The Ever-Popular Kurt-Cobain-Was-Murdered Conspiracy | 12
55:22 Share

When something bad happens, we want to know why. The weirder and worse the event, the more we need to know. It can't possibly be random. Someone needs to be held responsible and held accountable. Someone needs to be blamed. And there had better not be any loose ends. Certain segments of the population have always been suspicious of the official story. Forget the simplest and most logical explanation.

These awful events or phenomena are the work of some kind of secret cabal or organization pulling the strings of life on Earth. It had to be a conspiracy. For example, the most famous murder of modern times was the assassination of JFK on November 22nd, 1963. More than 60 years later, it seems that no one believes that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman and the only person responsible for Kennedy's death. Now, to be fair,

Those people may be right. There has been a lot of investigation into the JFK case over the decades. And full disclosure, I'm one of those nuts who reads, watches, and listens to everything involved with the assassination. And I gotta tell you that after all this research, I'm convinced that his death was the result of a need-to-know operation involving the CIA, the deep state, Cuban exiles, and American mobsters.

There's also something called Occam's Razor, which dates back to the 14th century. This monk, William of Ockham, was annoyed at how people blamed supernatural forces when even the simplest thing went wrong. His answer was, "Look, the simplest and most obvious explanation is usually the correct one. But try that approach with people who believe that the Earth is flat and that we never went to the moon."

COVID-19 was engineered by the media, and the Illuminati live beneath the Denver airport. Yes, 5G causes cancer, chemtrails are for mind control, the royal family had Princess Di killed, those lizard people, and 9/11 was an inside job. If you believe anything else, you're a sheep. You've been duped by the mainstream media. Do your own research. Join us. We are the truthers. The world of conspiracy theories is a bottomless pit of weirdness. And when it comes to music,

One of the deepest, strangest, and saddest of these theories has to do with what happened above a greenhouse in Seattle on April 5th, 1994. Boy, have I got stories, multiple stories, in fact, about this one. This might be the most comprehensive study you've ever heard on the subject. This is Uncharted, Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry, episode 12. It's the ever-popular Kurt Cobain was murdered theory. Okay, let's go through it again.

On Friday, April 8th, 1994, I was on the air doing my regular radio shift. And then this started happening. If you were around back then, maybe you experienced something similar. Radio, in those days, was our social media. If you needed to know what was happening in the world in real time,

He turned on the radio.

Police in Seattle say the body of a man in his 20s has been found with a shotgun wound in the head at the home of Kurt Cobain of Nirvana. A police spokesman says the body has been there for about a day. Police say that they'll leave it up to the medical examiner to identify the body. Police say the body was found this morning by an electrician who had been doing some work at the home. He saw the body through a window and police had to break into the cottage above a detached garage where they discovered the man and a suicide note.

That's all the details that are available right now, but we'll do our best to find out what's going on. - There's a greenhouse above the garage, and I walked around to the door on the upper side to see about getting access to run a wiretap in the garage.

And I looked in through the glass door and there's this guy laying there with a shotgun laying on his chest and blood running out of his ear. Well, still no official ID on the body found in Kurt Cobain's Seattle home, but various sources are reporting the body is that of Kurt Cobain. 338, I really don't want to do this. This is the latest from Seattle. A record company official says Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain shot himself to death at his Seattle home yesterday.

Police say Cobain's body was found today with a shotgun wound to the head, a suicide note nearby. He had been recuperating from last month's overdose of painkillers and champagne. His mother says Cobain has been missing for six days, and she says the last time she spoke with her son, she told him not to join the stupid club of other rock stars who had died early. Kurt Cobain was 28.

Hi, I'm Kurt Loder with an MTV News special report. The body of Nirvana leader Kurt Cobain was found in a house in Seattle on Friday morning, dead of an apparently self-inflicted shotgun blast to the head. Police found what is said to be a suicide note at the scene, but have not yet divulged its contents.

Cobain, who was 27, had reportedly been missing for several days. The Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday that Nirvana was breaking up and that Cobain was planning to undergo drug rehabilitation. A source close to the band told MTV News earlier this week that while that story sounded bad, it was better than what was, quote, really going on. That comment remains to be clarified.

good afternoon this is officer vanette tushy with the seattle police media update information line for april 8th friday and the time is 4 p.m if you are calling on any update information from the death investigation earlier this morning at 171 lake washington boulevard east the medical examiner has now

made a statement regarding this incident. You may call their recording line at 223-5888. Thank you. The King County Medical Examiner's Office has positively identified the body of Kurt Cobain by fingerprints. The autopsy has shown that Kurt Cobain died of a shotgun wound to the head, and at this time, the wound appears to be self-inflicted. Seattle Police Department, Homicide, and King County Medical Examiner's are continuing their investigation. ♪

What we heard was the first draft of a major event in music history. Kurt Cobain had taken his own life. Everyone was stunned. Yet at the same time, this wasn't entirely a surprise. If you were around on April 8, 1994, and were into music, there was no way you could have avoided the drama around Kurt and Nirvana over the six months leading up to his death.

