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The Life _ Mysterious Death Of Kurt Cobain · The conspiracy

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: On a Friday morning in April nineteen ninety four, an
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: electrician arrived at a Seattle home to install a security system,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: but he would find a body instead. Kurt Cobain was
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: twenty seven years old, and just like that, the most
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: important voice in rock music went silent. Before Nirvana, if
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: you wanted to hear something raw and real, you had
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: to dig for it. But Kurt kicked the door open,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: took the noise, the pain, the honesty, and shoved it
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: straight into the mainstream. And Lars Ulrik of Metallica said
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: it best. With Kurt Cobain, you felt you were connecting
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: to the real person. Between you and him, there was nothing.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: It was heart to heart and that connection is what
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: set him apart. And it's why thirty years later, kids
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: who weren't even born yet still find their way to
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: his music. And it's also why the questions never stopped.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Because how a man that real died and what actually
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: happened in that Seattle home is a story that's far
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: from settled. So this is his life, his death, and
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: the mystery that refuses to go away. Crime, conspiracy, cults,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: serial killers, and murder all things that I love to
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: consume and I know you do too, you sick, twisted, beautiful,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: intellectually minded freak. Today we are talking about Kurt Cobain,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: and to be honest, I knew very little about his life.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: I love Nirvana, but I honestly have never gone down
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: the rabbit hole of who Kirk Cobain was, what he
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: did in his life, and why his death was so infamous.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: So I learned a lot with this case. I think
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: is extremely interesting, and there's even stuff that is very
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: relevant to today and very scary. So without further ado,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: let's unbuckle our seatbelts, go mock five on the highway,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: slam on the rights, and mustle the swindshield into this
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: infamous case together. Let me pause for a sec to
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: paint you a picture.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Okay, it's seven am.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: My cat baby is sitting directly on my chest, staring
• 2:14
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• 2:17
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• 2:21
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• 2:24
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• 2:28
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• 2:30
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• 2:33
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• 2:54
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• 2:57
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  Speaker 1: CCCM thank you so much to Smalls for sponsoring the
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: video and supporting the channel, and let's get back to it. Aberdeen,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Washington sits in Gray's Harbor County, roughly one hundred miles
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: south west of Seattle, and for decades it was one
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: of the most productive timber towns in the country, and
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: they called it the lumber Capital of the world. And
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: they also called it the hellhole of the Pacific and
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: the Port of Missing Men, a nickname earned by a
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: murder rate that made the town infamous long before Kurt
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Cobain ever picked up the guitar. And the Great Depression
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: gutted the place and the town went from thirty seven
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: working sawmills to nine, and what timber was left got
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: stripped over the next few decades, and by the late
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: seventies the industry was hollowed out, and the Satsop Nuclear
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: plant showed up in nineteen seventy eight like a lifeline
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: and thousands of jobs, talk of permanent work, and the
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: whole town was betting on it. But four years later
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: the project collapsed and overnight the jobless rate shot through
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: the roof, and what was left was a place where
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: options were few and expectations were narrow, and Kabine described
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: it himself in nineteen ninety two saying, quote, a very
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: small community with a lot of people who have very
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: so small mines. Basically, if you're not prepared to join
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: the logging industry, you're going to be beaten up or
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: run out.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Of town unquote.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Sounds like a fun place, and New York reporter later
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: put it more bluntly, saying Cobain's quote fondness for poetry
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: and painting did not go over big unquote in Aberdeen.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: But this is where it all started. And on February twentieth,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, Kurt Donald Cobain was born at the
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: local hospital in Gray's Harbor and his mom, Wendy wait
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: at tables and his dad, Donald fixed cars, and they
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: lived at Hoquiam at first, with Dawn working at a
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: gas station nearby, and by the time Kurt was six
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: months old, the family had landed at one to one
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  Speaker 1: zero East First Street in Aberdeen and the neighborhood of
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Felony Flats. A Cobain would describe his family's status in
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: four words, saying, quote unquote, white trash posing as middle
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: class nice sounds like my family, honestly, just kidding, but
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: not really anyway. His sister Kim, arrived on April twenty
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: fourth in nineteen seventy, and by most accounts, the early
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: years were good ones, and his aunt Mary remembered it clearly, saying, quote,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: I can't even put into words the joy and life
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: that Kurt brought into our family. He was this little
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: human being who was so bubbly. He had charisma even
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: as a baby. He was funny, and he was bright unquote.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: But that brightness wouldn't last, at least not in the
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: way it should have. And in nineteen seventy six, when
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Kurt was nine years old, his parents would divorce, and
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: the split broke something in him, and he became troubled
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: and honestly angry. The emotional followed would eventually fuel some
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: of the most raw and honest music ever recorded, but
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: at nine it was just pain, and he went to
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: his mother's place first, but that wouldn't last, and then
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: it was his dad's house in Montesano, and then his
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: aunt's and then his uncles just basically whoever had room
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: and his father had remarried and the new wife would try.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: She paid attention to Kurt and gave him care, but
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: he couldn't shake the feeling he ranked below her own
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: kids been there. I love my stepdad, loved my stepdad,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: loved my ex step mom. But you know, when you're
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: a kid, you just kind of feel like that, you know,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: you can just kind of feel like that little feeling,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe a little bit. I don't feel like
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: that anymore, but at the time I understand it. But anyway,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: taking comfort from her felt like turning his back on
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: his mom. And his mother, meanwhile, had gotten involved with
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: a man who actually beat her and he would be
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: a long shoreman, and he put her in the hospital
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: with a broken arm in fact, and Kurt rode on
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: his bedroom.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: Wall quote, I hate mom, I hate dad. Dad hates mom,
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: Mom hates dad. It simply makes you want to be
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: so sad as a sister.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: That's heartbreaking when kids get in the middle of all
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: that stuff.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: But he was a child caught in the middle of
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: two broken households with nowhere that felt like home, and
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: doctors put a label on it early, diagnosing him with
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: attention deficit disorder, and they gave him Riddlin, but his
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: mother didn't think it helped, so she would pull him
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: off the pills and try him on the finold diet,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: removing artificial colorings and flavors, and she said the change
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: made more of a difference, but the deeper issue had
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with focus. He was quiet, sensitive, more
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  Speaker 1: interested in drawing than football, and in a town that
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  Speaker 1: ran on logging and toughness, that made him a target.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: He just didn't quite fit the mold, not with the athletes,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: not with the burnouts. And one of his closest friends
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: growing up was gay. Kurt never backed down from that friendship,
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  Speaker 1: even when guys in town roughed him up over it,
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  Speaker 1: and that loyalty cost him bruises, but it built something
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  Speaker 1: permanent inside him, a hatred of cruelty and prejudice that
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: never went away. And his journal said it plainly, saying, quote,
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  Speaker 1: I am not gay, although I wish I were just
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  Speaker 1: to piss off the homophobes unquote.
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  Speaker 2: That's metal is.
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  Speaker 1: And he would tell the advocate, quote, I'm definitely gay
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: in spirit, and I probably could be bisexual unquote, and
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  Speaker 1: he showed up to school in dresses and called himself
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  Speaker 1: feminine as a kid, and in a place like Aberdeen,
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  Speaker 1: and that kind of openness wasn't just unusual, it was
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  Speaker 1: honestly dangerous. And on top of that, his body was
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: fighting him too, and bronchitis just never seemed to go
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  Speaker 1: away for him, and worse, a stomach condition no doctor
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: could name that left him in constant grinding pain, and
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: in an interview with journalist John Savage in nineteen ninety three,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: he spoke of it, saying, quote, every time I've had
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: an endoscope, they find a red irritation in my stomach,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: but it's psychosomatic. It's all from anger and screaming, unquote.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: And he also said he had minor scoliosis since junior
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: high and that years of slinging a guitar over his
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: shoulder had bent his spine further sideways. But biographer Charles R.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: Cross wasn't so sure, and Cross found that the whole
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: thing may have started with a routine school screening that
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: incorrectly raised to flag, one that didn't hold up when
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: an actual doctor took a closer look. So the darkness
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: in Kurt's life wasn't random either. His cousin Beverly, who
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: worked as a nurse, eventually spoke publicly about what ran
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: through the family tree mental illness, alcoholism, and the word
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: you can't say on YouTube, you know self, you know what.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: So Kurt was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder himself. So
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: as the world around him was falling apart, one thing
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: always held study, and that was music, because the music
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: was there before anybody else. And at two he was
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: already singing along to Beatles and monkey albums, and his
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: Aunt Marie had an acoustic guitar lying around and he
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: wouldn't leave it alone. And by three he'd written his
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: first song is at three?
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: Three? What was I doing?
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: I was three?
