It is a bright and sunny April morning, definitely atypical of Seattle. Veca Electric employee Gary Smith continues rewiring the cable system at 171 Lake Washington Boulevard. At approximately 8:56, he glances inside the French doors of the greenhouse where he spots the body of Kurt Cobain lying in his own blood. Across his chest is a Remington M-11 20 gauge semi-automatic shotgun, and beside him a note that reads, "I Love you, I Love You!" Cobain has committed suicide… or has he? Unthorough police investigation, suspicious documents, and the sheer physical impossibility of events claim otherwise.

       Richard Lee, a journalist present during the investigation, confirms, "no standard forensics testing such as fingerprint, footprint, fiber sampling, etcetera, was done at the scene." The Seattle Police Department arrived on the scene the morning of April 8th, 1994, at approximately 9:50, as stated in the police reports. The scene was secured by 11:55 am. In Hank Harrison's book Beyond Nirvana, Smith who was present throughout the two hour investigation, says, "a note was clearly visible by the body, so clear that I could read, "I Love You, I Love You!" through the French windows. When the details filtered out to the press it seemed as if Kurt had placed the note in a planter box with a pen stuck through it. In reality the police photographer moved it across the room to get a better shot of it and failed to photograph it in it's exact original position near the body." The police report does not account for the original position of the note, but rather the location after being tampered with. Police reports also claim there were no fingerprints on the gun, pen, live bullets, or spent bullet shell. However, according to the dates on the fingerprint analysis reports, the pen and gun were not tested for fingerprints until May 6th, nearly one month after Cobain's body was found, and the live bullets and shell were not tested for prints until January 13th, 1997 - over two and a half years after his death. The fingerprint analysis reports show that, while prints were lifted, they were unreadable. An official press release inaccurately claims that Kurt Cobain left his wallet open, exposing his driver's license, which is common in suicides that may leave the person unidentifiable. Contrary to that claim, Officer Von Levandowski, first to arrive on the scene, states, "SFD asked for I.D. from the nearby wallet, and I opened the wallet which was within a couple of feet of the victims body. Inside I found a Washington state drivers license in the name of Kurt Donald Cobain, DOB/022067". Again referring to the police report, "there was a suicide note apparently written by Cobain to his wife and daughter, explaining why he had killed himself." The note was not, in fact, addressed to his wife, Courtney Love, or his daughter, Frances, but rather to Boddah, his childhood invisible friend. JusticeForKurt.com, a website dedicated to exposing the truth - whether homicide or suicide - of the Cobain case, states that the major errors in this police investigation are legal cause enough to consider homicide as a possibility.

       Among discrepancies in the investigation are discrepancies within evidence-related documents. The coroner confirmed Cobain's death to have occurred at 2 pm on April 5th. As included in Ian Halperin and Max Wallace's book Love and Death, Kurt Cobain's credit card records indicate an attempt to buy $1,517.56 worth of unnamed goods at 7:07 pm on April 5th and an attempt to charge $43.29 at 8:37 am on April 8th. The Seafirst Mastercard was cancelled prior to his death, and has never been located. Also suspicious is the supposed second suicide note Kurt left addressed to Courtney. In the December 15th, 1994 issue of Rolling Stone, David Fricke interviewed Courtney Love and questioned the content of the original note found at the crime scene, suggesting it was rather a retirement letter to the fans. Love confirmed the nature of the note by claiming that a second note was written to her by Cobain and was left on her bed under a pillow. Tom Grant, a private investigator hired by Love, states on his website CobainCase.com that Love never told him this information. "I couldn't understand why she'd withhold such a vital piece of evidence! Courtney said she didn't think it was necessary. 'I told Sgt. Cameron about it,' she told me." Justiceforkurt.com points out that "If the police knew about this other note, it would have been listed and evidence and mentioned in the police reports." Furthermore, Grant claims to have looked under the pillows as well as between the mattresses and under the bed during his search of their home, finding nothing but a package of Rohypnol prescribed to Love. Perhaps the most popular document in this case is the suicide note found at the scene of the crime. As previously stated, the text reads more like a retirement letter as it refers only to the horrors of touring. Only the last four lines allude to suicide. "Please keep going Courtney. For Frances. For her life which will be so much happier without me. I love you, I love you!" Incidentally, these last four lines are written in p.s. fashion, occur after the closing of the letter, and are written in larger, differently formed letters. As reported in Love and Death, handwriting expert Marcel Matley says, "The last four lines of the suicide letter, which include the words 'I love you, I love you,' were written by a different person. There are differences in the two." Reginald Alton of Oxford University, considered to be the world's foremost authenticator of literary manuscripts according to Halperin and Wallace, concurs. "There are more than a dozen discrepancies in the handwriting, definitely in the first line where the word Boddah appears to have been added, and in the last four lines." After going through a backpack left at her house by Love, Rosemary Carroll, entertainment lawyer and long-time friend of Love and Cobain, found a paper containing different handwriting styles. On the top right side of the page was a section marked "combos", where someone had practiced writing two and three letter combinations. "I had no idea what it meant or who had been doing the writing," Grant states, "but Rosemary found it among Courtney's things. It sure looked to us like she had been practicing how to forge a letter."