He made visits to nine different specialists on both coasts to diagnose his terrible stomach pain issues. It wasn't Crohn's disease. It wasn't IBS. Some severe version of acid reflux? Maybe. Maybe a pinched nerve, which could explain why opioids work to kill the pain. Percodan and morphine were prescribed. If you go back through the scrawls in Kurt's now-famous personal journals, you'll find many entries about his stomach. Let me read you this.

Let me just have my own very unexplainable rare stomach disease named after me. And the title of our double album is Cobain's Disease, a rock opera about vomiting gastric juice, being a borderline anorexic Auschwitz grunge boy with an accompanying endoscope video. Physical therapy and a prescription drug called Buprenix, another opioid, seemed to help, at least for a while. But another problem was heroin. Kurt was self-medicating.

On May 3rd, 1993, he injected between $30 and $40 of cheap heroin and OD'd. On May 9th, 1993, he was rescued from an overdose when paramedics gave him a shot of Narcan just in time. And that wasn't an isolated episode. In the last 10 months of his life, Kurt Cobain OD'd almost a dozen times. He was so isolated that his friends began calling him Rapunzel because he rarely came down from his room.

There was a police call to his home on Lake Washington Boulevard on June 4th, 1993. Cops came to defuse the situation. All domestic charges were dropped the following September. On July 23rd, 1993, Kurt suffered another overdose in the bathroom of a New York hotel room. In the days after, he gave an interview to the British magazine The Face, where he confessed, I've always been suicidal.

Fall 1993, Kurt spends most of his time strung out. People describe him as being semi-conscious, even when he was supposed to be totally conscious. Meanwhile, In Utero, the follow-up to Nevermind, hadn't been the major hit everyone expected. It sold less than 200,000 copies in its first week. And a major part of the problem was that Walmart and Kmart, all 4,000 stores, refused to stock the record because of what it considered to be offensive lyrical content.

But we also must be honest. By the time this record came out, a lot of fans were getting really bored of Kurt's never-ending issues and his protests about being famous against his will and all the drama surrounding his relationship with Courtney Love. Behind the scenes, there were fights with management. Finances were a mess. Kurt was demanding a greater share of royalties. What do you mean you don't want to headline Lollapalooza? That would have been a fast $9 million and everyone in the band would have benefited it.

And why had Kurt become so obsessed with writing his will? There were also many stories about Nirvana breaking up. Meanwhile, Kurt's depression worsened. On one set of legal papers involving a new book on Nirvana, he listed his address as "Hell on Earth." Kurt did manage to get it together enough so that Nirvana could tour Europe in February and March 1993. But Kurt was not well. And for some reason, no cancellation insurance was secured for that tour.

Kurt openly wondered to the people around him, "What would happen if I die?" On March 1st, 1994, Nirvana played a venue called Terminal One, an old airplane hangar in Munich. About 3,000 people were there. And the gig went... okay. Kurt was suffering from bronchitis and had a sore throat. There was a power failure at one point, meaning Nirvana had to whip up a quick acoustic set, but they did make it through.

No one knew it at the time, but this would be Kurt Cobain's last concert appearance. After that show, the rest of the European tour was canceled. Kurt was in no shape to continue. And frankly, the rest of the band needed a vacation too. Bassist Chris Novoselic went back to Seattle to recharge. Dave Grohl stayed in Germany to work on a soundtrack to a film.

And Kurt? He flew to Rome, where he met up with Courtney at the Excelsior Hotel, checking into room 541 using the pseudonym Kurt Poupon. He saw a doctor, who recommended that Kurt rest up for at least a month. Kurt was well enough to visit the Vatican, where he stole some candlesticks. He also bought some red roses, some lingerie, a rosary, and a pair of three-carat diamonds, all for Courtney.

Sometime after midnight on Friday, March 4th, Kurt got up and wrote a three-page suicide note on Excelsior Hotel stationery. He then washed down at least 50 Rohypnol tablets. Now, Rohypnol is usually used to treat insomnia, something that Kurt suffered from, but it's also known as the date rape drug. Kurt slipped into a coma, but Courtney found him in time at 6.15 a.m. Blood was coming out of his nose.

In one hand was a wad of cash, about $1,000. In the other hand, the suicide note. An ambulance was called and he was revived 20 hours later. In the interim, there were some news reports that he had in fact died. On Saturday, March 12th, a week after the suicide attempt, Kurt and Courtney flew back to Seattle and their house at 171 Lake Washington Boulevard East. Had the episode scared Kurt straight? No.

