Gary James Asks Private Detective Tom Grant
Kurt Cobain: Suicide or Murder?



Just six days before Kurt Cobain was found dead, his wife, Courtney Love, hired Private Detective Tom Grant to find Kurt. You may remember that Kurt walked away from a drug rehab center and promptly vanished. Tom Grant does not believe Kurt committed suicide: He suspects foul play. Detective Tom Grant is a former L.A. County Sheriffs detective, and at present, a licensed private investigator practicing in Beverly Hills, California.

What's behind this talk of Kurt Cobain being murdered? Tom Grant explains.

Q - Courtney Love hired you to find Kurt. Why did she select you? Did you come through a recommendation from a mutual acquaintance?

A - No. This was on a holiday, Easter Sunday, April 3rd (1994) and I happened to be in my office. Courtney was down here in Beverly Hills and she opened up her phone book to try and find a private investigator that she could hire at that time. She saw my ad in the phone book. So it strictly came from an ad in the phone book. I was reading an on-line post from one of Courtney's supporters saying "This will teach Courtney Love to never hire anyone out of a phone book." To that, I would have to agree. Courtney Love should never hire anybody that she's not able to pay off.

Q - Why is Courtney Love mad at you?

A - I really don't like to refer to the O.J. Simpson case because it's just out there in everything everybody writes and talks about. But the natural response to a question like that is, why is O.J. Simpson mad at Chris Darden and Marcia Clark? I'm just doing my job, but I'm accusing her of being involved in a murder. So naturally she's going to be angry, just like O.J. is going to be angry at people accusing him of something.

Q - Did you break some kind of law by pursuing an inquiry into Kurt Cobain's death after Courtney initially hired you?

A - We'll have to let the courts decide that. I was totally aware of a business and professions code that states private investigators are not allowed to disclose information of an investigation except to the police and to the client. In the material I wrote to the Department of Consumer Affairs, who licenses private Investigators, I listed ten to fifteen reasons why I violated that law, if there was actually a violation of law there. To this day, my license had not been suspended or revoked. In fact, I've never heard back from the Department of Consumer Affairs. I'll welcome a court challenge to what I've done here. The fact is, when I realized something was wrong, I did go to the police. I was eventually put in a position where since the police blew me off, and other people started dying that were close to this case, I felt among other things, that my life was in danger if I kept quiet.

Q - Is you life in danger as we speak?

A - Well, my life is in the same danger as any other police officer or prosecutor that goes after criminals. I don't feel paranoid. In fact, at this point, I feel as safe as an average police officer. If something happened to me right now, I think Courtney Love may be more afraid that I might get accidentally killed in a car crash than anything else, because everybody's going to be pointing the finger in that direction if something happens to me right now. But that's largely because of the strategy and tactics that I've taken personally. I've protected myself by going public, by speaking out. There's a lot of people around the world that are watching what happens to Tom Grant now.

Q - You went to the Seattle Police within seven days of Kurt's death and told them he was murdered. What did they say to you?

A - Well, first of all, I was on the phone to the Seattle police, trying to go to them the day the body was found. I was more or less blown off on the telephone. One of the detectives I talked to said, "Look, he was locked inside the room." The door was locked from the inside. I talked to them on the phone and tried to warn them that there were some funny things going on. I had come back to Los Angeles after the body was found, and met with Rosemary Carroll (Courtney's attorney) and then decided to go back up to Seattle the next week. I'd done a lot more investigating up there and spent some time with Courtney. A week after the body was found, I had a sit down meeting with Sgt. Cameron of the Seattle Police Station. At that point, I pointed out an awful lot of information which is outlined on the material I've released on the Internet. Among them was motive. Of course the first thing he asked me was, "Why would she do this?" And, I laid that out for him. I knew for a fact that Kurt was leaving Courtney at the time he ended up dying. There was a divorce in the works. There had been a lot of talk about divorce and separation. Courtney had an album coming out pretty soon. The obvious motive in a situation like this is, would she benefit more from a suicide or from a divorce? And again, if Kurt Cobain commits (suicide) she gets everything.

Q - You write, "There's never been any proof this was a suicide."

