Mysterious deaths

Cooke was killed at the age of 33 on December 11, 1964, at the Hacienda Motel, in South Central Los Angeles, California, located at 91st and South Figueroa Street. Answering separate reports of a shooting and a kidnapping at the motel, police found Cooke's body. He had sustained a gunshot wound to the chest, which was later determined to have pierced his heart. The motel's manager, Bertha Franklin, said she shot him in self-defense. Her account was immediately disputed by Cooke's acquaintances. The motel's owner, Evelyn Carr,[note 1] said that she had been on the telephone with Franklin at the time of the incident. Carr said she overheard Cooke's intrusion and the ensuing conflict and gunshot, and called the police. The police record states that Franklin fatally shot Cooke, who had checked in earlier that evening. Franklin said that Cooke had banged on the door of her office, shouting "Where's the girl?!", in reference to Elisa Boyer, a woman who had accompanied Cooke to the motel, and who had called the police that night from a telephone booth near the motel minutes before Carr had. Cooke was struck once in the torso. According to Franklin, he exclaimed, "Lady, you shot me", in a tone that expressed perplexity rather than anger, before advancing on her again. She said she hit him in the head with a broomstick before he finally fell to the floor and died. A coroner's inquest was convened to investigate the incident. Elisa Boyer said she ran first to the manager's office and knocked on the door seeking help. However, she said that the manager took too long to respond, so, fearing Cooke would soon be coming after her, she fled from the motel before the manager opened the door. She said she then put her clothes back on, hid Cooke's clothing, went to a telephone booth, and called the police. Boyer's account is the only one that exists of what happened between her and Cooke that night, and it has long been called into question. Inconsistencies between her version of events and details reported by diners at Martoni's Restaurant, where Cooke dined and drank earlier in the evening, suggest that Boyer may have gone willingly to the motel with Cooke, then slipped out of the room with his clothing to rob him, rather than to escape an attempted rape. According to restaurant employees and friends, Cooke was carrying a large amount of money at Martoni's. However, a search of Boyer's purse by police revealed nothing except a $20 bill, and a search of Cooke's Ferrari found only a money clip with $108, as well as a few loose coins near the ashtray.

In addition, because Carr's testimony corroborated Franklin's version of events, and because both Boyer and Franklin later passed polygraph tests, the coroner's jury ultimately accepted Franklin's explanation and returned a verdict of justifiable homicide. With that verdict, authorities officially closed the case on Cooke's death. Some of Cooke's family and supporters, however, have rejected Boyer's version of events, as well as those given by Franklin and Carr. They believe that there was a conspiracy to murder Cooke and that the murder occurred in some manner entirely different from the three official accounts. On the perceived lack of an investigation, Cooke's close friend Muhammad Ali said: "If Cooke had been Frank Sinatra, the Beatles or Ricky Nelson, the FBI would be investigating". Singer Etta James viewed Cooke's body before his funeral and questioned the accuracy of the official version of events. She wrote that the injuries she observed were well beyond the official account of Cooke having fought Franklin alone. James wrote that Cooke was so badly beaten that his head was nearly separated from his shoulders, his hands were broken and crushed, and his nose mangled. Some have speculated that Cooke's manager, Allen Klein, had a role in his death. Klein owned Tracey Ltd, which ultimately owned all rights to Cooke's recordings. However, no concrete evidence supporting a criminal conspiracy has been presented.

