A new report claims that the death of Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain was not by suicide, rather he was a victim of homicide. But police in Seattle are standing by their original findings.
According to a report in The Daily Mail, a private forensic team compiled by independent forensic specialist Brian Burnett said that Cobain’s death was a homicide.
Burnett’s team looked at the evidence and came to that conclusion.
But the Seattle Police Department disagrees, saying the suicide ruling is correct.
“Our detective concluded that he died by suicide, and this continues to be the position held by this department,” a police spokesperson told The Daily Mail.
One of the researchers on Burnett’s team said the scene looked like it was “like someone staged a movie” with the gun and shells receipt in Cobain’s pocket, a heroin kit neatly organized near his body.
Michelle Wilkins said that the writing on the note does not fully match.
“The top of the note is written by Kurt. There’s nothing about suicide in that. It’s basically just him talking about quitting the band,” Wilkins said. “Then there are four lines at the bottom. If you even look at the note, you can see that the last four lines are written in different … the text is a little bit different. It’s bigger, it looks more scrawly.”
Despite Burnett’s team’s findings, neither the police department nor the King County Medical Examiner’s Office is reopening the case at this time.
“Our office is always open to revisiting its conclusions if new evidence comes to light, but we’ve seen nothing to date that would warrant reopening of this case and our previous determination of death,” the medical examiner’s office told The Daily Mail.
KIRO’s news partner MyNorthwest reported that Cobain and Nirvana had “instant success” with their 1991 album “Nevermind” and songs such as “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
He started using heroin to deal with an illness, MyNorthwest reported, and he had suffered several drug overdoses.
Cobain had been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder when he was young, and eventually bipolar disorder.
He was found dead by an electrical contractor at his home in April 1994. Police said he had committed suicide by shotgun three days before he was found on April 8, 1994, KIRO reported.
Cobain last performed about a month before his death in Munich, Germany, according to KIRO.
This is not the first time his case has been reviewed. In 2021, the FBI released archival files that included a letter to the bureau to have officials investigate his death, Billboard reported at the time.
One letter from Nov. 20, 2006, claimed there were no fingerprints found on the shotgun, as well as the different handwriting in the suicide note. A second letter from 2003 asked to see “inconsistencies surrounding his death cleared up once and for all.”
Esquire reported that the FBI said it could not investigate, responding to the letters:
“In order for the FBI to initiate an investigation of any complaint we receive, specific facts must be present to indicate that a violation of federal law within our investigative jurisdiction has occurred,” the FBI wrote. “Based on the limited information you provided, we are unable to identify any violation of federal law within the investigative jurisdiction of the FBI.
“We are, therefore, unable to take any investigative action in this case.”
Read the entire file from the FBI vault here.
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