On Friday, March 18th, cops were called again to the house after he and Courtney had some kind of fight. Kurt had locked himself in a room with some guns and threatened to kill himself. The situation was diffused and the police left with four guns and 25 boxes of ammo. On March 22nd, Courtney tried to cheer up Kurt by buying him a brand new Lexus. He hated it and insisted that she return it to the dealership. She did, but not before they fought about it.

On Friday, March 25th, there was an intervention that included Christ and Dave, Nirvana guitarist Pat Smear, members of Nirvana's management and legal team, and a few doctors. Leading the session was a drug counselor named James Burr. That meeting lasted five hours. Kurt was convinced to try rehab, and arrangements were made. Kurt wrote this on his AOL account. I'm still pretty freaked out over the Rome thing, and I need some time to rest and get over it.

On the morning he was to leave for rehab, he and his friend Dylan Carlson visited Stan Baker Sports, a place that sold guns. Kurt had said that he needed a new gun for protection since the cops had confiscated his collection. Dylan bought a Remington C-11 shotgun and a box of shells. Kurt gave him $308.17 to cover the costs. The gun was taken back to the house. Later that day, and this is Wednesday, March 30th,

Kurt flew to LA and checked into the Exodus Recovery Center, a place renowned for treating strung-out celebrities. Meanwhile, Courtney resumed promoting Hole's new album, Live Through This, which was set for release on April 12. Kurt lasted two days in rehab. On Good Friday, April 1, a friend named Joe Mama checked in on him. He reported that Kurt seemed to be in good spirits. But that night at around 7:25 p.m., Kurt bailed.

He scaled the garden wall at the rehab center and escaped. Which is really strange because he'd checked in voluntarily. That meant he could have walked out the front door at any time and no one would have stopped him. At 8:47 p.m., he called Courtney at the Peninsula Hotel in Los Angeles. He left a message and a phone number. He took a cab to LAX and bought a ticket on Delta Flight 788. His seat was 2F, a window seat in the business class cabin.

He was surprised to see Duff McKagan of Guns N' Roses sitting right next to him. They chatted on the three-hour flight to Seattle. When they landed at 12:47 a.m., Duff offered Kurt a ride, but Kurt said that he'd be okay with a cab. Just as he was about to leave the airport, this would be sometime between 1 and 2 a.m. on Saturday, April 2nd, Kurt was recognized by a Toronto fan who had flown into Seattle for, of all things, a funeral.

Kurt was wearing shades, his trademark Elmer Fudd hunting cap, and a large brown jacket. The fan asked Kurt to sign something, and all the fan had was a copy of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park that he was reading at the time. Kurt signed it, Kurt D. Cobain, and for some reason he dated it April the 5th. Interesting, since it was April the 2nd, and April the 5th would be the day that he died. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Courtney heard that Kurt had bailed on rehab,

She called Tom Grant, an L.A. detective, to track him down. Kurt's mother, Wendy, was also contacted. She filed a missing persons report. Actually, though, it might not have been Kurt's mom. It may have been Courtney pretending to be here, but never mind. But as all this was going on, Kurt was actually at the house in Seattle. He'd arrived at around 2 a.m. on the morning of April 2nd. He even talked with his buddy, Callie, his daughter's nanny, and Callie's girlfriend at around 6 a.m.

Kurt also tried to call Courtney at her hotel in LA, but she had a do not disturb block on her phone so he couldn't get through. The next couple of days, April 3rd, 4th, and 5th, 1994, are something of a mystery. Even as he had a detective looking for him and a missing person search for him, Kurt was seen by a bunch of people around Seattle. He wasn't really missing at all.

He was seen at a park, by a taxi driver, by a couple of friends. At another house he owned a nearby Carnation, Washington, at a drug dealer's house, at a couple of hotels. And he apparently stopped at a store called Seattle Guns, where he purchased a box of 20-gauge shotgun shells. Sometime on Tuesday, April 5th, Kurt made his way up to the room above a greenhouse in the backyard of his house at 171 Lake Washington Boulevard East. No one saw him go.

He took the Remington shotgun and a box of ammo. He injected himself with a large dose of heroin, put the gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. No one saw him again until the morning of Friday, April 8th, when electrician Gary Smith found him. Kurt Cobain was dead of an apparent suicide.

Given all that we know about his mental health, his physical health, his drug use, his comments about his headspace, and also his repeated suicidal thoughts, that should have been the end of it, right? Well, no. This is where the conspiracies begin. And these theories continue to this day. We'll look at some of them in just a moment.