Within months of "I Fought the Law" becoming a top 10 hit, Fuller was found dead in an automobile parked outside his Hollywood apartment. The Los Angeles deputy medical examiner, Jerry Nelson, performed the autopsy. According to Dean Kuipers "The report states that Bobby's face, chest, and side were covered in 'petechial hemorrhages,' probably caused by gasoline vapors and the summer heat. He found no bruises, no broken bones, no cuts. No evidence of beating." Kuipers further explains that boxes for "accident" and "suicide" were checked, but next to the boxes were question marks. Despite the official cause of death, some commentators believe Fuller was murdered. Erik Greene, a relative of Sam Cooke, has cited similarities in the deaths of Cooke and Fuller. Fuller's bandmate Jim Reese suspected that Charles Manson played a role in Fuller's death, but never provided credible evidence; Manson was in prison from 1961 to 1967. A sensationalist crime website has speculated that the Los Angeles Police Department may have been involved because of Fuller's connection to a Mafia-related woman. Fuller was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles. His death was profiled in a segment of Unsolved Mysteries. His death was also explored in the May 11, 2015 episode of the NPR program All Things Considered. The program references the book I Fought the Law: The Life and Strange Death of Bobby Fuller, by Miriam Linna, with contributions by Randy Fuller. Sometime after the Unsolved Mysteries segment in question initially aired, the cause of Fuller's death was officially changed from "suicide" to "accident".

At around midnight on the night of 2–3 July 1969, Jones was discovered motionless at the bottom of his swimming pool at Cotchford Farm. His Swedish girlfriend, Anna Wohlin, was convinced he was alive when he was taken out of the pool, insisting he still had a pulse. However, by the time the doctors arrived, it was too late, and he was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital at the age of 27. The coroner's report stated it was a drowning, later clarified as "death by misadventure", and noted his liver and heart were greatly enlarged by past drug and alcohol abuse. Upon Jones' death, the Who's Pete Townshend wrote a poem titled "A Normal Day for Brian, A Man Who Died Every Day" (printed in The Times), Jimi Hendrix dedicated a song to him on US television, and Jim Morrison of the Doors published a poem titled "Ode to L.A. While Thinking of Brian Jones, Deceased". Coincidentally, Hendrix and Morrison both died within the following two years, with Morrison's death falling on the same date as Jones's. All three died at the age of 27. The Rolling Stones performed at a free concert in Hyde Park on 5 July 1969, two days after Jones' death. The band decided to dedicate the concert (which had been scheduled weeks earlier as an opportunity to present their new guitarist, Mick Taylor) to Jones. Before the Stones' set, Jagger read excerpts from "Adonais", a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley about the death of his friend John Keats, and stagehands released hundreds of white butterflies as part of the tribute. The band opened with a Johnny Winter song that was one of Jones' favourites, "I'm Yours and I'm Hers". Jones was reportedly buried 10 feet (3 m) deep in Cheltenham Cemetery, to prevent exhumation by trophy hunters. His body was embalmed, with hair bleached white, and was placed in an air-tight silver and bronze casket. Watts and Wyman were the only Rolling Stones who attended the funeral. Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull were travelling to Australia to begin the filming of Ned Kelly; they stated that their contracts did not allow them to delay the trip to attend the funeral. When asked if he felt guilty about Jones's death, Mick Jagger told Rolling Stone in 1995: "No, I don't really. I do feel that I behaved in a very childish way, but we were very young, and in some ways we picked on him. But, unfortunately, he made himself a target for it; he was very, very jealous, very difficult, very manipulative, and if you do that in this kind of a group of people you get back as good as you give, to be honest. I wasn't understanding enough about his drug addiction. No one seemed to know much about drug addiction. Things like LSD were all new. No one knew the harm. People thought cocaine was good for you." Long-time Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman said of Jones, "As the years go by, I become even more convinced that he's entitled to a free pardon. Brian Jones is a legend and his legacy is there for all to hear. While the Rolling Stones damaged all of us in some way, Brian was the only one that died."

Theories surrounding Jones's death developed soon afterwards, with associates of the Stones claiming to have information that he was murdered. According to rock biographer Philip Norman, "the murder theory would bubble back to the surface every five years or so". In 1993, it was reported that Jones was murdered by Frank Thorogood, a builder who was doing construction work on the property. He was the last person to see Jones alive. Thorogood allegedly confessed the murder to the Rolling Stones' driver Tom Keylock, who later denied this. The Thorogood theory was dramatised in the 2005 film Stoned. Thorogood is alleged to have killed Jones in a fight over money; he had been paid £18,000 for work on Cotchford Farm but he wanted another £6,000 from the musician. The killing is alleged to have been covered up by senior police officers when they discovered how badly the investigation into Jones' death had been botched by the local police. In August 2009, Sussex Police decided to conduct a case review of Jones' death for the first time since 1969 after new evidence was handed to them by Scott Jones, an investigative journalist, who had traced many of the people who were at Brian Jones' house the night he died. The journalist had also uncovered unseen police files held at the National Archives. In 2010, following the review, Sussex Police stated it would not be reopening the case. It asserted that "this has been thoroughly reviewed by Sussex Police's Crime Policy and Review Branch, but there is no new evidence to suggest that the coroner's original verdict of 'death by misadventure' was incorrect."

