This is the events leading up to Kurts finding. This is written by the investigator Courtney hired.
I might not change your mind on any of this and there is no way my mind will be changed. I truly believe Courtney had something to do with Kurt's death. Weather she did or not we lost one of the most brilliant song writers of all time. Most people think of Nirvana and think of rage and stage diving, but Kurt was so much more than that.
I guess well just have to agree to disagree.
http://www.cobaincase.com/events.htm
PRIOR TO MY INVOLVEMENT
Courtney Love and her husband, Kurt Cobain, had not been getting along. They'd been talking about divorce. Kurt did not want to tour or perform anymore. He was walking away from what Courtney said was a $9.5 million dollar contract to headline the Lollapalooza tour.
Courtney was angry at Kurt for the possible loss of all those millions. Her anger wasn't working, so she tried to blame Kurt's attitude on his drug use and put together a so-called "tough love intervention." Among others at the "intervention" were some of the junkies Kurt did drugs with!
Courtney claimed she told Kurt, "This has got to end. You have to be a good daddy!" This statement is somewhat pretentious, since it came from a woman who was doing drugs when I was first hired and continued her drug use during the eight months I worked for her. It's hard to believe Kurt could have taken this whole "intervention" scene seriously.
MARCH 26TH.
Courtney left Seattle for the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills.
MARCH 30th.
Kurt and his best friend Dylan Carlson purchased a shotgun. Kurt told Dylan he was afraid of intruders at the house. Walking out on the Lollapalooza tour was a business decision that would cost others a great deal of money also. I have reason to believe Kurt may have been intimidated into believing his life would be in danger if he failed to do the tour.
The shotgun was a 20 gauge, set-up for light load. This set-up is what gun dealers often recommend for home protection because the shot won't penetrate walls and endanger those on the other side. Kurt took the shotgun to his house so it would be there when he got back from rehab. He then left Seattle to go to a rehab center in Marina Del Rey, California, (near Los Angeles).
APRIL 1st.
Thirteen phone calls were made to Kurt's rehab center from Courtney's hotel room at the Peninsula. Most of these are to the patient's pay phone. Courtney later told me she only talked to Kurt once that day.
That evening, Kurt left the rehab. Later, at 8:47 PM, he called the Peninsula Hotel and left a message for Courtney. The message on the hotel log reads: "Elizabeth's phone # is (213)_______." (This # is in my case file.) Courtney never mentioned this message to the media. It doesn't appear to be a message from a person who is "suicidal."
Kurt arrived in Seattle early Saturday morning, April 2nd, and was taken to his house on Lake Washington by a hired driver.
Saturday night Courtney had a friend plant a phony story with the Associated Press that she had overdosed on drugs and was in the hospital. This planted story became significant later in the investigation.
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EASTER SUNDAY AT THE PENINSULA
SUNDAY, APRIL 3rd.
Courtney called my office in Beverly Hills. She told me someone was using her husband's credit card and she wanted me to try to find out who it was.
I took another investigator with me named Ben Klugman. We met Courtney at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. "If you leak this to the press, I'll sue the f___ out of you," Courtney warned me as we walked into the room.
Courtney told us her husband was Kurt Cobain and that he just left a drug rehab. She said she lied to the credit card company and had his card canceled. She wanted us to call the credit card company and find out what the attempted activities were on this canceled card. I mentioned I couldn't understand why she needed us for that. I advised her she could do that herself and save some money. If we did it, I'd have to charge her fifty dollars just to make a phone call.
"What? That's not enough money for you?" Courtney responded sarcastically.
Courtney told us Kurt only had one credit card and without that one card he had no access to money. She said Kurt didn't have any friends or anyone else that might loan him money. Knowing now who we were dealing with, this didn't make sense!
We questioned Courtney more about Kurt's ability to get money for his needs. "This guy can't even catch a f___ing cab by himself!" she insisted?"
Courtney told us about a story she had planted with the Associated Press the previous evening. The story alleged that Courtney had overdosed and was in the hospital. She claimed the reason she did this was to scare Kurt and get his attention so he'd try to contact her.
Later that afternoon while I was with her in the hotel room, Courtney rambled on in an angry rage about the "9 1/2 million dollars" Kurt was walking away from.
She said, "If he doesn't want the money, he ought to do it for his child, for Frances."
She said she'd do the Lollapalooza tour for Kurt if he didn't want to do it...
She said she'd do Saturday Night Live if he didn't want to do it...
She said she thought Kurt wanted a divorce...
