On April 8th, 1994, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was found dead of a gunshot wound sustained on April 5th, 1994, in his Seattle home. Many, including the Seattle Police Department, believe this gunshot wound was self-inflicted. Some do not.
When there's room for it, and even sometimes when there isn't, distraught fans of beloved celebrities taken before their time will construct theories to compensate for the sometimes random and often reckless, tragic waste that is the loss of the celebrity's life. Did Elliott Smith stab himself, or did his girlfriend do the stabbing? What about Marilyn Monroe—did she kill herself, accidentally or on purpose, or did someone want her dead? Is Tupac alive somewhere, laughing, just LOLing his butt off, having a blast?
Some of these theories are more compelling than others. (For real, who killed Marilyn?) (And also I don't buy the Elliot Smith story.) (And where is Tupac?) Today, we'll sift through a theory that has nagged at me since I was a brainless 12-year-old; a case the Seattle Police Department receives requests to reinvestigate at least , mostly through Twitter: The death—murder?—of Kurt Cobain.
The Rome Overdose
Unfortunately for Courtney Love—Hole frontwoman, Cobain's erstwhile wife, and the mother to his child, Frances Bean Cobain—it is impossible to talk about the theory that Kurt Cobain was murdered without acknowledging the theory that Courtney Love was the woman behind the murder. It is, more or less, the only theory.
The seeds of this theory were planted about a month before Cobain's death. While touring in Munich in March 1994, he was diagnosed with bronchitis and laryngitis.
Because of these health issues, Nirvana canceled the remainder of their European tour and Cobain flew to Rome for treatment. On March 3rd, 1994, Courtney Love joined him there, along with the couple's live-in nanny Michael Dewitt, and described the trip in published in December of 1994:
Kurt had gone all out for me when I got there [Rome]. He'd gotten me roses. He'd gotten a piece of the Colosseum, because he knows I love Roman history. I had some champagne, took a Valium, we made out, I fell asleep. The rejection he must have felt after all that anticipation–I mean, for Kurt to be that Mr. Romance was pretty intense.
Love claims she woke up around 4 A.M. and found Cobain unconscious after he ingested "50 fucking pills," leaving behind a note Love claims read, in part, "You don't love me anymore. I'd rather die than go through a divorce." He'd overdosed on Love's prescription Rohypnol, mixing it with champagne.
When asked if she thought this was a suicide attempt, Love told Rolling Stone, "...There was a definite suicidal urge, to be gobbling and gobbling and gobbling."
This, and similar statements made after his death regarding his overdose in Rome, is why the Rome incident is often cited in the case against Love. (Well, this and because some believe Love slipped Cobain the Rohypnol in a murder attempt, but this more frequently.) Many believe she only categorized it as a suicide attempt after Cobain's death in order to plant the idea that Cobain had, in the months preceding his death, been suicidal.
Others involved in the incident maintain that it was never thought of as such.
A doctor who treated Cobain that morning was quoted in Max Wallace and Ian Halperin's murder conspiracy text Love and Death: The Murder of Kurt Cobain saying, "We can usually tell a suicide attempt. This didn't look like one to me." In a Rolling Stone piece about Cobain's death, Janet Billig, of Nirvana's management Gold Mountain Entertainment, after recovering from the overdose: "A note was found but Kurt insisted that it wasn't a suicide note. He just took all of his and Courtney's money and was going to run away and disappear."
