Kurt Cobain Was Murdered

"...you're in high school again..."

--Kurt Cobain, "School"

Kurt Cobain Was Murdered

as reported

October 13, 1995

                                                         
a product of Mr. Lee's Remington Remette

I suppose in very many ways it is an appropriate punchline to the lengthy saga of the aftermath of the murder of Kurt Cobain that as the story has now gotten out further, in achingly slow fashion, that the credit for the discovery of the true nature of the unfortunate end of the leader of Nirvana is going to a resident of Los Angeles, a former LA cop, no less.

I am writing these comments on the evening of October 13, 1995, a date which marks now a full 18 months since my first broadcast on the Cobain matter on Seattle's public-access television channel 29, on April 13, l994, entitled, "Was Kurt Cobain Murdered?" This was a mere 5 days after the discovery of Cobain's body in the garage of his Seattle home. This first program, which was based on the initial signifigant evidence of violent death by means other than suicide in Cobain's case, has been followed by 78 weeks of ongoing, new, hour-long programs, which are now titled, with deliberate certainty, "Kurt Cobain Was Murdered".

The only coverage in the mainstream Seattle print media, to my knowledge, on any theory of Cobain being the victim of murder was a December 14, 1994 story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, based on a wire service story,that a private detective in Los Angeles, Tom Grant, had been featured on the syndicated Gil Gross radio program, and was forwarding what he claimed to be his theory that Cobain had been the victim of murder.

Local television news programs were eager to report this startling new revelation as they pulled it off the wire, in so doing fully ignoring the fact that I had been very publicly delving into this material for 8 full months, each and every week, on the public-access TV channel that reaches more than 350,000 households in King County (which includes Seattle), virtually all homes that are connected to cable television.

The only times I have spoken with Mr. Tom Grant were on two occasions that he called me a month or so prior to his going on the Gil Gross show in December. To be frank, there was immediately something I didn't like much about Mr. Grant, basically that he seemed to have the policeman's habit of changing details in the description of events he was relating to you within the course of a conversation, and acting as if you weren't too intelligent or concerned about his discrepancies. I also got the extremely strong impression that he knew virtually nothing about nothing, and was additionally difficult to deal with as he conveyed a certain feigned befuddlement, which further consideration of his abilities might convince one was not so feigned after all. My subsequent review of tapes of radio interviews that he has done, and especially of the the Internet postings, leads me to believe that his habit of relating what he knows, or claims to know, in a very irregular way undermines the degree of credibility of what he may genuinely know as the private investigator hired by Courtney Love for an initial period of a few days in April of l994, to make some sort of search for her missing husband Kurt Cobain.

Today a viewer of my television program called me on the phone and said I should run out and get a copy of the November issue of the British rock magazine Vox, which is featuring a lengthy story they've titled, "Was Kurt Murdered?" and "Who Killed Kurt Cobain?"

The Vox story, as you may have guessed, does not mention my work or my television program, and while Mr. Grant is the target of some rather sophomoric skepticism throughout the this story as a "conspiracy theorist in a land where death sells and sells," he is also elevated in very explicit language to the leadership position as an analyst and investigator of the Cobain case, i.e., "IF TOM GRANT'S THEORY (their capital emphasis) were to prove true, he would be at the centre of the biggest story in the rock world..."

Pardon my correcting you so absolutely, Vox (and others who have described the situation in these terms), but Tom Grant is not the originator, nor is he by any standard the best developer, of the "Cobain was murdered" theory or investigation. There can be no mistaking or denying the fact that I have revealed and reported this story each week on my television program, covering much of the material to which Mr. Grant refers rather casually, but in great depth, (up to and including the suspicions about the role of the male nanny), for a term of 8 months, much of the time Mr. Grant himself admits he was receiving money from Courtney Love to perform what he describes as rather inconsequential detective work.

Presumably from the remote location of Los Angeles all of this work that Mr. Grant says that he is doing on the case largely consists of trying to gain publicity for the idea that he developed the theory and the investigation on the Cobain murder. Here in Seattle, I have been diligently broadcasting an hour-long exploration of this case for public examination each and every week, as well as successfully developing new information in the case. I receive no compensation whatever for the television program, so that its ongoing production each week is quite a task indeed. (My present plans are to press forward and complete at least l00 of these programs). I have, of course, been at the significant disadvantage of not having any Courtney Love seed-money to get me started on this investigation. (Ms. Love, by the way, has written to call me "obsessed," saying little else).

My efforts to achieve national recognition for this important story have been difficult, to say the least. If you've read in the British rock press that Mr. Grant's allegations have created a huge stir here in the U.S., believe me, this is not the case. Mr. Grant was the subject of one story in the Star tabloid (entitled, ironically, "Kurt Cobain Was Murdered") which they didn't even promote on their page one, and a story was built on his Gil Gross interview on one of the better "tabloid TV" national programs (American Journal) and even MTV News did a brief spot with news jockey Kurt Loder actually enunciating the essence of the "Kurt Cobain didn't do it" theory, but it is significant for those of you outside the U.S. to know that Grant has gone nowhere since his first splash in forwarding this story with the mainstream American media.

Appropriate commentary has been provided frequently in my monologues on the TV program concerning the absence of attention to the Cobain homicide in this, the year of shameless and shameful rampant O.J.-mania. As much as I've focused on the rather sinister nature of the "gatekeeper" function of the tending-toward-monolithic major media here (that's a word, "gatekeeper," which Peter Jennings used to describe the primary function of media news-giants when he visited Seattle about 6 weeks after the Gil Gross wire story) the American media ignoring Tom Grant's claims are not best described in terms of big media conspiracy, snobbery, or any other pejorative. Those of you who have read his files on the Internet have probably noticed that while the whole of the theory is highly interesting (yes, I take a bow), Mr. Grant is not so compelling. His turgid writing style (long-winded though it may be) and what looks a whole lot like a propensity to make claims he can't ever possibly back up (like Courtney Love's attorney ratting her out to him a few days after Cobain's body was found, saying, yep, she probably whacked the poor boy), make for a story which in style, if not in substance, is beneath the standards of what is usually practiced by the tab-TV shows (who, despite their frequently awful exploitation of the O.J. Simpson drama, did actually do some respectable reporting on the Simpson matter, when viewed in the narrow terms of traditional city-news journalism).

For all of my efforts, I have been greeted by a complete blackout of all coverage by mainstream media (a phenomenon which I have frequently described as being the result of sinister forces, an analysis I do not, of course, disown here), and I must say that for what should be all of my good standing here in Seattle as a responsible journalist acting in the public interest, the ignoring of my work (and the brief attention given here to Grant) can only be described in terms of a scandal in itself. What would be the bluntest way of stating this, just so no one misunderstands my general theory on how this all could have happened? How's this--the gaggle of reporters who were at the scene of Cobain's body's discovery on the morning of April 8, l994 saw some mighty strange things as witnesses to a shotgun suicide, like no blood at the scene of the crime, and said nothing. As for expecting the truth from the local coppers, just you nevermind that. Once again I find myself referring to the famous Polanski film for an apt explanation that you may be able to understand. "It's Chinatown, Jake." Yes, and Seattle too.

A few pieces of inky coverage have helped to punctuate the vast stretch of time when I began on this project, visiting the Cobain home site on that most infamous day. A rather amusing exception to the blackout was an article in the international punk music magazine Maximumrocknroll last summer (actually post-dated as the October, 1994 issue), which was the first journal with a regular publication schedule (meaning other than "fanzines") to do a Kurt Was Murdered story, which was written by Seattlite John Nero based on an interview he did with me, which he subsequently published at great length last summer in his fanzine publication Lumber. The very first fanzine mag to get a "Was Kurt Cobain Murdered?" story out, based on my work, was the Seattle 'zine Feminist Baseball the publisher of which is a guy who actually refused to accept any phone call from me subsequent to this publication--I guess the oft-cited "Seattle rock community" has its ways of applying a little pressure, putting a bit of stick about.

The indifferent role of the British rock press has been hard to understand in all of this--I had held out hope for a long time that their interest was always soon to be expressed. The rock mags and papers in England have always been hungry for any scrap of news on Cobain and Nirvana (and still very much are), so I could not conceive of their failure to contact me as anything but deliberate. Apparently, it's "Chinatown" over there too, in terms of the rock press knowing that the way to get by in the nasty and mean world of corporate rock is to suck up to the living and power-wielding players in the Nirvana drama and let Kurt's ghost (especially as it functions through my television program), fend for itself. One exception to this blackout on my work by the British was the treatment I received in the January 28, 1995 color-slick mag Kerrang!, which did a cover story called "Grunge Ain't Dead:Kurt-Was It Murder? Shocking Seattle Report!" Though the Kerrang story did focus on Tom Grant as the star of the wire story, it also had a short but impressively accurate sidebar article titled, "A Conspiracy!...So Says a Weekly Seattle TV Show Called 'Kurt Cobain Was Murdered'!". While Kerrang! may have a very limited circulation in the U.S., this is not the case in England, and so my perception that I was being ignored by the Brits was confirmed, as no inquiries from the happy breed followed. What's the matter, I have been forced to wonder--does no one watch Rumpole over there? In April, I posed for a photograph in the park next to Cobain's house for a photographer for NME at the commemoration on April 8, and did an interview with one of their stringer reporters, to whom I provided a copy and a lengthy written explanation of the semi-famous "death threat" letter I received from Seattle Police Department personnel, in which she expressed strong interest. Once again, no follow-up occurred, and NME didn't even run a piece on the commemoration event.

FOR UTMOST IN PRIVACY, I SUGGEST THAT SENSITIVE COMMUNICATIONS OF ANY VARIETY, INCLUDING FURTHER MEDIA INTEREST, BE SENT TO MY POST OFFICE BOX, NOT TO THIS E-MAIL ADDRESS. **********************************************************************

A key document in the effort I have made to force action on the part of those who might be called among those foremost to blame for the sad state of corruption in which Seattle presently finds itself is an item of 20 pages that was provided with cover letters to several public officials here: Seattle Mayor Norm Rice, King County Executive Gary Locke, and Seattle City Councilperson Margaret Pageler, who is Chair of the Public Safety Committee that is supposed to oversee the Seattle Police Department. Mr. Rice and Mr. Locke eventually provided one-page letters that endorsed the shotgun-suicide verdict, Ms. Pageler, despite many phone calls to her staff in request of a response, neglected to answer.

What follows is a complete transcript of the "compendium" report to these officials.

(title page, page i)

 Kurt Cobain Was Murdered

 An Independent Investigation by Richard Lee

(frontispiece page, page ii)

"...another casualty of success..." Diane Sawyer, ABC's World News Tonight April 8, 1994

"...Kurt Cobain was, ladies and gentlemen, he was a worthless shred of human debris, who had been trying to kill himself for 12 years, and finally did it right, by using a shotgun, so he couldn't miss..." Rush Limbaugh, syndicated radio and TV talk-show host

"Kurt Cobain lived hard and died young. His body was discovered in his Lake Washington home today..." Dan Lewis, KOMO News 4 April 8, 1994

"Rock stars live a life a little bizarre to the normal citizen...This is not like calling up Mr. and Mrs. Smith of Wallingford at 9 in the morning to ask them some questions..." Capt. Larry Farrar, head of Seattle Police Department Crimes Against Persons Dept.

"...he screwed me over by splitting... maybe he was terminally pouting, I don't know, I don't know..." Courtney Love, widow of the deceased, MTV interview, August, 1994

(introductory page, page iii)

It has now been more than 8 months since the body of Kurt Cobain was found in his lakeside home in Seattle, Washington. This report is being prepared most specifically for the purpose of addressing the weight of evidence in this case to the attention of government officials to whom the ultimate responsibility of oversight of its investigatory agencies must be attributed.

In the past 8 months (beginning on April 13, only 5 days after the discovery of the body of Mr. Cobain), I have broadcast 36 consecutive weeks of analysis and commentary examining the evidence in the case of the death of Kurt Cobain on my cable television program in Seattle called "Now See It Person to Person". This program had aired continuously for 12 months prior to this event, providing coverage and commentary on political issues and events (candidate's debates, press conferences, political rallies, etc.) as a purely independent and self-financed news source reaching the homes of nearly all cable TV subscribers in King County. So important did I feel that the police mishandling of this case was that the format of the news program changed considerably to exclusively devote the program to the purpose of developing a public awareness of the facts in this case.

As host of this unique ongoing TV series, it is accurate to say that I can hardly step foot out of my home anymore without being soon recognized for this broadcast, yet to date, government response to this controversy has been virtually nil. This state of affairs has changed somewhat this week as a Los Angeles private detective named Tom Grant went on a syndicated radio talk-show and outlined his theory that Cobain was murdered. The Seattle Police Department has issued its denial of this, and given the rather general nature of the claims made by Mr. Grant, this appears to be all that can be said by local government at this time. There is, in fact, though, far more to the argument that Cobain was murdered than has ever been discussed in the press. In fact, prior to the story on Mr. Grant, no news story has ever appeared in a regular press source that approached this issue. Because the SPD and the King County Medical Examiner have made their case plainly enough in their official pronouncements, it falls to local elected officials to demand in the face of persuasive evidence that further explanation of this case be forthcoming.

Richard Lee

Dec. l5, 1994

(page 1)

Kurt Cobain

Kurt Cobain was born in February of 1967 and resided through his late teens in the area of Aberdeen, Washington, 100 miles south of Seattle. Young Curtis was considered a very bright boy with a definite artistic streak, and in his teens, with his interest in high school waning, he became involved with the local rock music scene, determined to be the leader of a professional rock band. His first record was released in 1988, and by 1991 he had produced his first major-label album, "Nevermind", which became a number 1 bestseller worldwide, selling more than 10 million units. This November, seven months after Cobain's death, a live recording by his band Nirvana premiered on the American charts at number 1.

The career of Kurt Cobain and his Nirvana was as critically acclaimed as it was commercially successful. With Cobain's thundering voice and intuitive grasp of rock music songwriting and performing, the band he led was changing and challenging the role of rock music and popular culture. His artistic achievement will not be forgotten, although his personal reputation has suffered greatly by the official proclamation of his death as a suicide.

An Overview of the Occaision of the Death of Kurt Cobain

Kurt Cobain's body was discovered on Friday, April 8 in a greenhouse room above the detached garage of a home on a small lot of property he purchased in January. The body was discovered by an electrician who was there to install security lighting, and who called 9ll at 8:56 am.

