On April 8, 1994, the body of Kurt Donald Cobain, a 27-year-old White male, was discovered in the greenhouse of his Seattle, Washington home. An electrician who had arrived to install a security system found Cobain, initially believing him to be a mannequin until he saw blood. A 20-gauge shotgun was found across Cobain's chest, and a suicide note was discovered nearby in a flowerpot, with a pen stuck through it. The King County Medical Examiner later determined that Cobain had died on April 5, three days prior to the discovery of his body. The official cause of death was ruled a suicide by a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head.
The subsequent investigation by the Seattle Police Department supported the medical examiner's conclusion. An autopsy revealed a high concentration of heroin in Cobain's system, along with traces of Valium. In the weeks leading up to his death, Cobain had struggled with his heroin addiction and depression. A month earlier, in Rome, he had overdosed on Rohypnol and alcohol in what his wife, Courtney Love, later confirmed was a suicide attempt. Shortly before his death, Cobain had checked out of a drug rehabilitation center in Los Angeles after only a couple of days. Police records also noted a domestic dispute on March 18, where Love reported that Cobain had locked himself in a room with a revolver and threatened suicide.
Despite the official ruling, no arrests were ever made, and there have been no official suspects in the death of Kurt Cobain. The case was formally closed, with law enforcement confident in their determination of suicide. In 2014, approaching the 20th anniversary of his death, a Seattle Police cold case detective reviewed the file, including developing rolls of film from the scene that had never been processed. This review did not lead to a reopening of the investigation; instead, police stated that the new examination only strengthened their conclusion that Cobain's death was a suicide. The FBI also released a small file on Cobain, revealing they had received letters from the public urging them to investigate his death as a murder, but the bureau determined it did not have the jurisdiction to do so as there was no evidence of a federal crime.
Over the years, several conspiracy theories have emerged, challenging the official findings and suggesting that Cobain was murdered. A prominent proponent of this theory is Tom Grant, a private investigator initially hired by Courtney Love to find Cobain after he left the rehab facility. Grant has publicly argued that the amount of heroin in Cobain's system would have rendered him incapable of firing the shotgun. He and others have also pointed to what they claim are inconsistencies in the suicide note, suggesting the final lines were written by another hand. Another figure in these theories was Eldon "El Duce" Hoke, who claimed Love had offered him $50,000 to kill Cobain, a claim he could not substantiate before his own death. However, these claims have remained in the realm of theory and have not led to any official change in the case's status.
