| ELDON HOKE AKA EL DUCE This section was originally uploaded on October 8 1999 and extensively updated on March 22 2005. References: 1. High Times April 1996 article by Steve Bloom and Tim Kenneally. 2. Seattle police reports. 3. Two articles from the Edmonton Journal, dated March 12 and March 14 1996 by Mark Lepage. 4. ‘Loser: The Real Seattle Music Story’ by Clark Humphrey, published by Feral House. 5. Nick Broomfield’s film ‘Kurt & Courtney’. 6. Wallace and Halperin’s book ‘Who Killed Kurt Cobain?’ (‘WKKC?’) Published by Birch Lane Press 1998. The April 1996 edition of High Times featured an article called “Who Killed Kurt Cobain?” written by Tim Kenneally and Steve Bloom. In this article the authors reported the views of Tom Grant, El Duce and Courtney Love’s father, Hank Harrison. El Duce was the singer for a notorious band called the Mentors, who, strangely enough, played their debut gig at a club called The Bird in Spring Street, Seattle, on March 4 1978. Courtney met El Duce in the late 80s. A founder member of her band Hole, Caroline Rue who went out with Eric Carlson, aka Sickie Wifebeater, who was the Mentors guitarist. (‘Loser: The Real Seattle Music Story’ by Clark Humphrey). The fact that El Duce had some knowledge of/connection with Seattle would be useful. In the High Times interview El Duce claimed that in the last days of December 1993, Courtney Love pulled up outside The Rock Shop, a Hollywood record shop, at 1644 Wilcox Ave, Hollywood, and spoke to him. The conversation went: Courtney Love: El, I need a favour of you. My old man’s been a real asshole lately, I need you to blow his fucking head off. El Duce: Are you serious? Courtney Love: Yeah, I’ll give you $50,000 to blow his fucking head off. El Duce: I’m serious if you are. Courtney Love: Where can I reach you? El Duce: You can reach me here. They then went into the store and he handed her a business card. The manager of the shop, Karush Sepedjian remembers the visit. He said: “El was kicking it out on the bench in front of the store and she came up. I overheard her saying, “Can you handle doing this? Can you get this done? What do you want for it?” They were talking about knocking off Kurt Cobain. Then El brought her inside and said to me quietly, “She offered me $50,000.” Love then took a business card and left. Sepedjian then went on to say that in March 1994 Love contacted the shop asking for El Duce, who at the time was on tour. Courtney was screaming down the phone at Sepedjian: “That son of a bitch, we made an agreement. What am I going to do?” Sepedjian replied: “I don’t know, I’ve got a business to run. Goodbye.” Ten days later Kurt’s body was found. This would imply that she spoke to Sepedjian around March 30th 1994. Could this be the “business” she told Carroll and Grant that she had to attend to, rather than going back to Seattle to look for Kurt? Sepedjian went on to say: “I was like Whoa! I wonder if she actually did pay some sucker to blow off his head?” El Duce said: “Maybe she got somebody else. I think Kurt was getting ready to divorce her for adultery charges. She had to have him whacked right away so she could get the money.” In a Seattle police report dated March 7 1996, Sepedjian was reported as stating that when she called the Rock Shop at the end of March 1994 looking for El Duce, when informed that El Duce was not available, Courtney was “screaming and yelling” and even asked Sepedjian himself if he would be prepared to do “it”, to which Sepedjian reportedly replied: “I’m not interested. I don’t want to deal with this.” Sepedjian then hung up on her. From Sepedjian’s above description, Courtney seemed to be scared and panicked, which is in line with Joe Mama’s description of her when, on April 1st 1994, he said of Courtney: “She was really freaked out, so we drove around looking for him at all the places he might have gone. She was really scared from the beginning. I guess she could tell.” (‘Cobain by the editors of Rolling Stone’ p 83). For reasons given below, it would have been a good idea to have polygraphed Sepedjian on his above claim. Joe Mama also saw Kurt just before Kurt left the rehab on April 1st and said of Kurt: “I was ready to see him look like shit and depressed. He looked fucking great!” The important question here, in the light of the El Duce and (possibly) Sepedjian information, information Courtney has tried hard to suppress, although not by legal means but by intimidation, is, was she scared and freaked because of her concern