Love & Death

by Max Wallace

  In her next conversation with Grant, Rosemary Carroll—calling from New York, where she has recently moved—says she is “freaked out” about what has been going on and tells Grant, “I think [Courtney] is pretty scared of you.” Then she shares with him the theory she has developed about Kurt’s death.

  CARROLL“You know, I’ve thought a lot about this. I try not to, but I have…. I’ve thought about stuff I know in general, about Kurt, and about Courtney, and about that whole scene up there. You want to hear my theory?”

  GRANT“Yeah, sure.”

  CARROLL“I hate to think of all this again because I’ll go crazy like I did last time, but I think all of that weirdness with Cali obviously living in the house for several days while there was Kurt’s corpse in the [greenhouse]. I think it had to do with the suicide note.”

  GRANT“Yeah?”

  CARROLL“This is my theory, and it’s a lot of intuition, but that suicide note is a pastiche of things he had written before, I think, and of someone copying or tracing his handwriting. I think it was sort of cobbled together.”

  GRANT“You don’t think Kurt wrote it?”

  CARROLL“No, I think Kurt wrote each of those words at different times and different places. I think someone went through his notebooks, found passages that plausibly could be cobbled together into a suicide note and traced them.”

  GRANT“You think they were traced?”

  CARROLL“Yeah, or forged or something like that.”

  At this point, she seems to hear a noise.

  CARROLL“Are you taping this call?”

  GRANT“I tape all my calls. Do you want me to turn it off?”

  CARROLL“Oh shit, Tom, it’s just my theory.” (She hangs up).

  Rosemary Carroll never speaks to Grant again.

  Grant found Carroll’s “pastiche” theory about the note intriguing, especially in light of the piece of paper she had found in Courtney’s backpack on which somebody had been practicing different handwriting styles. But he subscribes to a slightly different theory about the note.

  “If you read the body of that note,” he explains, “it doesn’t read like a suicide note at all. It reads like a note to his fans explaining why he is quitting Nirvana. I think he wrote most of the note, but that somebody possibly forged the last four lines.” When Grant first aired this theory publicly, Courtney adamantly denied that Nirvana had been in the process of breaking up. In a 1998 appearance on theHoward Stern Show, however, Dave Grohl admitted that the band had indeed split up at the time of Kurt’s death. Years later, Krist admitted the same thing to Kurt’s biographer Charles Cross: “The band was broken up.” This would certainly make Grant’s theory—about the note being a retirement letter to his fans—plausible, even logical.

  Indeed, the body of the note mentions not a word about suicide, but it does say, “Thank you all from the pit of my burning, nauseous stomach for your letters and concern during the past years.” To whom else is he addressing this line if not to his fans?

  The original officer on the scene, Von Levandowski—the first person to read the note—wrote in his report that the letter was “apparently written by Cobain to his wife and daughter explaining why he had killed himself.” But if Kurt wrote the note to Courtney and Frances Bean, why did he sign it with his full name, “Kurt Cobain”?

  For most who see the note, the most suspicious element is the incongruously large first word,“BoddAH” —suggesting Kurt had addressed the letter to his imaginary childhood friend—as well as the last four lines:

  Please keep going Courtney

  for Frances

  for her life, which will be so much happier

  without me. I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU!

  Why are these specific words written in what appears to be a distinctly different handwriting? And if Kurt had really addressed the letter to Boddah, why does he write, “Thank you all…for your letters and concern during the past years”?

  On November18,in Dublin, Ireland, a sixteen-year-old girl kills herself with a shotgun. In her suicide note, she writes that she has “done it for Kurt.”