From the very beginning, when reporters assembled in front of the Cobain home, the Seattle Police Department version of the situation was that they were there to handle a suicide. Mid-morning, SPD spokesperson Vinette Tichi mande an announcement to the press that they had found a dead body in the room above the garage and that there was "a suicide note left inside the house" (the note was subsequently described as being found next to the body). Although the body was not officially identified by the King County Medical Examiner until a press release mid-afternoon, on the east coast, television viewers were already being told by the evening network newscasts that Cobain had committed suicide in feature stories complete with analysis of his psychological torment. In the words of ABC's anchor Diane Sawyer that evening, Cobain was "another casualty of success." No evidence, it seems, is needed to close a case of alleged self-murder.

(page 2)

The Initially-Released Police Reports

Much of the ease with which the press was able to convey the death of Cobain as a suicide and not conceivably anything else was supported by 2 police reports that SPD made readily available.

The first report dated from March 15 and concerned a 9ll call from Courtney Love-Cobain, Kurt Cobain's wife, who claimed to police that her husband had locked himself in a room with a gun and was threatening suicide. When police arrived at the house, Kurt Cobain denied that this was true, and then Courtney Love, according to the report, "stated that she did not see him with a gun, and he did not say that he was going to kill himself.

"The disturbance was verbal only," this report concludes. Despite the retraction of her original claims, Seattle Police officers confiscated three handguns, a rifle, and a bottle of unidentified pills "for safekeeping," according to the report.

(This strange domestic dispute was similar to an earlier incident which also resulted in the confiscation of his firearms, the report of which was also made readily available by SPD. This incident of domestic disturbance, from June 4, 1993, involved Courtney Love calling 911 after, she said, Kurt Cobain had "pushed her" after she had thrown a glass of juice in his face. According to the report from that incident, Courtney Love claimed that she had suffered a scratch on her forearm, then changed her story to say this scratch was "self-inflicted." An unnamed 30-year-old witness, whose occupation was listed as "Psychic", is said to have backed Love's story. Says the report, continuing, "Kurt was determined to be the primary aggressor and was arrested for...assault...and booked into King County Jail." Charges were finally dropped that September on a basis of lack of evidence).

The second police report which was widely used in the media to demonstrate a reckless end to Cobain's life was from April 4, 1994, 4 days before Cobain's body was found. The report was phoned into police dispatch offices by someone claiming to be Kurt Cobain's mother, Wendy O'Connor, who lives in Aberdeen, where she is know to have been at this time. The main section of this SPD Missing Persons Report form reads:

Mr. Cobain ran away from a California treatment facility and flew back to Seattle. He also bought a shot gun and may be suicidal. Mr. Cobain maybe at 11/Denny location for narcotics.

One last cryptic note in this section was blacked-out by the SPD media relations office, but was still able to be made out as reading, "Det. Terry, SPD Narcotics has further info." When I called Det. Antonio Terry in May, I asked him how Kurt

(page 3)

Cobain's mother in Aberdeen would have information about a reputed drug dealer's address--in another section of the report his destination is described with extreme specificity as "ll/Denny brick apt building 1st flr corner unit". Det. Terry, who seemed nervous about discussing this matter, indicated that I was right in believing that this was information that is not logical to have come from Cobain's mother, but that his wife would would have been a much more logical source for this information.

The truth about the Missing Persons Report is that it is far more likely to have been the product of the efforts of Courtney Love. According to the SPD dispatcher who took the call and wrote the report, there is no doubt about the fact that the call came from California, where Courtney Love was at the time, and his perception was that this was likely to to have been Courtney Love falsely claiming to be Wendy O'Connor, Cobain's mother (such false reporting and criminal impersonation are considered gross misdemeanor offenses under RCW 9A.84.040 and RCW 9A.60.040, repectively). The dispatcher indicated that SPD detectives had duplicated the recording of the phone call.

All requests I have made to review the tape of the call have been rejected by SPD, who claim that this would violate the privacy of the person who made the call, who, they say, insisted that her privacy be protected when making the call. My telling the SPD media relations office that a person acting in violation of the law must certainly compromise such assertions of right to privacy fell on deaf ears at SPD. Their claim to right to conceal this material is in violation of the Washington State Public Disclosure Act.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported on at least 2 occaisions that it was Courtney Love who made this call (without much emphasis) and the Seattle Times reported confusion on the issue of whether it was Love or O'Connor who made the call. (Ms. O'Connor, by the way, has refused to indicate who made the call when I asked her directly, and has not addressed this issue publicly). It is quite obvious that it was no secret that it is without much doubt Courtney Love who made this call, though it is rather astonishing to think that this was not taken as quite significant by either police or press in light of the precient nature of the description offered--narcotics, a shotgun, and suicide were all said to have been the instruments of his death and the manner and which in was to occur. Since Cobain had been missing for 2 days already at the time that the call was placed, and since the King County Medical Examiner states that their estimate of the date of death as April 5 has a margin of error of "more than 24 hours" (according to the KCME pathologist who signed the death certificate), it is quite conceivable that Cobain was already dead at the time this missing persons call was placed, and that the manner of his death, or apparent manner, was known to the caller.

(page 4)

The SPD Endorses Quick Verdict

I spoke to SPD spokesperson Vinette Tichi on April 13, who seemed surprised that I would have any questions about whether or not Cobain had killed himself, after all, she asked, "Didn't you know that we had a suicide attempt on him last month?" and then repeated the use of the term "suicide attempt" to refer to the incident on March 18. The report, of course, concluded that this was only a "verbal disturbance".

Ms. Tichi also made it very clear that there was no reason to conduct an investigation into Cobain's death. She said, on April 13, "We don't normally even investigate suicides. You know, this was a kind of a high profile person, so our homicide detectives did go out to the scene that day to do an investigation, but our case is closed. It has been determined that it was a suicide, self-inflicted, and we aren't doing any further investigation regarding his death.

"We have done a thorough investigation," stated Ms. Tichi, with her statements closely matching those that were being made at this time by Capt. Larry Farrar, head of the SPD homicide squad, in an Associated Press story that same day. The death investigation was complteted, but some sort of investigation was being undertaken, apparently to find Capitol Hill narcotics dealers that Courtney Love was complaining to the media about (this being very strange as she was in jail in Los Angeles on several drugs charges only days before).

In a phone conversation that drew to a quick termination with SPD Chief Norman Stamper on June 3, he endorsed the quick-and-easy suicide verdict, saying that he was aware that on April 8, "they had reached their conclusion that, in fact, it was a suicide." One may wonder that Chief Stamper would find this acceptable, and further wonder at the fact that the homicide detectives' report indicates that they "turned over" the residence to Allan Draher, Cobain's (and, if not prior to his death, then after it certainly, Courtney Love's) attorney, before noon that day, April 8. Nowhere in the police handling of the scene will you find any indication that the detectives were there to do anything but write up a report on the death and then get out of there. Patrol officers are said to have entered the main house, but not homicide detectives. No standard forensics testing such as fingerprint, footprint, fiber sampling, etcetera, was done at the scene. Homicide detectives were apparently willing to entertain no notion but that this was a suicide.

This is also the fate of Ms. Kristen Pfaff, also age 27, who died in her Capital Hill apartment on June 15 or the morning of June 16. Ms Pfaff, who was the bass player in the rock band Hole, led by Courtney Love, died of what the KCME called a narcotics overdose according to a death certificate they issued one month after her death.

(page 5)

Just how a fatal dose of narcotics might have fallen into Ms. Pfaff's hands, or, alternatively, how it might have found its way into her body is not clear. Ms. Pfaff had returned from a European concert tour only a few days before her death, and was, in fact, preparing to depart Seattle on June 16 in a U-Haul truck already loaded with her posessions. Why she would have taken a fatal dose of narcotics at this time is not easy to understand. Likewise, how it was that no investigation into the matter of her death on a basis of someone being guilty of controlled substances homicide (i.e., providing lethal drugs) is a question that needs to be addressed. Ms Pfaff's record company, Geffen Records, immediately came out with a statement that Ms. Pfaff was a drug abuser who had recently been through a drug treatment/rehabilitation program, but her family has denied this. Ms. Pfaff spent the last night of her life in the company of two musicains, one of them the guitarist for the band Hole, a longtime associate of Courtney Love.

According to the SPD homicide squad, Pfaff's case was "handled as a suicide," meaning that there was no need for homicide unit detectives to even visit the scene, and so they did not.

The 200 Hour-Investigation

Although the early statements by police would seem to indicate beyond doubt that the SPD and KCME considered the Cobain case a strictly open-and-shut matter, with only narcotics inquiries following his death, on May 11 the Seattle Times ran a front-page story on how detectives had done "more than 200 hours" of work on Cobain's death, "to eliminate any questions in the future," according to a detective. Although this detective was apparently quite pleased with his work, saying only that SPD had gone to "some pretty remarkable ends," they were only able to conclude that Cobain died, said the Times, "without the possibility of foul play."

To reiterate, there is no evidence, or even any contention by SPD, that they ever treated the Cobain home or garage as a true crime scene where they were gathering evidence on April 8 to determine in the time after the body was found, if they were dealing with a suicide or homicide. This investment of 200 hours of time appears to have been to serve no purpose other than to protect the reputation ofthe SPD by doing some cursory work, while of course avoiding any evidence that might persuasively indicate homicide was the manner of the death, not suicide, the verdict they reached rather irrevocably on April 8.

Police documents made available to me only more than 6 months after the fact of Cobain's death tell a story of a pointless

(page 6)

poking around that was first outlined in the Times' May 11 story. According to the Times, Cobain's trail ends after the morning of April 2, when he was said to have gone to a gun shop to buy shotgun shells (with which to kill himself). The gun shop that the Times' source at taxi company indicated has personnel that are confident that it didn't happen there, and a nearby gun shop said likewise. Both shops said that it was virtually impossible that they would have written out a receipt for a trivial purchase like a box of shotgun shells. Each shop has a register receipt from its cash registers that is nondescript and does not bear the name of the shop in either case. Nevertheless, the Times reported that a "receipt for the ammunition was later found at Cobain's house." The police documents recently released make no mention of any receipt for shotgun shells, instead, they refer to two pieces of "note paper" on which are written references to a gun shop and shotgun shells which, SPD claims, were in Cobain's pants pockets at the time of his death.

The Times' May 11 story did report some very alarming information about attempted charges on Kurt Cobain's Seafirst Mastercard, the last of which was attempted at 1:35 am on April 8. These charges, according to the Times, included attempts to obtain $2,500, $5,000, $1,517.56, among other attempts. The Times stated that Cobain's wife Courtney Love had cancelled his cards from California, in an effort to make it easy for her private investigator to track him down, as she was concerned that he had left a drug treatment facility after only an overnight stay. Said the Times, "As it turned out though, cancelling the card made it more difficult to track Cobain because the bank stopped recording the precise location of the attempted charges." Seafirst's fraud prevention department has told me that this is not so, that the locations of attempted charges would still be recorded. As for their part, the recently-released SPD documents claim that "all of the transactions were attempted over the phone." This seems very unlikely, and a more realistic presumption would be that somewhere Seafirst made surveillance photographs of the person or persons connected to these transactions, who almost certainly was not Kurt Cobain, but who may be involved in his murder.

One other interesting pert of the Times' wrap-up piece is that they report that the "nanny" whose tasks seem to have included taking care of the Cobain's 2-year-old daughter and housesitting, left the Cobain house on the afternoon of April 7 to fly to Los Angeles to, as the SPD reports state, have a "face to face" conversation with Courtney Love. Cobain's body was found above the garage the next day. According to police reports, the nanny, Mr. Michael DeWitt, was involved in rather contentious relations within the Cobain household, and has known Courtney Love for many years.

(page 7)

Kurt Cobain and Drugs

"It's really hard to believe everything you read," said Kurt Cobain in 1992 on national television as a message to fans when accepting a major award. His fans were to understand that this concerned all of the controversy in the press about Cobain's and his wife's alleged (and, to some extent, admitted) narcotics use. The major drama in this area concerned a 1992 article in Vanity Fair magazine which reported that Courtney Love had admitted using heroin while pregnant. The article was a directly contributing factor to the Cobain losing custody of their newborn child briefly as per court order sought by California authorities.

In an article in the Los Angeles Times on Sept. 21, 1992, a month after their daughter's birth ("Cobain to Fans: Just Say No/ Nirvana's New Father Addresses Drug Use") Kurt Cobain made the assertion that he had been guilty of using drugs, but only to the extent of "dabbling" in heroin use more that a year before, and that his dabbling with narcotics was in a search for relief from chronic stomach pains which at that time he had not been able to successfully have treated or diagnosed.

Nevertheless, a book called "Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana", released shortly before Cobain's death, contains some wild claims by Cobain that he had been a full-blown heroin user "just filling up the syringe as far as it could go without pulling the end off." Although the author says he spent many hours interviewing Cobain, he never says that he tape recorded these interviews. Given that Kurt Cobain was known for his wry humor and his disdain for the focus on drug use in his life by the celebrity-hunting press. had he lived, he might have just brushed aside much of all of this with an explanation that some celebrity journalists just don't know when they are being "put on" by his humor (this sort of "put on" of writers is common in the rock music press). This book, was, in fact, specifically marketed to an audience eager to read lurid details about drug use, with its back cover advertising, "Nirvana tells all: about the ongoing allegations of herion use..."

It is probably fair to say that Cobain played into the fixation on drug use in his life to some extent, and there can be no denying its publicity value in his career. He also seems to have been genuinely offended by the effort to characterize him as anything less than an ideal father. His willingness to play along on the issue of illicit drug use is a complex issue, but certainly what has been published on this in the rock music press cannot be presumed to pass any standards of veracity. Had he lived, it appears most likely that he would have merely gone on saying what he told the Los Angeles Times and others, that drugs are "a total waste of time."

(page 8)

To what extent Kurt Cobain ever used illicit drugs is probably never going to be established (and, of course, this is an issue that has remained questionable in the lives of many leading national politicians). But the bonding of his name forever, it would seem, to heroin use in the event of his death is unequivocal. As the Seattle P-I began one story on its front page the week after his death, "Rock singer Kurt Cobain, high on heroin and Valium, shot himself in the head in the late afternoon or evening of April 5..." The report that Cobain had taken a massive dose of heroin at the time of his death came to the P-I not from any official source, but rather from Courtney Love, according to KCME chief pathologist Dr. Donald T. Reay, whose office has never made the toxicology report public. Nevertheless, the enormous wave of media coverage reported as fact the unsubstantiated claim (by, of all people, Cobain's wife) that the lab tests showed a massive dose of heroin taken at the time of Cobain's death.

