A group of forensic experts has recently reignited the debate over the death of Nirvana’s iconic frontman, Kurt Cobain, suggesting he may have been murdered at his Seattle residence on April 5, 1994.

At the time of his death, Cobain was only 27 years old.

The investigation raises questions about whether Cobain, often described as a reserved and fragile figure, could have possibly managed the cumbersome 6-pound Remington Model 11 20-gauge shotgun. The report scrutinizes the legitimacy of the handwriting on his supposed suicide note, the absence of blood on his hands, and the significant amount of drugs found in his system, among numerous other details.

The investigators argue that it would have been impossible for Cobain to inflict the fatal injury himself. They propose that he was overpowered by assailants, injected with a triple dose of heroin, and subsequently shot, with the scene manipulated to appear as a suicide.

Despite the compelling theories, the forensic team has not provided a clear motive, and official authorities maintain their original ruling: suicide.

Ultimately, the investigation may not alter the official narrative. For those who experienced the event personally, like myself, the truth of what happened to Kurt Cobain remains deeply ingrained in our memories.

In 1992, I was in the churning wash of the grunge tsunami, working as a part-time DJ on KROQ radio in Los Angeles. The first time I saw Kurt and Courtney in the flesh was at a Teenage Fanclub show in LA. The two of them looked like arctic-eyed ghosts floating through Fairfax High School.

At that point, rumors were already rampant that the pair had been dabbling in heroin. She looked like his bony-shouldered bodyguard towering over his tiny frame – a terrifying, red-lipped devil clearly looking for a fight (imagine Taylor Swift and Large Marge had an angry baby); he was wearing a cardigan.

Kurt Cobain was murdered? That’s the assessment from a squad of forensic scientists who conducted a private investigation into the Nirvana frontman’s death at his Seattle home on April 5, 1994

The report casts doubt on whether Kurt – a shy whisp of a man – could’ve held a 6-pound Remington Model 11 20-gauge shotgun, it questions the authenticity of the handwriting on his apparent suicide note and about a zillion other details

The first time I saw Kurt and Courtney in the flesh was at a Teenage Fanclub show in LA (Pictured: Love and Kennedy during 1993 MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles)

A few months later, I was hired as an MTV VJ, hosting a nightly music video show called Alternative Nation that played the greatest bands of the time, especially Nirvana.

So, I got to know Kurt. He was an introverted smoker, who seemed genuinely peeved by the fuss of fame when he and the guys had to stop by MTV to do press. I hung out with his bandmates and managers. They were all a ton of fun, but Kurt seemed like a sad, wet sandwich.

Only later did I get to know Courtney. I quickly came to realize, in part, why the guy was so despondent. She would lord over him like a Grunge Gollum, sniping at anyone she thought was trying to control her precious. Courtney was like a walking flask of battery acid with a loose lid, splashing her contents over anyone she deemed a threat.

Once, for reasons still unknown me, she told my MTV bosses that I wasn’t the 21-year-old nymphette that I claimed to be, but actually a 30-year-old who used to work in a bank. I had to bring in my high school yearbook to convince the higher-ups of my identity.

Then, one night the phone in my East Village apartment started ringing off the hook. At the other end was a pack of screaming Gen X’ers at a payphone. They were checking to see if the number that Courtney had given out onstage at a Hole concert was really mine. Unfortunately, it was. That vindictive moron had memorized my number and doxxed me.

Weeks later, Courtney called me to apologize and started quoting Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan, lecturing me about my lack of life experience. I was lucky, she said, that she had taught me a hard lesson by giving my number to hundreds of strangers, so that they could bombard me with unwelcome calls.

Ironically, Kurt prank called me too. He, I was told, got the number from Nirvana rhythm guitarist Pat Smear.

If only I’d known that it was Kurt I would’ve tried to convince him to leave his dreadful, destructive wife. But I had become so used to people messing with me that I just yelled back, trying to drown out my harasser.

Courtney has been open about their drug use. ‘We went on a binge,’ she told Vanity Fair in 1992 about a trip to New York City that January. ‘We did a lot of drugs. We got pills and then we went down to Alphabet City and Kurt wore a hat, I wore a hat, and we copped some dope. Then we got high and went to S.N.L. After that, I did heroin for a couple of months.’