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: I don't probably.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Eaten slugs eating banana slugs on the side of the road.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: True story, true story. I was not meant for greatness anyway.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Grandparents Leland and Iris remembered a kid who turned their
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: kitchen into a drum kit, banging on every pot and
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: pan he could reach. So they gave him a harmonica,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: and then a tin drum, and eventually a real drum set,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: and Aunt Marie also handed down an old wine steel
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: guitar with a small amp and his artistry took multiple angles,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: and on top of that, he would draw all the time,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: page after page of cartoon characters sketched in obsessive detail.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: The art just never stopped, but the music ran in
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: his blood. His uncle, Chuck had been part of the Beachcombers,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: known as the biggest act in Aberdeen back in the sixties,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: and later played with a bar band called Fat Chance.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Love that name, and when Kurt turned fourteen, Chuck handed
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: him a beat up electric guitar he'd picked up from
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Japan and set him up with lessons from Fat Chance's guitarist,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Warren Mason, and he eventually helped him trade up to
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: a knockoff Gibson Explorer, and at some point in school,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Kurt cross paths with Buzz Osbourne, who was the guy
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: behind the Melvins, one of the Aberdeen's local bands, and
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Osbourne quickly became a friend and a mentor and a
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: doorway into the world Kurt didn't know existed, just punk
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: and hard core music that sounded the way Kurt already felt,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: so he went to his first real concert in nineteen
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: eighty three with Sammy Hagor and the Quarter Flash at
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: the Coliseum in Seattle, but Kurt always said the show
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: that actually changed him was different. It was the Melvins
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: playing for free in the front of the thrift Way
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: grocery store where Osborne begged groceries, and he wrote about
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: it in his journals, saying that that was the moment,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: and after that the guitar swallowed everything, and he would
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: practice all day forgetting to do his homework, and it
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: got to the point that his father had got fed
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: up and killed the lessons. So Kurt left and headed
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: to his grandparents' house, first, then to his mom, switching
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: schools from Monsano High to Aberdeen High sophomore year, and
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: then back to his dad's and then out again, drifting
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: through the homes of whatever friends would take him in.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: And one of those stops was Jesse Reid's family's place
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: in North River, and the house was packed with instruments
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: and Kurt was welcome to play anything he wanted. Jesse's father, Dave,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: had played sax and sung with the Beach Combers, and
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: the boys would spend hours going through the band's old
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: forty fives, and with graduation two weeks away, he quit
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: school after realizing he didn't have enough credits to actually walk,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: and this caused his mom to lay out an ultimatum,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: find work or leave, but they didn't do either, and
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: when he came home a week later, everything he owned
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: was boxed up and waiting by the door. So he
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: was seventeen years old with nowhere to go, So he
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: continued to bounce around couches spare rooms. Sometimes he'd even
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: slip back into his mother's basement without her knowing. And
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: he told people he'd spent time sleeping under a bridge
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: that crossed the Wishka River and that the experience fed
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: directly into something.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: In the way, something away.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: H Oh.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: I've listened to Nirvana after this for at least several hours, okay,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: and Nova Selak always pushed back on that one, saying, quote,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: he hung out there, but you couldn't live on those
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: muddy banks with the tides coming up and down.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: That was his own revisionism unquote.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: But what is confirmed is that he spent nights in
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: apartment building hallways where the heat was still running, and
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: in the waiting room of the hospital where he'd been born.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: So he was homeless, and he was angry, and he
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: was in pain, but he had a guitar, and he
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: had something to say. So the first punk album Kirk
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Cobaine ever owned was San Denista by the Clash, but
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: in his journals he was clear about where his real
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: loyalty was the sex Pistols. The sex Pistols were quote
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: unquote one million times more important than the Clash. And
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: after that the floodgates opened, Black Flag, Bad Brain, Flipper,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: millions of dead cops, and buzz Osborne was the pipeline,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: handing Kurt stacks of records and stacks of beat up
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: issues of Cream magazine, dragging him deeper into a world
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: that finally just made sense to him, and the Melvins
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: became his center of gravity. So Kurt made himself useful
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: hauling gear, sitting behind the wheel of their tour band,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: and he and Nova Selk parked themselves at rehearsal after rehearsal,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: watching and just absorbing, and Kurt claimed they quote unquote
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: learned almost everything from them. And then came the Stooges.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: Raw power hit him like a freight train and he'd
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: call it the greatest album ever made, and the Pixies,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: who would teach him the trick that would define his
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: sound go quiet, then blow the roof off. So the
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: music was starting to take shape. Now Ali needed was
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: a band. By early nineteen eighty five, he started one
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Fecal Matter.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: Fecal Matter nice, you know, I'm glad.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: I'm glad it turns it and this is going to
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: turn into Nirvanica's Fiel Matter doesn't quite hit for me,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: not gonna lie. But it was one of what he
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: later called several joke bands, born out of the Melvin Circle.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: And Kurt sang and played guitar, and Melvin's drummer Dale
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: Crover picked up bass and Greg Holkinson handled drums, and
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: they worked up originals and ripped through Ramones, Zeppelin and
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Hendricks covers, and they laid down a demo together at
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: his aunt, Mary Earle's place in Burien called Illiteracy Will Prevail,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: just running everything through a four track recorder, and she
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: remembered it vividly, saying, quote, they set up in my
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: music room and.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: They'd just crank it up. It was loud.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: They would put down the music tracks first, then he'd
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: put the headphones on and all you could hear was
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Kurt Cobaine's voice screaming through the house unquote and Osbourne
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: and former Melvin's drummer Mike Dillard joined the band in
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six, but it fell apart fast and Osbourne
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: recalled quote Kirk got disgusted with it because I wouldn't
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: buy a bass system, and so he said that I
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: wasn't dedicated enough, and by summer Fecal Matter was no more,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: but the demo long outlived the band, and it was
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: the first recorded proof of what Kabine could do, including
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: raw versions of Spank Through and Downer, both of which
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Nirvana would eventually re record, and with the band no
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: longer playing, the tape became Kurt's calling card and he
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: handed it to anyone who would listen to it, and
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: the tape got passed around and people in the growing
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: grunge world started paying attention, and by the end of
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six he had his own place for the
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: first time, renting an apartment with paychecks he earned from
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: working at the Polynesian Resort, a hotel out in Ocean Shores,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: about twenty miles from Aberdeen. And then came Tracy Merender,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: his first real girlfriend, and they would get a place
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: together in Olympia, a small apartment on Pear Street and
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Kurt moved there in nineteen eighty nine, and that apartment
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: became the workshop, and most of the songs that would
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: launch Nirvana were written inside those walls. And his life
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: was tracing an arc, though invisible to him at the time,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: and Aberdeen gave him the pain. Olympia gave him the
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: space to turn that pain into songs, and Seattle, where
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: indie label Subpop Records was building an empire on Noise,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: was where the machine was waiting, and he first crossed
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: pass with eventual bandmate novo Celic at a Melvin's rehearsal
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: and Nova Celic's mom ran a hair salon and the
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: guys would sometimes jam in the room above it, and
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: Kurt just wanted to start something together, but novo Celic
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: initially blew him off for three years actually, but when
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Nova Selic finally sat down and listened to the Fecal
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Matter demo, something clicked quote I thought it was a
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: really good song, unquote, he said, referring to spank Through.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: So he suggested they start a group, and their first
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: attempt was the Sellouts, a Creten's Clearwater Revival cover band
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: with Novo Celic singing and playing guitar and Kurt on
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: trum and Steve Newman on bass, but it would kind
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: of go nowhere. In Round two featured a drummer named
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Bob McFadden and a set of originals, and that one
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: lasted about four weeks, no four weeks, but early in
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven they brought in a drummer named Aaron Burkhard,
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: and that lineup featuring Kabaine, Nova Celic and Burkhard was
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: the first version of what the world would eventually know
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: as Nirvana, and their first show was a house party
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: near Raymond, Pacific County in March of nineteen eighty seven
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: and beer from a keg and a lot of loud noise.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: They played under the name skid Row, but that didn't
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: stick for long, and neither did the next few names,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: but eventually they landed on the name We All Know
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: and Love Nirvana, and Burkhart eventually left, followed by multiple
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: different drummers. Dale Crover filled in, then Dave Foster, then
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Chad Channing, who sort of drifted into the band without
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: anyone officially saying the words, quote unquote. They never actually said, Okay,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: you're in. Channing recalled and he played his first gig
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: with them in late May of eighty eight, and by
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: November they had a single out, which was a cover
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: of Shocking.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: Blues Love Buzz released.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Through Subpop, and a UK music journalist named John Robb
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: gave them their first interview in Sounds magazine and the
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: record landed single of the week, so it was progress,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: and that December they went into the studio with producer
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Jack and Dino to cut their first album and the
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: whole thing cost six hundred and six dollars and seventeen cents,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: what a steal, and Jason Everman footed the bill and
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: he was a guitarist who joined the band around the
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: same time, and though he never actually played a note
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: on the record, they put his name on the credits anyway,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: and Kurt wanted him to feel like he belonged. So
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: the label had a mold and Subpop wanted a heavy, grungy,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: rough kind of sound, so Kurt dialed back his pop
