Love & Death

by Max Wallace

  In 1997, Seattle Police Department spokesman Sean O’Donnell told NBC’sUnsolved Mysteries of the monthlong investigation his department had conducted into the circumstances of Kurt’s death. His detectives, he said, originally began the investigation with the premise that Kurt had been murdered before officially ruling out the possibility: “That’s the way they conducted this investigation, so that there was a very thorough, comprehensive investigation done from the very beginning, and everything that the detectives encountered indicated to them that this was a suicide. We actually found nothing to indicate that this was anything but a suicide.”

  But a long trail of evidence suggests investigators never seriously contemplated the idea that Kurt was murdered at all. Indeed, a Seattle Police Department source familiar with the investigation told us in 1996 that Sergeant Cameron made it clear at the time that the so-called homicide investigation was just a show: “We weren’t supposed to take it seriously.” The source, who said he didn’t necessarily believe Cobain was murdered, described a “shoddy investigation” in which Cameron didn’t even bother to develop the photographs taken at the scene. He said an outside law enforcement agency should reinvestigate the circumstances because “Cameron will never admit he made a mistake. He is very concerned about his reputation.”

  The police reports we obtained under Washington State’s Freedom of Information laws appear to reinforce his charge that the homicide unit never took their investigation seriously. According to the initial incident report filed by homicide detectives, they had been summoned to the Lake Washington estate by a patrol officer at 9:50A.M. on April 8, a little more than an hour after Cobain’s body was found. The dispatcher informed detectives that uniformed officers “are on the scene of a suicide. There is a note present, and the gun is also in place.” In their official incident report, filed later the same day, the SPD homicide detectives wrote “Suicide” in the box on the form indicating “Type of incident.” This is a clear contradiction of the SPD spokesman’s assertion that the incident was investigated as a homicide from the very beginning. It proves that from the earliest hours of April 8, each unit of the Seattle Police Department had alreadyofficially labeled the death a suicide.

  Certainly, Grant’s own attempts to share information with Cameron did not inspire confidence. Grant had already spent considerable time in the greenhouse, photographing the interior and exterior from every angle. One detail in particular stood out for him. The doors had a simple push-in-and-twist-type lock. On April 8, Cameron had informed him over the phone that Kurt was “locked inside the room,” suggesting that nobody could have been inside with him. This appeared to suggest that suicide was the only possible scenario. Now, face-to-face with Cameron for the first time, Grant asks the veteran homicide detective why he had told him the door was locked from the inside. (Ever since Grant had actually seen and photographed the lock, he realized that the detective’s statement was irrelevant.)

  “Anyone could have pulled that door shut after locking it,” Grant says.

  Cameron has a ready explanation: “There was a stool wedged up against the door.” This is a detail that had already been reported on both MTV and the talk showGeraldo, as well as numerous newspaper articles about the case.Rolling Stone, for example, wrote, “Sometime on or before the afternoon of April 5, Cobain barricaded himself in the room above his garage by propping a stool against its French doors.” Anybody reading this would naturally assume that Kurt must have killed himself because nobody else possibly could have been in the greenhouse with him and then exited the room with a stool wedged against the door. Therefore, Kurt must have wedged the stool in front of the door himself before committing suicide.

  Grant asks Sergeant Cameron if he can examine the photographs that police took at the scene. The detective refuses, offering yet more proof that he never took his murder investigation seriously. “We haven’t developed the photographs and probably never will. We don’t develop photographs on suicides,” says Cameron.

  Grant shares some of the information he and Ben Klugman have gathered, including details on the use of Kurt’s credit card after he died.

  Again, Cameron brushes him off: “Nothing you’ve said convinces me this is anything but a suicide.”

  At the time, Grant had no reason to doubt Cameron’s word that a stool had been wedged against the door. But when, months later, he obtained the incident report filed by the first detectives who arrived on the scene, the file suggested that Cameron was either lying or had badly bungled his investigation. The report read:

  Cobain is found in the 19′ × 23′ greenhouse above the detached double garage. There are stairs on the westside leading to the French door entry and another set of French doors on the eastside leading to a balcony. These doors are unlocked and closed but there is a stool with a box of gardening supplies on it in front of the door.