I got a phone call and I didn't believe it because we used to hear shit like that all the time – that Jim jumped off a cliff or something. So we sent our manager off to Paris, and he called and said it was true. — Robby Krieger, recalling the period when the band learned about Morrison's death. After recording L.A. Woman with the Doors in Los Angeles, Morrison announced to the band his intention to go to Paris. His bandmates generally felt it was a good idea. In March 1971, he joined girlfriend Pamela Courson in Paris at an apartment she had rented at 17–19, Rue Beautreillis in Le Marais, 4th arrondissement. In letters to friends, he described going for long walks through the city alone. During this time, he shaved his beard and lost some of the weight he had gained in the previous months. On July 3, 1971, Morrison was found dead in the bathtub of the apartment at approximately 6:00 a.m. by Courson. He was 27 years old. The official cause of death was listed as heart failure, although no autopsy was performed as it was not required by French law. Several individuals who say they were eyewitnesses claim that his death was due to an accidental heroin overdose; however this has never been confirmed. According to music journalist Ben Fong-Torres, it was suggested that his death was kept as a secret and the reporters who had telephoned to Paris were told that Morrison was not deceased but tired and resting at a hospital. Morrison's death came two years to the day after the death of Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones and approximately nine months after the deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. All of these popular musicians died at the age of 27, leading to the emergence of the 27 Club urban legend. Since the date of his demise, there have been a number of conspiracy theories concerning Morrison's death.

On August 17, 1973, Williams was found dead inside a car parked in an alley having just left the new house of his then-girlfriend after an argument. A gun was found near his body. His death was ruled as an apparent suicide. According to Otis Williams, Paul had expressed suicidal thoughts to him and Melvin Franklin months before his death. Williams's funeral was held on August 24, with his family and former bandmates in attendance. He was survived by his wife, Mary Agnes Williams, and five children: Sarita, Kenneth, Paula, Mary and Paul Jr. Paul Jr later joined a Temptations splinter group, The Temptations Review featuring Dennis Edwards. Williams also had three other children, Paul Williams Lucas, Anthony Johnson, and Derrick Vinyard, with three girlfriends. Williams is buried at Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery, Clinton Township, Macomb County, Michigan in Lot 275, Grave #4, Section #G. The circumstances surrounding Williams's death caused the Williams family to suspect that some form of foul play was the actual cause of Williams's death. According to the coroner, Williams had used his right hand to shoot himself on the left side of his head. In addition, a bottle of alcohol was found near Williams's left side, as if he had dropped it while being shot. The gun used in the shooting was found to have fired two shots, only one of which had killed Williams.

During the peak of his career, Hathaway began experiencing severe bouts of depression and exhibiting unusual behavior. In 1971, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia for which he was prescribed various medications. At one point, Hathaway was prescribed fourteen different medications that he was to take twice a day. After Hathaway was diagnosed and began taking medication, his mental state improved. However, Eulaulah Hathaway has said that her husband became less than diligent about following his prescription regimen when he began feeling better and often stopped taking his medications altogether. From 1973 to 1977, Hathaway's mental instability wreaked havoc on his life and career and required several hospitalizations. The effects of his depression and severe mood swings also drove a wedge in his and Flack's friendship; they did not reconcile for several years, and did not release additional music until the successful release of "The Closer I Get To You" in 1978. Flack and Hathaway then resumed studio recording to compose a second album of duets. Sessions for another album of duets were underway in 1979. On January 13, Hathaway began a recording session with producers/musicians Eric Mercury and James Mtume. Each reported that although Hathaway was singing fine, he began behaving irrationally, seeming to be paranoid and delusional. According to Mtume, Hathaway said that white people were trying to kill him and had connected his brain to a machine for the purpose of stealing his music and his voice. Given Hathaway's behavior, Mercury said that he decided the recording session could not continue, so he aborted it and all of the musicians went home.