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: instincts in the artier edges to deliver what they expected,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: and biographer Michael Ezered later noted the ironies, saying quote
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: it was the restrictions of the sub pop sound that
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: helped the band find its musical identity unquote, and Bleach
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: dropped in June nineteen eighty nine. Now College Radio jumped
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: on it almost immediately, and the band locked in a
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: longer deal with Subpop, and the album moved a steady
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: forty thousand copies, but Kurt wasn't satisfied, and he thought
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: the label was sitting on its hands, not pushing the
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: record hard enough and not getting it into enough stores.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Nat Fall Nirvana joined Tad Tad at mud Honey for
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: a European tour billed as a grunge rock uprising, and
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: they arrived in Berlin just days after the wall fell.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: It's a crazy time to go on tour. Novo Selek
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: was struck by the moment, saying, quote, it was amazing.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: It's just one of those moments when history is in
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: the air and you can just feel it unquote. And
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: their first national tour followed but ultimately ended early and
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: growing creative tensions with Chad Channing led the band to
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: cut the final dates and no one even told him
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: he was fired, and he later said he just quit.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: But then in September of nineteen ninety came the introduction
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: that changed everything. Buzz Osborne called Kabain and Novo Celic
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: about a drummer he knew, a guy named Dave Grohl,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: whose bands Scream had just collapsed back in DC. Grole
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: flew out to Seattle and within days he was in
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: the room with them auditioning, and Nova Celic knew right away,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: saying quote, we knew in two minutes that he was
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: the right drummer. Quote. However, Grohl saw it differently, saying quote,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: I remember being in the same room with them and thinking,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: what that's Nirvana? Are you kidding? Because on their record
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: cover they looked like Psycho Lumberjacks quote, which is so true.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Regardless of any opinion, the classic lineup was complete, and
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: over the following months, the band began shopping for a
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: major label deal. So Nirvana had outgrown sub popped and
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: the label couldn't keep up with the demand, and no
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: indie distributor could match the band's Momentumkabain and Nova Celic
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: needed help navigating what came next, so they went to
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: a woman running Soundgarden and Alice in Chains, Susan Silver,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: and asked for direction, and she pointed them toward a
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: booking agent Don Muller and music attorney Alan Mintz. Now
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Mintz started pitching the demo to every major label that
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: would take a meeting, and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: had been talking them up to anyone in the industry
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: who would listen. And it worked, and Geffen's subsidiary label,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: DGC came calling in nineteen ninety with A and R
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: man Gary Gersh leading the charge, and the deal meant
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: buying Nirvana out of their sub Pop contract, but DGC
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: was willing to pay, and more than two decades later,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: at Nirvana's twenty fourteen Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Nova Cela publicly thanked Silver for quote introducing them to
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: the music industry properly unquote, And though it seemed straightforward,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: the transition wasn't painless, and Kurt felt the contradiction of
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: it all in real time, saying, quote, sure, we felt
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: under pressure to stay under ground. We're experiencing the typical
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: independent band going onto a major label, punk rock identity
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: crisis unquote. But the opportunity was undeniable and they cut
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: never mind. At Sound City in Los Angeles from May
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: through June of nineteen ninety one, with Butch Fig producing now.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: The label gave them sixty five grand to work with,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: and Kurt had his own way of explaining the band's
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: sound quote by definition, pop is extremely catchy, whether you
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: like it or not. Our songs also have a standard
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: pop format versus chorus, verse chorus, solo, bad solo. All
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: in all, I think we sound like the Knack and
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: the Bay City Rollers being molected by Black Flag and
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Black Sabbath unquote. What a fantastic description, seriously, And come
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: September twenty fourth, nineteen ninety one, the album hit shelves
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: and the label figured they'd be lucky to move a
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: quarter million copies, as that was a ceiling sonnet use
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Goo had set and that seemed like a realistic target.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: They underestimated it by a factor no one could have predicted, though,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: And the first single was Smells Like Teen Spirit, and
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: its music video hit MTV and refused to leave.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: Dude, what a moment. I wasn't even born yet, but
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Like born a couple of years later, but I remember
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: watching that for the first time.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: And they're like, this is the coolest thing ever. Did
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: that music hits.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: The song's title had an origin story nobody saw coming,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: and Kathleen Hanna, the singer of Bikini Kill, had scribbled
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Kurt smells like teen's Spirit on a wall, poking fun
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: at the deodor and his girlfriend wore, and Kurt didn't
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: get the joke, Instead, thinking it sounded like revolution, he
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: wrote the song and it just became inescapable, and by
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: late nineteen ninety one, the band's European tour was buckling
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: under its own weight, and venues were packed past capacity
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: and camera crews elbowed their way on stage night after night.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: You couldn't escape the single. It was literally everywhere the radio, MTV,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: you name it, and by Christmas the album was selling
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: four hundred thousand copies a week in the United States alone,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: and in January of nineteen ninety two, never Mind even
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: climbed past Michael Jackson's Dangerous to take the top spot
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: on the Billboard chart, and then it did the same
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: thing overseas, country after country. Billboard declared, Nirvana is that
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: rare band that has everything critical acclaim, industry respect, pop
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: radio appeal, and rock solid college alternative base unquote, and
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: it would go on to sell more than thirty million
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: copies worldwide. So the impact just rippled outward and Subpop
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: co founder Bruce Pavitt put it in perspective, saying, quote,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: when I first moved to Seattle in nineteen eighty three,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: most people in the world wouldn't be able to find
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Seattle on map. In post nineteen ninety one, that all changed.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: Nirvana did for Seattle what the Beatles did for Liverpool unquote,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: and he added quote, It put Seattle on the map
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: and was a huge inspiration for a lot of young people.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: The music really brought in a level of a motional
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: depth that had been missing from pop radio and is
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: missing from pop radio now. Quote and never Mind paved
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: the way, and bands like Pearl Jam, Sound Garden, Alison
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Chain's Screaming Trees all came through the door Nirvana had
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: kicked open. Grunge wasn't a subculture anymore, and by nineteen
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: ninety two it was just the culture. And the nineteen
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: ninety two MTV Video Music Awards gave them two trophies,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: one for Best New Artist and one for Best Alternative Video,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: and they played Lithium on the broadcast and Nova Celic
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: launched his bass straight up toward the ceiling.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: Misjudged the toss.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: All the way down and took the neck of the
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: guitar to the face, and he dropped to the stage
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: and played dead. And it was a rare moment of
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: lightness in a year that had already started to feel crushing.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: And the media started throwing out those labels I mentioned
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: earlier for Kirk Bain Voice of a Generation and gen
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: X spokesman. But he never asked for it, and he
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: never wanted it. And the more they say it, the
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: more uncomfortable he became. And he responded the only way
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: he knew how, by making music partered or swallow. It
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: was more abrasive and more personal, and he had no
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: patience for the crowd that sang along but missed the point,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: and people who wore the T shirts and ignored the message.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: And he started seeing his own future in Francis Farmer.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: She was a Seattle woman famous in the thirties and forties,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: and the industry used her up and they locked her away.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: And Kapain looked at that story and saw a blueprint
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: for what fame could do if you let it in.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: And the stomach pain that had plugged him since childhood
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: reached a breaking point during the nineteen ninety one European tour,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: and in a nineteen ninety three interview with John Savage,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: he admitted just how bad it had gotten, saying, quote,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: halfway through the European tour, I remember saying I'll never
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: go on tour again until I had this fixed, because
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: I wanted to myself.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: I wanted to blow my head off.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: I was so tired of it, And he said Heroin
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: was quote the only thing that saves me from showing
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: myself right now. And later, reflecting on the songs he'd
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: written for never Mind, Kurt described what was underneath the
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: distortion and the hooks, saying, quote, some of my very
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: personal experiences like breaking up with girlfriends and having bad relationships,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: feeling that death void that the person in the song
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: is feeling very lonely sick. The album the world was
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: celebrating as a cultural revolution had been written by someone
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: barely holding on. Never Mind had made Girvana the biggest
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: band on the planet, and for the follow up, Kurt
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: made a choice designed to make everyone uncomfortable, and he
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: hired Steve Albini. Albini was legendary in the indie world
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: and notorious everywhere else. He openly criticized the mainstream music industry,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: and he worked exclusively on analog equipment, and he had
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: no interest in making records that sounded polished or commercial.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: He once called royalty arrangements immoral and an insult to
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: the artist. And Kurt understood exactly the message that hiring
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: him would send to the suits, to the industry, to
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: every Bandwagon fan who jumped on after teen Spirit, and
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: he'd been obsessed with the sound Albini got on the
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Pixies Surfer Rosa. It was just stripped down and brutal,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: with no polish, and that was what he wanted for
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: the next Sturp on a record, and Albini laid out
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: his terms in a letter to the band, saying, quote,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: I'm only interested in working on records that legitimately reflect
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: the band's own perception of their music and existence. If
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: you will commit yourselves to that as a tenant of
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: the recording methodology, then I will bust my ass for
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: you unquote. So they committed, and Albini didn't want the
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: label anywhere near the studio, so the band paid for
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: it themselves, twenty four grand for studio time, and Albini's