I actually, I still miss him. I still miss him as much as I did the day he passed away. I will never forget the first time I heard Nirvana. I'll never forget the first time I identified to Nirvana, but mostly the first time I identified to Kurt Cobain. Every time I hear a Nirvana song, it reminds me of the beginning of a new age.

Now, I want to make it clear that I've been following all the stories about the death of Kurt Cobain since the moment I reported on it on Friday, April 8th, 1994. Not only have I done countless hours of research, I've also talked to people who were close to Kurt. After all that, I believe it was a suicide. But not everyone agrees. Kurt was cremated with some of his ashes spread along the banks of the Wishaw River in his hometown of Aberdeen, Washington.

Courtney kept some of them for a Buddhist shrine in her home. More were kept inside a teddy bear that she took with her, but that bear was stolen in 2008 and never recovered. The police ruled Kurt's death a suicide and closed the case. What about an autopsy report? Well, back in 1994, the full report was never released because of Washington state's privacy laws. Hold that thought, because we'll come back to that. It didn't take long for people to wonder if there was something rather strange about all this.

I will lay out all the evidence. The Kurt was murdered story really began in December 1994. The detective who was hired to find Kurt in April over the Easter weekend started to speak out. Grant is a former cop and county sheriff's detective running his own deal called the Grant Company from an office on the Sunset Strip. He claimed, and still claims all these years later, that this wasn't a suicide. He's convinced it was a murder.

Grant was hired by Courtney on Easter Sunday, April 3rd. His first move was to hire someone to watch over the house in Seattle as well as other places Kurt might be.

Monday, April 4th, she called in a missing persons report and she pretended to be Kurt's mother, Wendy Cobain. You've seen this printed in a lot of news media where Wendy called in this missing persons report and that's false. It was Courtney that called that report in. I believe one of the reasons she did that, in my own personal opinion, is so that she could word the report because the wording on that missing persons report turned out to be

a pretty important thing in this investigation. In fact, it reads, Mr. Cobain ran away from California facility and flew back to Seattle. He also bought a shotgun and may be suicidal. So again, the wording of this report, and this is what the police had to work with when they found the body, it sounded like he left the rehab, he was suicidal, he went out and bought a shotgun, and then they show up, and boy, sure enough, there he is.

By Wednesday, April 6, there was no sign of Kurt, so Grant took it upon himself to fly to Seattle to handle things personally. He rented a car, picked up Kurt's friend Dylan Carlson, the same friend who had bought the shotgun, and toured some of Kurt's usual hangouts, as well as areas where he had been known to buy drugs, but nothing. It was only then that they decided to check out the house at 171 Lake Washington Boulevard East. When they arrived, Grant activated a pocket tape recorder.

I had a little something. Here we go. Yeah, I did. Good idea. And call out while you're in there. Call out and say, "Curt, hello, Curt." You know, make a lot of noise. And you can just open the door for me. - Are you going around the door? - Yeah, yeah. Hello? We got a statue or something in here. Hello, Curt?

Grant and Carlson searched the whole house. Nothing. They did not search the greenhouse out back.

When Kurt's body was discovered on April the 8th, Grant figured that the case was closed. There was nothing more he could do. But he says that there were things that bothered him. So he began to collect more information on his own time. Let's look at Grant's theories. Item number one, the threat to break up Nirvana. Grant claims that Kurt was ready to break up Nirvana and join Courtney in whole. I quote from an interview Kurt gave to a French TV journalist on September 10th, 1993.

It's a nice thought, collaborations with Courtney. I'd like to, but to tell you the truth, I would rather just quit my band and join whole. You know, only because when I have played music with them, there's a level of connection that's a little higher than with anyone else I ever played with. It's amazing. It's totally satisfying for Courtney and me, but completely unrealistic because we're already so intertwined with each other. Most people don't think of the band Nirvana. They think of Kurt and Courtney, and it gets in the way.

People would just overlook the music and look into other things. It's such a sad situation. I wish we could just join bands, but it wouldn't be considered a real band. Item number two: The divorce threat. At the time Kurt died, Kurt and Courtney were going through a rocky patch. We've already talked about that. The domestic disputes, the police calls, Courtney's concern over Kurt's escalating drug use, and anecdotes from people who knew the couple.

She was also very upset about Kurt turning down the big Lollapalooza payday. Now, there is some veracity in this. In January 1994, Kurt told Rolling Stone that he and Courtney were contemplating a split. Papers were allegedly being drawn up. Courtney had apparently engaged her lawyer, Rosemary Campbell, to find, and I quote, "the meanest, most vicious divorce lawyer she could." She also wanted to know if a prenup agreement could be changed. The only thing that was keeping them together was their baby daughter, Frances.

