Friday, December 16, 2016

Kurt Cobain: The Mystery of His Death by Shelby Smith


Image result for pics of kurt cobain
The mystery behind the death of Kurt Cobain still stands despite the closure of the case by the police officers who ruled his death a suicide. On April 15th, 1994, Kurt Cobain died, reported to have shot himself with a shot gun as well as overdosing on heroin. (Maria Vultaggio, 1) But those who have taken the time to take a deep look into his death know that several fishy details still have yet to be reprimanded by the authorities like; why would Kurt Cobain shoot himself with a shotgun when he could have simply let his heroin overdose take over? And how did he manage to shoot himself after ingesting three times the lethal dose of heroin?  (Tom Grant, 1)  After taking a look at the evidence we can determine that everything points back to his murder.

         Kurt Cobain was a creative mess. He loved to do drugs but most of all he loved to create music. There is question on the entirety of his mental well-being or lack thereof because of his train wreck of a lifestyle. There is also a trail of mystery because of the face Kurt left behind to his loved ones was one that represented happiness and a man prepared to live life to its fullest despite the depressing nature of his music and the word of his wife. He was difficult to read for people who didn’t know him well because of his reservation and quiet presence, but it was clear to his closest friends and family, save for Courtney Love, his wife, that he was content before he supposedly committed suicide (“Soaked In Bleach”). This also leads us to look into the character of Courtney Love herself and question the stability of their marriage. The anomaly presented by his wife leads us to the source of the conflict that is the death of Kurt Cobain.   
 
        Courtney Love worked in the music industry similar to her husband and fell into the rough of the crowd. Detective Tom Grant, the lead investigator of the Kurt Cobain case worked closely with Courtney Love and he admits that she was an avid drug user and a manipulative attention enthusiast. Grant said “Most of the time I was with her, she was either on drugs or doing drugs.”(“Soaked In Bleach”) Not only that but she also “Planted a story in the news … saying that [she] had OD’ed and that [she] was in the hospital.”(1)  This may have been the reason that the two argued as often as Dylan Carlson said. “I don’t know why Kurt married her. They don’t get along. They don’t agree about anything. They’re always fighting. That type of thing.”(1) And perhaps it’s this constant fighting that led to the divorce that Kurt planned to file. In a panic, Courtney fled to a family friend and lawyer, Rosemary Carroll to see if there was any way to annul the prenuptial agreement that she had entered upon the marriage of her and Kurt but was denied (“Soaked In Bleach”). In Tom Grant’s website on the Cobain case, he explicitly says “Kurt was in the process of leaving Seattle and his wife Courtney, when he was found dead. Courtney knew Kurt wanted out of the marriage. Just weeks prior to his death, she asked one of her attorneys to get the "meanest, most vicious divorce lawyer" she could find.”(Grant). In an interview with Rosemary Carrol, she told him that “Courtney also asked Rosemary if the prenuptial agreement could be voided.” “According to Rosemary, Kurt hadn’t completed his will yet. He told Rosemary he wanted Courtney taken out of it.” (Grant). All of this gives her proper motive to kill her husband before he left her with one income to feed a baby and a drug addiction.

            Kurt was faced with the difficulty of choosing between a life of indulgence, or a life that centered around his daughter. He had struggled with his own heroin addiction like Courtney, but was attending rehab to help clean up his act and reduce his dependence on the illegal substance after Courtney called him out saying, “This has got to end. You have to be a good daddy.”(“Soaked in Bleach”) He spent some time in a rehab center in Marina Del Rey, California prior to his death though it is unsure whether or not his time in the center did anything for him. His tastes tended to run towards things less polished and more rustic and homey whereas Courtney preferred the expensive new things (Grant). He was known for going to trashy motels as opposed to the expensive ones that he certainly could afford. He enjoyed living humbly and having close relationships with the few people he surrounded himself with (Grant) (“Soaked In Bleach”).
Image result for pics of kurt cobain

This however led people to believe him to be a closed off and depressed which of course was backed up by his well-known heroin addiction and the edgy nature of his grunge rock songs like Lithium where he sings “I’m so lonely, but that’s okay, I shaved my head … And I’m not sad. And just maybe I’m to blame for all I’ve heard … But I’m not sure.” (“Soaked In Bleach”). (Lithium, Cobain) However those who talked to Kurt could vouch that there was no meaning behind his dark lyrics and that despite his quiet nature, he was not actually depressed. Kurt himself in an interview said “I’m tired of people trying to put too much meaning into my songs. A lot of times when I write lyrics, which is at the last second ‘cause I’m really lazy and then I find myself having to come up with explanations for it. There was may be one or two lines here or there, but I swear to god brother, it’s not really as much as it seems.” (“Soaked In Bleach”). One friend of his mentions that “[He] think[s] people tended to read him wrong just because he was a quiet person. [He] didn’t see Kurt as being depressed at all, [he saw] him as being optimistic (“Soaked In Bleach”). All of these combined features make it difficult to convict him as the suicidal man he is painted to be. 