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: fee was a flat one hundred thousand, and he walked
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: away from roughly half a million in royalties on principle,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: So at least two guys got principle.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: On its face, it's absurd.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I work on a record for a few days and
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: then for the rest of your fucking life, you have
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: to keep paying.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: For two weeks.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: In February of nineteen ninety three, at Packing Rum Studios
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: deep in rural Minnesota, the band locked the doors and
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: no one from DGC got in, and no one from
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: management did either. Nobody heard a note until the sessions
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: were finished, and then the rumor started and word spread
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: that DGC might refuse to release the album, and Albedi
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: of course pushed back publicly saying, quote, I wasn't there
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: when the band was having their discussions with the record label.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: All I know is we made a record, everybody was
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: happy with it, and a few weeks later I hear
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: that it's unreleasable and it's all got to be redone quote.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: So the band fired back with a letter to Newsweek
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: that no one was telling them what to do, and
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: they ran the letter as a full page ad in Billboard,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: and Geffen's people gave in and put out their own statement,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: and the statement was that the label would release whatever delivered,
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: no conditions, And in the end Kurt did make one concession.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: He called in Scott Litt, who was RIM's producer, to
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: touch up three songs, Heart Shaped, Box All Apologies and
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Penny Royalty because they weren't quite sitting right and he
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: wanted them perfect. And then on September twenty first, nineteen
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: ninety three, in Utero landed What a great album, dude,
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: what a great album, and it shot straight to the
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: and over time it moved three and a half million
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: copies in the US alone, and Rolling Stones David Frick
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: called it a lot of things, brilliant, corrosive, enraged, and thoughtful,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: most of them all at once. But more than anything,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: it's a triumph of the will quote. Kurt described the
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: album as very impersonal. He's so metal, he's so just
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: like that's the art. Take it or leave it, you know. However,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: the lyrics seem to tell a different story, the divorce
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: that split his childhood apart, and the way of fame
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: and what the world had decided about him and about
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: the woman he loved. That love was none other than
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Courtney Love. She had entered his life sometime around nineteen
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: eighty nine or round nineteen ninety, and Love told Sassy magazine, quote,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: I really pursued him, not too aggressive, but aggressive enough
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: that some girls would have been embarrassed by it. I'm direct,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: that can scare a lot of boys, unquote. And Kurt's
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: version of the story was simpler, saying, quote, I didn't
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: mean to play hard to get. I just didn't have
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: the time. I had so many things on my mind unquote.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: But by late nineteen ninety one they were inseparable, and
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: they bonded through music, through intensity, and through unfortunately drug use.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: And on February twenty fourth, nineteen ninety two, in Waikiki Beach, Hawaii,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: a wedding took place with eight guests, and Love showed
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: rowed up and addressed from Francis Farmer's estate, and Kurt
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: wore pajamas. The roll was there and Novacelic wasn't, and
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: he and his wife had grown uncomfortable with the drugs
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: and with what they saw as Love pulling Kurt away
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: from the band being a bit toxic if you will,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: and Kim Gordon had warned Love that Marian and Cabaine
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: would destroy her life, and Love responded, quote, whatever, I
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: love him and I want to be with him unquote.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: And Kurt told Rolling Stone, quote, I'm happier than I've
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: ever been. I finally found someone that I am totally
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: compatible with unquote. And he told Sasse he was so
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: in love he sometimes forgot he was even in a band.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: And their daughter arrived on August eighteenth, nineteen ninety two,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: born at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles, and they named
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: her Francis, after Vasilene's guitarist, Francis McKee, not Francis Farmer,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: though everyone assumed Farmer and Bean was the ultrasound nickname
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: because the image looked like a kidney. Bean and Michael
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Stipe and Drew Barrymore were named godparents, and Kurt told
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles Time quote, there's nothing better than having a baby.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: I knew that when I had a child, I'd be overwhelmed,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: and it's true unquote. And he would actually start talking
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: about leaving Nirvana, and he told Sassey his priorities had
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: shifted entirely quote in the last couple of months, I've
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: gotten married, and my attitude has changed drastically, and I
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: can't believe how much happier I am unquote. And then
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: came the Vanity Fair piece. In September of nineteen ninety two,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: and journalist Lynn Hirshberg wrote a profile called quote unquote,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: Strange Love. The allegation at the center of it was
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: that Love had used heroin while knowing she was pregnant,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: and Courtney and Kurt both said Hirshberg twisted what was
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: actually said, but it didn't matter what they said, and
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: the state got involved, and child Welfare opened a case,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: and Francis Bean was taken from them at just two
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: weeks old, and the reality behind closed doors didn't match
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: the interviews. His love would later say, Francis beIN quote
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: unquote was an attempt to save the relationship, and the
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: two of them were both struggling with themselves and with
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: each other. The fights were real, and the separations were real,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: and the happiness came and went. And the heroin had
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: taken root years earlier, and Kirk claimed it was the
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: only thing that eased the stomach pain that had tortured
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: him since childhood, saying, quote it started with three days
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: in a row of doing heroin and I don't have
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: a stomach pain. That was such a relief quote, And
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: Buzz Osborne didn't buy that explanation though, saying, quote, he
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: made it up for sympathy and so he could use
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: it as an excuse to stay loaded. Of course, he
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: was vomiting. That's what people on heroin do. They vomit.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: It's called vomiting with a smile on her face unquote.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: And Nova Selak found out about it in nineteen ninety
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: and Grohl found out about it a few months later,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: and it shadowed everything tours, recording sessions, milestones, and the
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: day before their debut on Saturday Night Live in January
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety two, photographer Michael Levine tried to get
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: a photoshoot done, but Kurt kept nodding off mid frame.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: And in the summer of nineteen ninety three, while backstage
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: at a New York show, he ow deed again, and
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Love hit him with the lockson and brought him back,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: and he walked out and played the concert. But the
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: public persona was fracturing, and he had already compared himself
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: to Francis Farmer, and now he wrote her into the
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: album Francis Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle appeared
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: on in Utero like a personal prophecy, and in nineteen
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: ninety two he performed at a gay rights benefit in Oregon,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: fighting Measure nine, and his work with Rock for Choice
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: made him a target. At least one activist sent word
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: that they'd shoot him the moment he stepped on stage.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: And at the nineteen ninety three VMA's Kurt Courtney and
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: baby Francis Bean were there together. Behind the scenes, Kurt
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: and Axel Rose got into it. Guns and Roses and
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Nirvana were the two biggest rock acts on the planet
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: and they couldn't stand each other. And for MTV Unplugged
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: November nineteen ninety three, the band sat down with acoustic
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: instruments and played a set that felt almost like a confession,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: and Kurt chose songs by David Bowie led Belly and
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: the Basilines and the Meat Puppets and six Covers mixed
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: in with their own more downward material, and the whole
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: thing felt less like a concert and more like a farewell,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: especially examining in hindsight because he'd already been thinking about
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: what came next, a quieter acoustic album More Ethereal, something
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: that sounded like RIM's most recent work. As Stipe said,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: the plan was in place and that he and Kurt
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: were going to record a demo together, saying, quote, he
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: had a plane ticket, he had a car picking him up,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: and at the last minute he called and said, I
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: can't come unquote. Now, Devana took the stage on January eighth,
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, at the Seattle Center Arena for what
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: turned out to be their last performance in the United States,
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: and no one knew. Courtney described Kurt state in December
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four interview with Rolling Stones during the months
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: leading up, saying, quote, he hated everything, everybody hated, hated, hated.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: He called me from Spain crying, I was gone forty days.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: I was doing my thing with my band for the
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: first time since forever unquote. And Nova Celic saw it
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: all up close. In Charles R. Cross's biography Heavier than Heaven,
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: nova Celic recalled, quote, he was really quiet. He was
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: just estranged from all of his relationships. He wasn't connecting
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: with anybody unquote, And one night Nova Celic offered to
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: take him out for dinner, but it didn't go the
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: way he had hoped, saying, quote, his dealer was right there.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: He wanted to get.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: Up into oblivion unquote. So on March eighteenth, nineteen ninety four,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Courtney got on the phone with Seattle PD and Kurt
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: had barricaded himself in a room and he had a gun,
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: and she said he was settle, and by the time
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: officers got there, Kurt said otherwise, saying he was not suital.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: He just wanted to be alone, away from Courtney. And
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: the officers left with four guns, twenty five boxes of AMMO,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: and a bottle of pills. And that was a second
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: time in less than a year the police had walked
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: out of his house with his weapons. And Kurt had
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: already started buying guns through other people, and he figured
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: cops would just keep confiscating anything registered to him. And
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: then came Rome. After a show at Terminal Lines on
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: March first. In Munich, doctors told him he had bronchitis
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: and severe laryngitis and the rest of the European tour
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: was scrapped, so he caught a flight to Rome the
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: next day to see a specialist, and Courtney flew in
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: on March fourth, and they checked into the Weston Excelsior
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: and that night he gave a bell boy a prescription
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: to Phil and then he called room service and ordered champagne.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: And the prescription was for a rotnol, a very strong