It's also been reported that Kurt had also contacted Rosemary Campbell to find out how Courtney could be taken out of his will. According to a nanny who worked in the house in the weeks leading up to Kurt's death, there was way too much will talk going on. Was Kurt messing around with someone else? There was some sketchy evidence about two airline tickets booked out of Seattle in Kurt's name and that of a woman who has never been identified.

But all this is also happening at the same time Kurt is openly musing about breaking up Nirvana and joining forces with Hole. So this seems contradictory. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but whatever. Item number three, the guns. In the months leading up to his death, Kurt was very, very afraid of someone or something. It might have been just the drugs causing paranoia, but the fear was real. Why the need for so many guns and so much ammunition?

And remember the electrician who found Kurt's body? He was at the house to install some security lighting and motion detectors. Anecdotally and unconfirmed were fears that because Kurt had turned down Lollapalooza, some mysterious outside forces were very angry and wanted retribution. And the shotgun loaded to end Kurt's life was loaded with three shells. Why three shells? Did Kurt load the gun or someone else? Item number four, the credit card.

When Kurt disappeared from the Exodus Recovery Center on April 1st, there is an allegation that Courtney leaked a story to the press that she had overdosed. The theory was that Kurt would hear this, get freaked, and come to her rescue. That same day, Courtney had Kurt's MasterCard cancelled. Here's Tom Grant speaking on the Alan Handelman Radio Show.

Initially,

Well, when we walked into, I took a guy with me by the name of Ben Klugman, one of my investigators, and we went over to the Peninsula Hotel and met with Courtney in the room. And when we walked in, one of the first things she said is she clarified this whole thing. She said that it wasn't actually someone using her husband's credit card. It was her husband using the credit card and that she had canceled it because he just left the rehab and she was trying to track his activity.

So that's where our investigation began. Kurt was missing from rehab. She had canceled his credit card, and she wanted us to contact the credit card company and try to track the activity of her husband and try to locate him and find out where he was.

She suspected that he'd gone to Seattle. She told us she thinks he went up there, but she never told us initially, anyhow, that he had been to the house, that he'd been seen at the house. She just suspected he was there, but she didn't have any way of knowing for sure. She also told us that she thinks he was going to be leaving Seattle and going back east to stay with Michael Stipe or somebody. The story is that when Kurt's body was discovered, that MasterCard was missing.

On April 4th, the day before he died, someone tried to use the card. There was an attempt to get a $5,000 cash advance over the phone. Another time, there was a request for $2,500 and another for $1,500. And how about this? On the morning of April the 8th, days after Kurt shot himself, someone tried to buy some flowers on the card for $43.29. Who was behind that? It's never been determined.

Item number five: the suicide note. Grant remains suspicious about its authorship. Based on his examination of the note, he believes that Kurt didn't write the whole thing. Here he is on the Gil Gross Show, an American radio program. Those particular words were written either with a different instrument or with a finer point pen, or they were written by someone else that used to use less pressure on the pen.

Now, to Grant, what Kurt wrote sounded more like a statement of retirement. Looking at the handwriting, Grant believed that portions of the note were written by someone else. Two handwriting analysts apparently agreed. And why no reference to Kurt's daughter or his mom in the note? And why no signature? Just Kurt written in small letters. There was also a second suicide note discovered by Courtney months later in a sealed envelope in her bedroom.

This is strange because Grant and Dylan Carlson said that they searched the bedroom back on the morning of April 7th and didn't find it. The note apparently detailed how Kurt was going to leave both Courtney and Seattle. If this note does exist, we've never seen it. It was never entered as evidence. Item number six, the toxicology report.

Although the documents of the toxicology report and the autopsy were never officially released to the public in 1994, there was a short report indicating that at the time of his death, Kurt's blood contained diazepam, a drug used to treat anxiety and alcohol withdrawal. It also contained this nugget. Kurt's blood had 1.52 milligrams of morphine per liter, which is a lot.

Dr. Sarah Wecht, a pathologist who has spent years investigating the JFK assassination, says this kind of dose would have put even hardcore addicts out within seconds. He maintains that Kurt would have never, ever been able to aim the gun and pull the trigger with that kind of smack in his bloodstream. So, if Kurt didn't pull the trigger because he couldn't, who did? And come to think of it, why would Kurt bother with a shotgun anyway? Why not just inject a lethal dose of heroin and peacefully go to sleep and die?

That would have certainly left a better looking corpse. And finally, item 7: the body and the crime scene. Several witnesses, including Gary Smith, the electrician, thought that Kurt's hair looked like it had been combed. And contrary to some initial reports, Kurt had not barricaded himself in that room above the greenhouse. There was a stool against the door, but it was too short to keep it from opening. So that's not exactly a barricade. And it must mean something, right?

