After he was released on bail, I took him to the hospital, where he underwent surgery to have five screws put in his hip. The doctors had fears that he might have contracted hepatitis C, and Todd said he’d been treated like a leper as a result. On the way home his girlfriend, Kathy, called to say she and her son were trapped in the house by a neighbor’s Rottweiler dog. They’d been having problems with the family, so Todd defied the doctors, who had told him not to drive, and went straight over there.
The dog chased Todd’s car, then ran off. The neighbors claimed he ran it over, there was an altercation, and the police were called. The following week he was charged with cruelty, torturing, and abusing an animal. It was all totally untrue—in fact, I found out later that the dog was fine—but if found guilty, Todd faced five years in jail.
Todd loved animals and was terribly upset he’d been accused of harming one. I offered to sell my property in Missouri to pay for a decent lawyer, and while Todd stayed at my house in Michigan, as a condition of his bail, I set off to sort out the sale. The 17th of October was Marshall’s thirty-second birthday.
As always I sent a card, along with a cherub. And as usual I heard nothing back. I arrived in Missouri after a two-day drive from Michigan, just before midnight, switched off the phone, and went to bed. At 1 a.m. I was awoken by my brother-in-law Lynard and nephew Jonathan banging on my door. They were screaming that Todd had been shot. Todd was back at the hospital, in intensive care. The doctors said he would not recover. At 4:40 a.m. the decision was made to take him off of life support. Todd died twenty-three minutes later; he was just forty-two. To date I have never forgiven myself for not taking him along with me when I went to Missouri. Maybe he’d still be alive; I know he would.
In the dark days that followed, I tried to find out what had happened. But everyone, including the police, gave me the runaround. Todd’s death was ruled a suicide. He was said to have been depressed about the problems with his neighbor’s dog, along with an arrest for allegedly drunk-driving, and had shot himself in the face.
I didn’t buy that for a second, nor did his girlfriend, Kathy. He’d been in great spirits, calling her at 3:30 p.m. from a friend’s house to say he was trying to persuade someone to give him a lift, because he didn’t have enough gasoline to pick up his son from his ex-wife, Janice, and return home.
Then, at 12:30 a.m., Junior, as we all call Todd’s eldest, phoned 911 to say he’d found his father parked outside his house in New Baltimore. He was in the driver’s seat, unconscious. I was told he had shot himself.
One of the first of many unanswered questions I asked was what was he doing way down in southern Michigan at his eldest son’s house when he hadn’t had enough gas to drive to his ex-wife’s home earlier on. There was no suicide note on him, although a piece of paper with the words “Nate’s life” was in his pocket. The detectives seemed to think that was relevant. In fact, it was the password to my computer. Todd had been using my Internet to research his upcoming legal cases. Other so-called notes were in the glove compartment. One note was addressed to “Mother.” Not only did it not resemble Todd’s writing; he’d never usually addressed her as Mother—it was Maw or Mom.
One of the most upsetting things was the reaction of the local paper. It printed a front-page piece dredging up the fact that Todd had killed his brother-in-law Mike Harris. The article was in bad taste and added insult to injury at a time when we were all so upset. I was in tears when Marshall called me. I hoped he’d know what to do.
But the old anger returned.
“I’ll pay for that piece of shit’s funeral, but don’t ask me to attend,” he said.
“Why are you being like this?” I wailed at him. “He bashed me all over the media,” Marshall said.
“Todd loved you,” I told him.
Marshall ignored that. He just told me to put a cap of $7,000 on the funeral expenses. He had no intention of paying any more.
The funeral home was packed. We had an open casket so people could see him. Then, after a short cremation service, Todd’s ashes were placed in an urn at the foot of Ronnie’s grave in Saint Joseph. It was all over so quickly. Kathy returned home to discover that the house where they lived had been broken into during the funeral. Among the things stolen were Todd’s computer, with his almost-finished book manuscript on it, and lots of Marshall’s drawings. The police didn’t even bother to investigate. Todd’s will was also destroyed. I’d notarized the first one in 2001, and he showed me the one he drew up in 2003. It was never recorded, yet he told everyone close to him where to find it if anything ever happened to him. Someone broke into the lock-box it was in and destroyed it.
The police swept Todd’s death under the carpet, too. When I rummaged through the car glove compartment I found a large manila envelope with all his papers and registration in it. I phoned my mom, as some of the papers were addressed to her, and she wanted to see them, so I made copies, also informing the officers—who threatened to charge me for tampering with evidence if I didn’t give it up. When I asked time after time why there was no blood on the ceiling of the car, they just ignored me. Apparently there were no pictures of this. I had too many questions. I was told the passenger door had to be pried open, yet they claimed it was never opened. I knew better—in the past, Todd had carried passengers who’d used that door to get in and out of that side. There were way too many things wrong.
