Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (24 page)

• There were no legible fingerprints on the shotgun that killed Cobain. (The gun wasn't even tested for fingerprints until nearly a month after his death.) Fingerprints can be wiped off a gun, but is that what happened here? If so, who wiped the gun clean, and why?

• Only part of the “suicide note” found by Cobain's body sounds like he planned to kill himself—the last four lines—and some experts
question whether those lines are in his handwriting.

Most of the note is an anguished apology to his fans for his lack of enthusiasm and seems more about his resignation from the music industry than suicide. (Shortly before his death he decided not to headline the Lollapalooza tour.) Only the last four lines are addressed to his wife and daughter. Was suicide an afterthought, or did he actually have no intention of killing himself?

• The driver's license by the body wasn't left there by Cobain—the first police officer on the scene found Cobain's wallet nearby and displayed the license by the body for photographs.

• Someone attempted to use Cobain's credit card until just hours before the body was discovered, even though, according to the coroner's report, Cobain had died four days earlier. Cobain himself had last used the card to buy a plane ticket from Los Angeles to Seattle on April 1. The card was not found in his wallet.

If suicide seems unlikely, accidental death looks next to impossible. How could Cobain, a hardened addict, so seriously misjudge his heroin dose? After such a dose, could he have accidentally positioned the shotgun on his chest and pulled the trigger? And if suicide and accident are ruled out, that leaves only…murder. But who would have wanted to kill Cobain and make it appear a suicide?

Cobain's wife, rock star Courtney Love, was in the L.A. area at the time Cobain's body was discovered. But according to Tom Grant, an L.A. private investigator, Love may have been involved in a conspiracy to kill her husband, possibly with the aid of Michael Dewitt, the male nanny who lived at the Cobain residence. Possible motives according to Grant:

Cobain may have told Love he was leaving her; if the pair divorced, Love would get half of Cobain's estate. With a suicide she would get it all.

Cobain's record sales would increase after a suicide, giving Love even more money.

Her own career would benefit. (Love's band, Hole, headlined the Lollapalooza tour in place of Cobain and Nirvana.)

Grant has a unique perspective—Love hired him to find Cobain after Cobain escaped from a drug rehab center just a few days before he died. Grant continued his investigation after the body was found and was disturbed by the inconsistencies and contradictions in Love's behavior:

Love phoned in a missing persons report on April 4, the day Cobain died, according to the coroner's report. Claiming she was Cobain's mother, Love told Seattle police he had bought a shotgun and was suicidal. But a receipt found on Cobain's body showed that his best friend Dylan Carlson bought the gun for him almost a week earlier,
before
Cobain entered rehab. According to Carlson, Cobain wanted the gun for protection, not suicide. By phoning in the report, was Love trying to plant the idea that Cobain was suicidal?

Love directed Grant to look for Cobain in a number of Seattle hotels and to check out his drug dealers. Even though Dewitt, the nanny, had told Love he'd talked with Cobain at their residence on April 2, Love did not tell Grant he'd been seen there. Was Love trying to keep Grant from finding Cobain too soon?

When Grant visited the Cobain residence with Carlson the day before Cobain's body was found, there was evidence that Dewitt had been there recently. (Neither Grant nor Carlson looked in the greenhouse.) Later that day Dewitt told friends he was leaving for Los Angeles. Grant says he had the feeling Dewitt was avoiding him.

The electrician who found Cobain's body was hired by Love to check the security system at the residence and, according to Rosemary Carroll, Love's entertainment lawyer, she specifically told him to check the greenhouse. Was she setting him up to find the body?

In the note found beside Kurt Cobain's body, his last words, before the disputed last four lines, were “…it's better to burn out than to fade away.” Did he think shooting himself was the only way out of his apathetic malaise, or did he simply plan to leave the music scene near the peak of his popularity to avoid becoming just another mass-marketed rock star, ultimately drifting into irrelevance? The police investigation is closed…so we'll probably never know.

Here's proof that crime doesn't pay.

“In Albuquerque, New Mexico, Timothy E. Beach, 23, was arrested for allegedly robbing a Taco Bell restaurant that he used to manage. According to police, Beach could not resist identifying himself to a former co-worker during the heist, and briefly lifted his ski mask to say, ‘It's me, Tim.'”

—Universal Press Syndicate

“Barry Darrell Freeman, 29, was convicted of attempted rape last year near Philadelphia. According to testimony, the victim asked Freeman to take off his own clothes and then taunted him until he did. With his clothes off, the woman saw that he wasn't carrying a weapon and ran away, eventually outrunning him to safety. During the chase, according to the victim, she heard Freeman muttering something about not being able to trust a woman.”

—News of the Weird

“When a Des Moines, Iowa, convenience store clerk tried to tell police about a man who had just robbed his store, he got some unexpected help. ‘He's about 5'10",' Harpal Singh told police over the phone. Then the suspect, who had inexplicably returned to the store, corrected him. ‘I'm 6'2",' the man said.

‘About 6'2",' Mr. Singh told the police, ‘and about 38 years old.'

‘I'm 34,' the man said, correcting Mr. Singh again. Moments later, a sheriff's deputy arrived and arrested Steven Hebron, 34, who was charged with robbery.”

—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Twenty-five-year-old nanny Ildiko Varga, on the run and wanted for trashing an employer's home and mistreating a toddler in a New York City suburb, was finally caught when she stopped a
police officer on the street to show him the article the
New York Post
had written about the crime and to ask him if he thought she had a good case for a slander lawsuit.”