But again, this supposes that Kurt was thinking clearly in the moments leading up to his death. Fingerprints on the gun? Nothing legible. I quote from the forensics report: "The atom was processed for prints on 05/06/94 by senior ID technician T. Geronimo, number 4466. Four cards of latent prints were lifted. The four cards of lifted latent prints contained no legible prints."

The conclusion by some was that since Kurt was so high, he wouldn't have the presence of mind or the ability to wipe any prints from the gun. Therefore, someone else must have done it. Again, I quote Tom Grant from a review in High Times Magazine. There's no doubt in my mind that Kurt was hanging out up there in the greenhouse with a shotgun. That was like a little lookout tower for him over his whole property, and I do firmly believe that he was in fear of his life.

He was going to be flying out of Seattle, probably within hours, certainly within the next few days. So he was up there, and whoever came in there with him was probably doing drugs with him until they got him loaded. He had three times the lethal dose of heroin in his system. 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.

If he wasn't unconscious, he was at least to the point where he wasn't aware of what was going on. Anyone could have done anything to him. Grant also believes that the infamous photo of Kurt's head is a fake, a stock autopsy photo of someone who had had an accident with a lawnmower. Grant believes someone planted that picture. The wound seemed inconsistent with the power of a shotgun and the ammunition.

Richard Lee, an independent journalist, claims to have learned that at the funeral home, Kurt's body was mutilated by one or more employees. That's never been officially verified. So if this wasn't a suicide, it was actually a murder. Who did it? Let's go down that rabbit hole next. When Kurt Cobain died, I was driving on the highway and I pulled over.

and basically just sat there. I didn't want to drive anymore, and I sat there and I listened. And for the first time, the death of a quote-unquote superstar really affected me. I cried. My stomach dropped. Just kind of sat there for about a half an hour on the side of the road. And Nirvana was a big part of my life, a big part of my life.

The general accepted consensus is that Kirk killed himself with a shotgun on April the 5th, 1994.

But as we've seen, some theorists believe otherwise. So if Kurt didn't kill himself, who did? One of the most spectacular claims came from Eldon Hoke, the frontman of an extreme punk band from L.A. called The Mentors. They proudly referred to themselves as the Kings of Sleaze. It's the sandwich of love, one below and one above. In the sandwich of love, blasting and growing.

We're going to call this item eight in the list of evidence and suspicious situations involving Kurt Cobain's death. These are the Eldon Hoke allegations. Carolyn Rue helped Courtney Love found Hole. Carolyn once went out with the guitarist of the Mentors, a dude named Eric Carlson, who worked under the name Sickie Wifebeater. It was through Caroline and Eric that Courtney met Mentor singer Eldon Hoke. His stage name was El Ducey.

In the April 1996 edition of High Times magazine, El Duce claimed that in December 1993, Courtney offered him $50,000 to kill her husband. He says, she said, I need a favor of you. I need you to blow my old man's head off. I'll give you $50,000 to blow his effing head off. He repeated this in the 1998 Nick Broomfield documentary, Kurt and Courtney.

- This is him, El Duce. - So, but you, you did some deal with Courtney, right? - Yeah, she offered me 50 grand to whack Kurt Cobain. - She what? - 50 grand to whack Kurt Cobain.

And that's a fact, is it? But people might think you're not the most reliable witness. Well, that's too bad. You know, when she offered me money, God dang, I wish I would have taken it, man. But I know who whacked him.

- But how were you gonna whack him? Did she tell you how to do it? - Yeah, blow his head off. - So where were you gonna find him to do it? - Well, up there in, she gave, you know, mapped it out. I mean, you know, up there in Bellevue, wherever they live, right outside Seattle. I know right where the house is. I know right what garden pop him in.

I just didn't think she was serious. But she didn't say anything about making it look like suicide. Well, yeah, but if you just blew his brains out like you said, it wouldn't look like suicide. It'd look like you blew his brains out, right? But that's just the way it's done. End of story. Hey, 50 grand does a lot of talking. Hoke, El Duce.

says Courtney pulled up in a limo in front of a record store called Rock Show on Wilcox Avenue in Los Angeles. The owner of the store corroborates this. Info was exchanged. And in March 1994, Alducci says Courtney called the record store looking for him. He was on tour, so he missed the call, and there was never any contact between them again. However, after Kurt died, Hoag spouted a theory that Courtney wanted Kurt dead before he could file for divorce.

He even took a lie detector test on national television, and the test was administered by the same guy who tested O.J. Simpson. He concluded that there was a 99.99% chance that Eldon Hoke was telling the truth. Has anyone followed up on these claims any further? Well, no. El Duce was decapitated when he was hit by a train walking home from a gig on April 18, 1997.

His obituary indicated that he was in a state of alcoholic intoxication at the time. And then there's this. Out of the blue one day, I received a call from Hank Harrison, Courtney Love's estranged biological father. Our chat went like this.