           The death of Kurt Cobain is undeniably much more complicated than the story painted by the media. While the public story is that he shot himself, it is important to see the minute details of the case that could point towards his murder, as ordered by Courtney Love.

            The police report states that the door was locked from the inside and that the “SFD broke the westside French door to gain access…” (The Smoking Gun) When Tom Grant spoke with the police officers that were apart of the investigation, they were “… inferring that Cobain had to have been alone in the greenhouse when he died.”(Grant) However upon further digging, Grant noticed that the lock on the door “… was a simple push-in and twist type. ‘Anyone could have pulled that door shut after locking it!’”(Grant.) After pointing this out to Sargent Cameron, the officer that Grant spoke to at the police station, Sargent Cameron added resentfully that “There was a stool wedged against the door.” However the police reports mentioned that the stool had been placed in front of the unlocked balcony doors on the other side of the room which provided no outside access to the greenhouse (Grant). The evidence suggesting that Kurt was locked inside, meaning no outside source could have partook in his tragedy is all based upon the inference that nobody locked the door behind them when leaving rather than the exploration of possibilities.

            “The toxicology report from Kurt Cobain’s autopsy indicated a heroin blood level of 1.52 milligrams per liter. Five milligrams will produce a level of .035 milligrams. Most users, even heavy users, only use up to 40-60 milligrams in one hit. So you can see to reach 1.52 milligrams per liter, you’re talking about an amount that would have certainly have exceeded 200 mg that were injected into Kurt Cobain. Three times the amount that would be considered lethal.” (“Soaked In Bleach”) A health professional enlightens us that Kurt was definitely drugged up and that the effect of the heroin would have killed him. It does not take a health care professional to know that when a drug enters the body through the blood stream that it takes effect very quickly. So when we are told that Kurt died from a self-inflicted shot gun wound to the head it’s difficult to get around the fact that Kurt should not have been able pick up a shot gun, let alone shoot himself. “Even for the most sever heroin addict, it would have incapacitated him. He would have been unconscious. Then to roll down the sleeves, put away the heroin kit, pick up the shot gun, position it backwards and pull the trigger… It just doesn’t make sense.” (“Soaked in Bleach”)

            These two inconsistencies are not to sniff out the corruption of police. When Kurt went missing initially, Courtney filed a police report that states “He bought a shot gun and may be suicidal.” (The Smoking Gun) This means that the police were already considering the idea of a suicide before brought upon the case, meaning their judgement is impaired with bias of prior knowledge. So rather than snooping out every possibility with the utmost scrutiny, they went with the easiest, logical scenario without following up on the discrepancy of the theory.

            In light of all this evidence, it appears possible that Courtney may have had something to do with Kurt’s death. Following his death, Courtney received his entire estate which she couldn’t have inherited otherwise because of the divorce that Kurt planned to file. (Grant) If Courtney set up his murder then it is possible that the murderer injected him with the heroin to sedate him, unaware of the sheer volume that they were injecting him with, then proceeded to shoot him with the shot gun that a “suicidal” man had bought only a few days previous. Kurt’s heroin addiction made the combination of the two seem rather characteristically sound to the police. If the person who murdered Kurt had left, it would have been easy for just about anyone to lock the door behind them and leave. A man by the name of Eldon Hoke incidentally claimed that “Love offered to pay him $50,000 to dispose of the Nirvana front man.” (Maria Vultaggio) In an interview for a documentary following the conspiracy of Kurt’s murder he said “Yeah, she offered me fifty grand to whack Kurt Cobain.” (Maria Vultaggio) Two days later, this man was mysteriously hit by a train and died. (Maria Vultaggio) 

            In a survey, 20 people were asked if they believed that Courtney had Cobain killed and 50% of which said yes. 67% of those aware of Tom Grant’s breakdown of the case believed that Courtney had Kurt killed. However there is still not enough evidence for the police to conduct a deeper investigation to see if Courtney truly conspired against her husband.

         Despite the reports of the police and the media, the death of Kurt Cobain is still debated upon. The fishy details of his circumstance such as the overdose, the false reports and the demeanor that Kurt displayed prior to his death have yet to be validated, leaving us to wonder until further evidence is found. Did Kurt really commit suicide, or was he murdered for the benefit of his wife Courtney Love?


Works Cited

Drive, By Dynamic. "Case Outline - The Kurt Cobain Murder Investigation by Tom Grant." Case Outline - The Kurt Cobain Murder Investigation by Tom Grant. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Oct. 2016.

Grant, Tom. "Case Outline." The Kurt Cobain Murder Investigation by Tom Grant. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2016.

Grant, Tom. "Summary Of Events." Cobain Case. Dynamic Drive, n.d. Web. 02 Nov. 2016.

"Kurt Cobain's Death, 10 Years After." The Smoking Gun. TSG Industries Inc., n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2016.

Soaked in Bleach. Dir. Benjamin Statler. Prod. Donnie Eichar. Perf. Daniel Roebuck and August Emerson. 2015. Netflix.

Vultaggio, Maria. "Kurt Cobain Conspiracy Theories Remerge."International Business Times. IBT Media Inc., 05 Apr. 2016. Web. 05 Oct. 2016.







           

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