Kurt Cobain Seattle Police Photos Surface, Scene of Suicide Revealed
Police photos taken from the scene of Kurt Cobain's suicide surfaced online this week, roughly 20 years after the Nirvana front man's death.
The "Come As You Are" singer died at age 27 at his Seattle, Wash. home in April of 1994 from a single gunshot wound to the head. The coroner believed Cobain had been dead since April 5, but his body was not discovered until three days later when his death was ruled a suicide.
According to the newly-released police photos, Cobain was surrounded by a filthy rag, sunglasses, a stubbed-out cigarette, and a cigar box full of syringes, a lighter, a silver spoon, and other unclear items at the time of his death. The singer's heroin use is evident in the police photos, reflecting that he had become a frequent drug abuser at the age of 13, with a full blown addition to heroin developing in 1986. Cobain's autopsy revealed a lethal amount of the addictive drug as well as valium in his system at the time of his death.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Ever since his death, conspiracy theories about Cobain's death have circulated far and wide, with some suggesting that the singer had not killed himself, but was instead murdered. Upon the release of the photos, even more questions about Cobain's death arose.
However, while Seattle police released two never-before-seen photos taken from Cobain's home at the time of his death, they are not reopening the case, according to a statement. Seattle Police Department Cold Case Detective Mike Ciesynski acknowledged that the detail's surrounding Cobain's death as well as the conspiracy theories were "interesting," but that fact surrounding the singer's death ultimately point to suicide.
"We knew with the 20th anniversary coming up and we knew there was going to be a lot of media interest," said Ciesynski of the photos, according to Seattle.gov. "I can see why people have questions about [the case], but you can always point to something and say 'what if.'"
Nevertheless, the Seattle detective dismissed the intense scrutiny of Cobain's death after all these years as being the result of continued falsehoods found in some documentaries and books.
"Sometimes people believe what they read- some of the disinformation from some of the books, that this was a conspiracy," Ciesynski explained. "That's completely inaccurate. It's a suicide. This is a closed case."
As for the new photos just released, the detective explained that authorities had saved four rolls of crime scene photos for almost two decades because it was such a high-profile case.
"There were so many conspiracy theories out there, it was good judgment on their behalf to hold this," Ciesynski explained of his Seattle Police Department predecessors who had worked on the Cobain crime scene.
Watch a video here of one of Nirvana's most popular songs, "Smells Like Teen Spirit."