Hours later, Hathaway was found dead on the pavement below the window of his 15th-floor room in New York City's Essex House hotel. It was reported that he had jumped from his balcony. The glass had been neatly removed from the window and there were no signs of a struggle, leading investigators to rule that Hathaway's death was a suicide. Flack was devastated and, spurred by his death, included the few duet tracks they had finished on her next album, Roberta Flack Featuring Donny Hathaway. According to Mercury, Hathaway's final recording, included on that album, was "You Are My Heaven", a song Mercury co-wrote with Stevie Wonder. Hathaway's funeral was conducted by Reverend Jesse Jackson. Later in 1979, the Whispers recorded the tribute song, "Song for Donny", for their self-titled album. The song reached No. 21 on the R&B chart. That same year, they used that tribute song's arrangement to do a cover of Hathaway's song "This Christmas", included on their Christmas album, Happy Holidays to You.

Driscoll was found murdered in his Ithaca, New York, home, with no apparent motive. Separating fact from invention is difficult, but there are rumors that there was more than one murderer, the killing was drug-related and perhaps most disturbingly, that Driscoll was either dismembered or flayed alive. It remains an unsolved case to this day.

Early on May 13, 1988, Baker was found dead on the street below his room in Hotel Prins Hendrik, Amsterdam, with serious wounds to his head, apparently having fallen from the second-story window. Heroin and cocaine were found in his room and in his body. No evidence of a struggle was found, and the death was ruled an accident. According to another account, he inadvertently locked himself out of his room and fell while attempting to cross from the balcony of the vacant adjacent room to his own. A plaque was placed outside the hotel in his memory. Baker is buried at the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California, next to his father.

Gunter was shot and killed in his car in Las Vegas in 1990. He was shot through the windshield at an intersection, and witnesses reported Gunter arguing with a man from his car shortly before the shooting. No arrests were made and the murder remains unsolved.

Rumors surround Thunders' death at the Inn on St. Peter hotel (formerly known as St. Peter Guest House) in New Orleans, Louisiana on April 23, 1991. Thunders apparently died of drug-related causes, but it has been speculated that it was the result of foul play. According to his biography Lobotomy: Surviving The Ramones, Dee Dee Ramone took a call in New York City the next day from Stevie Klasson, Johnny's rhythm guitar player. Ramone said, "They told me that Johnny had gotten mixed up with some bastards... who ripped him off for his methadone supply. They had given him LSD and then murdered him. He had gotten a pretty large supply of methadone in England, so he could travel and stay away from those creeps – the drug dealers, Thunders imitators, and losers like that." Singer Willy DeVille, who lived next door to the hotel in which Thunders died, described his death this way: I don't know how the word got out that I lived next door, but all of a sudden the phone started ringing and ringing. Rolling Stone was calling, the Village Voice called, his family called, and then his guitar player called. I felt bad for all of them. It was a tragic end, and I mean, he went out in a blaze of glory, ha ha ha, so I thought I might as well make it look real good, you know, out of respect, so I just told everybody that when Johnny died he was laying down on the floor with his guitar in his hands. I made that up. When he came out of the St. Peter Guest House, rigor mortis had set in to such an extent that his body was in a U shape. When you're laying on the floor in a fetal position, doubled over – well, when the body bag came out, it was in a U. It was pretty awful. There is conflicting information about the New Orleans' coroner's report. An article in the Orlando Sentinel states: "[He] died of an overdose of cocaine and methadone, according to the coroner's office in New Orleans. Chief investigator John Gagliano said tests completed last week found substantial amounts of both drugs." While other sources state: An autopsy was conducted by the New Orleans coroner, but served only to compound the mysteries. According to Thunders' biographer Nina Antonia as posted on the Jungle Records website, the level of drugs found in his system was not fatal. According to the book Rock Bottom: Dark Moments in Music Babylon by Pamela Des Barres, who interviewed Thunders' sister, Mariann Bracken, the autopsy confirmed evidence of advanced leukemia, which would explain the decline in Thunders' appearance in the final year of his life. In a 1994 Melody Maker interview, Thunders' manager Mick Webster described the family's efforts to get New Orleans police to investigate the matter further: "We keep asking the New Orleans police to re-investigate, but they haven't been particularly friendly. They seemed to think that this was just another junkie who had wandered into town and died. They simply weren't interested." Thunders was survived by his wife Julie Jourden and four children: sons John, Vito, and Dino, and daughter Jamie Genzale by Susanne Blomqvist.

