12 Crazy Conspiracies About the Death of Kurt Cobain

For decades, the death of Kurt Cobain has cast a shadow over the world of rock music. Cobain's untimely suicide transformed him into a martyr who has come to represent much more than he might have ever intended. In addition to his legacy as a poet and an artist, Cobain left in his wake a trail of conspiracy theories longer than any B-side. 

At first glance, Cobain's death seems cut and dry - but once you begin examining the evidence, the whole situation becomes as opaque as the singer's lyrics. How did Kurt Cobain die? Though his death was officially ruled a suicide, many feel there are plenty of questions about it that have yet to be answered. While many Kurt Cobain death conspiracies place his wife, Courtney Love, at the center of his demise, there are just as many theories out there that suggest otherwise. Even the most concrete pieces of evidence that were found at the time of death - his suicide note and the shotgun he used - have their inconsistencies. To date, questions remain about who really killed Kurt Cobain. 

If there's one thing we know about all dead rock stars, it's that the CIA haaaaaated them. According to conspiracy theorist John Potash, the government hooked Cobain on heroin in an attempt curb his anarchist views and promote drug use among America's youth. But when Cobain's addiction didn't do its job and Cobain threatened to start promoting a clean lifestyle, someone had to step in. 

Says Potash: 

Evidence suggests that, unknown to Cobain, US intelligence used him to promote heroin use, similar to the way US intelligence and media assets helped promote acid in the 1960's. Suppressed evidence indicates that US intelligence helped orchestrate Cobain’s murder due to his anti-materialistic, radical leftist politics, along with his implicit threat to promote sobriety when he stopped using drugs.

There are some who speculate that a UFO piloted by "grunge-loving aliens" was responsible for whisking Cobain away from planet Earth. They were likely piloting a flannel flying saucer and listening to Temple of the Dog B-Sides (which everyone knows was only released on Mars).  

This alien kidnapping theory comes to us from Ethel Highet, a Seattle woman who claims that she's since run into Cobain on one of his visits back to Terra Prime. "They let him visit his hometown Seattle from time to time, for inspiration to write his songs, you know," she says. Highet also alleges that she chatted with the former Nirvana singer while exploring Seattle's underground tunnels. "He's looking kinda pale but you'd expect that from being stuck on an alien spacecraft. Kurt said that another faction of aliens had kidnapped Elvis - rock and roll loving ones. Elvis and Kurt have managed to talk alot, even had some jam sessions together. They're now on a first name basis."  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You may already know that MK-Ultra is a stain on American history that can never be erased, but did you know that Kurt Cobain was a successful patient of the program? Indeed, there are claims he was unknowingly transformed into a CIA operative. 

According to one "MK-Ultra insider," Courtney Love was programmed from a very young age as part of an MK-Ultra "subproject." She then brought Kurt into the facility in order to help the government brainwash him so the singer could either disseminate their specific platforms to the youth of America or work as a hitman while he traveled overseas. 

After trying to break his programming and tell the world about the secrets of the American shadow government, Cobain was taken down in a "sloppy" agency hit. Hopefully, Cobain and Love's daughter, Francis, was able to escape being programmed like her parents. 

When Cobain's body was discovered, toxicologists found he had three times the lethal amount of heroin in his system. In 2012, private Investigator Max Wallace told Matt Lauer, "The forensic pathologist we spoke to said that there's no way this guy could have injected a triple lethal dose of heroin into his system, then rolled down his sleeve, put away the drug kit, picked up the shotgun and shot himself. He would have been incapacitated within seconds."

This fact may raise more questions than it answers: did he die of an overdose and was shot after? Or did someone else inject him with the drug?  

When it comes to the story of Cobain's death, one figure is rarely spoken of: the family's nanny, Michael Dewitt. According to Cobain death truther/detective Tom Grant, Dewitt was the one member of the family unit who actually had the ability to move freely after Cobain's suicide attempt in Rome. Love was holed up in a California rehab center and Cobain was in Lake Washington. Dewitt freely admits to seeing Cobain at the Lake Washington residence, although he didn't mention it to anyone at the time. Is this because he and Love conspired to kill Cobain and make it look like a suicide? Only two people know for sure. 

