Little Girl Blue (52 page)

C.J. also broke the news to Frank Bonito, who was employed as a medical social worker at the time. “Channel 8 News has been trying to get you,” the receptionist in his office mentioned.

“I had no idea as to why,” Bonito says. “C.J. contacted me and he told me. Thankfully he got to me before the TV news. You see this on the news all the time where they call someone up and say, ‘Did you hear that so-and-so died?' That is not the way you want to hear about it!”

Songwriter Paul Williams was in Washington D.C. “I was at Wolf Trap with Elizabeth Taylor and doing a big benefit. The news of the day was that Karen had died. Everybody was just stunned. I remember being devastated for everybody, for all of us, for her, and for everyone,” he says. “I think that most of us around A&M and those who'd had contact knew what was going on, but the feeling was that she was doing a lot better.” At the Cap Centre's Wolf Trap Gala, Williams sang “We've Only Just Begun” as a tribute to Karen. “An angel sang this song for me,” he told the crowd of more than twelve thousand. As he tried to
hold back his emotions, tears filled his eyes, and the stage lights were brought down.

Also in the nation's capital was Carole Curb, living in Paris at the time but visiting her brother Mike, who'd relocated to D.C. the month prior. “I was on the way to the airport to fly back to L.A. to visit my parents, and I heard it on the radio,” she says. “I remember falling to the floor of the limo. I just fell on the floor.” Mike Curb was in route to London and heard the news in the airport. “I was so jolted when I heard she'd died that I was just in a state of total shock. I almost fainted. The feeling I had was that she was working her way through it. A lot of people go through a tough time after a bad marriage. . . . I remember how frail she had looked the last time I had seen her, but then my sister had a lot of those same issues. My sister is still alive, so why isn't Karen still alive?”

News reports began hinting that the cause of death was believed to be associated with anorexia nervosa, but this information did little to lessen the astonishment of even those reporting the story. C. P. Smith of the
Orange County Register
wrote: “
It's hardly surprising
when one of rock's hard-livers dies at an early age. The passing of a Janis Joplin or a Jimi Hendrix is perhaps understandable in a macabre fashion—it's as though the nature of their gut-level music made death into more of an occupational hazard than anything else. But the passing of Karen Carpenter at the age of thirty-two came as a complete shock.”

I
NVESTIGATORS WITH
the Downey Police Department drove housekeeper Florine Elie to Karen's Century City residence, where they searched the premises looking for anything unusual or suspicious. “They went through the house and rumbled around,” she recalls. “I just sat there and waited on them.” They confiscated several bottles of prescription medication and various items unknown to Elie before returning her to Newville, where the mood was somber, to say the least. “They were real sad,” Elie remembers. “They didn't talk or do hardly anything.”

A bottle of Ativan tablets, commonly used to treat anxiety disorders, was turned over to investigators. The pills were prescribed by
Dr. George Monnet on January 10, 1983, and filled at the local Gemco pharmacy. Monnet later told the investigators he suspected Karen might have also been taking Lasix, a potent diuretic, and not taking the required potassium supplements. In his opinion, this might have caused a cardiac arrhythmia.

On the afternoon of February 4, Los Angeles County medical examiner Dr. Ronald Kornblum conducted autopsy number 83-1611. It began at 2:30
P.M.
and lasted two hours. Pending results of further lab tests, the immediate cause of death was marked “deferred.” Word from National Medical Services, a Pennsylvania-based clinical toxicology and forensic testing firm, came early in March. The autopsy report became final on March 11, and the certificate of death was amended to list the cause of death as “emetine cardiotoxicity due to or as a consequence of anorexia nervosa.” The anatomical summary listed pulmonary edema and congestion (usually caused by heart failure) first and anorexia second. Third was cachexia, which usually indicates extreme weight loss and an apparent lack of nutrition. The finding of emetine cardiotoxicity (ipecac poisoning) revealed that Karen had poisoned herself with ipecac syrup, a well-known emetic commonly recommended to induce vomiting in cases of overdose or poisoning. A letter detailing National Medical Services's lab findings was composed March 23, 1983. After testing both blood and liver, it was determined that 0.48 micrograms/g emetine, “the major alkaloidal constituent of ipecac,” was present in the liver. “In the present case,” they explained, “the finding of 0.5 micrograms emetine/g, with none detected in the blood, is consistent with residua of the drug after relatively remote cessation of its chronic use.”

In a press release detailing Karen's autopsy report and cause of death due to emetine cardiotoxicity, the coroner failed to cite ipecac by name. “
It never occurred to me
to mention ipecac,” Kornblum later told
People Weekly
journalist Gioia Diliberto in her exposé detailing the dangers of the syrup. “In my mind, emetine and ipecac are the same things.”

Karen's therapist Steven Levenkron claimed to know nothing of Karen's use or abuse of ipecac. He was reportedly shocked to even hear the word “emetine” as part of the official cause of death. In their phone
calls following her return to Downey in November 1982, Levenkron had quizzed Karen about weight maintenance and laxative use. She assured him she was maintaining her new 108-pound figure and had completely suspended use of all laxatives. He never dreamed she was resorting to something much more lethal.