  The report clearly demonstrates that the stool wasn’t, in fact, wedged against the exit door at all. Rather, it was standing in front of the French doors on the other side of the room—doors that didn’t even serve as an exit. Although the actual exit door was indeed locked, it could have been locked and pulled shut by anyone leaving the scene. Why Cameron was repeating the demonstrably false story about the wedged stool is a question he refuses to answer to this day.

  Whatever the reason, the police report proves beyond any doubt that Kurt never barricaded himself in the room, and it clearly demonstrates that another person could have easily been in the greenhouse at the time of Kurt’s death. Thus, one of the most convincing pieces of so-called evidence pointing to suicide is nothing more than a myth. It is a myth that has never been dispelled by a single biographer, nor by any of the media that originally reported on the barricaded door. It is a myth that many distraught teenagers would cling to in the months and years to come.

  After his meeting with Cameron, Grant pays another visit to the Lake Washington house. Courtney is in the dining room discussing Hole’s upcoming tour with her guitarist, Eric Erlandson. Grant asks her if she can arrange for him to meet with both Dylan Carlson and Michael “Cali” Dewitt together.

  “Cali went to rehab in El Paso, or Georgia…no, he’s in L.A. with friends,” she replies. Then she shouts to Eric in the other room, “Call Cali and tell him to get back up here on the next plane.”

  About an hour later, while Grant is in the kitchen fixing himself a sandwich, Dylan Carlson arrives. The two haven’t seen each other since April 8, when they returned together to the house after hearing Kurt’s body had been found. Grant is anxious to confirm Rosemary Carroll’s claim that Courtney told Dylan to “check the greenhouse.” When Grant emerges from the kitchen, Eric tells him Dylan is upstairs talking to Courtney in her bedroom. The two come downstairs some twenty minutes later. It is obvious to Grant that Dylan has just shot up. Grant leads him into the kitchen to talk out of Courtney’s earshot.

  “When we started talking, I immediately noticed that his answers sounded rehearsed, like he’d just been prepared about what to say,” Grant recalls. “He kept nodding off, I guess from the heroin, and I figured I was wasting my time trying to talk to him.”

  When Grant finally leaves to return to his hotel, he asks Eric to call him when Cali arrives. By evening, there is still no word, so he telephones the house. Eric tells Grant that shortly after he left that afternoon, Courtney had him call Cali and tell him he didn’t have to return to Seattle after all.

  “I don’t know what’s going on here, man!” Eric says.

  When Grant pocketed the copy of Kurt’s alleged suicide note from the house, he spotted a letter Courtney had just faxed somebody and quickly pocketed it as well in order to compare the handwriting later on. Then, as soon as he could, he made his exit, desperately anxious to read the note—so anxious, in fact, that he turned his car into a parking lot about a mile from the house and took the two letters out. For the next two hours, he studied the words on the suicide note:

