CRASH & BURN

These days, Shane Enholm is known mostly for his 2018 acoustic LP Divine American Pariah and his contributions in the tattoo world. But for many years it was for something much more nefarious. During his heroinaddled days, Enholm robbed a series of banks with the assistance of Casey Cola, whom you may know as the woman who, in 1980, survived a heroin suicide pact that killed Germs vocalist and punk legend Darby Crash. This is Shane's story.

I am not sure what Darby Crash was trying to accomplish that night 43 years ago when he took that massive heroin dose—maybe eternal life. I do know he was not trying to copy Sid Vicious, that was accidental. I think he was a mixed-up kid who found himself in the middle of a storm called L.A. punk rock. He was admired, and I think it’s a lot to have a shitload of kids looking up at you on that stage on Dec. 3, 1980, at the return-of-the-Germs show. Were you there? Because fuck yeah, I was. I wouldn’t have missed it for all the cocaine in Peru or China white in Thailand.

Let’s get some shit straight: I did not like Darby with a mohawk. It made his alcoholic cherub face even more cherub-y. I did wear fishing lure clips in my ear and for a while had a tail like Darby, but eventually he went to England and found Adam Ant and started to look like him. (Never forget that Black Flag kills ants on contact.) I also want to be perfectly clear about this: I was not there the night Darby and Casey Cola shot the rent money into their arms as some kind of double suicide mission, but what I do know is I paid through the nose for defending her. We were all kids and dealing with real adult issues like homosexuality, incest, drug addiction, and alcoholism. You can also throw in the rebellious nature of punk rock, which was everywhere in Southern California; then mix in the hormones, angst, and insecurity of being young.

I found punk rock by way of skateboarding, of course. Many of us did. I lived in the Elkgrove Apartments in Venice from 1979 to 1980, and one night I found myself on a stolen motorcycle with my sun-bleached hair flying around the western edge of Sunset Boulevard. The punks were out in force, and I was just dumb enough to ask the crowd about Devo or the surf punks. BAD MOVE. Regardless, I was fascinated by the punks—black leather jackets, black jeans, motorcycle boots, the whole chingadera. Living with some hairstylists in Venice and cleaning their salon in Playa del Rey, I got them to cut hair like Bowie. The next year was spent trying to spike my hair by any means necessary. Fast-forward a bit, the first time I saw Casey Cola, with her weak chin and purplish-black hair, I thought, “God, am I glad that ain’t my girlfriend.” Ah, the wisdom of a 16-year-old. It was at the L.A. Press Club—they had gigs there, but it was more art bands because punk rock was already branching into that New Romantic crap. Punk rock is notorious for having judgmental people. “I was a punk before you...by six months... so I’m cooler.” I always thought that shit was goofy, as we are all supposed to be about something new, fun, and different.

Among all these people who were “superior to me,” I would see Casey and Darby, sometimes together, several times before that fateful night. Now, first and foremost, she is the mother of my daughters, but that came much later. However, seeing the information available, I am not sure anyone has told the story of the night in question. But I can tell you that the movie What We Do Is Secret is full of shit. I loved the Germs record, and I did not mind them live, but the record was better as Darby was always wasted, and I, being an Alice Cooper freak, always read the lyrics, and that guy could write; he was our Jim Morrison. But if you need me to talk about that night, when the Germs did return, we were all there. Mike Muir (later of Suicidal Tendencies) got punched and took the microphone, stating his nose was broken. Over time, all the nitwits thought it was Darby.

A few days later the news flashed through us like a wildfire: Darby was dead. There had been a suicide pact with Casey. Darby would talk a lot about killing himself, and I think it was an unspoken thing to try not to encourage or facilitate that. Casey and Darby had been hanging out; she would say that they boned once, but I don’t believe that. I believe they were drinking buddies—she was very smart, well-read, opinionated, educated, selfcentered, and crazy as fuck, but I learned all that in increments. After that fateful night, I did not see Casey again until spring 1981.

That spring, I ended up in the L.A. County Sheriff’s station parking lot with Casey and a few others trying to get some friends out of jail. Most of the L.A. punk rock crowd around the Germs and Black Flag were older than me—Casey had 12 years on me, and Darby was 22 when I was 16. That gap is huge at that age. While we were there, Casey asked me if I wanted to eat, and, of course, street urchin that I was, I said yes. We stole chicken and Casey fried it in the front house and we ended up at the back house where Darby died. I wound up with Casey after she kicked everyone out. I did not want her to like me, I just wanted to get laid. I paid a high price for that, as she latched onto me and would not let go, always showing up wherever I was. Also, I was a street kid, and she had food, shelter, drugs, sex—all the things I could possibly want. But she was a narcissistic and a self-destructive person.