Here's the tough question. Do you believe your daughter had anything to do with Kurt's death? Oh, sure. I mean, she's actually written letters and had several interviews where she's confessed to various aspects of it. Now, whether she had a direct hand in the physical aspects of the...

I have no... I'm not sure, but whether she benefited from it and whether she had something to do with it. There's a lot of really missing material. We were in Toronto in 97. I was interviewed on the Jane Houghton show, if you remember that. Yeah, I was on that same show. And they did a survey...

and i was astounded to hear that about ninety five percent of the people listening to the gene hot show at that time were were interested in a reopening the case and voted that we called in and voted that way so i don't think it's just a few people think it's conspiracy i think there's a lot more i would even call it conspiracy because it was

If Curt hadn't been killed that weekend, he would have gone to the bank and taken all the money out of the funds. He would have signed the divorce papers, and he would have signed various other contract papers that had to be signed, which would have cut Courtney and a lot of other people out of a lot of money. So there's...

The motive is there. And right now, as it turned out, Courtney would have received something like whatever the prenuptial agreement would have allowed her, whereas now she got everything. And she now says that the baby's money is gone, too. So there, I've laid out the case for people who believe that Kurt was murdered.

Now, let's go back and examine each of these items carefully and check them for credibility. Are these claims evidence that Kurt was deliberately killed? Let's find out. Item #1: The Breakup Threat The insinuation here is that if Kurt was going to kill off Nirvana, well then he needed to be killed off too. This is just silly. Calling an end to Nirvana might have annoyed his bandmates and the Nirvana organization, but bands break up all the time.

Nirvana had been in a precarious position for years, so the idea of everything imploding at any second was something everyone had been dealing with for a long time. The idea of an artist wanting to work with their spouse? Not unusual. Hello John Lennon. Hello Paul McCartney. Was Kurt seriously thinking of combining forces with Courtney and Hole? Maybe. But is that enough motivation to have him killed? Hardly. Item 2: The Divorce Threat Kurt was a big personality.

So was Courtney. Put them in a relationship together, add in lots of money and lots of drugs, and you have a recipe for disaster and drama. Things will be said in the heat of the moment. And yes, sometimes things escalate to terrible places. Still, turning to murder when a marriage is breaking up? Okay, it does happen, but rarely. And this? Kurt was looking to form a band with Courtney at the same time he was thinking about divorcing her?

Remember all the expensive gifts he bought for her in Rome a month before he died? And if Courtney wanted Kurt dead, why did she bother calling an ambulance when she found Kurt in that Rohypnokoma in March 1994 in that Rome hotel room? She could have just left him to die. But she didn't. Item number three, the guns. Kurt was a paranoid, heavy drug user. He hung around with some shady people. And everyone knew where he lived in Seattle. To have guns for protection?

Not a surprise there. Why three shells in the shotgun that killed him? I'd say it's because Kurt was extremely high when he set things up and wasn't exactly in the best state of mind. Maybe the gun had been preloaded with extra ammo earlier. But the presence of extra shells in the gun has been presented as evidence that something is fishy. But what? Pure speculation. Item number four, the credit card. Who was attempting to use Kurt's MasterCard after he died? We don't know. But here's a possible scenario.

It's Occam's razor again. Kurt may have given his card to one of the sketchy people that he met up from time to time when he got back to Seattle. Maybe it was a dealer. Maybe it was a junkie friend. The fact that someone tried to use the credit card and remember they tried to use the credit card to get a cash advance over the phone, that's not a dispute. But it's hardly proof that anything nefarious happened beyond simple fraud. Item number five, the suicide note.

Now, this is admittedly a puzzle. Why the difference in handwriting? Why the use of different colored ink? Well, Kurt was a visual artist as well as a musical one, as evidenced by all the art he left behind. Maybe in his altered state, he just wanted the note to, I don't know, look pretty? Could it be our Occam's razor explanation? Item number six, the toxicology report. Kurt's last minutes apparently went something like this.

He went to the greenhouse with his bag of drug paraphernalia. He prepared a powerful injection, shot up, put the gear away, and as the drugs coursed through his system, he raised the gun and shot himself. The theory, once again, is that Kurt had too many drugs in his system for him to have been able to do all that. Therefore, someone must have helped him.

Now, definitely some loose ends here, but it's also possible that as an experienced junkie, Kurt had an incredibly high tolerance to whatever he injected, giving him just enough time to complete all the necessary tasks. It's also possible that Kurt injected himself in stages, trying to find the right state of euphoria for what was coming next. Remember, he apparently shot up in both arms. More likely, though, is that the results of the toxicology report were misinterpreted.

