Cobain's "suicide note"
makes no direct reference
to killing himself.


Sad Little Pisces Jesus Man

If you've got a suicide, you've got a suicide note. So if you're going to kill someone and make it look like a suicide, you'll definitely need a letter of intent for the victim's fictional exit scene.

The letter found with Kurt's body begins, "To Boddah pronounced," possibly a reference to an imaginary childhood friend. What follows is the weirdest, whiniest, most confusing suicide note ever left for a grieving widow. (A transcript and image file of the note are available in the menu accompanying this feature.) As a suicide note, it just doesn't make a lot of sense.

But if you view the note from a different perspective -- as a letter to his adoring fans, explaining his departure from the music maelstrom -- things start to fall into place. Lines like "I don't have the passion anymore and so remember, its better to burn out than to fade away" take on a whole new meaning in that context.

The note found with Kurt's body says nothing about suicide and was not written specifically to Courtney and daughter Frances Bean, who are only mentioned in a footnote. The tone of the note isn't particularly suicidal, with Kurt writing "I have it good, very good, and I'm grateful." The entire note is written in present tense, not the kind of finality you'd expect from a man who was supposedly preparing to pierce the wall of death with his own hand.

According to Grant, none of the psychologists who examined him at the rehab center he had briefly visited shortly before his death found him to be suicidal; neither did his friend Dylan Carlson, who had seen him a few days before.

And then, of course, there's the "second note" that Courtney kept in secret after Kurt's death, which she let slip during a Rolling Stone interview. In the second note, which she didn't share with the police in Seattle, Kurt stated that he was leaving Courtney and leaving Seattle, providing a backdrop for a good-bye note to his fans rather than a death letter to his wife and child.

But what about the Rome "suicide attempt" a few months earlier, which landed Kurt in an Italian hospital with a heroin overdose? Kurt wrote Courtney a note after that incident which included one line which she says was "very definitely suicidal":

"Dr. Baker says I would have to choose between life and death," Kurt wrote. "I'm choosing death."

Which makes no sense at all as a suicide reference, according to Grant. No doctor in his right mind would ever offer suicide as an option to a patient; he was clearly referring to Cobain's heroin habit. Cobain was stating that he chose heroin -- or, in the doctor's worldview, death.

But suicide note funny business and ballistic anomalies hardly prove murder. Homicide requires at least two people. If Cobain died as a result of a murder conspiracy, Courtney Love would be a prime suspect.

(c) Copyright 1996 ParaScope, Inc.

Next: Did Courtney Love have a murder motive?
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