A - That's right.

Q - You go on, "Your opinion of this case should not be based on the twisted details given by the police to the media." So you're saying then that the Seattle Police did not do an investigation into Kurt's death or did a sloppy investigation, or just didn't care. Which is it?

A - All of the above.

Q - "Murders do happen and they're often made to look like a suicide." In Kurt's case, you believe this is what happened? Are you saying that somehow Courtney is involved in this?

A - Well, I have said that Courtney Love and Michael DeWitt, the male nanny that was living at the house when Kurt Cobain died, were involved in the conspiracy that resulted in the death of Kurt Cobain, and there may be others involved. I need to throw that in.

Q - On Thursday, April 7th, 1994, at 2:15 a.m. you and Dylan Carlson (Kurt's friend) go to Kurt's Lake Washington home. Dylan went into the house to look around and you stayed in the car?

A - We both went into the house. Dylan crawled in through a window and opened the front door for me, and then we went in.

Q - So why didn't anyone look in the greenhouse where Kurt's body was eventually found?

A - First of all, the garage building itself was like an A-framed building and the greenhouse is the top part of that building. It's a little room up above the garage. When we drove up the driveway, it was late at night. It was dark. It was raining outside. We had raindrops all over the windshield. The garage that was straight ahead of the driveway had a spotlight on it, shining directly down towards us. So we're driving into a real bright spotlight with all these raindrops. Everything was glaring on the windshield. I could see that there was a garage there, and that there was a car parked inside the garage, but my concern was the main house, which was to the right. All the lights were on inside the house. There were no curtains on the windows. You could see through the windows and everything that was inside. We knew by this time that Kurt had a shotgun, so obviously I was concerned about somebody moving around inside that house with a shotgun. My eyes were focused on the house. I couldn't see the top of the garage because of the spotlight, but I wasn't looking that close anyhow. We got out of the car and went up to the door. The front door was locked so we went around and found an unlocked window in the kitchen. Dylan crawled in and then opened the door. We searched the entire house inside. It's a three story house altogether, with a basement and two stories. We searched everywhere in there. As we were leaving, we went out the kitchen door, which is in the back of the house, and walked around the back to the car. I said to Dylan, "Now, have we looked everywhere? Have we checked everything?" Dylan said "Yes." But from that angle, walking back to the car, there's some lattice work with bushes and plants on it that obstruct your vision from the back of the house to where you can't see the top of the garage. So from that angle, I couldn't see it even if I was looking for it and I wasn't looking for it. We got in the car and I turned around to back out and drove back. The next night when we were there, the same thing happened. We were still in the same situation. We didn't know where Kurt was, and were still looking for him at the house. When we went back the next night, it was raining too.

Q - So Dylan wasn't familiar with the layout of the house?

A - When we were driving around on Friday morning and we hear that a body had been found at the house, my first thought was he must've showed up after we left. Then later, before we got back to the house, we were quite a ways away, they had mentioned the body was found in the greenhouse. I turned to Dylan and said, "What's the greenhouse?" He said, "Oh, it's just a little room up on top of the garage." I said, "Why didn't we look in there?" And he said, "It's just a little storage room. There's some lumber and a couple of things in there. There's not much in there." I said, "Does Kurt ever go up there?" He said, "No. He wouldn't go up there. There's nothing up there." I was really anxious at that point to see what this greenhouse looked like, and what this room looked like. When we go back to the house, this was the first time we had been to the house in the daytime. When I looked up the driveway and saw the tip of the garage, this big A-frame room up there, I was blown away. I couldn't believe that was there and that we missed it. Dylan later told a reporter from the Seattle Times in an interview that he didn't know there was a room above the garage. I don't know why he said that. Obviously he did know because we discussed it in the car and he knew the room was there. I learned later from Rosemary Carroll, Rosemary was standing right next to Courtney; Courtney was over at Rosemary's house while we were up doing this. Rosemary lives down here in L.A. Rosemary said she heard Courtney tell Dylan on the phone, before we went to the house, "Be sure and check the greenhouse." So Dylan had been instructed to check the greenhouse and again, he never mentioned it to me or said anything about it. So that's that.