Yes, if you read the numbers one way, it appears that Kurt had nearly 12 times the lethal dose of morphine in his body. But we are not sure if the number represents something called a free morphine count or a total morphine count. There is a very big difference. A free morphine count looks at the level of drugs that were injected into a body at a moment,

If we're talking about a total morphine count, this includes traces of the drug that increase over a long period of time as the result of long-term heroin use. So in other words, Kurtz's blood registered 1.52 milligrams per liter. If that was a total morphine count, it's measuring a cumulative buildup of morphine over weeks and months, not a few minutes.

We can also consider that it's more typical in an overdose case like Kurt's to go with a total morphine count, which is cheaper, faster, and doesn't require the same specialized equipment as getting a free morphine count. I've read a couple of opinions on this ambiguity, and all of them point to Kurt's blood being subjected to a total morphine count. That negates the argument that he was too high to shoot up, load up, and shoot himself. We'll come back to the toxicology report in just a bit.

Item number seven, the crime scene. There's lots of conjecture and hearsay about the state of Kurt's body. No clear fingerprints on the shotgun? Well, that doesn't mean someone tried to wipe them off. I can imagine Kurt's palms being pretty sweaty in those last moments. And item number eight, the El Duce allegations. I'd call Eldon Hoke an unreliable narrator in this story and just leave it at that. The lie detector results indicating that he told the truth about his encounter with Courtney was interesting, but frankly, not proof of anything.

There are a few other items theorists have brought up, including the use of something called a dream machine, a stroboscopic device that's supposed to stimulate the brain and mind, but any reports about that have been debunked. Investigations into Kurt's death continue. There have been books, documentaries, and websites devoted to the topic. And every once in a while, some new information comes out.

In April 2014, 20 years after Kurt was found, it was revealed that a cold case detective named Mike Zizinski of the Seattle Police Force reviewed the file and began to release new photos. The conclusion of a 20-year vet who had been looking through cold case files for a decade? I quote, The investigation on the death of Kurt Cobain, which was conducted 20 years ago, reached the correct conclusion of the manner of death was suicide. The only new information he uncovered?

a sales slip for $6.95 for a box of 20-gauge shotgun shells from Seattle Guns. His report also contained info about a cab driver who dropped a person, probably Kurt, near the store at 145th and Aurora in Seattle. And the date for that was April 2nd, 1994. He also went through some 35mm film that had been taken of the crime scene. This helped him reconstruct how the gun was fired.

Consulting with a firearms expert, it was determined that there was nothing weird about where the spent shell landed or the position of the gun relative to the body. In other words, Szczynski's careful examination of the death scene destroys any theory that the suicide was staged. Then we have this. In 2021, the FBI made their file on Kurt available to the public. It was all of 10 pages long.

It included letters written to the Bureau by two people urging an investigation into Curt's death. Both names were redacted, and that's it. No further clues. And in early 2024, Tom Grant, who is still convinced that this wasn't a suicide, posted what he said was the official toxicology report sourced from the Department of Laboratory Medicine at the University of Washington. He says there was a leak.

If this is a genuine document, and it sure looks that way, it notes that Kurt's blood contained monosetal morphine, morphine and codeine , diazepam , and nordiazepam . His urine contained opiates and benzodiazepines in the concentrations one would expect. In other words, pretty much everything in this new leaked report is everything that we heard in 1994.

And there was no clarification of the total morphine count and the free morphine count ambiguity. And finally, consider this: Dave Grohl believes Kurt killed himself. Chris Novoselic believes Kurt killed himself. Kurt's mom believes Kurt killed himself. His dad believed that Kurt killed himself. The two managers I talked to both believe Kurt killed himself. Therefore, after looking at the Kurt and Courtney situation up close and personally over all these years, I just don't buy that it was anything other than a suicide.

Now, you can disagree with me, but you will never convince me. Life is messy. Death can be even messier. Unlike TV, there's always going to be loose ends. And we humans have this pathological fear of the unexplainable. When something bad happens, we just got to know why, even though there are some things about what happened that we will never, ever know. Death is the greatest unanswered question of all. So no wonder we as a species obsess about it.

And when someone rich and famous takes their own life, us regular people just don't get it. But you never know what's going on behind someone's eyes. And you could never ask the dead for an explanation.

You can catch up on all episodes of Uncharted by downloading them from your favorite podcast platform. Please rate and review if you get a chance. If you have any questions or comments, shoot me an email, alan at alancross.ca. You can also meet up on all the social media sites along with my website, ajournalofmusicalthings.com. It's updated with music, news, and recommendations every day, and there's a free daily newsletter you should get. And please check out my other podcast, The Ongoing History of New Music. There are hundreds and hundreds of episodes that you can enjoy for free.

Join me next time for more stories of crime and mayhem from the world of music. Technical Productions by Rob Johnston. I'm Alan Cross.