Cobain had done the overnight stay at the Exodus treatment center in Los Angeles as a response to an "intervention" encounter that occurred in his home on March 25, when his wife had arrainged to have about 10 people, including top record industry people from Los Angeles, drop in unannounced to give the 27-year-old Cobain a dose of "tough love" drug counseling. He is said to have vigorously denied that he had a drug problem. One might speculate that he flew to the overnight stay at the facility (a part of the Daniel Freeman Hospital) days later to satisfy this situation in terms of getting some solid proof from the facility in the form of tests and examinations that would demonstrate that his health was good and that he did not bear any marks of recent drug use.

One extremely curious and ethically compromised aspect of the drugs-at-the-time-of-death issue arises from the press release from the KCME dated April 11, which states that "Kurt Cobain died of a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head. Toxicological studies are being conducted which are routinely performed on autopsies." It seems an indefensible position that they could announce a cause of death without these tests being conducted. Further, although the information was not made explicitly public by any official source in the first month after Cobain's death, the May 11 Seattle Times article has SPD homicide squad leader Larry Farrar claiming that Cobain had a box of drugs and paraphernalia next to his body. "The shooting kit next to him looked like an alley downtown...It was just as dirty a stinking drug box as I've ever seen," the Times reported. But if this evidence of narcotics at the scene was known to SPD and KCME from the outset, why were the toxicology tests described as merely routine, and how could it be said that the shotgun blast could be said to be the only possible cause of death? When I attempted to ask this of Dr. Reay in the weeks after the death, he was quick to insist that my inquiry was all a waste of time.

(page 9)

The Wound Scenario

Perhaps the single most bizarre aspect of this very troubling case is that of the various descriptions of the wound to Cobain's head (or lack thereof) and the blood loss at the scene (or lack thereof). The nature of the wound to Cobain's head seems to be contradicted by nearly everyone who has seen it, with some witnesses contradicting their own descriptions, or contradicting their own descriptions in various ways.

One of the first descriptions of the wound or damage to the head of the body came from the electrician who found it, who said that from several feet away and through the windows of french doors, he saw only that there was "blood in the right ear" of what he initially thought was a mannequin. This account alone clashes considerably from what should result from a contact-range blast from a big-bore shotgun.

It was reported nationally that a reporter from the Seattle Post- Intelligencer had seen the body closely enough to positively identify it as Kurt Cobain's, but the P-I reporter on the scene at the time says that this just isn't so. In the April 9 P-I, a very troublesome wound description was published without attribution: "He was shot once in the left temple." The reporter who says that he didn't see the body also says he won't say who saw it and told him this, and interviewed recently, does not indicate as to whether he feels this is accurate.

Some press accounts report Cobain's body sustaining a massive destruction of flesh and bone, with Cobain's body identifiable only through his fingerprints. If they were told of this massive wound by an official source is not established, and one cannot rule out that sometimes a reporter for a leading national journal will simply make this sort of thing up.

Aside from the not-too-reliable eyewitness descriptions by reporters, police, and pathologists, people who we might assume make it their business to be accurate in these matters, we we must look to the photographic evidence to find any indication that can stand the test of scrutiny. The first still photograph published, in the late edition of the Seattle Times on April 8, actually shows us the right shoulder of the body, clothed in a white shirt. What is remarkable is that not a drop of blood is seen on the shirt or anywhere. Video aired that day showed the same portion of the body with the same lack of blood spots.

The next day the Seattle Times ran a front-page color blow-up of it's now-famous shot of Cobain's right arm, blue-jeaned leg, and sneaker. Much hubbub was to follow about how people were shocked and/or moved by this rather innocuous photo. The photo was most genuinely disturbing when one matched it with what was in the P-I that day about him being shot on the left side of the head. This should have sent much blood and gore to the right, but again, not a drop of blood is seen in this photo.

(page 10)

The following week, I put the question to Dr. Nikolas Hartshorne, the pathologist who had signed Cobain's death certificate on Saturday, April 9, making it officially a suicide. If Cobain had shot himself on the left side of the head, as the P-I reported, where was all of the blood, etcetera, that should have sprayed to the right side of the body but was not seen in the Times' photo. Dr. Hartshorne of the KCME put me on hold for a long while, then came back with a never-heard-before description that Cobain had shot himself in the mouth.

The death certificate then issued that week to expedite cremation (or, at least, this was the net effect of the hasty certification) read that the cause of death was a "Contact perforating shotgun wound to the head (mouth)". This would account for the lack of any blood in the photographs. The blood must have all gone to the left and behind the body.

In late May, working with an anonymous donor, I discovered a piece of video that shows the top of Cobain's body's head and several feet of floor space all around the left side of his head and directly behind his head. This was directly contradictory to Dr. Hartshorne's claims that the earlier photographic evidence was meaningless because "you don't have any idea what was around that head." Now we could see what was around the head at the spot where it was found, and not a drop of blood was seen in Cobain's hair, or anywhere. This was very convincing evidence that Cobain did not die according to the means or manner that have been described by the KCME and the SPD.

I aired that piece of video and discussed it at length on my television program of June 1. The next day, June 2, I reached Dr. Reay of the KCME and found that he now had a brand-new, never-before-heard version of the wound. The new official description was that "all of the shot stayed inside his skull" and that "there was no exit wound."

The next day I spoke long-distance with Dr. Cyril Wecht, arguably the leading forensic pathologist in the U.S. (he is the author of a standard 4-volume text on forensic sciences, published 1992). Dr. Wecht declared this wound scenario as "virtually impossible" and conceivable only in the case, possibly, of extremely defective ammunition. A coroner's investigator for the County of Los Angeles, where they have some 1500 suicides per year, many by firearms, was even stronger in his opinion. He says that he has seen hundreds of cases like this in his 30-year career, and that even with the rare incidence of defective ammunition, there is always an exit wound, and that always a very large blood loss if the person is found lying flat with a shot through the head. On this day I also spoke to Capt. Farrar of SPD homicide, who seconded the "no exit wound" scenario, and even said that he had seen an x-ray of Cobain's intact skull.

(page 11)

The contention of Capt. Farrar and the KCME pathologists is that this impossible wound scenario is possible because, they say, Cobain shot himself using what they call a "light load", meaning that these shells have a smaller size of pellet and sometimes a marginally less powerful powder charge. While "light load" shotgun shells can be much less lethal over a distance of many yards, even a blank shotgun shell with no pellets at all is quite lethal within 1 to 2 feet, so says a medical text, causing devestating bone and tissue damage.

The only person or persons I have ever known to have committed to this "light load" theory in writing is a person or persons claiming to be patrol officers from the SPD's South Precinct. Recently "Sam & Robert" ("Robert" is the nickname the SPD uses to refer to the "Ranier" patrol, and "Sam" is the nickname for the patrol unit south of Othello Street--both are headquartered at 3001 S. Myrtle, which is what "Sam & Robert" use for a return address) wrote me a hostile letter explaining this theory and referring specifically to #8 size shot, which is what Cobain is said to have used in SPD documents concerning his case (something you would think would not concern South Precinct patrol officers). In the recent letter, "Sam & Robert" explained that they are a bunch of South Precinct cops who like to get drunk on Wednesday night and sit around "laffing" at my TV program. In June, this "Sam Roberts" had sent me a letter spelling out that the police were not going to be too "enthusiastic...about investigating your murder." Mailing threatening communications in this way is a violation of section 876 of Title 18 of U.S. federal law, and punishable by up to 5 years in prison.

A recent document from the KCME signed by Drs. Reay and Hartshorne (dated June 20) indicates that Cobain suffered a "contact perforating shotgun wound to head" in one section and a "contact penetrating shotgun wound to head" in another section. The point seems to be that they would like us to believe that these two terms are interchangable. They are not. In fact, they mean exactly the opposite of one another. "Penetrating" means shot goes in but does not come out. "Perforating" means that shot goes in and then comes out the other side--with an exit wound. One who asks Dr. Hartshorne how that they can pretend that these terms mean the same thing is likely to get a shrill response in which he says "just semantics, that's all" a lot, in my experience.

No photograph has ever been published nor has any video ever been aired that shows blood at the scene where Cobain's body was found. Although eyewitness accounts vary widely, it is the extremely inconsistent descriptions offered by the pathologists at the KCME and officials of the SPD that most persuasively argue that tese officials are not telling the truth about the cause of death of Kurt Cobain.

(page 12)

The "Suicide Note"

The cornerstone of the SPD contention that Mr. Cobain killed himself has been, from the time of the very first hour or two after the body was discovered, what SPD spokesperson Vinette Tichi called immediately, apparently on instructon from SPD detectives, the "suicide note." (Ms. Tichi at one point was contending that she did not say this that morning, but instead said "apparent suicide note," but this is not borne out by what is heard in videotape of her statement on April 8).

The key question in examining the handling of the Cobain death and the so-called suicide note must be this: did SPD give adequate attention to the possibility that the note was a forgery, manufactured to conceal Cobain's murder? The answer is, of course, that they did not appropriately address this possibility.

The actual handling of the note has never been particularly clear. Courtney Love is said to have been handling the original note, in red ink, at a service for Cobain's family and friends, and on April 13 Vinette Tichi indicated that Ms. Love did indeed have the note, and then stated she really did not know.

The police reports from the scene state that "This is a suicide note directed to Courtney and (deleted) and signed Kurt Colbain (sic)." The letter, the top of which reads "To Boddah," who is said to have been an imaginary friend of Cobain's when he was a child (so it is said in two books about him), is not actually "signed" by Kurt Cobain as the police report indicates. His name is spelled out in very small printed letters, just like the rest of the letter. The SPD could have determined this discrepancy from their own files: here you can note the startling difference between how his name was "signed" in the s-note ("suicide note") and how he signed a fingerprint card from his arrest by SPD on 6/4/94. The difference could not be more distinct.

Although the chronology of events concerning the discovery of another cryptic note is not clear, SPD records state that there was another note signed "yer penpal Courtney" that private investigator Tom Grant, who had been hired by Courtney Love in Los Angeles, had at one time asserted to police was actually written by Michael DeWitt. This was said to have been written to Kurt Cobain and seems to be the note referred to by DeWitt in an interview with SPD, when he said that he wrote the note to Kurt because he was "pissed" at him about alleged drug use.

(page 13)

This forces a very pertinent question: if there was a note found at the house, the authorship of which was established to be apparently false, why would this not alert SPD detectives to the strong possibility that the alleged suicide note was also a fake? The answer to this question is probably best found in observing the negligence in the other areas of the case.

The SPD did make a belated attempt to authenticate the note, though this appears to have been a not particularly sincere effort. On April 18, SPD detectives asked Courtney Love to provide a sample of Kurt Cobain's handwriting for comparison, and according to the police reports, "Courtney was told of the need for a handwriting sample from Kurt. She turned over 3 small pages of note paper which contained the suicide note Kurt had written in Rome." This is quite remarkable. In order to attempt to authenticate one possibly false suicide note, SPD detectives used what they called another "suicide note", never taking into consideration the possibility that Courtney Love, primary beneficiary of the estate of Kurt Cobain, might have motive to expedite the conclusion of suicide for purposes of a more rapid securing of his estate (in avoiding probate delays that a homicide verdict might force, or that she may have been an active party in her husband's homicide). Using only one sample of handwriting for comparison, in this case a document subject to the same questions of authenticity as the primary document in question is nonsensical, unless, of course, SPD detectives were looking for a handwriting sample that was most likely to support their original conclusion on April 8 that the "suicide note" found then was genuine.

Although SPD reports show that detectives received confirmation from the Washington State Patrol crime lab that "the suicide note found at the the scene was written by Cobain," the WSP lab will vigorously assert that their authentication only indicates that this is a conclusion that can be reached only in the case of the comparison sample being genuine "known" handwriting by Kurt Cobain.

One might also wonder why a document this challenging was not given to the experts at the FBI's national laboratories for analysis and latent fingerprint detection. The fingerprint work done at SPD is apparently of a very limited quality, as their examination of the shotgun allegedly used by Cobain to kill himself had "no legible prints".

The SPD did go to the extent of consulting with ("hiring" according to the Seattle Times) at least 3 local handwriting examiners to authenticate the Cobain "suicide note". These examiners were apparently given only photocopies, not the original, to inspect, and all 3 will tell you that they backed SPD's original finding of authenticity, though none of these experts is at all willing to discuss their methods used to arrive at this conclusion.

(page 14)

So often, it seems, this is the case with expert witnesses who work within the legal system. According to SPD records, the original note was handed back over to Ms. Love on June 17 (the day after Kristen Pfaff was found dead). At least two of the expert used by SPD to authenticate the clearly indicated that the note that they inspected in photocopy form was also the note that appeared in photocopy form in the British magazine Vox. A close examination of this document reveals some very troubling aspects of the handwriting therein, particularly in that it is almost entirely devoid of "connecting" movements between letters, save two at a time, and that this kind of meticulous printing out of handwriting is an obvious red flag that the document may be a painstaking forgery, penned out meticulously by a forger who adopted a "printing" style of writing to facilitate the stopping and starting of their pen movement as often as they liked. The note's writing is discussed at length in Appendix B, but certain key points should be very clear on the subject of the s-note:

1. SPD's immediate conclusion that this was a suicide note and that Cobain had written it was improper and without merit.

2. SPD's belated attempt to authenticate this document was cursory at best. Their efforts look suspiciously like tactics employed to avoid raising any doubts about its being by Cobain.

3. The clear possibility of forgery was not dealt with in any reasonable way. The existence of the "yer penpal Courtney" note and its probable authorship by Mr. DeWitt would point to a lively interest in Mr. DeWitt, at least, in the activity of writing phony notes.

Courtney Love

One aspect of this evident homicide which has to be taken with the utmost seriousness is that of the possible role of Courtney Love-Cobain in her husband's death. A rock music singer who has yet to achieve commercial success in this field (her husband's band has sold at least 100 times the number of recordings as has Ms. Love's, according to recent figures), Ms. Love has long had a reputation of strange and outrageous behavior, which has increased, and not declined, since her husband's death. As a flamboyant public figure one might say that she merely makes an easy target for suspicion, but the evidence that indicates her possible role is more than mere odd character.

Ms. Love was married to Kurt Cobain for only 2 years (25 months) prior to his death. They had not known each other too well or too long before the marriage, and they were married while she was pregnant. In a January issue of Rolling Stone magazine, Kurt Cobain stated in an interview that he was perhaps headed

(page 15)

to divorce with Ms. Love in the near future, and that if this happened, he would try to end it amicably. After his death, the same magazine reported that papers were supposedly already being prepared for divorce by Cobain.