Although she had kept the ipecac secret from Levenkron, Karen had shared with Cherry O'Neill that she was resorting to the syrup on occasion. “She did mention ipecac and admitted to using it to make herself throw up,” says O'Neill. “She said she could never make herself throw up so she resorted to using syrup of ipecac to purge. I don't think she knew the dangers of using that substance for more than just emergencies. Not many people knew back then. The combination of self-starvation, the poisoning effect of ipecac over time, and not strengthening her heart and body with regular exercise probably became a lethal combination for her. I remember being concerned that she took ipecac and laxatives to purge, which are probably the most dangerous methods. I was also told that she resumed her use of diuretics upon returning to Los Angeles, and it was obviously more of a drain on her body than she was able to endure.”

Itchie Ramone had feared Karen was resorting to ipecac and, after hearing of the autopsy findings, was reminded of a phone conversation the two had the day after Thanksgiving 1982 when Karen's voice sounded weak and raspy. “What's wrong with your voice?” Itchie asked her.

“Oh, I was throwing up a bit,” she said. “I think I ate a little too much.”

“Oh, no,” she thought to herself. “
Please
tell me it's not ipecac!” The Ramones had kept a bottle of ipecac in their kitchen cabinet for years, just in case of emergencies, and it went untouched for the duration of Karen's stay during the recording of the solo album. She believes Karen may have begun using the syrup sporadically in late 1980. “Karen hated to throw up! But I know it started a bit after she met Tom. It was sort of an introduction with ipecac, and it was not a constant. The laxatives were. When she was in New York in 1982 she was not taking ipecac. That habit must have formed after she got home. I was just shocked.”

In a radio interview taped shortly after Karen's death, Levenkron discussed the autopsy findings: “
According to the L.A. Coroner
, she discovered ipecac . . . and she started taking it every day. There are a lot of women out there who are using ipecac for self-induced vomiting. It creates painful cramps, it tastes terrible, and it does another thing that the public isn't aware of. It slowly dissolves the heart muscle. If you take it day after day, every dose is taking another little piece of that heart muscle apart. Karen, after fighting bravely for a year in therapy, went home and apparently decided that she wouldn't
lose
any weight with ipecac, but that she'd make sure she didn't gain any. I'm sure that she thought this was a harmless thing she was doing, but in sixty days she had accidentally killed herself. It was a shocker for all of us who treated her.”

In one of Steven Levenkron's most recent books,
Anatomy of Anorexia
, the author boasts of his above-average recovery rate in working with those suffering from eating disorders. “
In the last twenty years
I have treated nearly 300 anorexics,” he wrote. “I am pleased to state that I have had a ninety percent recovery rate, though tragically, one fatality.” That was Karen Carpenter.

S
ADDENED BY
the death of his friend and client, hairstylist Arthur Johns recalls being shocked but not all that surprised to learn of her death. “It just seemed like nothing was going right in Karen's life,” he says. “From the failed marriage to going to New York and being hospitalized, it seemed like it was one thing after another.” Shortly thereafter, Johns received a call from Agnes asking if he would prepare Karen's hair and makeup prior to the public viewing. “Her mother was so pleading and so upset,” he recalls. “I found myself saying yes before I even realized how big and how emotional this might be for myself. And it was.” Johns called on a good friend to accompany him to the mortuary, where he worked to style Karen's hair one last time. “I was so young myself. Before this I had not done anybody that had died.”

Hundreds of friends and fans attended a visitation held Sunday evening, February 6, under the direction of Downey's Utter-McKinley Funeral Home and held at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Mortuary
in Cypress. Guests filed past the white casket adorned with red and white roses to view Karen's body, which was clothed in a rose-colored two-piece suit. A thin, sheer veil draped across the casket's opening, and a barrier of floral arrangements helped keep visitors at a distance in hopes of somehow masking Karen's gaunt form. Agnes, Harold, and Richard, along with other family members, greeted those paying their last respects to Karen throughout the evening. “
Most kept their visits short
, some chatting quietly about pleasant memories, others bowing their heads in silence,” reported the local newspaper.

Among the mourners was Tom Burris, who, according to Karen's closest friends, had come forward saying that he was still Karen's husband (which was legally true, as Karen had never signed the final divorce papers) and threatening against releasing her body to the family. “We had problems with him after Karen passed away,” Frenda Franklin recalls. In a statement to
People
magazine Burris claimed he and Karen “
always got along
” and “always cared about each other. Karen was dealing with her anorexia and her career; I was dealing with my real estate problems. I feel totally guilty, like I'd like to reverse everything. I tried to work with her. I got her in touch with a doctor, but she wouldn't admit she had an eating problem. We both tried, but we just couldn't work it out.”

Tom Burris tossed his wedding ring into the casket alongside Karen's body, an act later explained by Ray Coleman to be a sign of affection. Others were unmoved by this display.

Burris later called the Newville house and asked Agnes for Karen's personal wedding album. “Get it wrapped up and send it to him,” she told Evelyn Wallace.

“Agnes, why are you sending this to him?” she asked. “I don't think Karen would want him to have that. I wouldn't give it to him!”

But Agnes was “hard-hearted,” she says. “She made me wrap that up and mail it to him. I was just fuming to think that she would give him that wedding album. He probably sold it for several thousand dollars.”