Gary James' Interview With Homicide Detective
Cloyd Steiger



Cloyd Steiger worked with the Seattle Police Department for thirty-six years, twenty-two of those years in the Homicide Division. In 2016 he retired and authored the book, Homicide: The View Inside The Yellow Tape. He is currently the Chief Criminal Investigator of the Washington State Attorney General's Homicide Investigation Tracking System (HITS), which tracks all murders in Washington, Oregon and Montana, as well as assists local agencies with homicide investigations, including cold case homicides. Mr. Steiger is a Consulting Committee member of the American Investigation Society of Cold Cases, a national group comprised of experts in various aspects of homicide investigations (such as Investigation, Behavioral and Laboratory) which helps with cold case murders from all across the United States. While he did not have any direct involvement with the investigation into Kurt Cobain's death, he was part of the Seattle Police Department on April 8th, 1994, when the world learned of Kurt Cobain's passing. And so, we spoke with Detective Cloyd Steiger about Kurt Cobain and what he remembers and knows about the Kurt Cobain investigation into his death.

Q - Mr. Steiger, you're no longer employed by the Seattle Police Department. These days you're an author, correct?

A - Yeah. I also work with the Washington Attorney General's Office. I do homicide jobs there. I supervise a unit that does cold cases and solves (them).

Q - I would like to talk to you about Kurt Cobain. While you didn't have any direct involvement into his death, you knew people who did.

A - I was in the office when that came out and I didn't go. At that time I hadn't heard of Kurt Cobain. I had no idea who Kurt Cobain was and neither did most of the people who went out. They had no idea who Kurt Cobain was at that time. We weren't in this group of people who listened to his music. We were older people (laughs) Nobody knew who he really was. They just knew that he was dead up in a house in Lake Washington Boulevard.

Q - Was that one of the biggest investigations for the Seattle Police Department?

A - Not even close. We had cases where fifteen people were shot in the head. There were serial killings. It was (Kurt Cobain's death) a blip on the radar as far as that goes.

Q - Is it true that the first forty-eight hours are extremely crucial in solving a homicide case?

A - It is, but it was more true years ago than it is now because you can still go back. The general answer is yes, but it's not as solid a yes as it was twenty or thirty years ago.

Q - Probably because of DNA?

A - Yeah. What you can do with DNA is recover it later and other methods familiar with DNA and archeology and all these other methods you can use to figure out who the person is.

Q - Is it also true that you can make a homicide look like a suicide?

A - You can, but it's not easy. It's pretty tough. It's easier in jurisdictions that don't see a lot of both of them, that only see them very infrequently and are inexperienced in looking at them. But the bigger jurisdictions where they see things all the time, it's not as easy. Obviously if you go to a place that has one murder every six years and a couple of suicides every six years, it's going to be easier, but you go to a place that has suicides almost every single day, Homicide is more experienced in looking at death scenes. So, it's going to be a lot less likely.

Q - Are you familiar with Tom Grant?

A - I know who he is.

Q - Have you ever talked to him?

A - To my knowledge I've never talked to him.

Q - Tom Grant believes the Seattle Police Department was too quick to rule Kurt Cobain's death a suicide.

A - Here's my answer to that. The Police Department doesn't determine homicide or suicide. That's done by the Medical Examiner's Office. In a normal suicide a patrol officer goes and calls an examiner who has their investigators and is taken for an autopsy. This case was like a homicide from the beginning because four or six detectives, two lieutenants and a sergeant went out, which would normally never happen in a suicide. Let me tell you about Tom Grant. Tom Grant was an L.A. County Sheriff. He was only a patrol officer. He has no homicide investigation experience. I don't know the guy. He may be a great guy, but he has no background to make those kind of calls. He may be God's gift to investigations, but I doubt it. He didn't spend much time at the Sheriff's office and he never was a detective, at least a homicide detective. Just the Sheriff's office.

Q - He questions whether Kurt Cobain could have pulled the trigger of the shotgun found at the scene, after injecting so much heroin into his body.

A - Let me stop you right there. That is exactly the statement of a guy who doesn't know what he's talking about. Kurt Cobain was a hardcore heroin addict. If he didn't shoot up an hour before, he could have shot up immediately before and shot himself. I don't know. Somebody in the U.K. did a documentary where they gave another hardcore drug addict the same dose and the guy was up, skipping rope after taking that dose. So that's a red herring. Let me make one statement here about Kurt Cobain, the amount of co-ordination to make this look like a murder, when it was a suicide, is incredible. First of all they would have to have Kurt Cobain himself take a cab to a gun shop, use his own credit card to buy the ammunition and take the cab back home. When the cab driver recognized him with that ammunition, go over to his garage, load that thing, stick it in is mouth and pull the trigger. If you wanted to kill Kurt Cobain, you didn't have to go to all the trouble. All you'd have to do is "hot shot" him, 'cause all there'd be would be an overdose. They knew he was a hardcore heroin user. Why would you go to all this trouble to put a shotgun in his mouth and pull the trigger? He had a cadaveric spasm when he killed himself. His hand was gripped around the shotgun and it was still gripped around the shotgun when he was found dead. It's called a cadaveric spasm when your hand clenches and it stays around the trigger and around the handle. His other hand, the one he held the barrel on, was over the port because there was a soot staining on his hand 'cause the side port where the shell was ejected, he had a burn mark or soot mark on his hand consistent with holding the shotgun in his mouth. This wasn't even a close call. I've been over that case. I've talked to the pathologists about it, the Medical Examiner a few years ago when it was coming back up again, went through all the photographs. It's not even a close call. No celebrity can kill themselves or be killed without some conspiracy theory. First of all, if this was a murder we'd be all over it. What would be the reason to cover it up? Why would the Seattle Police Department even know who this guy was? Try to make a murder look like a suicide? It wouldn't happen. If it was a real murder I'd love to take it, but it's not even a close call. If they were going to give him this big shot of heroin, why not give him a tiny bit more and let him overdose? You don't have to ever worry about being caught because nobody would even blink. It would've been ruled an accidental overdose. His hand was still gripping the shotgun. He used bird shot. He head was intact. His head did not explode. No sign of forcible sticking the shotgun inside his mouth. Inner oral is almost always suicide in the mouth because nobody sits there and lets you put a gun in their mouth, even if you're high on a lot of heroin.

Q - Is it true that Kurt Cobain's fingerprints were not on the gun, almost like it had been wiped off?

A - No. First of all, his hand was still on the gun when he was found. I don't even know that the gun was fingerprinted. You don't need to. When you find a guy and his hand is still on the gun, you don't need to test it for fingerprints because you can see he's touching the gun. You can also see that his other hand is on the gun because of the soot marks on the webs of his fingers and the palm of his hands 'cause he gripped it around the part, which would be expected. If those were not there it would be more suspicious, but they were.

Q - In your mind and in the mind of the Seattle Police Department, there is no doubt that Kurt Cobain committed suicide then?

A - Well, first of all let me say that's in the mind of the King County Medical Examiner's Office. They're the ones that make that call. The police department doesn't make that call. We don't rule manner of death. The Medical Examiner does, but nobody in this case disagrees with the Medical Examiner.

Official Website: CloydSteiger.com

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