Q - How is it that none of the neighbors would have seen Kurt coming into the house?

A - It's a neighborhood with large houses on large lots. I would imagine that some neighbors could have possibly seen him. If I recall correctly, there's no one who lives directly across the street. I think it's a vacant lot. Behind the house there's a sloping hill and the people who live up there are friends of the Cobains, but they didn't notice anything and they wouldn't necessarily have been able to see a whole lot from where they were at.

Q - The press gave the world this image of Kurt barricading himself in the greenhouse in those last few hours. You say that was not the case at all. The doors were unlocked. Why was that image promoted? Did it fit the suicide scenario a little better?

A - Yeah, and this is the real distressing thing. Anyone can see from reading the police report carefully that there was no stool wedged against the door, and yet a lot of media stories went out there. A lot of the coverage that went out said there was a stool wedged against the door, that Kurt was barricaded in the room and that he had left his wallet open with his driver's license on top. We know simply from reading the police reports, in addition to other evidence I've gathered, that it clearly states the stool was sitting in front of the other two French doors that just let out to a balcony on that garage. Those doors were unlocked. This stool was so small, there's no way it could've been used to be wedged against the door anyway. It was simply sitting in front of these two doors. Two unlocked doors that led out to the balcony. It had some gardening tools sitting on top of the stool. The press printed there was a stool wedged against the door and I found out later there wasn't. I made one writer aware that this was false information. He lives in Seattle. I quoted the police reports to him. He could've gotten access to the police reports himself. In the reports it also states that the first officer on the scene found the wallet on the floor, opened it up, took out the driver's license and laid it on top to take a photograph. Kurt Cobain did not leave his wallet open with his driver's license exposed as was reported in the media. Yeah, that paints a real suicidal scene. If there was a stool actually wedged against the door and if he had left his wallet open with a driver's license exposed, that's some fairly decent evidence that it probably was a suicide. Of course that evidence alone convinced an awful lot of people that his guy must've really been planning this and really knew what he was doing. But the cold hard facts are that just wasn't true. It didn't happen that way. After I made it clear to this particular writer, an article came out in the Seattle Rocket, and not only was that information included, it was put on the very front page! I don't recall the exact wording, but they painted a picture which this guy had to have known at this point was totally false information. It appeared in the Anniversary Issue of the Seattle Rocket. This is what just completely blows me away about the Rock press in general. It's one thing to have misinformation. I understand how the media gets things wrong. That's human nature. The media is going to get some facts wrong from time to time. What disturbs me very deeply is to see things done deliberately, to deliberately mislead people. That was a case where I felt the information was put out there deliberately to paint a false picture of a suicide. Now, it's one thing again to have an opinion that this was a suicide. Fine. Write that in your opinion, but don't deliberately put out false information.

Q - I think what happens here is the press gets that information from the police and puts it on page one. If it's discovered two weeks later to be false, it's either not reported or buried some place else in the paper.

A - Right. In fact, they don't want to admit they made a mistake, and that's part of the problem here. .

Q - If I could make a comparison, it would be Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Dan Rather was there. If he harbors any suspicions about the Warren Commission's Report, we'll most likely never hear about it publicly. Because for him to admit that maybe he didn't ask the right questions at the time to the right people would mean his audience may never view him again as this star"anchor. Should people not watch the CBS Evening News, ratings fall and Dan Rather's $2 million dollar a year salary would be called into question.

A - You have a very good understanding of this and you seem to be more willing to talk about it than a lot of people are. But that's the problem with this whole case. Everybody seems to be strictly looking out for themselves, from every single Seattle police detective to the Seattle police chief to the Coroner's office or the Medical Examiner's office to every writer that has written about this, for the most part. There have been some exceptions. There's been some very good articles that have come out that have been very honest and very fair. But for the most part within the Rock press, everybody only seems to be concerned with themselves and their career. The truth just has no meaning whatsoever.

Q - You've stated "There were no marks on Kurt's hands that would have indicated he fired a gun." That's pretty significant.

A - That contradicts the police reports by the way.

Q - Is it possible that someone just overlooked a mark on the gun?