Todd was six feet tall and a 185 pounds. He had long legs, yet the driver’s seat was pulled forward, so he would have been scrunched up over the steering wheel. There was blood on the headrest but none anywhere else. The impact would have sprayed blood everywhere. Todd had used a gun once—and paid a terrible price for it. After killing Mike Harris he was rightly wary of firearms. He had a criminal record and could not be around them. When Nan died, he gave me her antique pistols, since he didn’t want them in the house. To this day, it is not clear where the rifle that killed him came from. Todd was said to have got it at a pawnshop on a Sunday night in exchange for his beloved guitar; then he was supposed to have borrowed it from a friend. It was a gun used for shooting animals but was unlikely to kill a human.
According to the police, Todd was found in the driver’s seat with the engine still running and all the doors locked. The rear window on the driver’s side had been smashed through. Todd was strapped into his seat belt clutching the rifle, which was underneath his jacket, to his hooded sweatshirt. He was supposed to have fired upwards under his chin. I’ve had several six-foot-tall, average-built men scrunch into a car with the seat pulled forward to try to recreate that scene. It’s not possible. And the gunshot wound was to the back of his head, not his chin.
I have constantly asked the police for a copy of the 911 tape and for pictures of the crime scene. They just give me the runaround. I was sent the wrong 911 recording tape. When I asked for the right one, I was told it had been erased. And they couldn’t show me the gun either.
One officer actually asked, “Who the hell was this guy anyway? He was no one.” Another claimed the opposite, saying Todd’s death wasn’t going to be investigated because of who he was. I assume it was because he was Marshall’s uncle. Then the officer asked me if I could get signed posters for his kids.
One of the officers had lived near Todd once. He seemed to have a massive downer on the entire family. I found him especially hard to deal with because he was so negative about everything.
December was the hardest: it would have been Todd’s forty-third birthday; then there was Christmas. Todd had always loved the holiday season, and we usually spent it together. I felt as though I’d lost everything precious in my life.
There were so many unanswered questions. Just a month before he died, I’d been at his hospital bedside when he came around after the hip surgery. He said then, “Sister, I’m so glad to see you. I thought I’d died,” as he squeezed my hand.
If he was so happy to have survived that, why did he kill himself a month later? Also, we were so close. Wh
y didn’t he leave a note for me?
His last words to me were: “Sister, all I want is for everyone to get along.” He hated the fact that our family was fractured and that Marshall and I were estranged.
My health went to hell in a handbasket: I suffered a small heart attack, I kept losing weight—my entire body seemed to be falling apart. The only good thing that happened was that I discovered I had been misdiagnosed. I didn’t have breast cancer after all. I was trying to investigate Todd’s death. There was no way he killed himself. I employed private investigators to help, but they got the same runaround as I did. They said my brother had been executed, lobotomy-style. In other words, he did not shoot himself. Todd’s then-girlfriend, Kathy, agrees with me, but she has hit the same brick walls as I have. Todd’s eldest son, Junior, evicted her shortly after he was made executor of the estate.
I have heard rumors about who killed Todd. I’ve even witnessed a certain someone bragging it was assisted suicide, claiming Todd had begged for help in killing himself. I pleaded with the office of the Macomb County prosecuting attorney for help. I handed over all of the medical records, the autopsy report, everything I had. But months went by before I received a short letter saying, “This office concludes there is no credible evidence to change the findings of the initial investigation and the medical examiner’s conclusion, which is suicide.” Something I find very hard to credit is the report of the medical examiner. It seems that a prominent scar on Todd’s abdomen and chest area was completely missed by the examiner, even though the same hospital had dealt with his hip surgery just one week before and had logged the details. How could the coroner not notice it?
Now I know most people would give up. But I had promised Todd that if anything ever happened to him, I would get to the bottom of it. I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on private eyes. I’m happy to spend every last penny finding out the truth. My brother had such a hard life here on Earth, and I’d like to think that God has given him everything now that he’s in heaven. That’s the only thing that keeps me sane.
This book is dedicated to, among others, Todd, along with our younger brother Ronnie. Over the years I have been asked many times to tell my side of the Eminem story, but I always refused. Then it struck me that I owed it to Todd to write about what had happened to him. If just one person comes forward with information to help me solve what happened, then cleaning out my closet—telling the world about the deeply private things I once hoped to keep secret—will have been worth it. It’s been a painful journey, but
foremost in my mind is that I’m doing it for Todd. I haven’t given up on solving his death, and if there is a lawyer or private detective reading this who would like to help me, please get in touch. I need someone who isn’t afraid of asking difficult questions and getting answers—someone with a strong backbone.
Other members of my family tell me to forget it. I know it won’t bring my brother back, but I need to know what really happened to him. I need closure.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Marshall gave an interview in Vanity Fair, one of the most respected magazines in the world. He expressed regrets about his fame, saying, “I would take it back to where I made a comfortable living. To where I would just make music, have people appreciate it, even if it’s a few people who appreciate it, and be able to walk to a mall, walk to a store.
“When you get fame and fortune and you make something of your life and become successful...a whole new slew of problems that I never expected...come along with it. Sometimes I battle with these demons that make me say in my head, ‘I’m not going to be locked in a cage, I’m gonna walk in this place and I’m not going to sign autographs.’”