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: depressant for the central nervous system. And come the next morning,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Courtney woke up to find that Kurt was an bed.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: He was on the floor next to it, not moving,
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: blood trickling from his nostril, and paramedics would take him
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: to Umberto Eye Polyclinic Hospital where doctor's pumped his stomach
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: and he was then moved to Rome American Hospital and
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Kurt didn't wake up for nearly twenty hours, and when
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: doctors examined what was in his stomach, they counted around
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: fifty row hitnal tablets. Every one of them had to
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: be peeled out of its wrapper by hand. And Grohl
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: would get the call in the middle of everything. Kurt
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: Cobaine was dead, or that's what they told him, and
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: a few minutes later the phone rang again and he
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: was in fact not dead, but in a hospital bed
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: and stable, and his management team at Gold Mountain called
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: it an accident, something like the flu, and exhaustion, just
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: a bat mix, and there was a note in the room,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: but spokesperson Janet Billing made sure to clearly state quote
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: a note was found, but Kurt insisted that it was
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: not a suped note unquote, and at the time that
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: was the story everyone told. They called it an accidental overdose.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: Two journalists Ian Helperin and Max Wallace tracked down doctor
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: Osvaldo Galletta, the doctor who treated Kurt in rome, and
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: they put his assessment in their book Love and Death,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: the Murder of Kirk Cobain, saying, quote, we can usually
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: tell a sad attempt. This didn't look like one to
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: me unquote. Three days later they discharged him and he
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: flew back to Seattle.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: Back home, the people around him gave one.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Last attempt to help Kurt, and Courtney organized an intervention
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: and friends showed up and they all urged him to
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: go to rehab in California, And before he agreed, he
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: made a stop to ask his friend Dylan Carlson, a
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: musician he trusted, to buy him a shotgun, and Carlson
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: walked into Stan Baker's gun shop in Seattle and came
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: out with a Remington Model eleven twenty gage. Importantly, it
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: went under Carlson's name, not Kurtz, and Courtney headed to
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: Beverly Hills on March twenty sixth. Kurt came out a
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: few days after. So on April first, nineteen ninety four,
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: Kirt called Courtney from the Exodus Recovery Center, and he
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: told her she'd made a really good record, and then
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: he said, quote, just remember, no matter what, I love
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: you unquote, And those were the last words she'd ever
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: hear from him. That evening, he told the staff he
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: needed a smoke break, but he never came back, and
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: he went over a six foot brick wall and he
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: would vanish. And he'd only been at the facility at
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: this point for two days. And on the flight home,
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: they actually put him next to the last person you'd expect,
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: Duff McKagan from Guns n' Roses. Now, mccagan didn't think
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: much of it at the time, but they talked. Things
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: seemed fine on the surface, but he told Cross later
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: that quote all of my instincts told me something was
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: wrong unquote.
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: Kurt landed in Seattle on April second, and hours later
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: he flagged down a cab and had it take him
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: to the gun shop and he walked out with a
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: box of shotgun shells and a receipt, and when the
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: driver asked what the shells were for, Kurt told him
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: he's been burglarized. And back in Los Angeles, Courtney was
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: still searching because she had a handful of friends spent
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: hours driving the city checking every place they could think of,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: because at this point Kurt is missing, unaware that he'd
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: already left the state, and on April fourth, Kurt's mom
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: filed a missing person's report with the Seattle Police, and
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: then Courtney brought in a private investigator named Tom Grant,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: and around the same time, the band pulled out of Lollapalooza,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: and obviously there was no version of the festival that
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: worked without Kurt, and a few people saw him around
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: town on April third, but there was nothing after that,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: and Courtney didn't know where he was and his family
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: didn't either, and the band didn't either. He was just gone,
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: and there were scattered reports, including a neighbor who thought
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: they spotted him at a park close by the house,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: bundled in a winter coat even though it was April
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: and he allegedly looked rough, and another rumor put him
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: at his summer place out in Carnation and possibly with
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: someone nobody could name. And Mark Lenagan, who was one
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: of Kurt's closest friends, hadn't heard from him either, and
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: he actually went a full week without a call, and
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: Lenagin told Rolling Stone, quote, Kurt hadn't called me, he
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: hadn't called some other people, he hadn't called his family.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: He hadn't called anybody.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: I had a feeling that something really bad had happened, unquote.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: And three days went by before anyone found him, And
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: on the morning of April eighth, a security system installer
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: named Gary Smith showed up at the house located at
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: one seven to one Lake Washington Boulevard East, and he
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: took the exterior stairs up the side of the garage
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: and through the glass he saw a figure lying on
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: the greenhouse floor and he figured the guy was just
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: sleeping it off, but then he noticed blood pooling from
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: one ear and Smith would call the police, and his
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: wallet was lying nearby, flipped open with his Washington State
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: I d staring at whoever found him. But three days
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: in that room had changed him beyond wrecking nission, and
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: they needed fingerprints to confirm it was Kurt, and the
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: shotgun was right there with him, and it was the
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: same one Dale and Carlson had bought on his behalf,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: and it was flipped upside down across his chest, barrel
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: pointing up, and his left hand still gripping it in
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: a single wound to his head, and the rest of
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: the scene told its own story. Sunglasses, a lighter, cigarettes,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: a winter hat and a Tom Moore brand cigar box
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: with syringes, a spoon and the rest of a Heroin
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: kit packed inside, and a note had been left behind,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: written in red ink and a pen was stuck through
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: it placed in a flower pot. Now the news would
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: break within hours, and camera crews were on the property
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: almost immediately afterward, got out climbing the hill beside the garage,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: pointing lenses at anything they could reach, and fans showed
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: up right behind them, And by the afternoon the whole
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: block was packed and Verretta park sits right beside the house,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: and it became a shriund line overnight with flowers piled
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: up and notes and photos things people brought because they
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: didn't know what else to do. Tim pro Voter with
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: MTV News the body of Nirana leader Kurt Cobain was
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: found in Seattle on Friday morning.
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: He was dead, apparently, And on April tenth, the city
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: held a public visual at the Seattle Center organized by
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: local radio stations and the city government covered half of
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: the expenses, and more than seven thousand.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: People showed up, packing the area around the International Fountain,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: and they played a tape of Courtney reading from the
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: note out loud over the speakers. But she wasn't just reading,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: she was answering him, arguing with him. Her voice kept cracking,
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: and at the end she told the crowd to call
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: him a and then to say they love him. And
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: a smaller private service took place that same afternoon with
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: about one hundred and fifty people gathered at Unity Church
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: of Truth, and of Oselek stood up and kept it short, saying,
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: quote unquote, we remember for what he was caring, generous
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: and sweet. And Danny Goldberg spoke least, saying quote, I
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: believe he would have left this world several years ago
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: if he hadn't met Courtney unquote. And Courtney would wear
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: all black, and she read from the Book of Job
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: and then from Rimbad Passages out of illuminations that Kurt
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: had loved, and she shared parts of the note she'd
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: held back from the public visual and one line hit
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: the hardest, speaking of his daughter, reminding him too much
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: of himself. And sometime over she turned over every gun
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: Kurt had owned, the shotgun included to Mothers Against Violence
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: in America, and his body would be cremated, and some
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: of the ashes went into a teddy bear, some into
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: an urn, and she carried another portion across the country
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: all the way to the Nemgiel Buddhist monastery in Ithaca,
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: New York, and monks there blessed them and pressed them
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: into clay, forming small sacred objects known.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: As tisa tissas. I probably said that wrong. I apologize.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: In five years passed before the final goodbye, and on
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: May thirty first, nineteen ninety nine, Kurt's mom brought the
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: family together one last time, and Courtney came, and so
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: did Tracy Miranda, his old girlfriend, and a Buddhist monk
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: chanted while Francis Bean took what was left of her
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: father and let it go, scattering his ashes into a
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: Clain Creek, and the creek runs through Olympia, which was
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: once called the city where Kurt found quote unquote his
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: true artistic muse. But the world was hurting at the
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: loss of a true grate, so much so that the
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: way things were left wasn't accepted by many. It just
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: couldn't be accepted. Someone had to have gotten something wrong
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: on that horrific day. So the Seattle Police Department arrived
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: at one seven one Lake Washington Boulevard East on the
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: morning of April eighth, nineteen ninety four, and by the
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: end of a day they had their answer. The coroner
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: and forensic team put the time of death at roughly
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: April fifth, which was three days before Smith found and
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: the manner of death was formally certified aside A. Doctor
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: Nicholas Hartsorn and assistant medical examiner conducted the autopsy, and
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: Hartsorn himself would die in two thousand and two, and
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: the findings were a single shotgun wound to the head,
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: needle marks inside both elbows, and toxicology confirmed what the
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: scene had already suggested, a morphine concentration of one point
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: five to two milligrams per liter with TRACE's valium, but
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: there was more fluid had collected in his lungs, and
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: his eyes showed signs of hemorrhaging, and both the brain
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: and liver had sustained damage, and the gun had already
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: been identified, but nobody ran prints on it until May sixth,
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: that's four weeks after the body was already in the ground,
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: and the note was written to Boda and imaginary friend.