A - Well, wait. Let me clarify something here. There could easily have been marks on his hands and the police claim that there were. I'm saying that the police are lying. There were no marks on his hands and I have evidence that I can prove that with. I experimented with an identical shotgun and fired it eighteen times. It left nothing visible on my hands. That's fine. I would be the first one to agree with the police, but that's not the same weapon that Kurt Cobain allegedly used. It was identical in design, but it wasn't the same weapon. His may have had some defects in it that could've left a mark. I would have to agree to that to a certain extent, although it's very highly unlikely that his shotgun would've left any different marks than the one I used did. But that's not my evidence. That's not my proof. What I've said now for quite awhile is this should not be a privacy issue describing the marks on his hands. There's nothing gruesome. If the police want to claim there were marks on his hands, all I'm saying is, you describe those marks and I'll prove you're lying about it. Now, that's a pretty presumptuous thing to say unless I know what I'm talking about. Tell us, was that an abrasion? Are you talking about gunshot residue? Are you talking about soot? Are you talking about a cut? An indentation? Exactly what was it on his hands that indicated he fired that weapon? Anybody can throw that line in, there were marks on his hands indicating he fired that weapon. That's an easy line to throw in, but back it up. Tell us what those marks were.

Q - You concluded that Kurt's suicide note was not a suicide note at all, but an explanation to his fans why he wanted to quit the music business. But that's your interpretation. Maybe my interpretation would be different. Maybe a trained psychologist's interpretation would be different. Can you hold up your interpretation of a suicide note as evidence?

A - My interpretation comes from a totally different prospective than anybody else's. My interpretation comes from the fact that I know absolutely, without any doubt, and there will never be any problem proving this in a court of law, that Kurt Cobain was leaving Courtney. That's where my perspective begins from. The public, the writers, nobody else was aware of that. Right now, all they think is, well, that's what Tom Grant says. We'll never know if he was leaving her or not. Yes we will. It will be proved that Kurt was leaving Courtney. I know that for a fact. So it makes it a lot easier for me to understand that note he left. We found out seven months later he also left her another note that she never told me about. It was never mentioned in the police reports, so we have to assume she never told the police about it. Rosemary Carroll didn't know about it because she was working with me behind the scenes and she never told me about it. All of the sudden, Courtney comes up with this other note that Kurt left for her at the same time! The same time he allegedly killed himself, now all of a sudden there's a second note. The little bit that she quoted from that note makes it very clear to me, especially since I knew what was going on. He said, "I'm leaving. I don't know where I'm going. Please don't follow me. I'll be there to protect you. I love you." That type of thing. Courtney tried to make it sound like that was another suicide note. Well, let's see everything Courtney. Let's see what that note says in its entirety. Courtney told me a lot of what that note says. A lot of that note trashes her, and she's told me that. I have a lot more to base my opinion on than the average person does when I say this is a retirement letter and not a suicide note.

Q - Maybe that note is no longer around.

A - I doubt if that note will ever be made public. There's a lot of evidence that will probably be destroyed.

Q - She made a mistake then in telling you about it.

A - She didn't tell me about it. It slipped out in an interview she gave to David Fricke of Rolling Stone when he was questioning her about the alleged suicide note. The interview came across as if the note didn't make any sense. I dealt an awful lot with Courtney over a seven month period and I know the way she thinks and the way she responds. She thought he was questioning if that was even a suicide note. So she blurted out on the spur of the moment, "Well, he wrote me another note too," and then she gave me a real brief description of that note. When I talked to her on the phone after I heard about that, she claimed that he left it in an envelope under the pillows of the bed. I personally know for a fact that she lied about that. I searched under the pillows on the bed. We looked between the mattresses. We looked under the bed. We were looking for any indication that Kurt had been at the house. We were looking for drug paraphernalia. Dylan told me he'd never seen the house that clean before. It didn't even make sense to him that the bed was even made and everything was all straightened up. It was never like that. I know that note was not under the pillows on the bed.

Q - You say you've heard from a number of people with information on Kurt's death, who are close to Courtney, that they're scared. Scared of what?