       Not only do these discrepancies point toward foul play, but the amount of heroin and Diazepam found in Cobain's system and the position of the gun at the scene of the crime make it physically impossible for suicide to have occurred. When heroin enters the bloodstream, it immediately turns to morphine. When Cobain was found, his blood morphine level was 1.52 mg per liter, or 225 mg total, as stated in medical reports. Canadian chemist Roger Lewis conducted a scientific study of blood morphine levels, using 100 medical and scientific experts. According to Lewis, the lethal dose for a 150-pound heroin junkie with the highest tolerance is appx. 75 mg total. Cobain's driver's license states that he was 115 pounds, yet his body contained three times this lethal dosage. T.A. Gossell, author of the article "Opiates" in the 3rd edition of Principal of Clinical Toxicology, says, "for a large overdose, the victim rapidly lapses into coma and is not arousable by verbal or painful stimuli." The Lange manual for Poisoning and Drug Overdose states that "for opiates with higher doses, coma is accompanied by respiratory depression and apnea often results in sudden death." Also present in Cobain's system was Diazepam, also known as Valium, a drug that aggravates heroin and increases the chance of overdose. In their large compilation of deaths involving mind-altering drugs, Gottschalk and Cravey discovered a case where .02 mg of morphine, 76 times less than the number found in Cobain's system, was deemed a lethal dosage because of the presence of Diazepam. Justiceforkurt.com states, "it is hard to believe that Cobain injected himself with an insane triple lethal dose of heroin, pulled the needle out of his arm, carefully put away the needle and the heroin paraphernalia neatly back into a cigar box a few feet away, rolled down and buttoned his sleeves, then picked up a shotgun, placed it in his mouth, and discharged it. Many researchers feel it is simply impossible." Which brings me to the placement of the shotgun. According to police reports, the "shotgun was inverted with the trigger and magazine trap door pointing up." This would put the ejection port, where the spent bullet shell is ejected when fired, to Kurt's right. However, the police reports claim the shell was found to Kurt's left. This seemingly defies the physics of gun. Justiceforkurt.com notes, "It is to be believed the shotgun rotated 180° (while remaining in Kurt's left hand which was found clutching the barrel) and also remained ideally positioned, resting parallel on Kurt's chest directed toward his chin." Is this possible?

       From the questionable handwriting on the note to the shoddy police work to the impossible positioning of the gun, these inconsistencies discount the claim of suicide. Since 1994, everyone from fans to forensic scientists have pushed for the re-opening of this case. Ten years later, Kurt's body has been cremated, the greenhouse has been torn down, the gun has been sold, and the suicide notes have been burned. The Seattle Police Department says that when they are presented with "major evidence", they will consider reevaluating the case. In 1997, author and filmmaker Nick Broomfield drove 3,000 miles to deliver this crucial evidence. Upon arriving, he was threatened with arrest, and was told the case was closed for good. "It is unlikely that this case will be reopened by the Seattle Police," he states. "In my book, this one remains an unsolved homicide."