  To BoddAH pronounced

 
; Speaking from the tongue of an experienced simpleton who obviously would rather be an emasculated, infantile complain-ee. This note should be pretty easy to understand. All the warnings from the punk rock 101 courses over the years, since my first introduction to the, shall we say, ethics involved with independence and the embracement of your community has proven to be very true. I haven’t felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music along with reading and writing for too many years now. I feel guilty beyond words about these things. For example when we’re back stage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowds begins., it doesn’t affect me the way in which it did for Freddie Mercury, who seemed to love, relish in the love and adoration from the crowd which is something I totally admire and envy. The fact is, I can’t fool you, any one of you. It simply isn’t fair to you or me. The worst crime I can think of would be to rip people off by faking it and pretending as if I’m having 100 % fun. Sometimes I feel as if I should have a punch-in time clock before I walk out on stage. I’ve tried everything within my power to appreciate it (and I do, God, believe me I do, but it’s not enough). I appreciate the fact that I and we have affected and entertained a lot of people. I must be one of those narcissists who only appreciate things when they’re gone. I’m too sensitive. I need to be slightly numb in order to regain the enthusiasms I once had as a child. On our last 3 tours, I’ve had a much better appreciation for all the people I’ve known personally, and as fans of our music, but I still can’t get over the frustration, the guilt and empathy I have for everyone. There’s good in all of us and I think I simply love people too much, so much that it makes me feel too fucking sad. The sad little, sensitive, unappreciative, Pisces, Jesus man. Why don’t you just enjoy it? I don’t know! I have a goddess of a wife who sweats ambition and empathy…and a daughter who reminds me too much of what I used to be, full of love and joy, kissing every person she meets because everyone is good and will do her no harm. And that terrifies me to the point to where I can barely function. I can’t stand the thought of Frances becoming the miserable, self-destructive, death rocker that I’ve become.

  I have it good, very good, and I’m grateful, but since the age of seven, I’ve become hateful towards all humans in general. Only because it seems so easy for people to get along that have empathy. Only because I love and feel sorry for people too much I guess. Thank you all from the pit of my burning, nauseous stomach for your letters and concern during the past years. I’m too much of an erratic, moody baby! I don’t have the passion anymore, and so remember, it’s better to burn out than to

  fade away. peace love,empathy. kurt cobain

  Frances and Courtney, I’ll be at your altar.

  Please keep going Courtney,

  for Frances

  for her life, which will be so much happier

  without me. I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU!

  As Grant pores over the words on the note, something doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t sound like any suicide note he’d ever read. In fact, nowhere in the note did Kurt even mention suicide. And the only part thatmight be construed as such—the last four lines—appeared to have been written in a completely different style of handwriting. Grant takes out the other document he had pocketed, a handwritten letter Courtney had faxed earlier that day. Some of the handwriting seems strangely similar, but Grant is no handwriting expert. He starts the car and drives away.

  “I got onto the highway and just kept going,” Grant recalls. “There were so many questions going through my mind after I read that note, and I just had to weigh them. I didn’t even know where I was going. The next thing I knew, I had driven all the way to Portland, Oregon. So I just turned right around and came back. The whole time, I really didn’t know what to make of it. I still had no idea what any of this stuff meant.”

  By the time Grant returns to Los Angeles, he is more confused than ever. He drives to Rosemary Carroll’s office with a copy of the note. Carroll spends fifteen minutes poring over it and then says it’s “obvious” that Kurt didn’t write it. She reads the note “over and over again” and it doesn’t mention suicide.

  Except at the bottom, Grant points out.

  Carroll, however, says the bottom section is obviously “in a different handwriting.” She tells Grant that the note doesn’t sound to her like anything Kurt would write. It actually sounds more like Courtney than Kurt, she says, explaining that the note contains a number of phrases that she has heard Courtney use before. Something’s wrong, Carroll says, clearly troubled. She pauses, then shares her conclusion with Grant: She doesn’t believe Kurt killed himself.

  Grant did not know what to think. As a former police detective, he had been trained not to jump to any conclusions, but rather to follow the evidence. This evidence comes the next day when he receives a call from Carroll, who sounds somewhat flustered. She says she has something to show him—some “writings” that Courtney left at her house. She never thought to look at them until the night before. Grant asks whether they are Kurt’s writings. “No, hers,” Carroll replies.

  Carroll is in a state of shock when Grant arrives at her house an hour later. She shows him a backpack Courtney had left behind after her visit to Carroll’s house the night of April 6. Sick with doubt after reading Kurt’s suicide note, Carroll had taken a look inside the backpack. What she discovered there frightened her. She takes out a sheet of paper. Written in Courtney’s handwriting are two words: “Get Arrested.” It is one of Courtney’s typical “to do” notes to herself.

  “She planned that whole thing,” says Carroll, referring to Courtney’s April 7 arrest.