Because the Cobain publicly discussed having a prenuptual agreement, and because Kurt was clearly in a financially dominant role in the event of a divorce proceeding, and because Kurt Cobain was known to have been a doting father with his daughter (while, by some accounts, Ms. Love was a rather indifferent mother), and because Ms. Cobain was a beloved public figure while Ms. Love tended strongly to be merely a controversial one, the effect of a divorce on her career and assets could be presumed to have been likely devestating. Given her aggressive attempt to denounce her husband as a narcotics user in the last days of his life, she seems to have been in a not very good position at all in terms of her relations with him or her desires to achieve success and greater fame.

Kurt Cobain's death can be said to have had a distinctly beneficial set of results for Ms. Love. Her well-publicized romantic endeavors with other rock musicians since his death demonstrate that she is likely none-too-grieving in a personal sense, and financially speaking, her outlook has turned around very suddenly. Negotiations for a motion picture about her husband's life and featuring music over which she now holds copyright (once probate is completed) could net her tens of millions of dollars in a very short period of time, and her status as a "survivor" of their marriage rather than an outcast puts a sunnier spin on her public persona and career opportunities. Given the examples of other major rock celebrities who have died young and left a substantial body of work to be exploited, it is clear that the ultimate value of the estate should not be considered less than possibly more than a hundred million dollars as it is marketed over many years. Love's apparent false reporting of the missing persons report, in at least as much as impersonating Cobain's mother and incorporating all of the elements that were to play a part in his death discovered 4 days later (shotgun, heroin, suicide) all cast her role in his death under grave suspicion. Add to this what looks like possibly a self-engineered arrest for narcotics by the Beverly Hills, California police later that week (the perfect alibi for anything is being in jail at the time it happens) in which substances and paraphernalia thought to be narcotics and illegal materials (prescription pad, syringes) were all explained away by her attorney as harmless, and also Ms. Love's very active public relations campaign to eliminate doubt but that Cobain's death was a suicide (she claims he attempted suicide in Rome a month before his death, although his

(page 16)

physician in Italy has clearly expressed an opposing opinion). The picture that begins to develop when you take these factors and many others into the scenario gives a weight of circumstantial evidence that is hard to ignore. Among others who should be appropriately investigated concerning their roles in all of this is Michael DeWitt, the "nanny" who flew to Los Angeles the day before Kurt's body was discovered.

In Conclusion

This report is only an overview of the key points in the matter of the death, apparently murder, of Kurt Cobain. In the past 8 months of investigation into this, I have found that the evidence clearly tends to point in one direction, that being that Cobain was a homicide victim and that that fact was concealed through the active efforts of KCME and SPD. If one is not willing to consider the very real and distinct possibility of falsificaton by these authorities, one can get nowhere in discovering the truth about the death, the murder of Kurt Cobain. Admitting that the actions of these investigatory agencies must be held to account is the first step toward correcting their considerable shortcomings.

Kurt Cobain was not merely a "rock star". He was a perceptive and articulate observer of his time who may have succeeded in using the rock music idiom as a means of personal expression as well as anyone ever has. As such, he most certainly will not be forgotten. Be assured that the circumstances surrounding his death, while not just yet a part of the mass consciousness, will very soon be known widely.

Just as any person does, Kurt Cobain descerves justice. In very many ways, Cobain exemplified Seattle and the Northwest in the hard-bitten, individualistic character of so many of its natives. His popularity here was not merely due to commercial success and popularity elsewhere, people really felt he was one of us. The way in which the handling of his death investigation was carried out casts a shame across the character of the official bodies that govern our locality. In this case, the local agencies have shown themselves to be uncaring, incompetent, and possibly criminal in their actions. There is still time, I believe, to largely correct this situation and to bring those who murdered Kurt Cobain to justice. Failure to to so can only be considered a further compounding of the errors already made.

Recommendations

1. The City of Seattle and King County government should take any and all actions neccessary to secure the greatest pool of extant evidence in this case, and to safeguard it from possible destruction from those who might prefer that it not exist.

(page 17)

2. The King County Executive has in his power the right to order an investigation and inquest into the causes and circumstances surrounding the death of any individual. Because this case concerns what looks to be, from every angle, flagrant violations by the pathologists of medical ethics and common decency, the King County Medical Examiner's staff could not possibly be employed to investigate their own work to report gross misconduct. Therefore, experts from outside the local pool of those whose professional paths cross with those of the pathologists in question should be brought in for consultation and/or to conduct the investigation of this inquest.

3. Because this case involves evident mishandling of the case by SPD, and quite possibly deliberate and blatant inappropriate actions, the City of Seattle should petition for the partic ipation of the U.S. Justice Department in investigating this case, which apparently concerns gross police misconduct and an interstate conspiracy to commit murder. Because of what can be presumed to be close personal ties between the personnel of the SPD and that of local FBI, if the investigation is to get anywhere, it is probably advisable that diligence be made to request that investigators be brought in to investigate this matter from elsewhere, at least in a supervisory role.

This is a still from the key video shot in the short time before the police shielded the scene from view with a tarp. I discovered this footage and aired it for the first time on the eighth program in the Cobain investigation on June 1, l994. Click on for blow-up of image.

This is a section of the Seattle Times front page from April 9, l994. As with all other known photographic evidence, not a drop of blood is seen. Click on for blow-up of image.

Click on here for full-motion video of the key video footage, within your system's limitations.

********************************************************************

by Richard Lee

The document examined in these pages is the one that was published in the English music magazine Vox in September, 1994, which a local police source has positively confirmed is identical to the alleged suicide note of Kurt Cobain. Most of this analysis was first discussed in several weeks of programming of the cable-TV program over a year ago.

A recent effort to gain official disclosure of this document was greeted by a typically bizarre official reaction. After several weeks of being referred around to several persons at the Washington State Patrol crime laboratory in September and early October, I was finally positively told by the laboratory manager there that despite objections they had heard from the Seattle Police Department to their releasing this document (and the "Rome" note Courtney Love had provided to detectives as a genuine comparison sample of Kurt Cobain's writing) they were prepared to release it within a week in the absence of any theoretical "court order" preventing them from doing so. A letter then immediately followed from that official informing me that they would not comply with the release that they had just promised. Subsequent phone calls then found this WSP laboratory manager being very elusive as to why they were reneging on their compliance with the Washington State Public Disclosure Act, as there had been no such court order as she had previously indicated would be necessary to block its release, with the lab manager concluding on one occaision by saying taken it under her own authority to shield the document from release.

A two-sentence letter from a Senior Counsel to the Attorney General of Washington state then arrived, dated October 25.

Dear Mr. Lee:

The purpose of this letter is to let you know that a lawsuit has been filed to stop production of the documents that you requested in your September 18, 1995 letter.

Once the litigation is resolved, I will let you know as to whether the documents can be produced.

Very truly yours, CAROL A. SMITH Senior Counsel

A Senior Counsel of the Attorney General of the State of Washington has written to inform me that a totally undescribed lawsuit has been filed to prevent public disclosure of documents that are part of a case of violent death of a public figure, a case which was long ago closed by police. This undescribed lawsuit has been filed by some anonymous party with undescribed standing to do so, having been prompted to sue by unindicated causes. The Senior Counsel, Carol A. Smith, whose offices are located in remote Olympia, says she will let me know how the litigation is resolved through undescribed means, at some totally unspecified time.

Handwriting Analysis

The easiest thing to understand about the alleged suicide note of Kurt Cobain is that the Seattle Police Department assumed it to be genuine immediately, having their spokesperson tell the media the very morning that the body was found that "there was a suicide note left inside the, uh, the uh, house" (the SPD later said that the note was found inside the detached garage, next to the body).

There are various psychological and biographical details pertaining to the lack of authenticity to the note, which I will not address here.

The most startling thing about the handwriting in this note is that there are very few connections between letters, meaning that this is a very rare document in which the adult writer has failed to convey any mastery of cursive styling usually associated with a mature handwriting style. In fact, it appears that with the exception of several words with a connection between the double-formation "ee" and an adjoining letter, there are no cursive movements showing three consecutive letters formed together without pen-lifts, except one, in line 18, where you will find "they're" with "hey" connected. This seems very strange for several reasons:

l. This note is said to have been written on a standard-size piece of notebook paper, meaning that the writing was very, very small. This would seem to be rather unnatural in the first place, and would, you would think, force Cobain into the easiest handwriting style he could manage. What you find, though, is very tiny letters, individually written with ending strokes and beginning strokes nearly connecting, but not quite, with pen-lift involved. This style seems artificial in the extreme.

2. In my own effort to hand-copy a note nearly identical to this one (using a pen similar to the one said to be found next to the note), I found that close writing of very small letters with a ball-point pen causes "blobs" of ink to "well up" at the tip of the pen, and then appear as small disturbances when trying to write smooth lines. This "blobbing" if ink occurred anytime there was a delay of more than a few seconds in continuing to write, for instance, in moving from right to left to start a new line in the letter (note, that is). There is almost a complete absence of "blobs" anywhere in this note, leading one to believe that the author of the note was compelled to wipe off the nib of the ball-point as he slowly went along. This would be the sort of behavior one would expect of forger, not the author of a suicide note.

3. There are several lengthy examples of Cobain's handwriting in the 1993 book "Come As you Are: The Story of Nirvana", which is about Mr. Cobain's life and musical career. Just as an example of the discrepancies, look at the first two lines of the draft copy of the lyrics to his famous song "Smells Like Teen Spirit", i.e., the title and the following line, "Come out and play make up the Rules", and one can easily identify (in only 12 consecutive words) 5 different examples of 4-letter cursive movements, and one 3-letter combination. In other examples of Cobain's handwriting in the book, you will find persistent use of lengthy cursive movement, which is, as is easily seen, entirely absent in the alleged suicide note.

Another troubling aspect of the alleged suicide note is that the last four lines appear to be markedly different in size and formation from the other 36 lines of the writing.

One place to look for clues is in the formation of the letters "h", "m", and "n", all of which, in normal cursive writing, have identical concluding strokes:

l. The writer of the note seems to have practiced making these letters with a convincing cursive stroke (in a two-letter combination only) to the letter "e". For instance, in the first 37 examples of the "he" combination in the note, the "h" and the "e" connect. In the 38th example, in line 39, they very clearly do not.

2. The "me" combinations are also persuasive of a distinct difference between the main body of the note and the last 4 lines. The first 18 "me" combinations connect, and then in the last sentence before the salutation ("remember" in line 34) they do not. The 20th "me" is in line 40, where they are also totally disconnected, with the letters formed in such a way that they resemble the formation in line 34.

3. The "ne" combinations show a lack of mastery that is not demonstrated in the more common "he" and "me" combination strokes, which the writer (forger) may have more assiduously practiced. 4 of 11 "ne" combinations do not connect, ("complainer", line 3, "entertained", line 17, and "everyone", line 22 are the first three). The size and shape of the overall writing changes between lines 36 and 37. In line 36, "Courtney" is written with the "ne" connecting, and then in in line 37, only nine words later, "Courtney" is written with the "n" and the "e" totally disconnected.

Another complete discrepancy between the main body of the letter and the last four lines is in the combinations of "fo". In the first 10 examples of "f" followed by "o", the cross-stroke on the "f" connects clearly to the "o". In lines 38 and 39, however, we see 2 examples of the word "for" in which the "f" and the "o" are totally disconnected.

The writer seems to have practiced connecting the "v" and he "e", but without true consistency. In 34 "ve" combinations, 8 do not connect, one "v" is left out (sensiti e", line 24, and in line 40, the all-capitals words "LOVE" have no connection between the "v" and the "e").

Combining "ce" with consistency seems to have also challenged the writer--5 of 13 "ce" combinations do not connect, even in writing Mr. Cobain's daughter's name, he twice combines "ce" but fails to do so in line 38. Just as in the writing of the wife's name, line 36 combines two letters, "ce" in the daughter's name, but thirteen words later, in line 38, this is changed, with "c" and "e" separate.

One of the important factors to consider in examining the distictly different writing in lines 37-40 is that these are the only statements that are compellingly referential to suicide or departure of some kind. The rest of the note seems more like a gripe to Cobain's fans about why, perhaps, his career might be changing (a Los Angeles Times story from 2 days before the body was discovered reported that his rock band was likely breaking up, according to unnamed sources, though it has been alleged that this story had been "planted" by Courtney Love-Cobain). It seems that perhaps if evidence (fingerprint, handwriting, or otherwise) were to be said to be linked to any of the conspicuous suspects by police investigators, the forgers (presumably persons in the murder conspiracy), might find a "fall back" defense in saying that they manipulated the bottom of the note only, say, for instance, after finding the body, as something to satisfy fan curiousity about his death.

Especially when one compares this lengthy sample to other Kurt Cobain handwriting samples (in the book "Come As You Are" or even his signature), one notices the very persistent cursive flow that is interjected frequently into the genuine examples, and the total absence of many of the distinctive style-points that characterize genuine Cobain handwriting. It seems as if some amateur forger tried real hard, within certain pre-determined limits (dropping challenging style-points like the frequent use of the capital "A" as a connecting letter) and then ultimately really didn't do a very convincing job of fakery.

This has been a relatively limited synopsis of findings.

click on the image below to view the alleged suicide note in photocopy

handwriting analysis stuff input 11/13, 11/14.

Note Card 1 features 6 of the 7 strongest examples of possible cursive movement from the s-note. Of these, only "theyre" has a convincing specimen of a 3-letter movement ("hey"). The other examples appear strongly to be run-togethers and not cursive movement (briefly, "totally" and "hateful" involve pen lifts in the "t"s and "f", "because" and "destructive" would have to include an unlikely bottom-to-top "s" formation, and "fade" would have to involve using "a" as a connector, which it is not elsewhere in the s-note). The sole strong example of a possible 4-letter combination is seen in Note Card 4 in the word "where" (from s-note line 27). Because the other 29 examples of "r" following "e" show no sign of cursive connection, we can assume that this is merely a run-together. and not a very unusual bottom-to-top formation of "r".

In Note Card 2 we see examples of Cobain's use of the capital "A" in the incorrect manner (that is, not at the beginning of a sentence or a proper name), frequently as a connecting letter of considerable sophistication, as seen here in examples from the manuscript of "Smells Like Teen Spirit". In the several pages of Cobain writing in "Come As You Are", one will have no trouble finding more than 100 examples of this, though the sole example in the s-note is the clumsy "BoddAH" in line 1. The forger found this element of Cobain's writing too challenging, especially as a connecting letter, and so decided to make no effort at mimicking it.

