No, Kurt Cobain was not killed by his wife Courtney Love

According to certain fans, authors, and investigators, Kurt Cobain’s famous 1994 suicide by shotgun was not the consequence of a struggling man with the entire world on his shoulders. He was murdered by his wife, Hole frontwoman Courtney Love, in a nefarious plot for financial control of his estate.

This is not some niche conspiracy either, otherwise it would be easy enough to ignore. Plenty of books have been written, the popular Nick Broomfield documentary Kurt & Courtney tries to validate the theory, and each generation of Nirvana fan eventually makes their way to it.

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It should be a simple case of Occam’s razor. Did Cobain, a man clinically depressed since early childhood, who struggled to develop healthy coping skills, and had a tumultuous time in the limelight, commit suicide? Or was it an elaborate hitman plot by his wife, which has been silenced and hidden away from us for three decades?

The evidence put forward of this supposed hitman plot is always conjecture, mere theories taken as fact by the believers.

Part of his suicide note had different styled handwriting. It could not have been that he wrote that part on a different surface or a myriad of other explanations – no, it is assumed that Love must have written it after the fact as part of the cover-up.

Cobain supposedly had too much heroin in his system to be able to pick up the gun and shoot. Yet Cobain was a heavy user of the drug, his tolerance would have changed its effect, and we don’t know how his body would have individually reacted to the level found in his system.

The ‘facts’ go on and on like this endlessly, all hinging on the mildest level of plausibility and wilfully disregarding any straightforward answers. The straightforward answers are simply too inconvenient to fit into the long-running narrative web being extensively spun.

Then there are the strange and untrustworthy figures surrounding the murder theory. One of the most prominent figures brought up is El Duce, frontman of shock punk band The Mentors. According to Mr. Duce, Love paid him $50,000 to ‘whack’ Cobain. He passed a polygraph test (a notoriously unreliable indicator of the truth) and used the notoriety from his claim to go on TV talk shows and feature in various magazines. That his claim has been taken seriously, and not seen as the publicity stunt it was, is the real conspiracy here.

A lot of the information provided and weaponised comes from Tom Grant, a private investigator who was once hired by Love to monitor Cobain. Grant has made quite the career for himself pushing this theory and is seen as a credible source in the eyes of the Courtney Killed Kurt milieu. Just one more new revelation and he’ll crack the case, surely. Or he’ll just blame the Seattle Police Department for withholding the truth. I suppose Love must have paid off an entire police department to keep quiet like some powerful mob boss.

The Seattle Police Department released a cache of photos to the public and re-investigated Kurt Cobain's death as a possible homicide in 2014 due to pleas from fans – the re-investigation confirmed the original ruling of suicide (Image: Seattle Police Department)So where does all this come from? Perhaps it’s the high level of idealisation surrounding Cobain, with Love – his abrasive, outspoken wife – playing the perfect scapegoat for a tragic end. Trying to grasp the fragile mental state of a rock idol and how he was brought to suicide is seemingly more difficult to parse than a fantastical narrative of murder plots and cover-ups.

Cobain and Love’s marriage was not an easy union, and no one would suggest otherwise. They married shortly after meeting, they were both heavy heroin users raising a young child in danger of being taken away by child protective services, and the microscope was always focused on them and exacerbated their problems.

But their relationship wasn’t an uncaring or transactional one, at least to the extent that Love would want to murder her husband. A month before his suicide, Cobain had overdosed in a hotel room in Rome. Love had awoken to find him unresponsive and called for help. Would those with murder in their eyes not see the perfect crime laid out in front of them? If Love wanted him dead, why would she not leave him to die from the overdose? She didn’t, she saved him. Just that alone makes an elaborate hitman plot unnecessary and nonsensical.

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For certain fans, Love is an unwelcome presence in their adoration of Cobain, and it is surely a factor in why the murder theory has managed to gain legs. Love is still even accused of letting Cobain write her songs, not even allowing the musician the simple grace of her own talents. But the opposite is true: Love had a stubborn pride in not letting her husband contribute to her music. The lyrics for Nirvana’s last studio album In Utero are littered with words from Love’s poetry and letters.

Sadly, the idea of Cobain being murdered by his loose cannon hellraising wife will find itself a new audience, just as it has before, and the cottage industry of books, films, and crime stories will continue to provide all the ammunition the conspiracy needs. But is it a valiant effort to stand up for the late musician and find the truth, or is it just denying the sober reality of a tragic end?