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: Kurt had as a kid that most of the notes
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: spoke to a musician who had lost his fire. He
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: said performing had gone hollow, that the crowd noise, the
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: energy that once fueled artists like Freddie Mercury just didn't
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: reach him anymore. And he called his wife quote unquote,
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: a goddess of a wife whose sweats ambition and empathy.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: And he said his daughter quote reminds me too much
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: of what I used to be quote, and near the
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: end he borrowed a line from Neil Young, saying quote,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: it's better to burn out than fade away unquote, And
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: after signing off with peace, love, empathy, Kirk Cobain, he
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: added a final message to Courtney and Francis, saying, quote,
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: please keep going Courtney, for Francis, for her life, which
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: will be so much happier without me. I love you,
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: I love you unquote, and Cross described the moment the
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: room was barely lit, just the flicker of MTV and
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: the first glow of sunrise creeping in quote. When he
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: put the pen down, he had filled all but two
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: inches of the page. It had taken three cigarettes to
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: draft the note unquote, and the King County Medical Examiner's
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: Office stood behind its determination in the office stated quote
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: in the death examination for Kirk Cobain, the King County
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: Medical Examiner's Office worked with the local law enforcement agency,
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: conducted a full autopsy and followed all of its procedures.
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: In coming to determination.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: Of the manner of death as unquote, and the case
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: was closed the same year he died. And Mark Larsen
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: spent years running the criminal division at the King County
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: Prosecutor's Office, and his take was pretty blunt, saying, quote,
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: the investigation was over almost before it started unquote, and
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: obviously not everyone accepted that, and it took exactly seven days.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: A public access TV host in Seattle named Richard Lee
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: launched an ongoing series and he called it Kurt Cobain
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: was murdered and claimed the police reports didn't line up
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: and details about the shotgun wound had shifted between versions,
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: and he was the first to do so, but he
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: would not be the last, and an Unsolved Mysteries episode
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: dedicated to the case introduced the questions to a national audience,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: and the doubt started to spread, and citizens wrote letters
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: to the FBI requesting a federal homicide investigation. In twenty
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: twenty one, the Bureau published a batch of those documents
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: and ten pages of people asking the government to take
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: a second look, and the institutions didn't budge, but they
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: didn't speak in a unified voice either, and in nineteen
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: ninety five, when Courtney sued over the release of the note,
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: the Washington State Patrol filed a formal response in King
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: County Superior Court and they said they couldn't confirm what
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: SPD had concluded, and the Patrol said they quote unquote,
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: lacked sufficient information to back the ruling, and nearly twenty
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: years later, the department took another look. In twenty fourteen,
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: Cold case detective Mike Shazinski was assigned to review the file,
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: and what he found in an evidence vault surprised even
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: him because sitting of the vault were four roles of
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: thirty five millimeter film nobody had ever bothered to develop,
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: and they were crime scene photographs taken in nineteen ninety
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: four and left to sit in the dark for two decades,
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: and Don Cameron, the sergeant on the case, had made
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: that call back in ninety four and he shelved the
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: film and relied on polaroids instead, But Chazinski had the
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: film developed and the photos went public in twenty sixteen,
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: and a year earlier, SPD had already put out thirty
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: four other crime scene images and five more close ups
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: of the shotguns follow alongside the newly developed film. But
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: in the end, Shazinsky reaffirmed the initial ruling, saying, quote,
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: I've been a detective and homicide for twenty years, and
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: I've been in the cold case unit for ten years.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: Most of the cases I work on, I look for
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: something that wasn't done in the past. Sometimes people believe
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: what they read and some of the disinformation from some
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: of the books that this was a conspiracy unquote. The
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: vilautopsy report didn't see daylight though until twenty twenty three,
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: which was almost thirty years after it was written. But
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: the requests kept coming, and in November of twent twent five,
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: the most significant challenge to the official story arrived, and
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: a team of independent researchers dropped a paper in the
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: International Journal of Forensic Sciences, which is an open access,
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: peer reviewed outlet, and the title was quote a Multidisciplinary
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: Analysis of the Kirk Cobain Death quote and Brian Burnett,
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: a forensic specialist, led the effort alongside independent researcher Michelle Wilkins,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: and they brought in heavy credentials from Italy, including a
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: university professor in forensics and toxicology, a medical examiner from
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: a national institute, and the head of chemical forensics for
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: Italy's National Police, and their conclusion left no room for ambiguity,
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: saying quote Kirk Cobain, based solely on publicly available discovery
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: and analyzed through a multidisciplinary critical method, was a homicide victim.
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: His body was moved from the site of the homicide
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: and staged to appear as a side unquote, and Snopes
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: ran it down from the paper itself was legitimate, but
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: they added a caveat and Snopes quote has not independently
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: verified the report's conclusions, and no other credible source has
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: disproven SPD's conclusion that CAMPAIGNE killed health unquote and that
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: November the researcher sat down with Seattle Police brass and
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: walked them through it, and the answer came in January
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: of twenty twenty six from Assistant Chief Nicole Powell, and
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: the department thanked them for the effort and said nothing
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: had changed and the original investigation stood along with the
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: twenty fourteen review, and the SPD still had no intent
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: to revisit the case, but the King County Medical Examiner's
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: office let the door open distant crack, saying, quote, our
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: office is always open to revisiting its conclusions if new
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: evidence comes to light, but we've seen nothing to date
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: that would warrant a reopening of the case and our
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: previous determination of death unquote. Informal Seattle Police Captain Neil
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: Lowe didn't think that was good enough, because he'd given
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: five decades to the force, retiring in twenty eighteen, and
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: back in two thousand and five, the department had brought
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: him in to take a fresh look at the cabin file,
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: and Lowe's concluded that the officials had called it a
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: sort before the investigation was even done, and he recommended
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: a blue ribbon panel of investigators to re examine everything
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: from the beginning, and then added quote, but I don't
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: think that's going to happen unquote. Now, the Burnette Wilkins
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: forensic team called the death scene eerily clean. A shotgun
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: to the doesn't leave a clean scene. It's one of
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: the most violent ways a person can die. And looking
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: at his left hand, the one wrapped around the barrel,
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: you can barely see any blood on it, and blood
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: cover the gun from end to end, but his hand that.
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: Held it was clean.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: And Wilkins put it like this, saying, quote, if you
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: ever look at photos of shotgunss, they are brutal. There
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: is no universe where that hand is not covered in blauote.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: And then there was the heroin kit. Everything in it
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: was neat organized, even careful. The syringes were capped and
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: packed into a Tom Moore cigar box sitting right at
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: his feet, and receipts for the gun and the shells
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: were still in his pockets, and the shells themselves were
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: arranged in a row beside him.
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: Quote.
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: We're supposed to believe he capped the needles and put
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: everything back in order after shooting up three times, because
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: that's what someone does while they're dying unquote. And Wilkins
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: said quote to me, it looks like someone staged a
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: movie and wanted you to be absolutely certain this.
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: Was a side unquote.