Note Card 3 shows several examples of a diagonal stroke connecting the two perpendicular parts of "t", from "Smells Like Teen Spirit". None of these single-stroke "t"s can be found in the s-note.

Note Card 4 shows a particularly bizarre example of a presumed "Freudian slip" of the pen which can be supposed to have been intended to be seen later as indicative of a disturbed state of mind in the author, allegedly Cobain.

Physically, there is no reason for the darkening of the letters "who re" in the words "who remembers" (from line 25 of the s-note), as we have said, this particular ball-point seems to have had a remarkable ability to resist any of the "welling up" of ink at the tip, almost as if the writer was dabbing off the nib with a tissue as he went along.

Psychologically, the placement of this "who re" next to the word "daughter" would be very difficult to account for in the mind of Kurt Cobain, who, by all accounts, was a doting and even reverential father. The existence of this strange anomaly and others in the note (including the various show-business references in what was supposed to have been a very private communication), would lead one to look toward Courtney Love's possible role in the creation of the s-note. Remember that is was she who was bold enough to "plug" a major motion picture, called S.F.W., in which she participated in the music track, in the taped reading of the s-note on April 10, 1994 (reportedly unauthorized by its producers to do so), by saying "so fucking what." The song Courtney Love contributed to that film project was called "Teenage Whore". She is also known for having tried to popularize the term "kinder whore" in connection with the recent fashion fad of mature women wearing baby-doll dresses. Because this s-note was intended to become some sort of ultimate rock-culture statement, its value as an advertising medium for Courtney Love would seem to be very substantial.

this is a work in progress--stayed tuned. RLee. 10-22-1995 hey, lookie, gang, I did a whole page before interruptions did their thing. do stay tuned. RLee 11-6-1995. pages 9-13 input on the evening of 11-9-95, before midnight closing. Stay tuned. RLee. Here it is, the completion of the basic text of last year's report to local officials. As you might guess, their responses showed them to be less than Confucian administrators. stay tuned for much more in graphics and text. RLee. ll-10-95, 11:43 pm.

The precise progess of this document has been disrupted somewhat in that some of the most recent changes and additions were whacked out of the system due to a glitch in the system of the local server. The entry of the latest material on the s-note, i.e., the note cards 1-4 scan and notes date from 1/21/96, and crashed out of the system on Saturday, Feb. 3 at about 5 pm. I have had to rebuild the comments next to the cards from memory.(RLee 2/11/96). A correction was input concerning the formation of "s" in Note Card #1, which now reads "bottom-to-top," not vice versa (RLee 5/18/96).

******************************

There is always a lot of new news to impart to those following this story, much of which makes it onto the cable-TV program but which is not input in a timely way to the readers of this web site. Believe me, we will keep inputting new good stuff as we get the chance and as it seems most appropriate to this format.

We are rapidly approaching our production of the 100th 1-hour program in the Kurt Cobain Was Murdered TV series. Give us a toast on March 13. Last week we were able to do something new when we followed the presentation of program #95 with a 30-minute live call-in studio show, which went, if I do say so, very well.

An even more interesting little event occurred tonight at a local billiard parlor where I was able to have a brief non-interview with the "Senator", Krist N. This was at something called the "Washington Music Industry Coalition's First Annual Celebrity Pool Tournament", and was sponsored by an astonishingly frank alignment of the usual suspects: MCA, Geffen Records, Sub Pop Records, and Senator Krist's let's-payola-the-politicians organization, JAMPAC.

K.N. was to be found at the extreme far corner of the establishment, up a flight of stairs guarded by a guy who said you had to pay $10 to play "Celebrity Challenge" pool. I asked him if it was ok if I was a shark, that is, if it was okay if I wanted to win against the celeb. He chuckled and said okay and let me through.

As I reached thew top of the stairs, K.N. took his best shot, which was to send a ball high off the table, and another onto the floor. He flubbed another 3 shots before his buddies set him up to sink the 8 ball real easy, as it was 3 inches from the pocket with the cue ball conveniently about 2 feet from it. The "Senator" sank the 8 and headed down the stairs without saying anything to his hangers-on. In pursuit, I went down the narrow stair after him, firmly placing a hand on his dark-suit-jacketed shoulder (this being the traditional attire of the MCA record-executive gang) and asked him if he thought I was really there because I was interested in celebrities or what. His response was to cackle in a high-pitched laugh that I could only call rather canine. I told him I didn't think too much of his laughing at me, that I hardly thought that this was an adequate response. I asked him if he still thought I was "pissing up a tree," which is what he had the nerve to tell me when we had our last similar encounter last January.

I asked K.N. if he thought I was in this for money and getting no response, asked him how much money he was thinking of getting out of all of this. I asked him if he really meant what he said in the Rolling Stone when he said "Who cares?" about Kurt Cobain's alleged suicide. This was "Senator" Krist's first statement to anyone in the press in any way about Kurt's death, unless you count the bizarre unsigned letter he sent me last January (and which I am mentioning publicly here for the first time). His sole response of any merit was to say "Some people need to open their eyes," which seems like the sort of canned comment we've come to expect from him, sounding as if it were authored by a record company publicist.

K.N. signaled his security boys and then sort of "waved" me toward the door with a little "creeping finger" gesture, toward the door. I wasn't really there to cause a ruckus, but to force a comment or chat from K.N., and so I followed, thinking for a moment that he might actually have the fortitude to speak with me or tell me to bugger off directly, instead of letting his lackies do this, which is what happened last year. Nothing doing. K.N. held the door, said something like "have a good evening", trying his best to do an evil smile, and may have even gotten a hand in on forcing me out the door, vigorously aided by four bruiser-types who seemed to enjoy these moments of brutality. For my part, I made a few choice comments as I fought back, best characterized by shouting "Who cares!" in K.N.'s face (he is 6'7" and was, of course, in no danger, with his muscle-boys doing their muscle-work on me). Shouting "Who cares!", I felt strangely like Johnny Rotten singing "No fun!", as you might well imagine. The bruiser in the blue security shirt #818 stayed on top of me, shouting "I'm gonna beat your ass!" if I didn't flee immediately.

The celebrity pool-shoot, by the way, was to raise funds to "fight censorship", although apparently this censorship thing in the eyes of K.N. and company does not have anything to do with the roughing-up, forcible ejection, and violent threatening of a journalist who was there to ask a few questions of the one of the event's principal organizers, Krist Novoselic, the former bass player for the rock band Nirvana, who now is seeking a career in, of all things, politics.

"The Seattle rock community" indeed.

Richard Lee, 11:11 pm, February 11, 1996.

********************************************

 
 Kurt Cobain Was Murdered

 Internet Column of March 16, 1996 


 "But as I reviewed the record, a second more horrifying thought
occurred to me. Perhaps Dallas homicide had systematically altered
evidence not just to nail Oswald in a fit of misguided patriotism. Perhaps
it had behaved as it had  intentionally,  to protect  the
actual killers of both John Kennedy and J.D. Tippit. If that were true, it
would mean that we were dealing with something beyond incompetence, even
beyond cover-up. It would mean that Dallas homicide--or key members of
it--had at worst colluded in the assassination before it happened or at
best actively ratified it afterwards.




-Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins



Now, as of the last few days, with more than l00 editions of the Kurt
Cobain Was Murdered  cable-TV program to our credit, we feel that the
monumental aspect of our work on this case is beyond doubt.  A common
American cliche would be to say that we can now die a happy man. I
however, will not resort to this hackneyed excamation of self-
congratulations for several reasons, principally that I am not now very
happy at all, and even less accepting of the idea of my imminent death. 



To say that I am discontented with the idea of becoming some sort of next
figure in "Seattle rock" to die mysteriously is not to say that I don't
often get the creeping feeling of this distinct possibility. Two very
mysterious clusters of homicides have been well known to have been
developing in this town for several years--murders or likely murders of
persons involved in rock music, and persons who are apparently being
murdered by the Seattle Police Department. As someone who was close to
Kurt Cobain likes to call certain situations, this is a "dollars to
doughnuts" wager, that is, that whoever these persons are who are going
around doing these killings, the last thing they want is some guy going
before many thousands of television viewers every week to talk about it. 



My particular reason for pondering my own mortality this evening has a lot
to do with events I managed to live through this afternoon. One of the
particularly horrifying features of my life as the sole investigator of
the Kurt Cobain murder these two long years has been that I am keenly
aware that the sorts of people who are distinctly implicated as possibly
behind the Cobain murder--the Mafia, show-business sleazos, the Seattle
Police Department--are not the at all the kind of schemers who like to sit
back and do nothing as they are being criticized. Rather, they are the
sort who like to exert pressure immediately, brutally if if suits their
needs. I have felt long overdue for retribution. 


 

Nevertheless, I have persisted in doing the weekly one-hour program,
and last week, following our 100th edition, did our 2nd effort at a live
phone-in presentation, where viewers can call in with questions. One of
the dangers of this sort of impromptu show is that I may let slip some
comment that I wish I hadn't said, particlarly in the realm of possibly
letting go with some clue as to how some adversary might find a way to
find me and do harm (this is actually a continual concern, as I am always
recognized when anywhere in public, and it would be easy enough for some
gossipy observer to mention to the wrong person where I might be
frequently found). 



Foremost among all of my concerns is that I will be murdered by the
Seattle Police Department. As the local organization that exercises an
active interest in who-is-killing-whom and which has its eyes and ears
everywhere (even as it is coordinated by such feeble brains), they are the
most likely entity to set me up for a murder, or to just do it themselves.
As described in the Compendium Document part of this web-site, in 1994 I
received 2 letters from persons calling themselves "Sam and Robert", who,
without a doubt, were actually some gang of Seattle Police who had decided
that they would get active in trying to intimidate me. The principal
implication of this harassment was that, as they wrote, "your murder" 
might occur soon, and that the Seattle Police were certainly not going to
do anything to investigate it. Despite my notifying local and federal
authorities of this situation, no response indicating that they might
consider this as police misconduct or corruption has been forthcoming. 
 



But these are hardly the most improper actions of the Seattle Police
Department. Only 8 days ago an inquest jury handed down no recommendation
to prosecute homicide in the case of the death of Edward Anthony Anderson,
a 27-year-old black man who was shot by police outside his residence on
January 15, the national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King. My
understanding of the incident was that this took place at night in a
well-lighted yard area, with the victim, who is alleged to have been
fighting with his wife, lying flat on his back when he was shot through
the spine at the neck, at a distance that the authorities themselves say
was only about 1 foot. The officer's videotaped testimony showed him to be
claiming that the Glock .40 caliber gun just "discharged", and when he
looked at his hand, his trigger finger was still "indexed", meaning that
his claim has been all along that the gun shot itself, as if the gun was
defective (the police technicians who tested it found no such defect).
This means that neither the officer nor the Seattle Police Department were
able to offer an explanation, and yet the inquest jury recommended no
prosecution. The 31-year-old white officer smiled as he described the gun
firing itself, and has offered no apologies. Most disturbingly, Seattle
Police Chief Norm Stamper, who (along with Mayor Norm Rice) put the deadly
Glocks (with a notoriously light trigger-pull) in the hands of the
trigger-happy local police (announcing this new acquistion, strangely, the
week Kurt Cobain was killed), declared last Wednesday that no punitive
action will be taken against the officer, only that he will be reassigned
to a new precinct, and, most importantly, given more training on how to
handle that extremely dangerous firearm. 



My program last week had a good deal of commentary and video footage on
that case, and in the call-in part of the program, I even took the risk of
mentioning several items that later caused me concern as they might
contribute to the general security threat I live under. I said why be shy
about mentioning the case of a woman who was arrested (for minor charges,
possibly traffic infractions) only months ago by Seattle Police and was
soon found strangled in a holding cell with her own shoelaces, a "suicide"
as the police and local media called it. I also mentioned that I saw a
young kid talking to his mom about the High Times cover story on
Kurt Cobain at the Tower store a few days earlier, a site which I have
photographed often in video (they have been displaying Nirvana merchandise
very conspicuously there). I also stated to a caller that I had never 
been to jail in Seattle and I certainly hoped to avoid the experience.



Today I went to the magazine rack at Tower Books shortly after 1 pm, and
within minutes of my entering the store, two policemen followed, standing
close to me among the magazine racks. (I should explain that I always
carry a cheap 110 mini-camera these days, and that only this week I took
several photos of a woman examining the High Times cover story, an
event that undoubtedly caused gossip among the Tower personnel). Officer
S. took a position among the music magazines, only a few feet away from
me. I took my camera out and tried to photograph him in the same frame as
the Kurt cover story, although the flash may not have gone off. I said
quietly, "Hi, officer" and was somewhat curious that neither his being
photographed nor my saying "hi" caused him to look my way. I took a copy
of Record Collector and started to look at it on the rack opposite.
Officer S. went over to officer L. and said, "Hey, I'm gonna take a look
at this Kurt Cobain thing," and returned to his former place. I got a
flash photo of him standing in front of the Kurt face on the magazine
cover, an then a particlarly good snap of him (from behind him, over his
shoulder, but with his big Seattle Police arm-patch obvious) having opened
up the 2-page spead with the headline "Who Killed Kurt Cobain?" I put the
mini-camera away and resumed looking at Record Collector. 

 A minute later Officer S. was standing very close to me, with a firm
grip on my right elbow, acting very angry. He asked me something along the
lines of what did I think I was doing. He said that I could not just go
around taking pictures of people in public. I said that I have been doing
this for years and my belief is that it is perfectly legal. He said that
it is not and asked me where the camera was (which was in my pocket). I
said hey, it's still a free country, to which he answered with a definite,
"No, it's not." I said, what do you mean, it's not a free country, and he
immediately insisted, "You're coming with me outside," grabbing my left
arm and putting it into a half-Nelson position, pushing me through the
many book-and-magazine shoppers there. I made mildly loud protestations of
"hey, what's the problem?" and "what did i do, take a picture?" to call
attention of the witnesses to this strange event. I protested to him,
"Hey, I am a professional journalist. I have the right to take a picture."
His response, full of irony for me now, was "If you're with the Seattle
Times or the  Seattle P-I you're a reporter, but you're not,
you're nobody!" 