It’s been said that Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, would have a field day dissecting my son. It’s true. Marshall is a mass of contradictions—he’s shy, suffers terrible stage fright, yet tours constantly and is among the most instantly recognizable people in the world. I believe he’d have been far happier writing lyrics and producing away from the spotlight. Sometimes I wish we hadn’t moved back to Michigan in 1987, where he got involved with hardcore rap. If we’d stayed in Missouri, he’d have maybe worked on a farm or in a factory. I don’t know if that would have made him happier, but I do know we would not be estranged.
Lots of therapists have contacted me over the years to offer their opinion on my son’s behavior. One called me from Britain to say that up-and-coming celebrities often claim to have suffered tough childhoods to help their careers. They invent a new persona. In Marshall’s case, he has become Slim Shady and Eminem. With these celebrities, alcohol and drugs color their memories, and after a while they honestly think the bad things really happened.
I suppose it’s like O. J. Simpson, who truly believes he did not murder his wife Nicole, or John Mark Karr, who confessed to killing the child beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey when DNA and all other evidence said otherwise. Forensic psychologists say that if either man took a lie-detector test, they would pass. Simpson believes he’s innocent; Karr believed he was guilty. I’m not the only parent of a celebrity who has seen history rewritten. A dear friend of mine who is a celebrity’s father has been through similar issues since his son became famous. Like me, he couldn’t get through on the phone to his son. He would try to reach him, but his son’s staff would ignore him. He continues to try to break through this barrier of employees, advisers, and hangers-on, and I wish him the best, as I know how he feels.
In my heart I know Marshall still loves me; he’s just confused. He says now he doesn’t even remember 1999, the year he made it big, toured constantly, and married Kim for the first time. Everything is just a fuzzy memory.
Yet look at his lyrics: the people he is closest to—Hailie, Kim, Nathan, and me—are mentioned constantly.
By 2004 I’d stopped listening to Marshall’s songs or watching his videos. They were too upsetting. But in October I heard about the promo for his single “Mosh.” He was playing George W. Bush reading a children’s book upside-down to a roomful of kids. My first reaction was to cringe: you just don’t make fun of the president. But Marshall had never cared about that, so much so that the Secret Service had made inquiries into his anti-Bush remarks the previous year. Now here was my son openly mocking the commander-in-chief’s intelligence.
I puffed up with pride when I realized Marshall was using his influence to encourage youngsters to get out and vote in the November elections. I’ve always been an activist, volunteering at polling stations and putting up placards for local politicians. My brother Todd was the same. Now many Americans, especially the young, don’t bother even to register to vote, so I was delighted that Marshall was rallying his fans. In Michigan he’d been involved in an earlier voting drive, and even though “Mosh” was released too late for many to register, and Bush was re-elected, I did read that twenty million people under the age of thirty voted—four and a half million more than in 2000. I like to think Marshall helped get the word out.
Marshall was arguably the most controversial musician of his generation, but, whereas before he’d been vilified for inciting hatred against women and gays, he had matured into rap’s elder statesman. In the beginning he thrived on confrontation, mocking everyone from the Spice Girls and boy bands to MTV presenters and former president Bill Clinton. But he now sought to be the peacemaker. His protégé 50 Cent—whose Get Rich or Die Tryin’ was the biggest breakthrough album of 2003—had been involved in numerous spats with New York rapper Ja Rule and his Murder Inc. crew. Marshall got caught up in the feud by default—Ja Rule mocked both Kim and Hailie in song. Marshall answered back, but instead of being goaded into what could quite easily have spiraled into a new rap war, my son penned “Like Toy Soldiers,” a track that basically said let’s stop pretending we’re gangsters. Ja Rule agreed to the ceasefire. I was proud that my son had proved to be the bigger man by offering reconciliation.
I’m reminded now of the Saint Joseph newspaper horoscope for the day Marshall was born, Octob
er 17, 1972. Aside from saying he would never turn his artistic talents into commercial worth—clearly wrong—it stated he’d make an excellent jurist or keeper of the peace. I laughed about that when Marshall first became famous, because he seemed to bring trouble on himself. Now, finally, at the age of thirty-two, he’d grown up into a typical Libran, weighing up arguments and working out the best way forward.
Regardless of whether I listen to Marshall’s music more than once, I still buy his CDs to support him. His winter 2004 album Encore was another big hit, selling a respectable nine million copies worldwide. He was also working with a stable of new artists as well as his old mates Proof and D-12. But speculation was rife that he intended to retire.
Just like David Bowie, who thirty years earlier killed off his alter ego Ziggy Stardust at London’s Hammersmith Odeon by announcing it was the last show he’d ever do, Marshall seemed to be signaling the end of Eminem. He’d scattered clues throughout Encore, which ended with his gunning down the audience before shooting himself. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the cover, which pictured him with a gun in his mouth and a suicide note.
He was certainly exhausted. The last thing he wanted was to go on tour again. Marshall seemed happy only when holed up at home with Hailie and her cousin Lainie playing happy families. There he enjoys doing all the daddy things with them, shooting basketball hoops on the driveway and helping them decorate the house at Christmas, Easter, and Halloween.
My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem: Setting the Record Straight on My Life as Eminem's Mother Page 16