  A month after Kurt’s death, police had told Grant that Courtney’s Seattle attorney, Allen Draher, had identified the note as being in Kurt’s handwriting. When Grant informed Rosemary Carroll of this development at the time, she responded, “Allen Draher didn’t know Kurt at all.” By this time, the SPD had already turned the note over to the Washington State Patrol crime laboratory, where it was analyzed by a forensic document examiner, Janis Parker. The police then asked Courtney for a sample of Kurt’s handwriting with which to compare the writing on the note. She turned over a three-page note, written on Rome’s Excelsior Hotel stationery, that she claimed Kurt had written to her in Rome before his March overdose—the so-called Rome suicide note.

  “That just boggles my mind,” says Grant. “Instead of asking his lawyers for a copy of a document known to be written by Kurt, they went and asked Courtney for a letter. How did they know Kurt wrote the letter she gave them? What if she wrote both letters? The thought never even seems to have occurred to them. But ever since Rosemary Carroll showed me the sheet of paper from Courtney’s backpack where somebody had been practicing different handwriting styles, it certainly occurred to me.”

  The state forensic examiner sent back a report on April 22 stating that she was satisfied the note had been written by Kurt Cobain. She did not address the discrepancy in the handwriting of the first and last four lines. Three years later, in February 1997, NBC’sUnsolved Mysteries hired two of the world’s most prominent handwriting analysts to conduct their own analyses. This time, the producers supplied the experts with a copy of Kurt’s handwritingknown to be authentic—song lyrics he had written that were reproduced in his official biography,Come as You Are.

  The first expert was Marcel Matley, an American forensic examiner. Matley had attained national recognition in 1995 when he sat on a commission that determined the authenticity of the suicide note written by President Clinton’s former White House deputy counsel, Vince Foster, who had been found dead under suspicious circumstances in a suburban Virginia park in July 1993.

  After completing his analysis of Kurt’s note, Matley concluded, “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.”

  The second expert consulted was Reginald Alton, a don at Oxford University, who is considered the world’s foremost authenticator of literary manuscripts. He concurred with Matley: “There are more than a dozen discrepancies in the handwriting, definitely in the first line [where the wordBoddah appears to have been added], and in the last four lines.” Both experts agreed that the text in the main body of the letter was written by Kurt.

  As Grant’s suspicions about Courtney intensified, he asked himself what she would have stood to gain by Kurt’s death. “As a police detective, I was always trained to look for the motive,” he explains. “She had already told me that Kurt wanted a divorce and that they had a prenuptial agreement. But she also told me something else. During one of our earliest conversations, she basically admitted to me that Kurt was worth more to her dead than alive.” He plays a tape of this conversation, recorded on April 3, 1994.

  On the tape, Courtney tells Grant that around the time of Kurt’s coma in Rome, her ambition was to become the first female musician to receive a million-dollar music publishing deal. She says that she can always gauge her career by how much money she was being offered by record companies. For example, she tells Grant, before theVanity Fair controversy, she had been receiving $500,000 offers but, afterVanity Fair, she was only getting $50,000 offers. So, after Kurt’s coma, Courtney called her entertainment lawyer and said, “I bet the offers fell off after the coma.” On the contrary, her lawyer replied. In fact, the offers had doubled. When Courtney asked why, the lawyer told her it’s because everybody thinks “you’re going to outlive him.” At first, Courtney says, she thought thi
s idea was “morbid and sexist,” but then she realized that she didn’t care. “Go for it,” she told the lawyer. “Try to get two million dollars.”

  On November20,in Niagara Falls, Ontario, an unnamed seventeen-year-old male hangs himself in his basement bedroom. The day after his funeral, his nineteen-year-old best friend hangs himself from a tree in the park. The suicides are described in the media as Cobain-related. Both boys were devotees of Nirvana; the mother of one blames “death music” for the suicides.

  Two weeks later, a twenty-year-old Californian named Lyle Senac, jokingly emulating Kurt’s suicide, accidentally kills himself in front of his friends by propping a 12-gauge shotgun on the floor, then kneeling with his mouth over the barrel. Eventually, there would be sixty-eight documented cases of Cobain copycat suicides worldwide. The real figure is likely in the hundreds, since most suicides don’t leave a note. Because it’s not an intended suicide, Senac’s death doesn’t count in those statistics.