Outside, Officer S. walked me about 20 feet from the door (away from
witnesses) and said, "You're under arrest. Put you hands behind your
back." I asked, "What for?" and Officer S. immediately grabbed the hair on
the back of my head and forced my head down, slamming me down on one knee.
He immediately tried several times to perform some sort of "judo"-type
movement of snapping my head very quickly to the side while gripping my hair,
which, it was immediately apparent to me, was intended to make me lose
consciousness like a knockout punch. This didn't work, though, and so he
started pulling my hair in various ways and trying to force my face to the
pavement, which I tried to prevent by keeping a hand between my face and
the sidewalk. he was screaming, "Hands behind your back!" and I started
shouting, "Help!"  loudly and repeatedly. 



It is interesting to note that his partner was absent for this scene and
did not show up for about five minutes. I was shouting to various
witnesses that "I am being abducted by Officer S.!' and "This is a
political kidnapping!" In retrospect this might seem weird to some, but
the entirety of Officer S.'s behavior and his attempt to snap my neck in
particular left me with the distinct impression that Officer S. would not
mind at all killing me. It also occurred to me that the whole of the
situation was a set-up, and that they had something very particular
already planned for me, perhaps a many-days-long session of imprisonment
and intimidation, perhaps worse. As I shouted Officer S.'s name and the
fact that I was being abducted, Officer S. tightened the handcuffs as far
as he possibly could, and when this failed to silence me, he started
twisting my fingers in various ways to try to torture me to silence.
Officer S. was still alone, with, against standard procedures, his
partner, Officer L., apparently still hiding in the book store, and so 2
witnesses, a middle-aged black woman and a young white male, came forward
and started asking Officer S. a few questions about why he was torturing
me underneath the jacket that he had pulled back over my wrists. The woman
perceptively mentioned that this was obviously a case in which there are
"very powerful people involved", and the young man soon mentioned that he
knew who I was from the TV show, too. Officer S. never made such an
admission. 



I must have shouted Officer S.'s name and the claim that this was a
political abduction about 20 times, with all sincerity, I assure you, and
with the numbers of people who were witnessing this, I started to feel
more secure in terms of probably not facing imminent death. A police car
showed up in a few minutes and officer S. and the driver, Officer C.,
taking me over the sub-station at the foot of the Space Needle. (Officer
L. showed up only momentarily at the end of the scene, before I got in the
car, having not participated actively in his partner's strange arrest, as
if they had worked this out between themselves beforehand). 



Once inside the sub-precinct, I was put into the single holding cell there
and treated to the usual insults and shake-down as they emptied my
pockets. When I pointed out to Officer C. that phony arrests of
journalists is a primary characteristic of fascist regimes, Officer C.
said that obviously that shouldn't bother me, since "that's the kind of
thing that Communists do, too." They left me in the holding cell and
started to examine my personal effects, showing ape-like fascination with
my Seattle Police Department press identification and a small notebook
that they scratched their heads as they tried to read. (I had never been
asked to show any form of identification until I was in the lock-up). 
When I shouted repeatedly through the glass that my hands were numb from
the handcuffs, they had lots of laughs about this and Officer S. even
pulled out a tin of tobacco and started sucking on some as he played with
his ear, as if he was hard of hearing. After 10 minutes of shouting
through the glass that every officer there was legally liable if I would
become permanently disabled, they sent Officer S. in to loosen the cuffs
on my badly swollen wrists. 



Within the first 20 minutes or so, Officer S. was on the phone explaining
the situation to someone in a rather apologetic manner, then actually saying
he was sorry to call this person at home at the conclusion of the call.
Eventually, the supervising Sergeant, Sergeant L., came in and tried to
make a relatively calm inquiry about the accusation of Officer S. that I 
was guilty of resisiting arrest, although I stated that the only physical 
resistance I ever offered was to try to keep my neck from getting broken.



It was explained by Sergeant L. that the officer's actions were 
precipitated by feeling threatened by my actions. He said that Officer S.'s
version of he incident was that I had been "in his face" with the tiny 
flash camera, and that he had been "blinded" by the light of the flash 
and thusly felt that this was perhaps some sort of an attack. When I told
the sergeant that the photo was taken from over the officer's shoulder, 
and that I had resumed reading Record Collector when he approached 
me from behind, this was explained away that he considered turning away 
from him a "furtive action" that was accompanied by the suspicious 
activity of my putting a hand in a pocket. The sergeant's rationalization 
of the officer's actions were described in terms that are quite similar 
to the description of events as we in Seattle so often hear when a person 
is shot because they allegedly have a TV remote-control or a cigarette 
lighter in their hands. The sergeant's implied meaning was quite true--I 
should probably consider myself lucky, after all, under these described 
circumstances, I could have been shot to death.

 

Eventually, the conciliatory Sergeant L. tried to characterize the
whole thing in terms of a misunderstanding, and actually said that I was
legally obligated to consent without objection to arrest "on suspicion."
On suspicion of what charge, though, I asked, and he responded, I kid you
not, "on suspicion of engaging in suspicious activity," with no sense of
irony. He attempted to explain Officer S.'s actions as basically a result
of his "training," as if Officer S. was just some big angry dog that had
to act without thinking. 



That is the easy interpretation of the event. I would say that part of
my feeling about the whole incident was the impression, backed by many of
the nuances that I have related here, that this was some kind of a set-up,
and that grave danger was narrowly averted. But it is so very hard for a
reporter, acting in the best tradition, to pass up a bit of the truth, or
for a photographer to resist going for that dangerous shot that tells the
whole story. 

 

A clear flash photo of a uniformed Seattle Police officer reading the
headline, "Who Killed Kurt Cobain?" is precisely what I captured, even
while a voice inside was telling me that this was risky, that the whole
thing seemed like bait for a trap. The liklihood that I will ever be able
to display this photo is very small. After the 3-and-1/2-hour ordeal, I
was released by Sergeant L. who returned my personal belongings, minus the
camera, of course. He stated that this was being "held for evidence" in my
trial for this incident, and that Officer S. had already left the building
on the mission of delivering the camera to the West Precinct station. He
asked if I was sure that there was really film in the camera, as if this
might emerge as an explanation for missing photographic evidence. As I
explained to the sergeant, the photographic evidence in the camera would
prove absolutely that I was never "in the face" of Officer S., "blinding"
him with a flash, and therefore I had a hard time believing that he would
allow this evidence to exist, proving his whole story a lie. This is, of
course, similar to the treatment of the physical evidence in the case of
the murder of Kurt Cobain--they will fight in court for their presumed
privilege of concealment of records, especially photos and tape, and if
one were to win release of this evidence in court, it would not be
suprising to find it missing, destroyed, or altered. 
 



It is not overstating the case to say that the Seattle Police Department
seems to enjoy killing people, both in the hearts of its killer officers,
and in the intent of the administration that implies approval of its often
murderous enforcers. The officer who killed Edward Anderson has performed
a service to the more homicidally-inclined of the members the
department--he has proved that the Seattle Police are above the law, in
the matter of killing unarmed civilains, and by inference, everything
else. He has also shown that the controversial police chief, Norm Stamper,
is not about to resign or do anything of the kind upon the occaision of
the first person to fall victim to the inevitable--the "accidental"
shooting of a person with the deadly Glock with the light trigger-pull and
no "safety" device. Mayor Norm Rice, who joined in with enthusuiastic
support of Stamper's idea to buy these inappropriate arms (for an
estimated $385,000) at a time when other police agencies were trying to
get rid of Glocks, has not let his complicity in Edward Anderson's death
dampen his ambition--he is now running for the office of governor of the
state of Washington. "I will run on my record, and I will run on my
principles!" he shouted in announcing his candidacy. 



Just what the guiding principles are in the government of this city, as
demonstrated particularly by its police department, cannot be easily
ascertianed. I would say that the best description in brief is that we are
under the rule of a governement which wants to prove its devotion to
ambition has no boundries, including the sanctioning of murder. 



The murder of Kurt Cobain was no abberation, rather, it was more in
the way of business as usual. 

 Richard Lee, March 17, l996, 1:59 am. 
 revision input
3-17-96, concl. 12:51 pm.
 
***********************************************
 




Kurt Cobain Was Murdered

as reported 

April 10, l996

(an Internet posting of the commentary from the cable-TV program)





I know that there must be a good deal of curiosity over the type
of television documentary that I've been producing for, as of this 
evening, an even 2 years now, and so I thought I'd come down to the cafe 
tonight to send out a description that will enable readers to imagine
some of the style of the series.



What follows is an item-by-item list of the video items that comprised the
first 3/4 or so of the show last week, followed by the prepared commentary
that appeared at the conclusion, as has been the basic format of the
program for the last 104 editions. Thousands of segments of video float in
and out of the program to build a weight of evidence that the viewer can
find persuasive without "voice-over" narration, which would tend to, as
Kurt said about song writing, make things "too obvious." 



These video items appeared, following the opening titles: 
 


1. A close-up of the headline of the Seattle Weekly for the week of
April 3, which featured a front-page headline of a story of Courtney Love
by one of her pet writers, Melissa Rossi. The camera pans down to show
that this is the 20th anniversary issue of Seattle Weekly, with the
main article in the issue headlined (in blood-red) "Journalism in Seattle"
and including an excerpt from a truly awful April 13, l994 piece about
Cobain's death onto which tha camera zooms: "Like his songs, his suicide
was a masterpiece of torment..." The background music to this segment is
the screaming "Tourette's" from In Utero. 



2. A close-up of a British rock-mag article headllined "Kurt Cobain to 
be Laid to Rest at Last" and which names the Forest Memorial Gardens as 
the place Kurt Cobain's ashes will reportedly be buried April 7.



3. A minute or so of some very strange video of what looks like a red
Ferrari with Courtney Love as passenger speeding down Interstate 5. The
license plate on the car is from Washington state, and reads NIRVANA. The
superimposed date on the video footage is April 7, 1996. Music from
Bleach blares from my car stereo. 



4. Brief slow-motion footage of a german shepherd guard-dog approaching
menacingly.



5. A hand-held piece of footage of the camera going up the hill of the
park next to the Love-Cobain house. The peak of the garage in which Cobain
is alleged to have died juts up above the tall bushes. A
several-minutes-long interview follows with Michelle and Danika, two
teenagers with "Goth" make-up who at first express admiration for Courtney
Love, but apparently begin to have doubt about this as our discussion of
the liklihood of murder in the case deepens. Danika has brought along a
folded-up photocopy of the official Cobain death certificate, and this
leads to our discussing the bizarre discrepancies in the pathologists'
official assertions. 



6. A brief bit of "sampled" video from a local news program: Norm Stamper,
the chief of police here explains about his police force, "What I see in
each of them is heart..." 



7. Another bit of "sampled" video from local news: Captain Larry Farrar,
the retiring head of the homicide squad gives a rare interview, in which
he relates a story he finds very funny, (about being approached by a young
military school cadet) saying, "'Are you guys really policemen?' I said, 
'hell, yes, son-- FBI.'" He laughs vigorously and bangs his fist on his desk
in delight with his amusing story. 



8. An old piece of video from 1992 shows Kurt Cobain and bandmate Krist
Novoselic in an interview at an anti-bigotry benefit in Oregon. Novoselic
says, "You gotta fight back. You know, if you don't care, then you're
worse than the conservative fanatics that are implementing this on
everybody. And you gotta choose sides." The irony in Novoselic's words
should not be lost on viewers who have followed the story with interest. 



9. The full-length promotional video for "Lithium" (a montage of the Dave
Markey film). 



10. The "key video" of the crime scene in which no blood is seen around
Cobain's corpse's head. 



11. The title "MCA Home Video" at the beginning of a tape of Warner
Brothers' production of the 1960s TV classic Dragnet (this was
either the pilot for the series or a high-production-value episode for
theatrical or overseas distribution). "Ladies and gentlemen, the story you
are about to see is true. The names have been changed to protect the
innocent," the film begins. A man is shotgunned to death in a vacant urban
field. His body is shown in a police photo as actor Jack Webb begins the
narration, "It was Saturday, April 9. We were working the day-watch out of
the Intelligence Division..." This is intercut with close-ups of the front
page of the Seattle Times from Saturday, April 9, 1994, showing
Cobain's purportedly shotgunned body (in part, as you have seen in this
web-site). 


 
12. A close-up of newspaper editorial from March 17, 1996 headlined,
"Stamper Response to Police Shooting", highlighting the police chief's
typically sentimental approach to a crisis: "What I look for is what was
in the heart of the police officer...what was his intention." 



13. A close-up from a March 26 neighborhood newspaper detailing my bizarre
arrest after taking a photo of a policeman reading the High Times
in which I am alleged to have "temporarily blinded the officer", (although
the picture was, in fact, taken from behind and to the side of the
officer, making this impossible). 



14. A portion of an old Monty Python skit in which police constable Pan 
Am gives evidence against a suspect charged that he "conspired to do 
things not normally considered illegal...he assaulted myself and 3 other 
officers while bouncing around the cell--the end."




15. A few seconds from from the TV classic The Prisoner where a
citizen of The Village is forced to give public confession: "I'm
inadequate!...Disharmonious!" 



16. A short clip from a local news report featuring Brian Ross of ABC News
stating that he had been hung-up on by the FBI when he recently asked why
they didn't move in to arrest Ted Kaczynski, the "Unabomber" suspect
earlier, with Ross saying that there seeemed to be no "cross-check" of
Kaczynski's name on more than one list of possible suspects.




17. A commercial for a Fox network show called Sliders, in which
adventurers time-travel to alternative versions of history. "Slide into a
dimension where women wear beards, rock 'n' roll doesn't exist, and the
U.S. Constitution has been outlawed," goes the promo, followed by a promo
for the supernatural The X-Files in which "a murder victim returns
to hunt down his killers." A clip from Sliders is shown, in which
an old man relates that martial law was declared in the 1960s, after the
election of J. Edgar Hoover, "the step-father of our country." One of the
adventurers is then seen shopping for records from, as the salesman
explains, "the latest state-approved sounds--Liberace Unplugged, Jim
Morrison sings Irving Berlin, and Kurt Cobain's Christmas
Album." 



18. Brief interview with Joel, age 14, and Jamie, age 11, in Viretta Park,
next to the Love-Cobain house. Jamie says, "I think there would be tons of
blood" if Cobain had shot himself on the loft of the garage seen in the
background. The camera zooms on a video surveillance camera mounted on the
Love-Cobain house, as I explain to, Mrs. M., the kids' mom, that Jimi
Hendrix's family just settled for a reported $60-80 million in a court
case concerning royalties, so this is a touchy situation with so much money
involved. 