She mentioned a prenuptial agreement, but said, "My name's on all the houses and assets."
Courtney said she didn't know for sure where Kurt was. She said he might be in Seattle, or he may have flown back east to stay with Michael Stipe. She failed to mention initially that Kurt had been seen at their Lake Washington house on Saturday morning, April 2nd, by "Cali," (Michael Dewitt), the male nanny who was living at the Cobain residence. Cali later claimed he informed Courtney on Saturday, April 2nd, that Kurt had been to the house earlier that morning. Cali said Kurt came into his bedroom and they had a short conversation.
Courtney asked me to find someone in Seattle to watch a drug dealer's apartment and other locations in case Kurt turned up, but she didn't ask us to watch the Lake Washington house, the one place we later learned Kurt had actually been seen!
I sub-contracted with a P.I. firm in Seattle for the surveillance.
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A FALSE POLICE REPORT
MONDAY, APRIL 4th.
I met with Courtney again at the Peninsula hotel. Courtney told me she had called in a missing person's report pretending to be Kurt's mother, Wendy O'Conner.
As we monitored the progress of the surveillance team in Seattle, we continued working with the credit card company trying to track the use of Kurt's credit card. Someone was still attempting to use the card for various charges.
Courtney advised us Kurt only stays in the best hotels. We began calling hotels from listings in the Seattle phone book. At one time we thought we had located him at a hotel under one of the aliases Courtney had given us. I notified Courtney and she asked us to watch the hotel in case Kurt might leave.
Courtney told us she didn't want Kurt to know she was looking for him, but during an earlier phone conversation, Courtney told me Kurt was suicidal. "Everyone thinks he's going to die," she announced. So now I had to wonder why she wouldn't want the police or someone else to go to the room and try to save him?
After less than an hour, Courtney called me and said she talked to the person in the room and it wasn't Kurt. Of course I wondered why she'd call his room if she didn't want him to know she was looking for him.
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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6th.
Kurt had still not been located. At the hotel later that afternoon, I volunteered to go to Seattle and search for Kurt. One of Courtney's friends in the room said, "Why don't you go up there, Courtney?"
"I can't, I have business I have to take care of here," Courtney replied.
I asked Courtney not to tell anyone I was coming because they might alert Kurt. She agreed but later told me she had called Cali to tell him I was on my way to Seattle. Courtney told me earlier that she didn't trust Cali. Now she claimed, "He won't tell anyone."
"Save the American Icon, Tom!" Courtney shouted dramatically as I left the hotel room and headed for the airport.
THE SEATTLE SEARCH
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6th, 11:30 PM.
I picked up Kurt's best friend, Dylan Carlson at his apartment. We went to a cafe where we ate and planned our strategy for locating Kurt and finding out what was going on.
I asked Dylan if he felt Kurt was suicidal. He replied, "No. Not at all. He's under a lot of pressure, but he's handling things pretty good."
I asked Dylan if he'd ever been told that the Rome incident was a "suicide attempt," and he said, "No. Kurt said it was just an accident."
If Cobain was so "suicidal," and if he had really "tried to kill himself" a month earlier, I wondered why nobody clued in his best friend, the guy he hangs out with! Wouldn't they want Dylan to keep a close eye on Kurt? And if Kurt was so "suicidal," wouldn't Courtney want to make sure Dylan didn't allow him to have access to guns?
Dylan told me Kurt had been afraid of intruders at the house lately, and that he wanted a gun for protection. So he said he helped Kurt buy a shotgun to have at the house when he returned from rehab. He said Kurt didn't want the shotgun registered in his name because the police had just confiscated his other guns. He didn't want them to know he had this one or they might confiscate it also.
After leaving the cafe, Dylan and I checked out a drug dealer's apartment on Capitol Hill and several hotels on the Aurora strip where Kurt had been known to stay from time to time.
I mentioned to Dylan that Courtney had told me Kurt only stays at the "best hotels." Dylan appeared puzzled. "No, he doesn't. He usually stays in some pretty ratty places."
While Dylan and I were driving around Seattle, I asked him if we should check with Kurt's mother in Aberdeen. Dylan replied, "No. Kurt wouldn't go there. He doesn't get along with his mom."
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THURSDAY MORNING, APRIL 7th, 2:15 AM.
We went to the Lake Washington house. I waited in the car while Dylan walked up alone as we had previously planned. We didn't want to alert Kurt to my presence if at all possible. Dylan came back to the car after at least five minutes saying no one was home. I wondered what took so long if no one was home?