Anyway, you must remember that the Germs were IT! I loved them! I dug X and Fear, but the Germs and Darby were just, wow. So in our relationship Casey would tell me all about Darby, and I listened and asked questions incessantly about that fateful night. Everyone was so mad at Casey; she was rich and had all of her stuff stolen from her place because they blamed her for his death. They would spit at her, try to fight her, attack her because of Darby—there are people who still do! I defended her over and over because the fact is, I heard Darby talk about wanting to die young on more than one occasion, so I knew he was serious. I guess no one knew just how serious he was.

I know he spoon-tricked her. There was 400 dollars’ worth of white dope, and that was enough to kill the whole band and some roadies. What is a spoon trick, for you non-intravenous addicts out there? It’s when a clever dope fiend throws all the dope in the spoon, draws it up quick when others are not looking, and quickly throws water from their finger dipped in a water glass into the spoon to make it look like they did not draw it all. So I think he took the lion’s share and left her in the cold. It may not have been with malice—maybe he just wanted to make sure he got the job done.

They made the decision to do it at the Hong Kong Cafe, took the rent money, and copped. The back room had no water, so Casey went and got a glass of water and a spoon from the kitchen, put a few scarves over the lights, and put on the Doors’ “The End.” (I made Casey tell me this story 50,000 times.) Darby did the cooking, and he fixed Casey first. I spent many nights that summer in the bed in that back room, talking to the ceiling and asking Casey about that night while listening to the Germs, the Doors, and Nico. Casey said that the night they tried to die, she dreamed that she was at a party and everyone was saying, “Hey, Casey, Darby is looking for you.” She said every time she tried to get to him people would pull her back. We all know what happened in the end: She woke up, Darby was dead, and Los Angeles punk rock would never be the same.

Now, looking back, it was just one incident in line with many just like it in Casey’s life. If you asked me why I stayed with her before we had kids, I would say it was easy and I needed a mom. But I paid through the nose for it. There were many nights that summer when she would say she was gonna kill herself, and maybe if I was completely honest I’d admit I hoped she would, as there seemed to be no getting away from her. In fact, it took a bank robbery spree and a decade in prison to truly shake her from me.

One day, Casey and I met some bank robbers and we talked about how maybe we should try it sometime. Eventually, we did. We found ourselves downtown (the best heroin is there), broke and arguing, and she said that she had taken care of me and now it was my turn. I knew she meant bank robbery. So I shoplifted a pellet gun from a toy store on Broadway and went looking for a bank to rob. Now, we had no car, but I noticed that the buses all go up Eighth Street from east to west and there was a bus stop at Eighth and Flower. The banks were on Seventh and Flower, so I told Casey to watch down the street and when she saw the bus to raise her arm, I’d be by the bank watching. I figured that would give me enough time to rob the Bank of America, and I was scared. Cops shoot bank robbers, after all. So as if she was doing it in slow motion, I saw her raise her hand. I didn’t go. She raised it again. I didn’t go again. Finally on the third time she punched the air above her. I went.

I showed my gun to the tellers and demanded the money, and they gave it to me. No problem. When I was walking out, I envisioned cops waiting to smoke me, but stepping outside was quite normal. I skip-stepped into the alley that ran down to Eighth, and as I exited the alley Casey was smiling and the bus doors were just opening. We stepped in and the bus turned up Figueroa, and as I was asking the bus driver if he had change for a fifty, the cops were pulling up to the bank. We had gotten away with it...for the time being. Suffice it to say that robbing banks—like anything, really—gets easier the more times you do it. What is it they say about Pringles? No one can eat just one.

Together we robbed 29 banks, finally getting caught in San Francisco in September 1987. In the end, I found myself in the robbery office with bank surveillance photos spread out on the table. I made a deal that Casey could walk out if I signed the photos—a way to keep our kids out of the system. I did, and she did, but I never saw her again. Our two girls were put in foster care while I was in prison from ’87 to ’94, during which time Casey went missing. I got the kids back after my release, and in 2012 we were informed that Casey had died of an overdose at some point over the past couple years. They found her with nothing in her pockets in the stairwell of a dope-fiend motel.

I’m grateful to be alive, and I got the best part of her—I just had to go through hell to get it. If I could go back and talk to that 16-year-old Shane, I’d say, “Kid, there’s nothing free in this world.”

As much as Casey and our relationship caused turmoil in my life, with Michelle “Gerber” Bell from Darby’s inner circle it was the exact opposite. She looked after me in prison in ways too numerous to count. Punks take care of our own, and I wanna make sure no one forgets Gerber and her love and friendship to Darby. I can never repay her kindness and the trouble she went through to see me while I was paying for my mistakes with Casey. Life has a trajectory of its own that we can never map out while we are living it—the key word here being “living.” She gave me the best parts of her, and I hope we never forget she was on this planet and creative and crazy but beautiful beyond beautiful...