The camera zooms in through a small clearing in the bushes to view a
late-model European sedan entering the gates. A guard shines a bright
light in the lens of the camera from a distance. A minute passes and a
german shepherd guard-dog has somehow emerged in Viretta park from the
Love property, and is approaching me slowly. The guard with the light
appears, and I say, "Hey, hey, hey--attack with a guard dog is attack with
a deadly weapon. That dog is a deadly weapon, my friend. You don't want to
use a deadly weapon on anybody here..." I start to back out of the park
slowly as the guard approaches, and Mrs M. and her kids follow. Mrs M. 
(who says that she works as a law-enforcement professional in Canada) 
tells me a few minutes later that she heard the voice of Courtney Love
from behind the bushes, as if it was Love in the car and she who ordered
the illegal letting-loose of her attack-dog in the public park.



19. The footage of the video from earlier in the show is repeated, with
still images showing the NIRVANA Ferrari and what looks very much like
Courtney Love in the passenger seat. 



20. Footage dated April 7 is shown of the Forest Memorial Gardens, a 
shabby, hilly little cemetery in Olympia. It is very unattended, even 
though this is Easter Sunday.



21. Similar footage of a somewhat nicer cemetery called Olympic Memorial
Gardens, also supposedly a selected site for Cobain's ash burial. It is
similarly unattended by all but a few persons on this warm, sunny day. 



22. Brief news clips of a protest at a local junior high school where
hundreds of students walked out in support of a 13-year-old boy who was
sent home for wearing a skirt to class. 




23. Another Sliders clip, showing dialogue between the
time-travelers and alternative-history locals who say that Martin Luther
King, Bobby Kennedy, and comedian Sam Kinison are all political prisoners
on Alcatraz Island. "You wouldnt happen to know who is in cell 54, would
you?" an adventurer asks, as the camera pans to a young Cobainish-looking
guy (the question is left unanswered and the inference is that this may be
a veiled reference to Cobain). 



24. A short clip (from Live, Tonight, Sold Out!")of Krist Novoselic 
saying, without explanation, in apparent jest, "Kill 'em all, that's what 
I say."





25. A non-English-speaking emcee screams, "Nirvana!" to a concert audience.



26. A freeze-frame of Kurt Cobain in a crown, as he appeared in the Rio
concert in Brazil in 1993. (he was wearing a dress, which relates to the
local students' protest and also a sub-plot in the Sliders show,
where the policemenn, apparently so-ordered by reputed cross-dresser J.
Edgar Hoover, all wear skirts).



The following is the text of the commentary for April 10, 1996.



Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-wracking vice a man can persue; 
it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of of spirit. It 
cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practiced at spare moments; it is a 
whole-time job.



--Somerset Maugham, from his Cakes and Ale, Chapter 1.

 

Of course, now that we are nearing within a few days of the 2-year mark in
this weekly investigation of the murder of Kurt Cobain, the most
persistent inquiry we can expect to be asked by those with a limited grasp
of the situation is why, why, why do we persist thusly? 



Those of you who have been with this adventure for any length of time and
who can also appreciate the breadth of implications of the case at hand
will have little need to ask such a question. Without seeming to gloat too
much over the limited extent of our victories here, let me just say that
never did I dream that I'd be walking into such a case that, above
anything else I've ever heard of, much less been involved in directly--
this nasty affair of the Cobain murder--is the ultimate textbook case of
just exactly what is the problem with the growing phenomenon of mindless
corruption and hypocrisy in these United States today. 



I am aware that many viewers must find the whole idea of the Cobain death 
as the result of a pre-conceived murder plot far more horrifying than 
that of the official corporate-media tale that winners are sometimes 
quitters, especially in this Loser Generation, but to me this is not so. 
Not only is the version of events that that Cobain was done in by others 
more persuasive in fact, once one disregards the false value of 
"official" data in the case, much of which is evidently false, but on an 
even more interesting level, the Cobain case as a murder is much more 
"real", that is, compelling, because it is in accordance with what one 
witnesses these days in terms of greed, ambition, stupidity, and let us 
not leave out the very important factor of mindless subservience to 
authority, even if that "authority" is not much more than the 
well-tailored suit and tie of a Los Angeleno lawyer/record-hustler, or 
that of the local legal world, where everyone these days seems to have 
their fingers crossed that Seattle might decay into some state of 
relative anarchy, and thus prove more profitable to those who need to get 
paid by cleaning up the legal messes of lives ruined by lawlessness.



Well, at the very least I suppose that we're all supposed to sleep more
soundly at night knowing that the Feds have finally bagged our era's
Johnny Dillinger, that oh-so-terribly cunning Unabomber "genius", who has
kept the "J. Edgars" scratchin' their noggins for nearly two decades,
despite leaving a trail of clues as to his identity so distinct that it is
no wonder he was so confident that he could get those bastions of
officialdom, the New York Times and the Washington Post, to
give him more column inches than they do to their entertainment reporters. 



Just as the U.S. government needs it foreign-policy boogie-men--the
Ayatollah, Kadaffi, and Saddam--domestic policy apparently is much more
easily-ordered when focusing on a mere few supercriminals a la the old
Batman TV series. Rewards are sure to follow, wherever the famed
Una-bummer may go. Made-for-TV-movie celebrations of the
mathematician-turned-backwoods-blower-upper are already reportedly in the
works. None of this highly entertaining crime story would be occurring, of
course, if the X-Files duo had shown up so many years ago and asked
somebody for the short list, maybe just a top 10 list, of the nuttiest
nerds to ever drop out of society after showing signs of losing grip while
working in that targeted building at Berkely. 



I guess the argument that we might hear, if any argument were to be
forthcoming, from federal law enforcement would be that they didn't want
to look too closely at suspect Ted Kaczynski because this might be a sort
of staring into the sun of his Constitutional rights, that somehow the
Una-bummer had the right to persue happiness by any means necessary, until
such time that he was ratted out by his own family, rather than being
taken down by earnest investigators, perhaps like some eager,
young Lincoln, Montana high school investigative reporters who might have
run a story in the school paper someday about how "Uncle Ted"  used to be
a Berkely prof, but now he just sits around in his cabin waiting for the
collapse of modern civilization. 



We certainly would not want to give anyone the impression that we're
presenting photographic, that is, video evidence, in this series without
appropriate explanation concurrent with the images (such as is standard in
network-TV documentaries, with the use of voice-overs). The most
astonishing footage we have presented this week, as I am sure you have
noticed, is the startling sight of what appears to be the yella-haired and
dark-sunglassed wicked wid, Courtney Love, riding in a Ferrari or Corvette
with Washington state plates reading NIRVANA, being driven around by
someone with a distinct resemblance to to one Mr. Michael DeWitt, who is
certainly on anyone's "top 10 list" of conspicuous suspects to have
possibly taken part in the killing of Mr. Kurt Cobain. 



As truly fascinating as this footage is--after all, the Courtneyesque
character bears a resemblance in profile, not only to the wid's distinctive
nose, but also apparently of her large-lobed ears, and this physical
resemblance convinced me of the great liklihood of this being America's
most un-wanted rock 'n' roll couple. The fact is, though,that I managed to
track down the owner of the 'Vette-with-the Ferrari-kit-body, and he says
with appropriate sincerity that the blonde is his girlfriend, and that
they have never had anything to do with the Nirvana rock band, that he got
the plate because he just liked the word, so he says. 



I am not truly convinced of this, but I will say that the sincerity of the
'Vette owner is strong preliminary evidence that I am not being stalked by
the weird widow in the flesh, which, believe me, I rather felt was the
case before reaching the car's owner by phone. It occurred to me that
perhaps I was being baited by the temptation of a photographic find, such
as I believe that I was baited by that policeman who walked into Tower
Books and plucked up the "Who Killed Kurt Cobain?" High Times, and
therefore, I did not persue the forboding Ferrari (as it sped off the
highway immediately after I began filming). 



Besides, I figured that if it was you-know-who, I would meet up with her
in Olympia or Tumwater at one of the cemeteries that media sources said
she would be to bury some portion of Mr. Cobain's ashy assets that day,
April 7, Sunday. As you can see, nothing was shaking at either boneyard
this weekend, and even Courtney's favorite local lapdog TV station, KOMO,
reports nothing doing with the singer's soot this weekend, although right
up until this afternoon they have been covering with great enthusiasm the
reported day-by-day saga of the division and distribution of the dust of
Mr. Jerry Garcia. Apparently the plans to bury Kurt Cobain in a down-scale
plot near downtown Olympia were foiled, perhaps by an unwillingness by
many of the principals in the drama, the Nirvana drama, to go along with
this shabbily-conceived disposal ritual. 



As to whether I am "stalking" Ms. Courtney Love-Cobain, an
accusation I am rather suspicious she has tried to circulate, I would say
that without a doubt, I most certainly am not. I did, as you can see,
spend a short time in Viretta Park, about an hour's worth, this weekend,
as it was the anniversary of the discovery of the body, and this was a
modest-sized event last year. So enraged was the wicked wid at my presence
there, so it seems, that she pulled into the driveway in her car of choice
and ordered, within 90 seconds, her securtiy man to let loose the
schnitzen guard-dog into Viretta Park, which is public property, a
public park. 



You notice on the tape that I state in no uncertain terms that I consider
this an intimidation with a deadly weapon, which is a crime.  If you think
that this is overstating the case, just look at the behavior of a Seattle
police officer last week, who according to Lynnwood police, felt so
threatened by a 65-pound labrador-rottweiler who had wandered onto his
property that he felt he needed to issue a likely illegal warning to the
dog and a 7-year-old and a 3-year-old boy who were reportedly within a few
feet of the dog, by flaunting his pistol, presumably his high-powered
service pistol. This police officer, by the way, was home on "paid
administrative leave" because of an incident only a couple of weeks before
in which he had shot another officer in the foot with his service Glock,
as well as, in that incident, shooting a dog to death. Whether his
warnings, verbal as well as deadly, were issued to the boys or the dog is
not entirely clear, although we might expect that the dog did not speak
English and would not have understood the symbolism of the drawn pistol,
and so we can assume safely that the dog was not the only organism there
being threatened with deadly force in this latest incident. 



According to this police officer's standard of conduct, I guess I should
have had a high-powered pistol at the ready there in Viretta Park and
started blasting way until the dog, at least, was dead.  I, however, do
not carry a gun, and have no desire to go around killing people, although
the same most certainly cannot be said, according to what we now know,
about the wicked wid or her many friends in the Seattle Police Department. 



(this program, our 104th in the series to utilize exactly this format, a
montage of clips and original video, followed by a lengthy commentary
monologue, was followed by our 4th presentation of a live, half-hour
call-in program). 



Richard Lee, entered overnight April 13-14, 1996, concl. 1:55 am.


********************************************



Kurt Cobain Was Murdered



Internet Column of

 

June 30, 1996



The time has come, the Walrus said
To speak of many things,
Of ships and shoes and sealing wax,
Of cabbages and of kings.


Lewis Carroll, Alice Through the Looking Glass


Wouldn't you belive it, it's just our luck, that we get no recess at all
on the KurtWasM project, looking forward to further toil in this matter
for the ages, that has no seasonal boundries.



Just what the prospects have been for direct answers in this case with so
very many unanswered questions is at the heart of what the public has a
right to expect in a case which will either serve to show the
possibilities of the truth prevailing in a tragedy against all odds in
what we can only observe is very much a fixed game, or, alternatively,
will be a scandal that dies on the vine without fruition, existing as a
vague memory in the minds of a few that perhaps there was some small echo
of a rumor that justice had not thoroughly been served in this case.
Can you say "nevermind?"



Some considerable developments have occurred this weekend in the course of
providing at least a palpable degree of to what extent these unanswered
questions have remained unjustly that. Staying on the trail of the passive
who have provided a distinctly silent presence in this homicide, all the
while making plans for their monumental profits from the artistic oeuvre
of this very accomplished man, has been to try to peer through the
veneer of their publicity appearances to decipher in what way they seek to
confound public perception of the event and in so doing cover their
secreted maneuvers for power in the post-Kurt world.




On rare occaisions the denizens of the garrisoned quarters who comprise
the inheritors of the short-lived phenomenon of Nirvana appear in public
to convince us that they are not residing in an otherworldly universe of
freedom from untold profits to date and in the lengthy trail ahead called
the future. When doing so they will try to convince us of their status as
ordinary people with slightly unusual jobs as musicians and marketers in
the growing grunge industry. And grow it will, like you wouldn't believe.



Courtney Love has remained ensconced and unavailable for any unguarded
close-ups by the public for more than 2 years. Her interest in continuing
to reside in Seattle is apparently considerable, and we might opine that
inasmuch as she has the local media securely under her thumb (the
masterstoke of this perfect murder was to give the local media enough
indication that murder was truly the case, all the while assuming
correctly that they would slavishly go along with the official
declarations of the police and corporate lawyers that Kurt was the killer)
her continuing here conveys a sense of her social acceptability and
innocence of any conceivable wrongdoing.



Courtney Love, as far as is known, did not appear at the Planet Hollywood
restaurant opening yesterday, although the close associations her MCA
overlords hold with Planet H. certainly would have rated her an invitation
under any ordinary circumstances. We can only assume that these
corporations understand all too clearly the unusual dangers that any
involvement of Ms. Love in their business affairs represents. She also
failed to make an appearance in the very large Freedom Day parade and
rally in Seattle's Capitol Hill, where she might have assumed a receptive
crowd among gay liberation supporters, many of whom are the only people
costumed in a way that would make her usual attire and exhibitionism look
as if it is tending toward the mainstream. The local gay parades would
make a perfect venue for Ms. Love to do her thing as if it were to be
interpreted as social activism, and to do so along with the Seattle mayor,
a gay city councilwoman, and the female attorney general of the state of
Washington (all of whom marched today). To my knowledge, Courtney Love has
never appeared at any such parade or event. 



One can wonder if the word is out on Ms. Love and what she is coming to
represent in the minds of many of the better-informed of the public. 
Although she did not appear, the significant event of the day for our
purposes was the quietly-publicized inclusion of Sweet 75, the band led by
ex-Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic, which was to provide the big finale to
this day of celebration. 



I arrived at the event just after the time that Sweet 75 was scheduled to
go onstage. The many thousands of revelers had vacated Volunteer Park
before my arrival, and Novoselic's band was obligated to appear before a
crowd of less than 200 in front of the bandstand, with perhaps another
100 persons looking on from a distance. One can wonder if the appearance
of Sweet 75 before such a sparse audience at this event on a particularly
gorgeous day of sunny, mild weather was due to something other than desire
by the attendees to hurry off to someplace less comfortable.  Many of
those who did watch this show seemed to be young and not in the typical
leather and lace getups of the gay paraders.