We went to a pay phone and called Courtney. She was at Rosemary Carroll's house in Los Angeles. Dylan talked with Courtney. I told him to have her call the alarm company and ask them to turn off the alarm so we could go in the house.
Upon returning to the Lake Washington house, we gained access through an unlocked kitchen window. While we were searching the house, Dylan commented, "I've never seen the house this clean before." A television was still on in one of the bedrooms upstairs and the bed was unmade. Dylan told me this was Cali's room.
We didn't find Kurt. Dylan didn't tell me about the room above the garage, and since it was dark and raining, I hadn't noticed it. I dropped Dylan off at his apartment and went to my hotel for a few hours sleep.
I picked Dylan up later and we resumed our search. We spent most of the day on Thursday checking out some of Kurt's hangouts and talking to people who might know where he was. As evening approached, we headed for the small town of Carnation located about 30 miles east of Seattle where the Cobains owned two vacant cabins situated on several acres of property. But in the dark, Dylan became unsure as to whether or not he could locate the property. The increasing rain didn't help much so we eventually turned back. We'd try another time.
We stopped at a pay phone and Dylan made a call. When he returned to the car, he said, "Courtney's had some trouble. She got arrested and she's in the hospital."
Dylan eventually managed to speak with Courtney on the phone to get further instructions. Courtney wanted us to go back to the Lake Washington house to look for the shotgun. She said it could be in a hidden compartment in her closet.
Since Cali had been at the house quite a lot, I wondered why she hadn't asked him to look there before now?
9:45 PM.
Dylan and I returned to the Lake Washington house. Inside I found a note from "Cali" which had been placed on the main stairway. It wasn't there the night before. The note read in part, "I can't believe you managed to be in the house without me noticing. You're a f---ing a--hole for not calling Courtney..."
I had a feeling the note was intended for me to find, not Kurt. It just seemed phony. When I mentioned this note later to Rosemary Carroll (a person who knew Kurt, Courtney and Cali very well), she agreed, "Didn't it Tom? Didn't it sound phony?!"
On Thursday afternoon, April 7th, Cali told friends he was leaving for Los Angeles. Although I spoke with him later, I never got to see or talk to Cali while I was in Seattle looking for Kurt. I had the feeling he was trying to avoid me.
Cali later claimed he was hardly at the house from Monday on. He said he wasn't staying at the house because Courtney kept calling and saying she knew Kurt was there.
The obvious question: if Cali was hardly at the house himself, why would he find it so hard to believe Kurt had been in the house without him noticing? And if Courtney told Cali she knew Kurt was there, why wasn't she having us watch the house during our surveillance?
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KURT IS FOUND
FRIDAY MORNING, APRIL 8th.
Dylan and I were on our way to the Carnation property once again. We stopped for gas and Dylan got out to make a phone call. When he came back to the car, Dylan said a friend just told him a body was found at the Lake Washington house. Was it Cali, Kurt or someone else? We turned on the car radio and soon heard that the person found dead was Kurt Cobain. Dylan showed no reaction.
Later we heard on the radio that Kurt's body was found in the "greenhouse." I turned to Dylan and asked, "What's the greenhouse?" Dylan told me it was a room above the garage.
"Why didn't we look there?" I asked.
"It's just a dirty little room. I think they keep some lumber in there or something," Dylan replied
I called my office and spoke with Ben Klugman. He told me the credit card company indicated someone had continued trying to use Kurt's credit card as recent as Friday morning, April 8th, just hours before Cobain's body was found.
We soon learned Cobain had been dead for two days or more. Now it was apparent that someone had been trying use his missing credit card since the time he left Los Angeles to return to Seattle. Someone also attempted to use that same card after Cobain died!
I called the Seattle homicide detectives and tried to tell them something was wrong. The detective told me Kurt was locked in the room by himself. He said the door was locked from the inside and the fire department had to break a window on the door to get in, inferring that Cobain had to have been alone in the greenhouse when he died. I assumed they must know what they're talking about, but I was curious about what kind of door lock this was.
I spoke to Courtney on the phone that afternoon. She wasn't at all upset that we hadn't found Kurt. She acted as if she thought Kurt died the night before. If so, we could have saved him if we'd found him in time! Why wasn't she angry at us?
Courtney tried to get me to talk to the press. I told her I didn't want to say anything until I found out more about what happened. This whole thing smelled really rotten!
I left Seattle and flew back to Los Angeles.