Edwards disappeared on 1 February 1995, on the day when he and Bradfield were due to fly to the United States on a promotional tour of The Holy Bible. In the two weeks before his disappearance, Edwards withdrew £200 a day from his bank account, which totalled £2,800 by the day of the scheduled flight. It is not known if he intended to spend the cash during the U.S. tour or whether a part of it was to pay for a desk that he had ordered from a shop in Cardiff. There is no record of the desk having been paid for. According to Emma Forrest, as quoted in A Version of Reason, "The night before he disappeared Edwards gave a friend a book called Novel with Cocaine, instructing her to read the introduction, which details the author staying in a mental asylum before vanishing." Whilst staying at the Embassy Hotel in Bayswater Road, London, according to Rob Jovanovic's biography, Edwards removed some books and videos from his bag. Among them was a copy of the play Equus. Edwards placed them in a box with a note that said "I love you", wrapped the box like a birthday present and decorated it with collages and literary quotations including a picture of a Germanic-looking house and Bugs Bunny. The package was addressed to Edwards' on/off girlfriend, Jo, whom he met some years prior, although they had split a few weeks earlier. Edwards' sister, Rachel, contributing to an article about Edwards' final lyrics by Guy Mankowski, proposed that Sylvia Plath's poem 'Tulips' 'summed up everything he [Edwards] thought at the time he went'. She added, 'why do I know this? Because he told me, he kept a copy of it, and he asked for it to be read at its funeral'. Rachel Edwards said, 'his thoughts must have been dominated by this poem–the themes and messages.' The poem is generally considered to depict the tension between the speaker's desire for the simplicity of death and the tulip's encouragement towards life. The next morning, Edwards collected his wallet, car keys, some Prozac and his passport. He reportedly checked out of the hotel at 7:00 a.m., leaving his toiletries, packed suitcase, and some of his Prozac. He then drove to his flat in Cardiff, leaving behind his passport, his Prozac and the Severn Bridge tollbooth receipt. In the two weeks that followed, Edwards was apparently spotted in the Newport passport office and at Newport bus station by a fan who was unaware that he was missing. The fan was reported to have discussed a mutual friend, Lori Fidler, before Edwards departed. On 7 February, a taxi driver from Newport supposedly picked up Edwards from the King's Hotel, and drove him around the valleys, including Edwards' hometown of Blackwood. The driver reported that the passenger had spoken in a Cockney accent, which occasionally slipped into a Welsh one, and that he had asked if he could lie down on the back seat. Eventually they reached Blackwood and the bus station, but the passenger reportedly said "this is not the place", and asked to be taken to Pontypool railway station. It was later ascertained, according to Jovanovic's account, that Pontypool did not have a telephone. The passenger got out at the Severn View service station near Aust, South Gloucestershire and paid the £68 fare in cash.