A - Oh, everything from physical harm to career damage, destroying their careers. Practically everybody that at one time was a friend of her's that she doesn't like now, she just devastates them all over the Internet, or in interviews in magazines. Nobody wants to subject themselves to that.

Q - "I have reason to believe Kurt may have been intimidated into believing his life would be in danger if he failed to do the Lollapalooza Tour." How did you arrive at that conclusion?

A - From statements Dylan Carlson made to me. From comments Courtney made that I had to analyze later on. I don't want to get real specific here, because there are some bits and pieces of information I need to withhold until this case is reopened and it should only be revealed to the investigators. I will admit part of that is speculation. It's not all that relevant to the case whether he felt intimidated or not, but there's so many things that go into that opinion. I do believe he was holed up in that greenhouse. The greenhouse is almost like a little guard-shack for that property. It overlooks the driveway and anybody coming up the driveway. Kurt Cobain was leaving Seattle. He was going to be going back East. There was another ticket that he had purchased out of Seattle. I believe he was concerned. That's why he was sitting up there with a shotgun. That's why he bought the shotgun before he went to the rehab, not after. When he got back, he wanted to have that with him. He was concerned for his safety. That's why he was up in the greenhouse to begin with.

Q - A month before he was found dead, there was that incident in Rome. If that wasn't a suicide attempt, was it an overdose?

A - No. I believe that was an attempt on his life.

Q - Did anyone ever ask Kurt what happened?

A - Well, the strange thing is, Dylan Carlson is very close to Courtney and Kurt. He's Kurt's best friend. Courtney was always in touch with Dylan. Courtney never told Dylan Carlson that was a suicide attempt in Rome. So, Kurt came back to Seattle and was there for quite awhile, hanging out with Dylan Carlson. Nobody told Dylan it was a suicide attempt in Rome. And Dylan goes with Kurt to buy him a shotgun. His best friend would not have helped him buy a shotgun if he thought he had just tried to kill himself. Dylan Carlson knew he wasn't suicidal. He's told me that. He's told the press that. The Rock press can say whatever they want, but Kurt's own best friend said he wasn't suicidal. One would have to wonder why Courtney Love would not notify Kurt's best friend Dylan Carlson to watch out for him. He just tried to kill himself. Keep an eye on him. That's pretty strange to me. It either shows a total lack of concern, that Courtney could care less about this guy, indicates this was not a suicide attempt. And that's what I believe. It was another attempt on his life. I think that when he came to, they were able to convince him that he just mixed a little bit too much drugs with alcohol and went into a coma. I don't even think he was aware of how much was in his system.

Q - Once you get involved in this drug culture, it changes everything.

A - I've always said, if you do drugs, you better be sure you don't have any enemies.

Q - Rosemary Carroll, Courtney Love's attorney, is either living with or married to Danny Goldberg. Danny Goldberg is the CEO of Warner Bros. Records, which distributes Geffen Records, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana's label, as well as Courtney's recordings. So when you say, "I'm up against some pretty powerful and wealthy people here", those are the people you are referring to.

A - You got it.

Q - You're an ex-police officer. How do they know you're not well-connected?

A - I am well-connected.

Q - So, the magazines and newspapers and TV stations and radio stations that aren't doing interviews with you about Kurt Cobain's death are afraid of Warner Bros. Records pulling advertising support.

A - We can all speculate about that, and I feel we all have a pretty decent understanding of what's going on here. In the end, I don't care how powerful they are or how wealthy they are. It doesn't matter. I don't care what names are connected to this behind-the-scenes, and I don't care what games they play initially, to try and put all this back in the closet. It's not going to work. It's just going to delay things. In the end, it's not going to work. The American public is not stupid. We can all be fooled, every one of us, and be fooled from time to time. Every one of us can be misled from time to time. There are so many glaring holes in this case. As it gets looked at closer and closer, and once people are made aware of it, which they haven't been for the most part, it doesn't matter what games these people play, everybody is going to want some answers.

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

The views and opinions expressed by individuals interviewed for this web site are the sole responsibility of the individual making the comment and / or appearing in interviews and do not necessarily represent the opinions of anyone associated with the website ClassicBands.com.