Belushi Willingly Accepted Injections of Drugs by Smith, Friends Tell Court

In the days before he died, a drawn and tired John Belushi repeatedly accepted drug injections from Cathy Evelyn Smith, and encouraged his friends to join him, two of Belushi’s companions testified Monday.

On the first day of Smith’s long-delayed preliminary hearing, Leslie Marks-Moritz, 28, a former clothing store clerk, and Nelson Lyon, 46, an advertising and television writer, provided new details of Belushi’s unrelenting use of drugs the week before he died of a heroin and cocaine overdose on March 5, 1982.

Smith, 38, a former back-up vocalist and one-time companion to singer Gordon Lightfoot, is being prosecuted for second-degree murder and 13 counts of furnishing heroin and cocaine to Belushi, a television and film star who became famous on the original Saturday Night Live television program in the mid-1970s.

Responding to questions from Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael J. Montagna, Marks-Moritz and Lyon testified that although Belushi personally supplied or paid for the drugs he and his friends used, they never saw him inject himself with a needle. That task always fell to Smith, they said.

Lyon said he left the comedian’s $200-a-day bungalow at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood about 3:30 a.m. on March 5, after a day in which Smith injected both Lyon and Belushi at least seven times with a drug that Lyon believed was cocaine.

However, Lyon said that the last injection Smith gave him, about 1 a.m. that day, produced a dramatically different effect than the earlier injections. “I felt intensely numb, intensely stoned, it was a very upsetting numbness, very disorienting.” Lyon said. He testified that he became sick to his stomach a few minutes later.

Actor Robert DeNiro stopped by to visit Belushi at the bungalow early that morning, but Belushi had gone out, Lyon testified, and DeNiro left. Later, comedian Robin Williams stopped by the bungalow, sniffed cocaine with Belushi, and left shortly before Lyon went home, the writer testified.

Marks-Moritz, introduced to Belushi through a friend in early February, said she first tried heroin, sniffing it, at Belushi’s behest sometime between Feb. 11 and Feb. 22, 1982.

On a later occasion, Marks-Moritz said, she allowed Smith to inject her with a cocaine solution while Smith repeatedly administered “speedballs”--mixtures of heroin and cocaine--to Belushi and at least two of his acquaintances.

At one point, Marks-Moritz said, Smith “told me it could be dangerous giving me an injection. . . . Something to the effect of, if she didn’t do it right, she could kill me.”

Two days before he died, Belushi arrived at her Westwood apartment at 7:30 a.m., “distraught and exhausted,” Marks-Moritz said. When she returned from work that afternoon, she said Belushi was asleep on her bed, his arms exposed.

“They had a lot of what looked like red splotches in the crook of his arm, where he had been injected,” she testified. “Over a dozen, at least.”

“He said that they upset him and that they really bothered him, to look at. He was just distressed over how bad he looked. “

Tried to Cover Marks

So, Marks-Moritz said, she tried to cover the marks with make-up.

But at 4 a.m. the next day, the day before he died, Belushi awoke and pulled a slip of paper from his pocket. The paper had Smith’s name on it, Marks-Moritz recalled.

Outside Nelson’s courtroom, Smith’s attorney, Howard L. Weitzman, said the testimony of Lyon and Marks-Moritz did not surprise him.

“We all knew that type of testimony was going to come out. I don’t believe it has any effect on our theory of the case.” Weitzman said he continues to believe that Smith was acting only at Belushi’s direction, and that she is not guilty of murder. “I’ve said all along this is not a murder case,” he said.

The hearing is to resume today before Los Angeles Municipal Judge James F. Nelson.