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Halifax Daily News
June 4th 1996
by Andy Pedersen
What if Kurt Cobain didnt kill himself? What if the driving force behind the '90s most revolutionary rock group, Nirvana, simply wanted out of the music business and wanted out of his marriage to the flamboyant and outrageous Courtney Love?
What if - because his flight from the band and from his wife would have huge financial repercussions - he was murdered instead?
A Beverly Hills private investigator is so sure that Cobain did not pull the trigger on April 8, 1994 that he has dedicated the past two years of his life to having the Seattle Police Department's investigation reopened.
"I have a whole lot more to lose from this than I have to gain" says 49-year-old Tom Grant from his Los Angeles office. "I wouldnt be out here risking my reputation and my business if I weren't convinced that this was a murder."
Grant, who worked for the L.A. Sheriff's department for eight years through the 1970s was hired by Love just days before Cobain's body was discovered in his Seattle home. She said she didnt know where Cobain was, and that she wanted Grant to find him.
Grant continued his investigation after Cobain was found. Here is some of what he claims is evidence that Cobain was murdered:
Records show that somebody was trying to use Cobain's credit card - over the phone - after he died but before he was found. That card was not in Cobain's wallet when he was found, yet Grant says the Seattle police did not seriously investigate its disappearance.
Cobain did not - as the police originally reported - barricade himself inside the greenhouse room where he was found. The doors to the room were unlocked and a stool was not, in fact, wedged against the door.
The note Cobain left is not clearly a suicide note. It is fatalistic to be sure, but according to Grant, could also be read as a note announcing his intentions to leave Nirvana and the pop music industry. "I havent felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music along with reading and writing for too many years now,"Cobain wrote. "I feel guilty beyond words about these things.... The worst crime I can think of would be to rip people off by faking it and pretending as if I'm having 100 per cent fun."
As well, the note's last line ("Please keep going Courtney for Frances for her life which will be so much happier without me") appears to have been written in a different hand. Grant says that handwriting experts are divided on the legitimacy of that claim.
Grant maintains that not only did Love know that Cobain wanted to leave her, but that she was readying herself for the divorce suit. He says that Love's lawyer, Rosemary Carroll, told him that Love had instructed her to "get the meanest, most vicious divorce lawyer she could find."
With these claims, Grant has launched a media assult. He has, over the past year-and-a-half, done interviews with radio stations and newspapers in the hopes of pressuring the Seattle police to reopen their investigation. And his campaign is gaining currency - a book published last month by a pair of Montreal-based journalists attempts to cast doubt on the Seattle police's investigation and conclusions.
But the question begs to be asked: why? Why would Grant, as he himself says, put his own career at risk pursuing an investigation that he's not even being paid for.
"I've got three daughters and seven grandchildren. I hate the thought that people like them are out there committing suicide because of something that's an absolute farce."
It is impossible to know exactly how many copy-cat suicides there have been - but there is little doubt they have occurred.
A young man killed himself after a candlelight vigil held for Cobain in Seattle, and there have been at least five other suicides worldwide that investigators have connected with Cobain's death.
These suicides also provide a compelling answer to this question: if Grant's evidence is so damning, why haven't the Seattle police reopened the case?
"Professional pride, city politics and potential lawsuits," Grant writes on his Web site.
"The copy-cat suicides had already begun. There was no way an outside investigator was going to overturn the 'official' opinion on the cause of Kurt's death, an 'opinion' that had already resulted in the world wide media coverage and had caused the loss of additional lives."
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