On 14 February, Edwards' Vauxhall Cavalier received a parking ticket at the Severn View service station, and on 17 February, the vehicle was reported as abandoned. Police discovered the battery to be dead, with evidence that the car had been lived in. The car also had photos he had taken of his family days prior. Due to the service station's proximity to the Severn Bridge, a known suicide site, it was widely believed that Edwards had jumped from the bridge. Many people who knew Edwards, however, have said that he was never the type to contemplate suicide and he himself was quoted in 1994 as saying, "In terms of the 'S' word, that does not enter my mind. And it never has done, in terms of an attempt. Because I am stronger than that. I might be a weak person, but I can take pain". Since then, Edwards has reportedly been spotted in a market in Goa, India, and on the islands of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote. There have been other alleged sightings of Edwards, especially in the years immediately following his disappearance. However, none of these has proved conclusive, and none has been confirmed by investigators. In 2018, it was revealed that the bridge's toll receipt was timestamped with a 24-hour clock, meaning he would have crossed the bridge at 2:55 am, rather than 2:55 pm as previously thought for 23 years. The investigation itself has received criticism. In his 1999 book Everything (A Book About Manic Street Preachers), Simon Price states that aspects of the investigation were "far from satisfactory". He asserts the police may not have taken Edwards' mental state into account when prioritising his disappearance, and also records Edwards' sister Rachel as having "hit out at police handling" after CCTV footage was analysed two years after Edwards vanished. Price records a member of the investigation team as stating "that the idea that you could identify somebody from that is arrant nonsense". While his family had the option of declaring him legally dead from 2002 onwards, they chose not to for many years, and his status remained open as a missing person until 23 November 2008, when he became officially "presumed dead".

On the night of September 7, 1996, Shakur was in Las Vegas, Nevada, to celebrate his business partner Tracy Danielle Robinson's birthday and attended the Bruce Seldon vs. Mike Tyson boxing match with Suge Knight at the MGM Grand. Afterward in the lobby, someone in their group spotted Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, an alleged Southside Compton Crip, whom the individual accused of having recently tried to snatch his neck chain with a Death Row Records medallion in a shopping mall. The hotel's surveillance footage shows the ensuing assault on Anderson. Shakur soon stopped by his hotel room and then headed with Knight to his Death Row nightclub, Club 662, in a black BMW 750iL sedan, part of a larger convoy. At about 11 pm on Las Vegas Boulevard, bicycle-mounted police stopped the car for its loud music and lack of license plates. The plates were found in the trunk and the car was released without a ticket. At about 11:15 pm at a stop light, a white, four-door, late-model Cadillac sedan pulled up to the passenger side and an occupant rapidly fired into the car. Shakur was struck four times: once in the arm, once in the thigh, and twice in the chest with one bullet entering his right lung. Shards hit Knight's head. Frank Alexander, Shakur's bodyguard, was not in the car at the time. He would say he had been tasked to drive the car of Shakur's girlfriend, Kidada Jones. Shakur was taken to the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada where he was heavily sedated and put on life support. In the intensive-care unit on the afternoon of September 13, 1996, Shakur died from internal bleeding. He was pronounced dead at 4:03 pm. The official causes of death are respiratory failure and cardiopulmonary arrest associated with multiple gunshot wounds. Shakur's body was cremated the next day. Members of the Outlawz, recalling a line in his song "Black Jesus", (although uncertain of the artist's attempt at a literal meaning chose to interpret the request seriously) smoked some of his body's ashes after mixing them with marijuana. In 2002, investigative journalist Chuck Philips, after a year of work, reported in the Los Angeles Times that Anderson, a Southside Compton Crip, having been attacked by Suge and Shakur's entourage at the MGM Hotel after the boxing match, had fired the fatal gunshots, but that Las Vegas police had interviewed him only once, briefly, before his death in an unrelated shooting. Philips's 2002 article also alleges the involvement of Christopher "Notorious B.I.G." Wallace and several within New York City's criminal underworld. Both Anderson and Wallace denied involvement, while Wallace offered a confirmed alibi. Music journalist John Leland, in The New York Times, called the evidence "inconclusive".

In 2011, via the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI released documents related to its investigation which described an extortion scheme by the Jewish Defense League that included making death threats against Shakur and other rappers, but did not indicate a direct connection to his murder.

