No Nirvana in Wake of Cobain's Death

This is the question posed by one of the more cogent conspiracy theories floating across the Internet: the murder of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain-not his apparent suicide.

The murder theory of Cobain's death has gained a cult following around the nation, thanks to the ongoing investigation by L.A. private investigator Tom Grant, who has spearheaded the campaign since 1993. The 1998 book Who Killed Kurt Cobain? also examines the case in thorough detail.

Musician Courtney Love (Cobain's wife) hired Grant on April 3, 1993 to locate Cobain after he had gone AWOL from a nearby drug-rehab clinic. Five days later, an electrician discovered Cobain's body in the greenhouse of the rocker's Seattle residence. Cobain had overdosed on heroin and apparently suffered a fatal self-inflicted shotgun wound through the back of the head.

Although the Seattle Police Department was quick to presume Cobain's death a suicide, Grant insists that the investigation was botched and then covered up by the authorities, the media, and Love herself. Grant maintains that the coroner's office still does not have any forensic evidence to prove that Cobain shot himself, not even his own fingerprints on the gun.

Crazy Courtney
Grant's theory doesn't smell like Teen Spirit, but it does reek of a rat named Courtney.

Love's estranged father, Hank Harrison, also believes that Love was involved in Cobain's death.

"Courtney has a dark side, a suppressed and repressed dark side to her personality that is extraordinarily violent," Harrison told Grant in April 1993.

"She tried to kill me twice. She's been extraordinarily violent with her friends, and was kicked out of every band she's been in for violent outbursts. It's almost like she has multiple personalities. And one of those personalities is really evil-really, really dark and sinister-more so than you can imagine. I mean real sick."

Motives
Grant attests that Love's main motives for having her husband killed were greed and revenge.

According to the couple's friends and even a letter from Cobain, Love was about to lose her husband-not to death-but to divorce. Love, who suspected her husband of cheating on her, was informed that Cobain was going to remove her from his will.

With a purported suicide, a vindictive Love would benefit financially and vengefully. With a divorce, she would lose everything.

"I found Courtney to be extremely intelligent," Grant says on his web site. "She's also a psychopath, a pathological liar, and an opportunist who will use anyone and any situation to self-promote her ambitious goals of fame and fortune."

Harrison feels the same about Love's visions of grandeur.

"When she was little she really wanted to be a big star. I know a lot of girls say they want to be a movie star, but she meant it. She'd always find some way to draw attention to herself."

"My goal keeps me alive," Love stated in an issue of Entertainment Weekly on Aug. 12, 1994. "But if you think you're going to stop me from going where I'm going, you're not going to do it."

But Grant says that Love was intent on stopping Cobain from going where he was going. She reportedly offered $50,000 to California shock-rocker El Duce to knock off Cobain. Hoke passed a lie detector test in 1996 given by a world-renowned polygraphist and mysteriously died eight days later after being hit by a train.

Another interpretation
Imagine that Cobain's suicide note was actually a retirement letter written to his fans. Grant claims that after examining the note in this context, this form of farewell actually makes more sense. Cobain was leaving the music business, his wife, and Seattle in one fell swoop.

Grant also says that this revelation is confirmed in a second letter Cobain wrote Love, which she kept from the public to perpetuate the suicide.

But four handwriting experts weren't convinced with the official cause of death. They became wary after examining the suicide note and concluding that someone other than Cobain wrote the last four suicide-laden lines.

Grant was also leery of foul play because of the copious and incapacitating amount of heroin found in Cobain's cadaver-three times the lethal dose. Medical experts and heroin addicts that were interviewed agreed that it would be impossible to do anything after ingesting a lethal dosage of heroin.

"It's highly unlikely that he would shoot himself up in both arms, put the needle away in his little kit, and then have the mental capacity to sit there and manipulate this shotgun and shoot himself," Grant explained. "If he wasn't unconscious he was at least to the point where he wasn't aware of what was going on. Anybody could have done anything with him."

And somebody may have. But somebody had also stolen Cobain's credit card, which was mysteriously used after his death, but before his body was found. Grant had planned on tracking the credit card account to find a probable suspect, but Love cancelled the account once the investigation began. Grant has since been unable to trace the account.

Obstruction
So why have the Seattle police been mum on such signal flares as well as the overall investigation?

Grant says the police never wanted to admit that they were wrong. Their declaration of Cobain's suicide prompted a slew of over 60 copycat suicides among young Nirvana fans around the world. If the police admitted that their slip had led to more deaths, a horde of ugly lawsuits would be quick to meet them.

Love's attorneys tried to remove Grant from the equation in May 1994 by attempting to revoke his P.I. license. Grant, however, applied for and received a renewal of it.

"They are making an all-out effort to scare everybody away," Grant said in an April 1996 interview with High Times magazine. "Of course, they're blowing smoke. Anything they would do would just bring more attention to the case, and that's exactly what they want to avoid."

Suicide?
But what Love didn't want to avoid was the notion that Cobain was suicidal prior to his death, citing a near-fatal drug overdose in a Rome hospital on March 4, 1993, as proof. However, Love was the only one who labeled the Rome incident a "suicide attempt", and it wasn't until after Cobain died that she proclaimed it. Grant says the idea of a suicide attempt was manifested by the media's passive acceptance of Love's claim.

Cobain's best friend, Dylan Carlson, dispelled Love's contention that Cobain had been suicidal in the months leading up to his demise.

"Kurt didn't seem suicidal," Carlson told Grant in April 1993. "He was facing lots of pretty heavy things, but he was actually pretty upbeat. He was prepared to deal with things facing him."

Columnist David Fricke concurred with Carlson about Cobain's positive demeanor in a Dec. 15, 1994 issue of Rolling Stone, one year since a previous interview with Cobain.

"He told me he was happier than he'd ever been," Fricke recalled. "And frankly, I believed him."

A word for skeptics
But not everyone will believe that Cobain was murdered, particularly Hole fans. Grant, however, offers advice to skeptics.

"Intelligent people have good reason to be skeptical," asserts Grant, initially a skeptic, on his web site. "But intelligent people will also want to have an open mind if they care more about truth than the pre-fabricated media-manipulated fantasies that have been rammed down our throats by a small army of publicity and promotion experts."

Grant is referring to various measures of threat and intimidation employed by industry power brokers and the media that have largely quashed his probe from the start.

Although his goal of reopening the investigation has not come to fruition, he hopes that the dissemination of his case will spread through the Internet and eventually reach the FBI. Grant presents even more seemingly conclusive evidence at his web site that Cobain was murdered, citing a host of testimonial holes from Love and the police.

Foreshadowing
Perhaps even Cobain was suggesting something. In the Nirvana tune "Territorial Pissings", Cobain sings, "Just because you're paranoid/Don't mean they're not after you."

Cobain may have thought that someone was out to get him. And they just might have.