Former Seattle Police Captain Believes Kurt Cobain Was Murdered

A former Seattle Police captain believes Kurt Cobain was murdered and thinks that the case should be reopened.

Just a few weeks ago, the Seattle Police responded to a new report from an unofficial group of forensic scientists who conducted their own investigation and determined that the Nirvana frontman’s death was a murder. The department stated that they would not reopen the case.

Now, the department’s former captain Neil Low, who retired in 2018, has come forward and shared his thoughts about the case.

WARNING: This post may contain graphic content.

What Did Neil Low Say About Kurt Cobain’s Death Case?

Low worked for the Seattle police department for 50 years, according to Daily Mail. Cobain was found dead in his greenhouse on April 8, 1994 due to an apparent shotgun wound. Although Low didn’t work on the investigation then, he was asked by his chief to audit the case in 2005.

“I just am not buying that Kurt did that to himself,” Low told Daily Mail, alleging that he believes the initial investigation was “botched” and staged to look like a suicide.

The retired captain claimed there were abnormalities in the blood evidence and inconsistencies between the autopsy report and the police reports, such as missing notes and conflicting details about what happened prior to the singer’s death.

“One thing about report writing is the human error factor: misheard, misunderstood, transposed thoughts and forgotten details,” Low argued.

“They were led astray. I might have fallen for it too, but now I think it’s a homicide and I do think the case should be reopened… I’ve read the case and I can tell you what the evidence says because that’s what I did for a living and it does say not suicide.”

What Did Low Find During His 2005 Audit of the Cobain Case?

Low read the entire Cobain death file and had access to all of the evidence collected at his death scene when he conducted the audit in 2005. While audits are meant to ensure all policies were followed correctly, maintain the integrity of the evidence and prevent errors in future cases, they’re not done to change the ruling of the circumstances.

The former captain believes that the team that investigated Cobain’s death were so confident it was a suicide that they didn’t try to treat it as a homicide.

“It was obvious this man is dead from a shotgun wound to the head… Now there was a suicide note left inside the house,” Vinette Tishi, a spokesperson on behalf of the Seattle Police Department, said in a recorded interview in Cobain’s driveway after his body was discovered.

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Low told Daily Mail that based on the photographs from the death scene, he felt Cobain’s hands were unusually clean and the blood spatter pattern wasn’t consistent with that of a shotgun wound that close to the head.

“All the pellets were accounted for, but the impact would have been so forceful that it would have produced a significant spray, not just a little, a large spray,” he asserted.

Furthermore, Low suggested that the amount of heroin that was found in Cobain’s system — which was about three times that of a lethal dose — would have made it difficult for him to operate a shotgun on his own.

Low wrote a book titled Crazy Love about the Cobain case that was published in 2024.

What Has the Seattle Police Department Said About Cobain’s Death?

The Seattle Police Department have stood firm in their findings. “Kurt Cobain died by suicide in 1994. This continues to be the position held by the Seattle Police Department,” they told Daily Mail recently after reviewing the new report by independent investigators.

Nirvana are considered one of the “Big 4” of the Seattle grunge scene. See our picks for the best song off every Big 4 grunge album below.