  By December 1994, eight months after Kurt’s death, Grant is finally ready to go public with his suspicions and chooses a national forum to do so. Appearing on theGil Gross Show, broadcast over the CBS radio network throughout the United States, he states his belief that Kurt Cobain was murdered. The Seattle police, he says, are not guilty of a cover-up, only a rush to judgment. He refuses to disclose the name of the person he believes committed the crime.

  “I felt I had to go public,” Grant recalls. “All the copycat suicides were starting to haunt me, all these kids killing themselves because they thought that’s what Kurt did. At first, I thought the best strategy would be to avoid naming names. I assumed the media would be less nervous.” Nevertheless, within days, he receives a letter from Rosemary Carroll’s firm accusing him of airing his “baseless” allegations for the sake of “personal profit and notoriety,” and warning him to cease and desist with his charges or the firm would refer the “matter to the authorities for possible criminal prosecution.”

  “That made me mad,” Grant recalls. “Rosemary knows that she was the one who first said Kurt was murdered and who encouraged me to pursue the investigation. Now here she was threatening me with legal action if I went public. I thought that was very cowardly of her.” His response, dated December 29, 1994, is blistering:

  Dear Rosemary:

  Having received the letter from your firm threatening me with lawsuit and possible criminal prosecution, I have to wonder what must be going on in your head! My loyalty to you and the confidentiality of our conversations ends abruptly when I am threatened for doing a job I was encouraged by you to do.

  From the beginning, you played a major role in directing this investigation and exposing some facts and details that implicated Courtney as part of the conspiracy that eventually led to Kurt’s murder. I’m convinced you know in your heart the truth about what happened. It’s time for you to come forward and speak to the authorities about what you know.

  I’m aware there’s lots at stake here for you. Your career, your marriage, possible financial losses and who knows what else? You may not realize it yet, but these things are in jeopardy whether you come forward or not.

  You impressed me as the type of person who has their priorities in order. What good are we as human beings if we’re so afraid that we allow people to get away with murder?

  The world of secrecy is a dangerous place to live, especially when your mind holds information that could help convict a killer. I’ve placed my life in danger here in order to bring about justice and put an end to what may turn out to be more than just one killing. In addition, kids are continuing to commit suicides themselves, thinking Kurt did it so it must be the way to go! The last of these incidents occurred just a couple of weeks ago.

  Although I’m still in some danger, I feel my silence would have created an even greater threat to my life. Getting rid of someoneafter they talked is just plain stupid and can only bring more attention to the case. The real danger existsbefore the person talks.

  I think I’ve given you something to think about. Call me if I can help. If you choose to oppose me in this, all I can say is good luck. You’ll need it.

  Sincerely,

  Tom Grant

  Carroll never responded.

  A week later, on January 5, 1995, Grant takes to the radio air-waves again, this time on the nationally syndicatedTom Leykis Show, where he outlines his case in detail for more than an hour. It is during this appearance that Grant publicly airs the heart of his theory for the first time, charging Courtney Love and Michael “Cali” Dewitt were involved in a criminal conspiracy that resulted in the murder of Kurt Cobain.

  After Grant drops this bombshell, Leykis opens the phone lines to listeners. One of the first callers happens to be Gary Dewitt, Cali’s father, who is understandably outraged:

  GARY DEWITT“I can’t believe that this guy’s going to make a huge score for absolutely no reason at all. Kurt Cobain killed himself. Period.”

  LEYKIS“So, you believe our guest is out only to make a buck?”

  DEWITT“Of course…. He’s out for the big score. There’s a lot of money in it.”

  LEYKIS“Have you seen any of the evidence to prove that what the police said, that this is a suicide, is true? Have you seen the evidence?”