  Painstakingly, the two review what occurred after Courtney’s visit to Carroll’s house two weeks earlier, on the night of April 6. Hours after Courtney left Carroll’s house to return to her hotel, she was indeed arrested. Responding to a 911 call reporting a “possible overdose victim,” Beverly Hills police, fire department officials and paramedics arrived at Courtney’s Peninsula Hotel suite the morning of April 7 to find Courtney in a state of physical distress. She was taken by ambulance to Century City Hospital, where she told doctors she was merely suffering an allergic reaction to her Xanax medication. Upon her discharge, she was immediately arrested, brought to Beverly Hills Jail and charged with possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession/receiving stolen property.

  “When she eventually went to court,” says Grant, “she had a logical explanation for everything police found in her room. It turned out that the white powdery substance they thought was heroin was actually Hindu good-luck ashes; the prescription pad they thought was stolen she said had actually been mistakenly left behind by her doctor. But at the time, these things provided a perfect excuse for her to get arrested without getting into any real trouble. Rosemary’s explanation that she ‘planned the whole thing’ makes a whole lot of sense. She needed an alibi.” Grant now believes that Courtney planned to get herself arrested on April 7 so that the papers would report the fact that she was in jail in L.A. that day, the day she expected Kurt’s body to be found.

  “That’s the day that she suddenly wanted me and Dylan to go back to the house to search for the shotgun in the closet, even though she could have asked Cali to look for it anytime that week,” he explains. “I’m now convinced that she wanted us to find the body that day.” Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson later revealed to Kurt’s biographer Charles Cross that Courtney had already asked him to search the closet for the shotgun on Tuesday afternoon, April 5. So why did she ask Dylan and Grant to do the same thing two days later?

  Carroll then tells Grant that she found another piece of paper in Courtney’s backpack, one that disturbs her even more than the “Get Arrested” note. She hands the paper to Grant. On it, somebody has been practicing different handwriting styles. On each line, the person has experimented with different forms of all the letters of the alphabet, much like a schoolchild’s handwriting exercise primer. But this handwriting is clearly in the style of an adult, not
a child. On the top right side of the page, in a section marked “combos,” the person has practiced writing two-and three-letter combinations:

  ta re fe ur you te

  As he studies the sheet, Grant gets a chill. “I had no idea what it meant or who had been doing the writing,” he recalls, “but Rosemary found it among Courtney’s things. It sure looked to us like she had been practicing how to forge a letter.”

  7

  By the time Rosemary Carroll understood the implications of the two notes she found in Courtney’s backpack, she had already stated more than once that she didn’t believe Kurt killed himself. Yet never once on Grant’s tapes, before or after this conversation, does Carroll explicitly say that she believes Courtney murdered him. She is suspicious enough, however, to remove a folder from her files and slide it over to Grant. Inside are more items from the backpack: Courtney’s Peninsula Hotel bill as well as an itemized list of her phone records and messages there.

  It is the second message on the list that gives Grant pause. On Friday, April 1, at exactly 8:47P.M., the Peninsula Hotel switchboard took a message for Courtney: “Husband called. Elizabeth number is (213) 850- .” Courtney has always claimed she never heard from Kurt again after he fled rehab, yet here is concrete evidence that he had contacted his wife less than an hour after he left Exodus and told her where he could be reached. On the copy of the message sheet Grant shows us, he has blacked out the last part of Elizabeth’s phone number, which is located within the Los Angeles area code. He says he knows who “Elizabeth” is, as well as the significance of her involvement, but can’t reveal these details until the case is reopened.

  On our own, however, we discovered that the Elizabeth in the message almost certainly refers to the American painter Elizabeth Peyton, who specializes in portraits of pop culture icons. Peyton, who was apparently staying in Los Angeles at the time of Kurt’s disappearance, had become close friends with both Kurt and Courtney and later painted several striking portraits of Kurt after his death. For years afterward, it seemed that Peyton managed to bring up Kurt in virtually every interview she gave, as if her old friend had become a lingering obsession. From a 2000 interview with Peyton inIndex magazine: