Re-examining Courtney Love’s Connections With The Seattle Authorities

Courtney Love

I was listening to this new interview of Buzz Osborne at Amnesia Rockfest, and once again he was asked about Montage of Heck, a movie he reviewed because he was asked to, as he pointed out. I like Buzz, he is honest and direct and in this interview, he reiterates what he had already written in his review, ‘It makes very little difference what the facts are, what matters is what people believe … and there is not much there that is the truth’.

Just like me, Buzz is big on facts and he has understood that people are not very interested by facts and much prefer to listen to their feelings and what they want to believe. This could apply to a lot of things and stories and meanwhile facts and useful information are lost, ignored… I just wonder how much we still don’t know in the investigation into Kurt Cobain’s death.

A lot of people have written about it but this article published already 16 years ago, was examining the relationship between Courtney Love and the Seattle cops and authorities, how this relationship may have compromised the murder investigation, and this is quite unbelievable.

First of all, King County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Nikolas Hartshorne, who did the autopsy of Kurt Cobain’s autopsy was an old friend of Courtney Love, and that in itself is a bit weird unless you know that Hartshorne had also promoted punk rock groups in the late 80’s. According to this same article, Dr. Hartshorne labeled the cause of death a ‘self-inflicted shotgun wound’ after examining the body for only a few minutes and was soon telling reporters, ‘I’ve never seen a more open-and-shut case of suicide’. He issued a death certificate writing the cause of death a ‘perforating gunshot wound to the head (mouth)’ and gave the permission to Courtney Love to cremate Cobain’s body only one week after it was discovered.

‘We feel confident that this was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. There’s nothing suspicious about the scene or the circumstances that bothers me,’ he declared in this 1994 Baltimore Sun article. Why was he so prompt to declare there were no suspicions at all? Aren’t the police obligated to at least wait for the toxicology report? And I am not sure how long an autopsy should last but a few minutes seems like a really hasty job to me

His friendship with Love was confirmed many times in different publications and the authors of ‘Who Killed Kurt Cobain’, Halperin and Wallace have a video of Hartshorne admitting he and Love were good friends. Isn’t it a conflict of interest? Interestingly or not, Hartshorne died on August 2002 in a base jumping accident.

But this is far from being the only connection between Courtney and the authorities. Preceding Cobain’s death in April 1994, there were a few incidents involving the couple, like the one that occurred in May 1993. Cobain allegedly overdosed on heroin and Courtney Love dialed 911. The problem is that the police report, available here, on the Smoking Gun page, contains an entire paragraph that has been blackened out, and this wasn’t done to preserve Cobain and Love’s privacy as Cobain’s name and address appear on the first and second page. When private detective Tom Grant managed to get the full report, it was revealed that the blackened out paragraph describes how Love attempted to ‘save her husband’s life’ by forcibly administering him ‘with Buprenorphine, Valium and Tylenol laced with Codeine’, because giving more drugs to a person who is overdosing is probably the right thing to do? And why wasn’t this fully investigated?

There was another incident reported in June 1993, an alleged assault performed by Cobain on Love, who accused him to have pushed, grabbed and choked her. Once again Love’s name is blackened in the document. As the document says, Kurt even got arrested and booked into King County Jail, but the ‘victim’ later testified that nothing happened and that her injury had been self-inflicted. Again, she got away with this?

There was another 911 call from Courtney on March 1994, and she claimed this time that Cobain had locked himself in a room with a gun, and had threatened to kill himself. Once again the police had a special treatment for Courtney Love, as her name is blackened and not Kurt’s name. Love admitted later to the police ‘that she never actually saw Cobain with a gun and that he never said he was going to kill himself’ and Kurt said ‘he only locked himself in a room because he wanted to get away from his wife’… She obviously lied to the police in the first place.

And there was the infamous Rome incident, often considered as a suicide attempt just a month before his death: He overdosed and was rushed to the hospital, however Tom Grant has always thought that Love had herself administered the Rohypnol and the champagne to Kurt. Tom Grant knew about a note that Kurt had allegedly written when he was in Rome, and Grant wrote that Courtney gave the note to the police who strangely returned it to Courtney in June 1994. However Sergeant Cameron told Courtney: ‘This will never do you any good, I’d get rid of this if I were you.’ And Courtney burnt the note. Why would a police officer have advised Courtney Love to destroy such an important piece?

When Kurt went missing on April 4, 1994, Courtney Love called the Seattle police falsely portrayed herself as Cobain’s mother, Wendy O’Connor, again the motivation behind such a lie was never investigated… The 911 report cites narcotics Detective Antonio Terry as a source, and according to Tom Grant Terry was Love’s good friend…. which could explain why she could get away with her impersonation of Wendy O’Connor… Strangely Detective Terry was murdered in June 1994.

When Officer Van Levandowski arrived at the crime scene, he obviously reached to the suicide conclusion very fast, saying that the suicide note was ‘apparently written by Cobain to his wife and daughter, explaining why he had killed himself’, and this before any investigation had been completed. If you are familiar with the case you may also know that a Visa card was missing from Cobain’s wallet, actually the Seattle police inspected the wallet five days after the body was discovered!!! Love had cancelled the card but the card was used at least twice after Cobain’s death. However, the SPD never made any effort to identify the person who was using the card or to find out why Love had canceled the card before Cobain’s body was found.

All these information (and you will find many more if you dig a little) are extremely worrisome and ignored by people who nevertheless dare to have an opinion about the case. As Buzz Osborne said, it makes very little difference what the facts are because people don’t pay attention and believe what they want. If Courtney had all these connections with the Seattle police, if she got away with all these things because of these connections, everything is possible, and this type of police behavior could as well be much more frequent than we ever think.