A decade after Kurt Cobain’s sudden death, investigators are still trying to find out how he died.
Last week, on April 5, Cobain fans mourned at the tenth anniversary of the grunge-rock idol’s death. Although police claim it was a suicide, recent evidence suggests Cobain was murdered.
On April 8, 1994, The Seattle Times reported Cobain was found dead in his home from a “Self-inflicted shotgun wound,” with a gun “lying across the body.” The article also said there was a suicide note at the scene.
For the past ten years, Cobain’s family, friends, and fans have been searching for clues leading to the twisted tale of his death.
Tom Grant, a private investigator, who was hired by Courtney Love to find her missing husband in April 1994, has scientific evidence that it was not a suicide.
“For the police to label this as a ‘textbook suicide’ makes no sense,” Grant said. “If for some reason they find it really was, which I stress, there is no way they will, then it will be the oddest, the rarest, and the strangest suicide in history.”
It is more than just an opinion that proves Grant’s murder theories.
“I challenge the medical community to show me a similar case when this has happened,” he said. “I want to see evidence that someone, with that much heroine in their blood could have the ability to pull a trigger. Not one person has come forward to bring up a similar case.”
Cobain fans stand behind the recent media coverage, which has blamed Cobain’s widow Courtney Love for murder.
“I think Courtney Love did it, for many reasons, but mainly for the money,” mechanical engineering sophomore Ted Zaleski said.
A Nirvana listener, Zaleski, would like to see the case re-opened.
“Why not re-open it?” he said, “I have always believed it was a murder, but recent media has made me want to blame Courtney. Believe it or not, I think she’s smart enough to do it.”
Grant stressed the obstacles in re-opening a case like this one.
“It’s going to take a lot of pressure from the public and the media,” he said. “It takes more than people simply asking for the case to be opened again. We’ve proven scientifically that he did not kill himself, but we’re just a bunch of private investigators.”
Grant, who runs his own investigation company in California, recently decided to release tape recordings of conversations with Love and himself. These tapes, among other evidence, inspired award-winning authors Max Wallace and Ian Halperin to write, “Love and Death: The Murder of Kurt Cobain.”
The 282-page book, released last week, is a documentation of Grant’s evidence along with Wallace and Halperin’s very own encounters in Cobain’s hometown of Aberdeen, WA.
The book, paired with the recent media coverage of Love, are not the first accusations made since Cobain’s death.
Grant suggests fans look at Justiceforkurt.com, one of thousands Yahoo result pages dedicated to Cobain. Grant’s own site, CobainCase.com, is an overview of the evidence he’s found over the past 10 years.
Cobain’s music may have only reached a particular genre of listeners, however it hit all-ages.
Sam Riso, a 14-year-old Nirvana fan and Baton Rouge native, does not need books to know his favorite singer was killed.
“He was murdered,” Riso said. “He had so much heroine in both of his arms, how could he have enough time to roll down both of his sleeves, and return the drugs to the cigar box where he kept them, and, on top of that, lay down on the couch?”
Riso stops short of blaming Love for murder.
“Courtney was facing a divorce and on her way to being removed from Kurt’s will, but he didn’t have enough time to make the changes,” he said. “She was in jail at the time of his death, but somehow, she knew exactly where they would find his body.”
Grant would like to point fingers at Love, however he lets the evidence do the talking.
“I have never said, ‘Put Courtney Love in jail for murder,’ but, I think, everything would eventually lead back to her,” Grant said.
Fans mourn the death of a rock icon ten years later
April 14, 2004