reflections and things like that, but he wasn’t there. He was lost.

  DAVID DUET When I was living in Texas, Layne called and said he’s comin’ to play Lollapalooza. He says, “Here’s what I need: a bottle of Jägermeister, a bag of pot, mushrooms, bottle of Jack Daniel’s …” Gives me this long list. When I get on his bus, I’m excited to see him and not really paying attention, so I bring him the bag of stuff and I say, “Okay, here’s everything.” He’s trying to give me the eye the whole time. And then I learn I’m on Layne’s personal “clean and sober” bus. (Laughs.) His stepdad, his manager, everybody’
s standing there.

  I packed the bag up and left the bus before it was confiscated, and Layne met me like 15 minutes later.

  LORI BARBERO Eventually Kat and Layne got in trouble, of course.

  MAUREEN HERMAN Layne and Kat started seeing each other on tour, and then when we were in San Francisco, either his girlfriend was in town or he had changed his mind about the situation. Something happened, and he couldn’t be hanging with her. I don’t know what it was. But they had a falling-out that day, so Kat decides to react to the situation with Layne by doing excessive heroin.

  KAT BJELLAND Layne and I hung around the whole time. We weren’t going out, just to make that clear. He was like a kindred spirit. We probably had crushes on each other, because I punched him in the stomach once, which is like a third-grader’s crush reaction, right? And then he had his minions throw me in a bucket of water before we were supposed to play. I was immature. I kinda liked him, but you just get confused when you’re out around the same people all the time.

  Let me make this very clear: I never really did heroin on tour. When I came home and I was bored and depressed with money, yeah, that’s when I would do it. In my whole career on tour, I’m thinkin’, I did it three times. Otherwise, I’d do that thing people do—they kick by drinking themselves to death for at least four days, get through the withdrawal symptoms, and be on their way. At that show in San Francisco, some person from Minneapolis brought it to me. I didn’t ask for it. Never really did that onstage before. Really slows things down to a sub-dirge.