Years after Kurt’s death, I asked one of him good friends if Kurt was always depressed and on drugs. The source said he knew Kurt as a typical teenage beer drinker.

Courtney has been open about their drug use. ‘We went on a binge,’ she told Vanity Fair in 1992 about a trip to New York City

So, I got to know Kurt. He was an introverted smoker, who seemed genuinely peeved by the fuss of fame when he and the guys had to stop by MTV to do press

Years after Kurt’s death, I asked one of him good friends if Kurt was always depressed and on drugs. The source said he knew Kurt as a typical teenage beer drinker, until he met Courtney.

After meeting Courtney, he said, that’s when Kurt truly fell in love… with heroin and became a darker, more withdrawn version of his introverted self. 

Kurt also always seemed to be in physical pain. I’ve long suspected that it was Celiac Disease, something that I also suffer from.

In March 1994, Kurt overdosed on painkillers and alcohol in a Rome hotel room. By then, he and Courtney had a two-year-old daughter, Francis Bean.

Nirvana’s management tried as hard as they could to contain the chatter that he had been trying to kill himself, but rumors started to spread and his friends got very concerned.

Then, we got the terrible news.

I will never forget the April afternoon that the world learned that Kurt had died. A pall that fell over MTV.

I walked into the 42nd street studio and into a sea of swollen eyes and shattered faces. People couldn’t bring themselves to even offer condolences. None of it felt real, even though his suicide was the most predictable thing in the world.

Courtney, it seemed to me, did not have a traditional mourning period. I was told by a guy in a band that he and another musician were shooting heroin in a New York City hotel room just a few months after Kurt’s passing – and Courtney was there. She allegedly kept pulling Kurt’s ashes out of her backpack in a gruesome show-and-tell.

It was around the same time that Courtney started sleeping with Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor while they were on tour together. Once, while I was speaking to Reznor on speakerphone, he goaded me into bad mouthing her. Little did I know she was in the room. Rock music is just full of self-indulgent sociopaths.

Their brief fling didn’t last long. In a 1995 interview with Spin magazine, Courtney said of Reznor. ‘Don’t call your band Nine Inch Nails when you have a three-inch one.’

Courtney called me shortly after that to say she’d snatched up a New Orleans dream home that Reznor was in the process of buying. She knew that we were friends and that I would spill the beans. Just then, Reznor beeped in on the other line, and demanded I hang up with her. When I clicked back, she knew the trap was sprung and started shrieking, ‘Is it him? I bought his house! Tell him he’s a one-inch nail!!’

Was Courtney Love a terrible person to be around? I believe, yes. But she didn’t cause Kurt’s death. And murderers? That’s not even worth addressing.

In March 1994, Kurt overdosed on painkillers and alcohol in a Rome hotel room. By then, he and Courtney had a two-year-old daughter, Francis Bean

It was around the same time that Courtney started sleeping with Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor while they were on tour together

In a 1995 interview with Spin magazine, Courtney said of Reznor. ‘Don’t call your band Nine Inch Nails when you have a three-inch one’

What this new investigation doesn’t make clear is that Kurt Cobain was a deeply depressed man, with a track record of heavy drug use, a family history of suicide (two of his uncle’s killed themselves) and alleged attempts to take his own life.

After the Rome overdose on March 18, according to a Seattle police report, Courtney called police after Kurt locked himself in a room. She said he had a 38-caliber revolver and claimed he said he was going to kill himself.

Weeks later, Kurt checked himself into Exodus Recovery Center in Marina del Rey, California but bolted after just two days. He reportedly told clinic staff that he was stepping out onto the patio to smoke, then jumped a six-foot brick wall and ran. Cobain’s mother, Wendy O’Connor filed a missing person’s report and told police that her son might be suicidal.

That’s the truth as I know it. Kurt Cobain took his own life. As painful as that reality may be, it’s not as painful as dredging up the past and reopening old wounds.

Rest in peace, Kurt.

If you or someone you know needs help, please call or text the confidential 24/7 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the US on 988. There is also an online chat available at 988lifeline.org.