Faking your own death might sound crazy, but not for Cobain. It was widely known that he hated being famous, and would have preferred remaining a low-key Seattle act for the rest of his career. Unfortunately, the world couldn't stand to let him be a regular guy. 

As one Redditor points out, there's a scant amount of evidence that the body found in Cobain's Lake Washington home was actually Cobain himself: there's only one photo of the body, there are no fingerprints on the gun, there were no media allowed at his funeral. 

However, the real evidence comes in the form of an anagram that Cobain had obviously been thinking about for a while. Says the Redditor: "Let's look at Kurt, Courtney, and Francis' names, shall we. KURT cobAIn, courtney LoVE, FrancIS bean cobain. Take the capitalized letters. Now what is it an anagram for? Why, none other than...KURT IS ALIVE."

Kurt Cobain isn't dead, after all! He just left Seattle, his family, his millions of dollars, and his very popular band so he could move to South America. Only in 2012 did he emerge to appear on the Peruvian talent show Yo Soy. Though he attempted to disguise himself by giving the name Ramiro Saavedra, real Cobain fans knew it was him from the beginning. Hiding in plain sight is always a fool-proof plan.

This continues to be the go-to Cobain death conspiracy. It goes something like this: after nearly committing suicide (or maybe accidentally overdosing on pills and red wine) in Rome, Kurt made up his mind to leave Courtney. There were already rumors floating around that Courtney was either cheating on Kurt or wanted to cheat on him, so Kurt decided to take himself out of the equation. 

After his suicide attempt in Rome, Kurt retreated to his Lake Washington home to re-examine his career and relationships. When Courtney found out Kurt was thinking of leaving her, and that he'd written a letter to her stating that he was quitting his band and their marriage, she finished the job he started in Rome. As the conspiracy goes, Courtney even added a few lines at the bottom of his note. 

Setting aside the who and why of Kurt's demise for a moment, one should examine the "suicide note" that was left in the greenhouse of Cobain's Lake Washington home. It's worth noting that the handwriting at the beginning of the letter is completely different from that at the end. It may just be a strange coincidence, but it gives rise to a few theories: perhaps he began the letter with his left hand and finished with his right. Or, maybe the letter began as a sincere message to someone (possibly Courtney), but then he changed his mind. Lastly, there's the theory that Kurt began the letter, then someone else finished it after killing him in order to make his death look like a suicide. 

Tom Grant, a detective who has been working on this case since the '90s, has a few opinions on the letter:

My own tests with that so-called 'suicide' note indicated that when it is enlarged on a copy machine, the inconsitencies [sic] become even more clear. The ink printed line of that one critical comment, ("which will be so much happier without me"), are thinner than all of the ink printed lines in the rest of the note. At the very least, this indicates that line was added after the rest of the note was completed. The pressure from the hand using the pen to add that line was not consistent with the pressure from the hand that wrote the body of the note.

At the very least, one can conclude that the intent of the letter changed drastically between the beginning and the end. 

Okay, so maybe Courtney didn't actually pick up a shotgun and kill Kurt on her own - after all, she was in a drug rehab facility in California when Cobain "killed himself." If Love had actually wanted to kill Cobain she would have had to hire someone. But that's crazy, right? Maybe not. Eldon "El Duce" Hoke, singer of Seattle band The Mentors, claims that Love approached him at a record store in Hollywood and offered to pay him $50,000 to kill Cobain. In a 1996 interview with High Times, Hoke said that he passed the job off to a friend. Whether he was telling the truth, or just trying to get some press will forever remain a mystery: Hoke was run over by a train in Riverside, CA, two days after filming an interview for the documentary Kurt & Courtney in 1997.