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: And the gun sat for almost a month before anyone
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: thought to check it for Prince, and May six is
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: when they finally dusted it. No usable fingerprints were recovered
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: from the gun, the pen, or the shell casing, and
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: other physical details raised questions as well. The ejection port
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: on the Remington faces right, and physics would say the
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: spent shell goes right, but the casing ended up on
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: the floor to Kabin's left, the wrong side. If you've
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: ever shot a shotgun, and his left hand had locked
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: onto the barrel in a cataveric spasm, just an instant
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: death grip, which means the gun didn't spin or shift
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: after it fired. If you've ever shot a shotgun, that
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: shit has a kick, and he was sitting upright when
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: they found him with legs crossed. But a twenty gage
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: shotgun kicks hard enough to knock a grown man backward,
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: and yet his body hadn't moved in one detail caught
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: the attention more than most. Cabin shot up left handed,
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: and that's why most of his old track marks showed
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: up on the right arm you inject, the arm you're
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: not using, But there was a mark on the other
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: arm two, a fresh one on his left forearm, the
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: arm he would have needed someone else to inject, and
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: that would suggest someone else held a needle. And there
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: was also an alleged witness, someone who claimed they'd watched
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: other people hold Cobain down and push Heroin into him.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: And the forensic team found this person in the record,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: and police supposedly never talked to them. And then there
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: was the note. The main body was addressed to Boda,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: but it starts off reading like a goodbye to the music,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: not to life. He talked about losing the spark, feeling
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: like a fraud, and guilt he couldn't shake. More than
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: a few people who read it came away with the
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: same reaction that's not a note, that's someone quitting the band.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: The sign off did seem final, quote unquote, peace, love, empathy,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: Kurt Cobain. But the page didn't stop there, and below
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: the signature more words appeared, the ones addressed to Courtney
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: and Francis, and the handwriting, though looked different here bigger, rougher,
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: less controlled, and that bottom section is tech The only
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: place in the entire note where death actually comes up,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: and as Wilkins notes, quote, the text is a little
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: bit different. It's bigger, it looks more scrawlly unquote. Not
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: everyone agreed, though, and forensic linguist Carol Showski put the
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: entire note through snare, which is a computational tool built
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: specifically to analyze side notes in the top and bottom sections.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: Both came back the same way, so in her analysis
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: found no evidence that a second person had written the ending.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: And his mother, Wendy, looked at the whole note and
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: she believed Kurt wrote every word of it. But others
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: pointed to a simpler explanation. A person in crisis doesn't
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: write the same way they do when they're calm. Handwriting
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: shifts under the kind of pressure. And then there was
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: the heroine. At one point five to two milligrams per leader,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: the morphine in his blood was roughly triple what it
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: takes to kill even a seasoned user. And on top
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: of that, his valium came back seven milligrams per liter,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: which is enough on its own to slow a person's
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: breathing to almost nothing.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: Quote.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: He's dying of an overdose, and so he can barely breathe.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: His blood isn't pumping very much. I mean, he's in
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: a coma and he's holding this up to be able
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: to reach the trigger to get it in his mouth.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: It's crazy, unquote, Wilkins would say. And his brain and
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: liver both showed necrosis. And that's what happens when a
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: body shuts down slowly an overdose.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: Not a gunshot. Quote.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: The necrosis of the brain and liver happens in an overdose,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: it doesn't happen in a shotgun death, unquote. And in
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: their view, the shotgun wasn't the cause of death. It
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: was the last step, the final blow to a man
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: who was already dying. And there was one more thing.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: When someone shoes in the head, blood typically floods the airways,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: but Kurts were clear. But the heroin question is more
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: complicated than it appears. And that one point five to
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: two number depends on how you read it, because total
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: morphine includes everything metabolites stacked up from days of use,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: and free morphine strips all that out and measure only
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: the live drugs still active in the blood. And if
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: the test measured total morphine. A two thousand and two
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: study says you can survive that number and found functioning
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: drivers with even more in their system. But if it
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: measured free morphine, Kabain had almost twelve times the highest
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: level anyone has ever lived through. And nobody knows which
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: tests the lab ran which is really odd, but both
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: methods have been available since the seventies. The answer matters,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: but the file doesn't say. And people on the other
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: side of the argument don't ignore the heroin numbers, but
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: just read them differently, and they say tolerance rewrites the equation.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: And death investigator Joseph Scott Morgan said the heroin questions
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: quote unquote may be worth examining, but he pushed back
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: on the idea that the numbers alone tell you what happened.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: Kurt had been using four years and that history can't
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: be ignored. And doctor Richard Harriff said, quote tolerance is
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: extremely important when evaluating opiate levels. With tolerant individuals, very
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: high levels can be achieved far more than a non
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: tolerant individual un quote, and forensic consultant Douglas Lyle framed
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: the broader problem saying, quote, determining what drugs are present
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: and in what amounts is critical and usually fairly easy,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: but determining how that level of that drug affected the
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: victim's abilities.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: Isn't always so clear.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: In the end, the me and toxicologist must make a
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: best guess as to the drug's true effect in the
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: particular victim being examined, unquote, and the experts in the
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: forensic and toxicology worlds are still arguing about this to
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: this day, thirty two years later. Even they can't agree
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: on whether Kurt could have pulled the trigger or not.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: But every version of the murder theory starts in the
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: same place. One combo question who who had the most
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: to lose if Cobain stayed alive and the most to
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: gain if he didn't. For three decades, the answer has
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: pointed in one direction. Tom Grant had spent years working
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: homicide for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department before going private,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: and when Kabain walked out of Exodus in April of
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, Courtney called Grant and told him to
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: bring her husband home. He was still working for her
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: when the call came in on April eighth, so he
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: started recording every conversation with Courtney, every call with her associates,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: and every contradiction and what he heard didn't add up
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: is He later described the whole thing as quote filled
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: with lies, contradictions in logic, and countless inconsistencies. And according
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: to Grant, Courtney filed the missing persons report using a
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: fake name belonging to Kurt's mother, and she told police
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: he'd bought a shotgun and that he was struggle And
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: Grant's argument was that by the time showed up to
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: the greenhouse, they'd already made up their minds. And Grant
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: also said she killed his access to money, credit cards,
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: bank cards, all of it shut down, so if Kurt
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: wanted to go anywhere or do anything, he couldn't pay
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: for it. And during his search, Grant was never told
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: about the greenhouse above the garage, which is where Cobain
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: had been the entire time.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: What's the greenhouse? And he thought that the dirty little
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: room above the garage.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: Grant's case came down to four things. The drugs in
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: Cobain's blood should have knocked him out cold before he
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: could even reach for a gun, and the note looked
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: tampered with and not a single fingerprint was found at
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: the scene, and the person who stood to gain the
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: most from his death was the one signing Grant's checks,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: and the money was straightforward, and by early nineteen ninety
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: four the marriage was cracking, and Kurt told Rolling Stone
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: that month that divorce was on the table, and lawyers
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: were already involved on both sides, and wills and per
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: nuptial agreements were being revisited, and they'd signed a print
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: up before the wedding, and if they split, they each
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: kept what was theirs. The math worked fine when they
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: were on equal footing, but by nineteen ninety four, Kurt
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: was worth tens of millions and Courtney wasn't close and
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: a divorce would have cost her everything, but his death
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: would hand.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: It to her.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: And Helperin and Wallace, who investigated the case for years,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: reported that Courtney had been shopping for what she called
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: a vicious divorce lawyer, and someone who could break the
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: print up apart, and Grant would add another layer, and
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: he said Cobain had gone to attorney Rosemary Carol and
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: asked her to write a new will, one that left
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: Courtney with nothing, and the couple's nanny, Michael de Witt,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: who everyone called Kelli, reportedly backed that up, saying, quote,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: he had talked to a divorce lawyer, and he had
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: left her. If they would have got divorced, she wouldn't
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: have got a penny unquote. The numbers only made it worse.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: The time of his death, Kurt was worth an estimated
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: fifty million dollars, and the royalties alone were projected to
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: push that number past four hundred and fifty million over time,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: and Gret noted that Mary people kill each other every
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: day over far less, and Kurt had already walked away
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: from a Lollapalooza headlining offer worth nearly ten million dollars,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: which Courtney was furious about. And Grant's theory accounted for
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: the optics too. A public divorce would have destroyed her image,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: whereas a dead husband made her sympathetic. This is all alleged,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: by the way, This is all This is all speculation,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: by the way, for the law, so nobody sues me.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: And her own father, Hank Harrison, who had been estranged
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: from Courtney for years, even told the press his daughter
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: had every reason to want Cobaine dead. And the day
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: before the body turned up April seventh, that Courtney got
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: arrested in Beverly Hills for drug possession and stolen property.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: So at the moment, Kurt had already been dead in
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: the Greenhouse for two days. And then there was El Ducce,
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: a punk singer named Elden Hoake with stage name El
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: duccea as frontman of a band called The Mentors, and
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: went on camera and said Courtney had offered him fifty
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: grand to murder her husband. What And he sat for
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: a lie detector test on national television and passed. And
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: he also brought up a name Alan, someone he said
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: had taken the job. And a few days later, Hok
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: was dead, hit by a train on his way home
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: from a show, and he'd been drinking heavily, and the
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: last person anyone saw him with was a musician who
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: went by Alan Wrench. Not many people took it seriously.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: Global News said, quote unquote, if you know anything about
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: El Ducce and The Mentors, I'd call Elden Hoke an
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: unreliable narrator. And polygraphs, as we know, don't hold up
