A private team of forensic scientists has published a peer-reviewed paper in the International Journal of Forensic Science arguing that Kurt Cobain's 1994 death was not a suicide but was a staged homicide.

The paper presents ten points of evidence drawn from autopsy and crime scene materials, concluding that Cobain was incapacitated by a massive heroin overdose before someone shot him in the head, placed a shotgun in his arms, and left behind what the team believes was a forged suicide note.

The King County Medical Examiner's Office isn't budging. Requests to reopen the case have been declined, according to the Daily Mail.

The Scene That Never Made Sense

Cobain was found on the floor of the greenhouse above his Seattle garage on April 5, 1994. He was 27. A Remington Model 11 20-gauge shotgun lay across his body, his left hand wrapped tightly around the muzzle end of the barrel. A heroin kit sat several feet away. Receipts for the gun and shells were tucked into his pocket. Shells were lined up at his feet. An alleged suicide note rested nearby.

For three decades, the official story has held: self-inflicted shotgun wound. But the forensic team led by specialist Brian Burnett — a veteran analyst who has previously challenged official findings in the deaths of Marine Colonel James Sabow and Billey Joe Johnson Jr. — reached a different conclusion after three days of reviewing the autopsy and crime scene materials.

Michelle Wilkins, an independent researcher who collaborated with the forensic team, recalled Burnett’s response to the findings. He stated it was clearly a homicide and emphasized the need to take action.

Dying Twice

The central problem with the suicide ruling has always been the heroin. Police on the original investigation said Cobain injected himself with ten times the normal amount, even a heavy user would take. The autopsy showed fluid in the lungs, bleeding in the eyes, and damage to the brain and liver — all consistent with overdose, not a shotgun blast.

Wilkins laid it out plainly:

"The necrosis of the brain and liver happens in an overdose. It doesn't happen in a shotgun death."

"He's dying of an overdose, and so he can barely breathe, his blood isn't pumping very much. So that means the brain and liver aren't getting oxygen, and they're starving, and they're dying."

The official narrative asks you to accept that a man deep into a lethal overdose — comatose, organs failing — then picked up a six-pound shotgun, maneuvered it into position, and pulled the trigger. Wilkins didn't mince words about the physical implausibility:

"So he's dying of an overdose. I mean, he's in a coma, and he's holding this up to be able to reach the trigger to get it in his mouth. It's crazy."

And the heroin kit? Capped needles. Everything was put back in order. As Wilkins noted:

"We're supposed to believe he capped the needles and put everything back in order after shooting up three times, because that's what someone does while they're dying. Suicides are messy, and this was a very clean scene."

A Crime Scene That Tells the Wrong Story

The physical evidence fractures the suicide narrative at nearly every point. Start with the shotgun shell. Wilkins explained that, given where Cobain's hand was reported to be on the barrel, the gun shouldn't have ejected a shell at all:

"If your hand is on the forward barrel, where Kurt's hand was reported to be in the SPD report, the gun wouldn't eject a shell at all. So not only is there a shell where it shouldn't be, there shouldn't even be a shotgun shell."

Then there's the blood — or rather, the absence of it. Shotgun suicides are catastrophically violent. Yet Cobain's hand was clean.

"If you ever look at photos of shotgun suicides, they are brutal. There is no universe where that hand is not covered in blood. You could eat off of… well, I mean, gross, but, like, his hand is so clean."

Blood did appear in one telling location: the bottom of his shirt. Wilkins argued that this detail alone suggests the body was moved after death.

"There's also blood on the bottom of his shirt. The only way the blood would get on his shirt is if Kurt was lifted and his head was down. There's no blood on his hand. There's no blood on the rest of his shirt, but there's a big blood stain on the bottom of his shirt."

The staged quality of the scene struck Wilkins as deliberate — almost theatrical:

"To me, it looks like someone staged a movie and wanted you to be absolutely certain this was a suicide. The receipt for the gun is in his pocket. The receipt for the shells is in his pocket. The shells are lined up at his feet."

The Note

The alleged suicide note has drawn scrutiny for years. The forensic team's findings gave that scrutiny a sharper edge. According to Wilkins, the body of the note reads as a farewell to music, not to life:

"The top of the note is written by Kurt. There's nothing about suicide in that. It's basically just him talking about quitting the band."

The final four lines — the only portion that could be read as suicidal — appear visually distinct from the rest.

"Then there are four lines at the bottom. If you even look at the note, you can see that the last four lines are written in different… the text is a little bit different. It's bigger, it's… looks more scrawly."

A man writing a note about leaving his band. Four lines appended in different handwriting that turn it into a suicide letter. Receipts arranged like props. A body with the wrong blood pattern. An overdose that should have killed him before any gun entered the picture.

The Door That Won't Open

The forensic team published its findings through the editorial process at the International Journal of Forensic Science. This isn't a Reddit thread or a documentary filmmaker's hunch. It's peer-reviewed forensic work.

However, when the team contacted authorities, they were met with complete resistance. Wilkins said that both King County and Seattle police dismissed their efforts outright, refusing to even review the evidence they presented. The King County Medical Examiner's Office issued a statement that reads like institutional inertia dressed as professionalism:

"King County Medical Examiner's Office worked with the local law enforcement agency, conducted a full autopsy, and followed all of its procedures in coming to the determination of the manner of death as a suicide."

"Our office is always open to revisiting its conclusions if new evidence comes to light, but we've seen nothing to date that would warrant re-opening of this case and our previous determination of death."

"Always open" — but refusing to look at the evidence presented. The contradiction speaks for itself. Wilkins put it simply:

"If we're wrong, just prove it to us. That's all we asked them to do."

"We weren't saying, arrest people tomorrow. We were saying, you have these… the extra evidence that we don't have."

The Cost of Getting It Wrong

This isn't just a cold case debate for true-crime enthusiasts. The suicide ruling that has stood for over three decades carries real consequences. Cobain became the most famous suicide in a generation, and the cultural ripple never stopped.

Wilkins highlighted one case that continues to trouble her, recalling that in 2022 a young person died by suicide after believing Cobain had done the same, adding that copycat suicides have continued without stopping.

If the ruling is wrong — if Cobain was murdered and the case was closed prematurely — then every copycat death that followed was driven by a lie. That's not a conspiracy theory. That's a question institutions owe the public the decency of answering.

The forensic team did the work. They submitted it to peer review. They asked authorities to look at it. The authorities said no, not because they reviewed the evidence and found it lacking, but because they didn't review it at all.

Thirty-one years later, the greenhouse in Seattle still holds its secrets. The only people who seem uninterested in finding out what really happened are the ones whose job it was to get it right the first time.