Cobain slain? What a tangled Web is weaved
by Michael Saunders, Globe Staff

Kurt Cobain is still dead. He has not been seen ordering fries at a Wendy's nor has he filled in for Dionne Warwick to plug her paranormal "Psychic Hotline" pals. His death, a pop music tragedy, officially was ruled a suicide, but there's a vocal 'Net contingent that would like the world to think otherwise.

Two extensive web sites forcefully allege that the angst-ridden lead singer for Nirvana did not willingly kiss the business end of a 20-gauge shotgun and pull the trigger, as was determined by the Seattle police when Cobain's body, minus much of his head, was found April 8, 1994. Toby Amirault, a Melrose writer, and Tom Grant, a Los Angeles private detective, say Cobain was killed. Each has compiled substantial documentation attempting to prove that Cobain was murdered and that his controversial widow, Courtney Love, knows why and how. They are waging a 'Net-based campaign to pressure the Seattle police to reopen the Cobain case. So far, their claims have fueled little more than rounds of newsgroup postings and nasty e-mail missives between Nirvana loyalists and fans of Love and her band, Hole. No nibbles from the police yet, although Amirault, 31, is at work on a book with a working title that leaves little to the imagination - "The Murder of Kurt Cobain." It's also the title of his web site, found at www.tiac.net/users/tobya/.

"So many people I've spoken to are saying that we know that there is something fishy here. I think that they have a personal stake in this because of the tremendous love for Kurt Cobain," Amirault said.

His little corner of the web is one of the many places where Love's minions are definitely not welcome. Amid the first- and secondhand information condensed from Grant's web site, Amirault has sifted the media for quotes and comments that Love likely hopes the world would forget. Some of the nicest merely cast Love as a manipulative whacked-out heroin queen; the most damning comments blatantly hint at her capability to be a husband-killer:

Steve Albini, grunge-guru producer of Nirvana's "In Utero" and other alt.rock discs, is quoted as saying, "I don't feel like embarrassing Kurt by talking about what a psycho hosebeast his wife is, especially when he knows it already."

Hank Harrison, discredited Grateful Dead hanger-on, New Age author and father of Courtney Love, told High Times that his daughter "profited from his death in a considerable way. I know for a fact that Kurt was trying to divorce her and she didn't want the divorce, so she had him killed. . . . There is no doubt in my mind that Kurt Cobain was murdered."

Harrison and Love are not believed to be close. Like Amirault's site, Grant's site - websites.earthlink.net/tomgrant/ - contains ample speculation laced with enough detail to raise eyebrows, if not questions. Under the heading "Here's just some of what you were never told," Grant claims that Cobain was about to file for divorce before he was killed, that someone was using Cobain's credit card in the days after he died, that Cobain bought a shotgun because he feared for his life, and that after his body was found, there were no discernible prints on the gun.

If Grant and Amirault are right, then the Cobain case is either a classic travesty of justice or a supremely evil act gone unpunished. If they're wrong, if Cobain did kill himself, then Amirault and Grant are prime weavers of a conspiracy theory of the first order, one that makes Elvis' reincarnation, the Trilateral Commission conspiracy for world domination and the aphrodisiac powers of green M & Ms seem like reasonable propositions.

The "what-ifs" don't seem to faze Amirault, who says that the response has been strong and steady since he posted the page earlier this year. "All of these things are too serious to overlook and the case deserves to be reopened," he said in an interview. "I never claim that this is the most scientific investigation, and frankly, I'm trying to entertain people. Young people who don't have much of an attention span."

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