On March 8, 1997, Wallace attended Soul Train Awards after-party hosted by Vibe and Qwest Records at the Petersen Automotive Museum. Guests included Evans, Aaliyah and members of the Bloods and Crips gangs. The next day at 12:30 a.m. PST, after the fire department closed the party early due to overcrowding, Wallace left with his entourage in two GMC Suburbans to return to his hotel. He traveled in the front passenger seat alongside associates Damion "D-Roc" Butler, Lil' Cease, and driver Gregory "G-Money" Young. Combs traveled in the other vehicle with two bodyguards. The two trucks were trailed by a Chevrolet Blazer carrying Bad Boy director of security Paul Offord. By 12:45 a.m., the streets were crowded with people leaving the party. Wallace's truck stopped at a red light 50 yards (46 m) from the Petersen Automotive Museum, and a black Chevy Impala pulled up alongside it. The Impala's driver, an unidentified African-American man dressed in a blue suit and bow tie, rolled down his window, drew a 9 mm blue-steel pistol, and fired at Wallace's car. Four bullets hit Wallace, and his entourage subsequently rushed him to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where doctors performed an emergency thoracotomy, but he was pronounced dead at 1:15 a.m. He was 24 years old. His autopsy, which was released 15 years after his death, showed that only the final shot was fatal; it entered through his right hip and struck his colon, liver, heart, and left lung before stopping in his left shoulder. Wallace's funeral was held at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in Manhattan on March 18. There were around 350 mourners at the funeral, including Lil' Cease, Queen Latifah, Mase, Faith Evans, SWV, Jay-Z, Damon Dash, DJ Premier, Charli Baltimore, Da Brat, Flavor Flav, Mary J. Blige, Lil' Kim, Run-D.M.C., DJ Kool Herc, Treach, Busta Rhymes, Salt-N-Pepa, DJ Spinderella, Foxy Brown, and Sister Souljah. David Dinkins and Clive Davis also attended the funeral. After the funeral, his body was cremated and the ashes were given to his family.

Smith died on October 21, 2003, at the age of 34 from two stab wounds to the chest. At the time of the stabbing, he was at his Lemoyne Street home in Echo Park, California, where he lived with his girlfriend, Jennifer Chiba. According to Chiba, the two were arguing, and she locked herself in the bathroom to take a shower. Chiba heard him scream and upon opening the door saw Smith standing with a knife in his chest. She pulled the knife out, after which he collapsed and she called 9-1-1 at 12:18 pm. Smith died in the hospital, with the time of death listed as 1:36 p.m. A possible suicide note, written on a sticky note, read: "I'm so sorry—love, Elliot. God forgive me." The coroner misspelled Smith's first name in the autopsy report, omitting the second 't'. While Smith's death was reported as a suicide, the official autopsy report released in December 2003 left open the question of homicide. Smith's remains were cremated, and his ashes were divided between his mother, father, and half-sister Ashley. A small memorial service for family and friends was held at his father's home in Portland, although Smith's "ashes weren't on hand because the coroner wouldn't release them." The status or location of Smith's ashes has not been made public. According to Pitchfork, record producer Larry Crane reported on his Tape Op message board that he had planned to help Smith mix his album in mid-November. Crane wrote, "I hadn't talked to Elliott in over a year. His girlfriend, Jennifer, called me [last week] and asked if I'd like to come to L.A. and help mix and finish [Smith's album]. I said 'yes, of course', and chatted with Elliott for the first time in ages. It seems surreal that he would call me to finish an album and then a week later kill himself. I talked to Jennifer this morning, who was obviously shattered and in tears, and she said, 'I don't understand, he was so healthy.'" The coroner reported that no traces of illegal substances or alcohol were found in Smith's system at the time of his death but did find prescribed levels of antidepressant, anxiolytic, and ADHD medications, including clonazepam, mirtazapine, atomoxetine, and amphetamine.[94] There were no hesitation wounds, which are typically found on a victim of suicide by self-infliction. Due to the inconclusive autopsy ruling, the Los Angeles Police Department's investigation remains open.