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: in court. And the twenty fifteen docu drama Soaked in
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: Bleach laid the whole theory out. Courtney's lawyers fired off
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: Cease and assists letters to theaters calling the film defamatory.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: But she never followed through and there was no lawsuit.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: But Grant has been daring her too for years, saying
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: a court case would crack the whole thing open, with
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: depositions in evidence on record, and she has not taken
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: the bait. But the people closest to Kurt have not
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: supported this theory. Not one person in his inner circle
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: has backed the murder theory, not the band, not his mother,
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: and not his daughter. Novo Selik has been direct about it,
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: and in a Reddit ama he said he was quote
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: convinced Kurt killed unquote, and bought that firearm as a
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: device unquote, And the rest of the family made a
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: statement to people saying, quote, we all know that Kurt
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: Courtney did not kill him, nor did she have him
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: killed unquote. Carlson rejected the theory outright, implying that if
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: he believed his friend had been ordered, he quote would
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: have dealt with.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: It himself unquote.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: The twenty twenty five Burnette Wilkins report gave the theory
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: its most credentialed backing, but it should be noted that
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: the journal it appeared in sits on the bills, list
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: of potentially predatory academic publishers. I am just a mere
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: vessel for information that's out there. I don't have much
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: opinion on this. You guys can speculate in the comments below,
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: but I'm not saying anyone did anything. Okay, but the
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: questions from the last three decades have found new places
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: to live as well. For years, the debate over Kirk
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: Cobain's death lived in documentary films, private investigator websites, and
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: late night Internet forums. And then in early twenty twenty six,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: it jumped somewhere unexpected and a new theory emerged, one
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: that went further than anything Tom Grant ever alleged, and
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: it reframes Kurt Cobain as someone who knew about exploitation
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: inside the entertainment industry and was beginning to fight back
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: against it, and it claims that pushing back is what
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: got him killed.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: Now the theory picked up speed on.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: Social media through twenty twenty five and into twenty twenty six,
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: and though its roots trace back to fringe corners of
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: the Internet and alternative media outlets, the people pushing this
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: theory don't see k Abain's death as a standalone event,
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: and they instead tie it to the likes of Chris Cornell,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: Chester Bennington, Anthony Bourdain and a Vici. Now in these
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: corners of the Internet, every one of those deaths are
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: explained by the alleged fact that they knew too much
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: about trafficking among the powerful and they were silenced for it.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: And the claims about Cornell and Bennington have been debunked
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: by Snopes and medical examiners in both cases determined the
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: cause of death was st by him. And there was
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: also a claim that all four were working on an
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: anti trafficking documentary called This Silent Children, and Ruters looked
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: into it and someone from the actual auction confirmed that Cornell, Bennington,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: Navici and Bourtain had nothing to do with the film apparently,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: And an important distinction needs to be made is here's
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: what's true about Kurt's activism. He stood against sexism, racism,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: and homophobia, and he backed it up with benefit concerts
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: and public statements. He showed up, but looked through every
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: interview he gave, every journal entry, every public statement, you
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: won't find a single reference to child exploitation, trafficking rings,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: or anything resembling the organized These theories describe Kurt thought
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: for the causes he believed in, and that is documented,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: but the idea that he was blowing the whistle on
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: trafficking is not backed up. But then in February twenty
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: twenty six, the theory got a little bit more fuel
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: and on February fourteen, the Attorney General Pam Bondi announced
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: the full release of the Jeffrey Epstein files under the
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: Epstein Files Transparency Act, and attached to it was a
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: list and more than three hundred names pulled from across
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: the released documents, and Kirk Cobain was on that list. However,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: the context was completely harmless. Epstein had a book in
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: his possession called a Manual of Peace thirty eight Steps
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: towards Enlightened Living, and Kurt's name was in it, and
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: the book held him up as a bad influence on
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: young people. And that's it. But one other detail did
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: turn up, and Epstein's Twitter account appeared to follow Courtney,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: and even the DOJ's own letters said as much. And
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: the names came from a wide variety of contexts, and
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: some people had real direct contact with Epstein and others
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: just showed up in unrelated documents that happened to pass
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: through his orbit and on W. Burr's On Point, experts
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: called out names like Kabaine and Elvis Presley as nonsensically mentioned,
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: mixing them in with people actually tied to trafficking. They argued,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: was quote almost intended to confuse, inte to dilute the
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: actual impact and the actual nefariousness of what so many
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: people in Jeffrey Epstein's circle did. Quote and Courtney's name
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: appeared in a different part of the files, and her
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: contact info was in a separate document, Epstein's personal address book,
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: the one people call his little Black book. Her name
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: had a circle around it, and within that book, a
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: circle is thought to mark someone as more than a
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: casual contact. But the book was massive, hundreds of names, politicians,
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: business figures, celebrities, plenty of them had no proven tie
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: to anything Epstein did. If you want to know more
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: about that, I have several videos in epstein one, including
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: that birthday book, so you can go look at those.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: But I mean, we all know what the government. I mean,
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: the government's throwing around all sorts of names, like mixing
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: everything up to confuse people, and so it doesn't make
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: any sense.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: It's just disgusting. I just you know.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: But the wildest version of the story ran on a
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: site called The People's Voice previously known as news Punch,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: and it has a long track record of pushing unverified
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: conspiracy content. And their claim is that Courtney played a
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: direct role in trafficking and Kurt was killed because he
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: was about to blow it open. And they leaned on
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: a deposition from Judge Paul G. Cassel, who said that
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: in a hypothetical FBI investigation, Courtney quote would be one
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: of the people I'd want to talk to unquote, but
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: that's quite a far cry from calling someone a criminal.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: And in February twenty twenty six, a post went viral
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: claiming to show Epstein's sitting in a crowd during Nirvana's
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: legendary MTV Unplugged taping in November nineteen ninety three. However,
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: no credible source has verified it, and one thing about
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: Courtney is verified though. At the two thousand and five
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: Pamela Anderson Comedy Central roast, Courtney was asked if she
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: had advice for young women trying to make it in Hollywood,
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: and she said, quote, I'll get libeled if I say it.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: If Harvey Weinstein invites you to a private party in
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: the four Seasons don't Go quote, and she said later
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: that her remark got her permanently banned by the Talent
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: Agency CAAA, and that footage came back around twenty seventeen,
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: right as the hashtag med too.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: Movement was exploding.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: So yes, Courtney knew what was happening in Hollywood, and
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: she wasn't afraid to say it out loud and years
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: before anyone else would. But knowing about Weinstein doesn't connect
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: her to Epstein in any way that we know. And
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: three things happened at nearly the same time. In early
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty six, the DOJ released the Phil Epstein files
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: with Cobain's name included, and the Burnette Wilkins forensic report
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: challenged the official cause of death. And the ground had
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: already shifted with Weinstein, the Ditty case, and years of
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: Epstein revelations. So by twenty twenty six, people are primed
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: to question just every institution that ever looked the other way,
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: which seems like every institution basically, and the result has
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: just been a collision on social media. The two threads
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: got welded into one story, even though they almost had
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with each other. Justice for Kurt and
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: hashtag Cobain Forensics started trending, and people were treating the
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: forensic report and the Epstein files like chapters of the
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: same story. But the forensic team never said a word
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: about Epstein and never mentioned trafficking, and never touched the
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: entertainment industry, and real forensic questions do exist about Kurt's death.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: I still have lots of questions because stuff does not
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: add up and it's very concerning, but they didn't come
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: from Reddit threads. Credentialed professionals raised them. Saying there are
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: unanswered questions is one thing, and saying Kurt Cobain was
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: murdered by a trafficking ring connected to Jeffrey Epstein is
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: something else.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: Entirely.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: There does not seem to be convincingly credible evidence for
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: it at this point, but there are absolutely things about
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: Kurt Cobain's death that still don't add up.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: That much is for sure.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: But the Epstein link that's been trending based on everything
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: that's surfaced so far, isn't one of them. The official
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: answer has never changed. The King County Medical Examiner's Office
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: ruled Kirk Cobaine's death as light on April eighth, nineteen
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: ninety four, and the same day his body was found,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: and the case remains closed, though the Medical Examiner's Office
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: did leave a slight glimmer of hope that it could
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: be looked into further in the future, but the Seattle
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: Police Department has made its position clear that it still
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: has no intention of reopening the case, but a change
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: dot org petition demanding the case be reopened has pulled
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: in significant public support. People still regularly contact SPD asking
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: them to take another look, and most of those requests
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: come through social media. The forensic study published in late
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty five gave the doubters their strongest ammunition yet,
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: with credentialed professionals concluding it was homicide, and SPD listened
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: to the presentation and still said no. And as of
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: March twenty twenty six, nothing has changed. The case is
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: closed and the questions are still sitting there. Fingerprints on
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: the shotgun, four rolls of crime scene film left in
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: a vault for twenty years, a heroin level that experts
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: still argue over, a note that doesn't quite add up
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: to many people, and a man found in a greenhouse
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: above a garage, three days after anyone last saw him alive.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: That's what we're left with, so let me know what
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: you think down below. But that is the case of
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: Kurt Cobain, and for.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: Me, I am you know.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to listen to some Nirvana. The whole
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: the whole case is very devastating, but what an artist.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: But as always, my heart goes out to the family.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: And if you have any other cases you want me
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: to deep dive into, let me know down below. I
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: always read the comments. And until next time, stay safe
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: out there, stay beautiful, and I'll see you in the
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: next one.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: Bye,