Cathy Smith, who played a key role in the drug-related death of John Belushi in 1982, has died, it was reported Thursday. She was 73.
Smith, the one-time girlfriend of Gordon Lightfoot, died on Aug. 18, Canada’s The Globe and Mail reported. No official cause of death was given, but Smith, a longtime resident of Maple Ridge, British Columbia, had been on oxygen and in failing health the past few years, according to the newspaper.
Smith was with Belushi on March 5, 1982, the day he died of an accidental overdose of heroin and cocaine in bungalow No. 3 at the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. She later told the National Enquirer that she had injected Belushi with the concoction known as a speedball.
The confession led to her arrest for second-degree murder. A plea bargain reduced the charge to involuntary manslaughter along with three drug offences, for which she served 15 months at the California Institution for Women in Chino.
Smith was a capable back-up singer who shared a songwriting credit on the Hoyt Axton song Flash of Fire, The Globe reported, but she was more known in the music world as an attractive background figure who walked in the shadows of the stars with whom she associated, including Levon Helm, the Rolling Stones, Axton and, most famously, Lightfoot.
She had a tumultuous relationship with the iconic Canadian balladeer in the early 1970s.
“Cathy was a great lady,,” Lightfoot told The Globe and Mail this week. “Men were drawn to her, and she used to make me jealous. But I don’t have a bad thing to say about her.”