Novoselic played his set without any comment to the crowd at all, which is
tending toward being a singular event in the career of Mr. Novoselic, who
seemed to always be waiting for songs to end so that he could scurry over
the microphone and make his attempts at funny jokes when he was in Kurt
Cobain's band. Novoselic plays both bass and guitar in his band, which is
fronted by a punky female singer, and likes to hold his guitar neck high
above his head as he plucks a single note repeatedly, which should tell
you a little about the band's music. A young blond girl of 3 or 4 was
front-and-center before the stage on an adult's shoulders, being bounced
around as she moved her tiny arms to the music in what looked like
rehearsed participation in the ecstacy of rock, which was received by
rather tepid applause by the young adults there.



I was there to get an earful of the band, yes, but, as you might guess,
for other reasons as well. When the announced last song was in play, I
headed around back for the real reason for my attendance, an impromptu
interview with the newly taciturn Krist Novoselic, who has offered
scarcely a word of response to questions I have attempted to pose in our
last two such encounters.



I approached with camera running as two pre-teen kids were going up to
Novoselic with a "set list" of song titles they had picked up and wanted
autographed. K.N. was changing from a plain white dress shirt (costumed so
that he would look more-or-less like any old musician putting in a weekend
wedding gig) into a non-sweaty rocker's plain black tee. He may have been
easily able to spot me on the lawn with my camera and tripod an hour
before, and seemed psychologically at the ready for our strange meeting. 






KN: Hey, it's Richard Lee.



RL: Hey, it's Kris Novoselic.



KN: I gotta sign this and pack up. I gotta go to work. There you go. 
Thanks for coming.



 KIDS: Thanks. Later.




KN: I gotta go to work.




RL: Really? And what is work for you? President of Nirvana, Incorporated? 



(KN is getting into his black Toyota Land Cruiser van and he closes the
door) 



KN: (laughs slightly) 



RL: You are the president of Nirvana, Incorporated, are you not? (Raising
voice to be heard through car window). What exactly does that net you on a
per year basis?... 



(KN starts engine, then rolls down window).



KN: Those are all interesting questions. 



RL: Are you a one-third owner, 33.3 percent, of Nirvana, Incorporated? 



KN: What I'd like to say, I'd like to say hi to all my friends on
channel 29--



RL: Do you have any friends on channel 29? 



KN: Well, I think that, um, (he is looking in mirror and slowly backing up
his van)



RL: I think you had a crowd of about 200 here today--



KN: Well, I think that, uh, I think about public television, that's a
pretty good thing



RL: Yeah, public access is great, but business is even better--



KN: Yeah, there's a difference--



RL: Corporate rock is where it's at, man.



(KN smiles slightly). 




RL: You know, corporate rock. 33.3 percent of Nirvana, Incorporated. That
should net you quite a fortune. 



KN: (opens mouth to speak with a slight smile) 



RL: Oh, yes it will. There's no doubting that. Additionally, I would say
that--



KN: (wagging finger)  You're obssessed, Richard. 



RL: Obssessed? Really? 



KN: Yeah, you know what you should do is--



RL: And you're unconcerned, and that's far worse--



KN: I told you that-- 



RL: You're unconcerned-- 



KN: I told you that your theories don't hold water, you know.  (he rolls
up window to van)



RL: (raising voice) I think we should discuss ballistics. 



(a Roughneck Hanger-on who styles himself like the singer in White Zombie
laughs at this) 



RL: The ballistics of how you can shoot yourself with a shotgun and
not spill any blood.  



(KN steps out of van)  



RL: Is that really possible? 



(KN steps around corner of stage structure and out of sight) 



ROUGHNECK HANGER-ON: You don't want to get your ass kicked right now, do
ya?



RL:  'Get my ass kicked'? Do you have the legal authority to kick
anyone's ass?  I don't think so.



(RL circles around van) 



RNHO: No legal authority at all, punk.



KN: (at back of van) You have to, you're just going to have to
go away, I can't-- 



RL: You understand, Mr. N., that I am asking questions in the public's
interest. 



KN: (walking away) Oh, God. 



(KN returns, rolling a mid-sized amplifier offstage)



RL: So, no blood at the scene of the crime.  That's something I think you
would be concerned about, I mean, you might stop short of obsession, but
concern, at least, asking the logical questions, would be, I think,
in order, Mr. Novoselic.



(KN gets into van and moves it up a few feet, returning to "go" at the
camera in a sort of wordless assault, making a "talk-talk" gesture with
his hand like it is a sock puppet).



RL: 'You have the right not to remain silent'...Don't touch the
camera--it's expensive. I'm sure you can afford it, (but) I can't afford
to replace it. 



(KN makes a small, sudden movement at the camera)



RL: Oh, yeah, well, you're bigger than I am, and I'm sure that, given our
last confrontation, a violent assault is something you'd be happy to
conduct, as long as you had 4 or 5 muscular men assisting you.


 
(KN "goes" at the camera lens with his "talking hands"
gestures, making odd mouth gestures as well)  



RL: What about the shotgun suicide scenario, Mr. Novoselic?



(he turns and walks toward van)



RL: He shot himself in the mouth, and yet there was no blood at the scene
of the crime. And you've inherited one-third of this man's wealth, and yet
you have no questions about the crime scene. You can laugh all you like,
Senor Wences, but I think that most people would find that extremely
bizarre.



(KN does a laughing and knee-slap gesture, twice, apparently in reaction
to my comment about his 'Senor Wences' hand-puppet gestures)



RL: Yeah, you can laugh at it all you like. History will not be so kind to
you, Mr. Novoselic, as to overlook your shortcomings as a human being,
with a simple laugh and a knee slap. 



(KN is back at the camera with his hand, as he is still moving between the
various doors of the van, loading small equipment)



RL: I guarantee you, I will make sure that occurs...Running for governor
anytime soon, Mr. Kris, Senator Kris, President Kris?--president of
Nirvana, Incorporated. 



(KN smiles at this to RNHO, as if encouraging his further participation in
verbally harassing me) 



RNHO: Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up.



RL: Is he the guy that you carry around with you to exert violence--is
that it?



(KN walks up short ramp onto stage)



RNHO: If you want to find out the shit, you go to the Seattle Police
Department, otherwise, shut the fuck up.



RL: Why doesn't he go down to the police department and find out the shit?



RNHO: 'Cause I don't care--you're the fucking one--



RL: yeah--



RNHO: Fuck you, man. Fuck you, see that (he is giving me the finger)



ROADIE: We are trying to take care of the--



RL: That's right, you've got important business--



ROADIE:  Well, we do have a business. 



RL: Yeah, you've got a business all right, Nirvana, Incorporated. I'm sure
it'll make you a fortune, too. Be a good soldier.



(KN is coming down off stage)



RL: So who is it that you think made the famous 911 call predicting the
means, manner, and death of Mr. Kurt Cobain on April 4, 1994, the day
before 'he died'? 



RNHO:  You and channel 9 can suck my motherfucking dick. See it--suck it
man, suck it, there it is, right there. Fuck you. 



(KN smiles and then stifles his amused grin)



RL:  You think that it was Courtney Love who made the 911 call? Have you
ever bothered to find out? 



RNHO: You want some answers, you talk to fuckin, the bitch. That's who to
talk to. Period. 



RL: Yeah, that's a good point. Have you ever discussed this with Courtney
Love? Have you ever bothered to ask Courtney Love if she was the one who
made the 911 call, rather psychically predicting the manner, means, and
death? 



(KN is back at camera with his hand and making faces)



RL: Mr. shot, 'Mr. Cobain bought a shotgun and may be suicidal. Narcotics
may be involved'. (KN turns away) Do you feel that your former bandmate
was, in fact, a hard narcotics user? 



KN: Jesus Christ.



RL: Or is that a question that you refuse to answer?



KN: Jesus Christ! (KN is now onstage and covering his head in gesture to
show he doesn't want to hear any more).



RL: Jesus Christ, yeah



(after about a minute, he heads offstage toward me again)



RL: Are you familiar with the organized crime background of MCA, the
corporation for which you now represent in Seattle? 



(KN does an odd gesture in opening his mouth and coughing loudly and
repeatedly, as if this is some sort of response to my question, and is
joined by others in doing this) 



RL: You do plan to continue to do business with MCA and David Geffen. You
do know that MCA has an organized crime background. 



(more coughs from KN and others)



RL: That's very funny.



KN: Richard, you're so obsessed--



RL: They always said you'd make it big as a comedian--



KN: Come on--



RL: Obsessed?



KN: Go take your mother out to lunch. Go call your mom, say, I love you
mom. Take your mother out to lunch, 'cause everything's going to be okay.



RL: Everything's going to be okay?



KN: That's right.



RL: You mean Kurt's coming back from the dead?



KN: I don't talk about it.



RL: Or his killer will be arrested?



(KN gets behind van)



RL: 'You have the right not to remain silent'. Isn't that the slogan of
your, ah, political organization? 'You have the right not to remain
silent', and yet, two years, now, and you have remained utterly
silent, have you not?



RNHO: What the fuck's up? If you think something's up, you better check
with the bitch with the blond hair, man, these guys ain't got shit to do
with that shit. Okay. Bottom line.



RL: Just a few simple questions. I guarantee you, Barbara Walters ain't
gonna come asking.



STAGE CREW MEMBER: You don't go backstage...



RL: Public interest prevails, my friend...(I show press pass)



(KN again emerges from behind van)



RL: You have the right not to remain silent. I guess your opinions can
remain as jive as they need to be, because, after all, you've got
corporate rock to protect you. You've got many billions of dollars in
private interests behind you. You've got your own fortune of many millions
of dollars. A 33.3 percent holding in Nirvana, Incorporated--a king's
ransom by anyone's standards, I'm sure.  



(KN walks by and up ramp to stage) 



RL: Were you the president of Nirvana, Incorporated, before Kurt died? No,
I think that's a role you stepped into after he died. Congratulations. Do
you have a concern about the manner of his death?



(KN has retreated to a position 35 feet or so onstage, and begins to
engage in make-believe casual conversation as he sips a bottle of water)



RL: So apparently your superiors have authgorized you to call me
'obsessed' and say little else. Do you really believe that Kurt Cobain
would write such a sappy and insipid 'suicide note'? Or do you believe it
was a suicide note at all? Do you believe it was a letter to his poor fans
about his 'burning, nauseous stomach'? 'I'm just not enough like Freddy
Mercury'? 



(I move around to the edge of center stage, about 20 feet from KN, and
keep the zoom lens on him)



RL: Senator Kris, what are you running for? Are you running for Senator?
Are you running for Governor? Of course, you don't have to run for
President, you're already president, of Nirvana, Incorporated. And is it a
33.3 percent holding that you have in Nirvana, Incorporated, a holding
which you most certainly did not have prior to your business partner's
death? 



Clearly, a man who profits from the death of his business partner, has a
rather distinct role in history. Profiting from the death of your business
partner. Certainly when Kurt Cobain was alive, you had nothing approaching
a 33.3 percent holding in Nirvana, Incorporated. That is a development, as
of late, shall we say. 



What do you approximate the total net worth over the next 50 years would
be, 50 years of copyright, as the president of Nirvana, Incorporated?
Well, let's see, the Elvis Presley estate can manage to net a good 50
million dollars per year.



(KN begins spitting water, as if this is some sort of response to my
questions) 



RL: I guess over the next 50 years that might be several billions of
dollars in revenues. Possibly quite a lot more than several billions of
dollars. And yet, when this man died, you had absolutely no questions. You
were on KOMO News 4 the same day saying that it was a 'shame.' Isn't it a
'shame'? 



Tell me, Kris, when Kristen Pfaff showed up dead, dead of an 'apparent
drug overdose', an apparent 'self-inflicted' drug overdose, did that give
you any concern at all? Or was she just, as the Seattle Police Department
determined, 'just another suicide', not even worthy of a homicide
investigation, because she was 'just another suicide'. Kristen Pfaff, Mr.
Novoselic, was that suicide, homicide, accidental overdose--what would you
say? 



(KN walks to ramp and waves to those he was with onstage, and opens door
to his new van)



RL: You have the right to remain unsilent, Mr. Novoselic; your own
political organization propagates that idea.



(KN drives away)





 
 
*************************************************************






much more to follow. RLee. 1159, began 1020pm , June 30, 96 technical
glitches and time constraints gave me an hour, 1050--1155pm to input (up
to "shotgun suicide scenario"). will finish with much more.  rlee, 1155pm,
7-1-96.  "interview" material up to KN driving away input 855-1100pm,
7-2-96, rlee. Intro para. 4 changed from "trail" to "manueuver..." and bit
about KN smiling at RNHO added 7-12-96, concl. 526 pm.-- rlee. 








-------------------------------------- 

************************************** 

-------------------------------------- 








About the Author

 

We have resisted doing this to this point, preferring to let the evidence
convince you on its own merit, but in any case, here we go: 

 

Richard Lee was born in 1963 in New York City and grew up mostly in
Aurora, Illinois. He began his career as a journalist by interviewing
columnist Mike Royko in the newsroom of the Chicago Sun-Times for
his high school paper in 1977. Shortly thereafter he co-founded a theater
troupe which included him as the featured performer in a punk rock band
called Joe Punchpress and the Neo-conservatives. 

 

Mr. Lee became a professional journalist in 1982, starting with a cover
story for the Chicago Reader titled "Playing for Change", which
soon led directly to the Chicago City Council passing a new ordinance to
"legalize" street music and end police harassment of street musicians.



Now See It Person to Person, the weekly cable-television series in
Seattle which includes the Kurt Cobain investigation, began production in
1991 and was first aired in April of 1993. Even before the program had
ever aired, it made national news when Lee was violently assaulted by an
extremist presidential candidate at the conclusion of a 23-minute
interview at a radio station. 



A two-part series of reports in 1993 on the program established that the
FBI ignored evidence of the involvement of military personnel and military
arms trafficking in their raid of a skinhead apartment connected to the
bombing of the Tacoma office of the NAACP. Lee proved this more
conclusively in a subsequent year of investigation at the request of a
local news weekly, which then explicitly refused to publish the piece
because of Lee's ongoing public probe of Kurt Cobain's murder. 



-----------------------------------------------




(photo) Richard Lee on June 9, 1996, only days before the carriage
house (garage) of the historic Denny-Blaine Mansion, the scene of the
crime, was razed by Courtney Love.

 
 



 
 this "bio" input 4-28-96,

 concl. 11:07 pm.

photo and caption input

 7-7-96, concl. 630 pm. more

 to follow.  RLee 
 



 




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