  DEWITT“No, but I’ve known Courtney about five years and Mike is my son, and believe me, neither one of them is capable of something like that…and when I heard this on the radio, I couldn’t believe it, so I called Sergeant Cameron at the Seattle police, and they’re treating this guy like a nut.”

  LEYKIS“Let me ask you a question. Is it possible that cops don’t like P.I.s messing in their business? Is that possible?”

  DEWITT“Naw. That’s movie stuff.”

  After the show, Courtney leaves a message on Grant’s answering machine at 4:00A.M. : “Hi, Tom. This is Courtney…. I just heard the radio thing…. I haven’t heard you tell an out, ya know, I listened to the thing and didn’t hear you tell, tell like outright lies…. I wish you were doing it for the money, and the realization that you’re doing it because you think it’s right hurts me a lot.”

  Two weeks later, Grant receives another call from Courtney, who has just begun a tour of Australia and New Zealand. Her tone is more pained than angry:

  COURTNEY“If this is in your fucking head, I’ll do anything to get it out of your head…. I don’t think you’re crazy, just a little bit paranoid…. People would kill me if they knew I was calling you.”

  GRANT“I’m after the truth.”

  COURTNEY“That’s why I fucking called you. I’ll do anything I can do to get you not to think this. This is nutty and not true. I’d like for you to have every piece of evidence to prove that I had nothing to do with it.”

  Grant asks her for a copy of the autopsy report, explaining that only the postmortem records can prove that Kurt committed suicide. Courtney’s response is unexpected: “I spoke to Nikolas [the deputy medical examiner] the other night…. He said he’d come over to my house when I get back. He’s angry at you. He won’t give you the records…. As long as Nikolas is the coroner, I’m not afraid.”

  The Nikolas in question was Dr. Nikolas Hartshorne, the deputy medical examiner who conducted the autopsy in April and ruled Kurt’s death a suicide. In late 1995, when we were researching our first book, a source close to Hartshorne told us that, while he was still in college, he had befriended Courtney Love and her first husband, James Moreland. He met Moreland while he was still in medical school when, as a punk rock promoter, Hartshorne organized Nirvana’s third-ever Seattle show, at the Central Tavern in 1988. This means the bill that night featured not just one but both of Courtney’s future husbands, since the headliner just happened to be Moreland’s band, the Leaving Trains.

  We decided to pursue this lead and, posing as Canadian university students who were doing a paper on the Kurt Cobain copycat suicide phenomenon, contacted Hartshorne for an interview. He agreed to meet with us at his office in December 1995.

/>   During our interview, Hartshorne confirmed that he had been friends with both James Moreland and Courtney Love, whom he described as a “great girl.” When we asked him if his friendship with Courtney might have constituted a conflict of interest in the investigation of her husband’s death, Hartshorne replied, “Absolutely not.”

  He then confirmed that he had determined Kurt’s death was a “textbook case of suicide” when he first arrived on the scene and admitted that the police never seriously contemplated the possibility of murder at all. He described Tom Grant’s theory as “ludicrous.”

  “They [the homicide unit] came to the scene because of the popularity of the individual,” he told us. “I mean, Elvis is still walking around out there, and when you have somebody this prominent, you like to get the best people in there to make sure all youri ’s are dotted andt ’s are crossed. Look at all the people who think it’s a conspiracy. If they hadn’t done all this work, you would have many more people mucking about saying it’s murder.” Hartshorne paused for a moment, and we couldn’t help noticing the huge Kurt Cobain poster looming over us from its spot on the wall. We were in the very room where Hartshorne had conducted Kurt’s autopsy a year earlier.

  “The suicide was [Kurt’s] decision,” he continues, “and you have to respect him for whatever his decision was. He had that right.”

  Now, in the New Zealand phone call, Courtney continues telling Grant about her recent conversation with Hartshorne: “I asked Nikolas if there was doubt in his mind whether this is a suicide, and he said, ‘I’ve seen people fake suicides before, and this isn’t one of them.’ ”