for Kurt? Or was she in this state because her plans were in imminent danger of collapsing? And as Kurt was AWOL, she had no control over him; he could sign his new will and file for divorce on the grounds of adultery. Do I go with Joe Mama’s possible misinterpretation of Courtney’s behaviour, and let’s face it, Joe thought Kurt looked “fucking great!” Or do I go with El Duce who has passed a polygraph test? I have to go with El Duce. It’s not like he gained anything by his claims, he just ended up dead, like Kurt. And another possibility which springs to mind is that when Courtney and Joe were driving around looking for Kurt, was she actually trying to locate El Duce or maybe find someone else to take care of business, unbeknownst to Joe, who really was trying to find Kurt? Joe, how do you reconcile your perception of Kurt looking so great, with Courtney’s claims that he was suicidal? GRANT’S INITIAL REACTIONS TO EL DUCE’S STORY: In a radio interview of March 1996 Grant made the following comments on El Duce: “I have mixed feelings about it, I’m a little bit sceptical of this El Duce character. I’ve known about him for quite some time, probably close to a year, and I’ve never mentioned him before. I’ve never written anything about him because for one thing, the way the story was first told to me, was through a phone call from a guy that claimed that he was a reporter from CNN, and within 15-20 minutes of that conversation I discovered that he wasn’t a reporter for CNN, but he was a freelance type person that put together stories and tries to get them on television. I didn’t like the way the whole thing started and it made me a little bit sceptical to begin with and I have a lot of questions about how this all happened and why he wasn’t told of the police initially and everything. I do think there’s a possibility that he’s telling the truth but at best I give it a 50/50 shot. I’m not ready to just jump into the water with just anybody that wants to go in there and swim around, especially if they are making up stories just to get the case reinvestigated. So I’ve been real cautious when these people first called me and told me about El Duce. And they tried to get me on television with him almost immediately and I said I don’t even want to talk to this guy on the phone until he’s gone to the police and reported it to the police. Let them blow him away - blow him off- I should say. And then we’ll get a polygraph for him. If he passes the polygraph then we’ll take it another step farther and I’ll interrogate him and find out a little bit more and see what comes of it. But for the next several months I kept getting more phone calls trying to get me on television but practically ignoring everything I’d ever said about wanting to polygraph him first, and everything. So I’ve been very sceptical of him from the beginning and I still am. And I’m very cautious. Hard Copy, right now, is following up on this and looking into it and polygraphing him and the guy that claims to have overheard part of the conversation so it’s interesting. I do think it’s possible.” Grant is probably referring to Sepedjian and his claims to have overheard Love’s offer of money to El Duce, to murder Kurt. EL DUCE’S POLYGRAPH TEST In March 1996 El Duce was to appear on the Hard Copy show, which commisioned polygraph tests for El Duce and Sepedjian. On March 6th 1996 El Duce underwent and passed the polygraph test which was administered by Dr Edward Gelb, a leading US polygraph examiner. Following the polygraph test, someone (referred to from hereon as “X”), contacted the Seattle Police Department on March 7 1996 and spoke to Officer Mike Ciesynski who recorded the conversation. The result of the polygraph test and subsequent Ciesynski police report looked promising, it was enough to get Seattle Homicide Detective Sgt Cameron to send a memo to Lieutenant Al Gerdes dated March 7th 1996 stating that they would have to look into the matter further and that Gerdes was to make himself familiar with all aspects of this investigation. The police reports relating to this are provided at the end of this section. Unfortunately the Santina Leuci/Hard Copy developing story rapidly degenerated into a circus: On Sunday March 10 1996: Cameron sent another memo to Detective Kirkland advising him to inform “X” that, as the conspiracy originated in LA and involved LA residents, that he should file a report with the LAPD. Once “X” had completed that, he was to provide the SPD with the resulting case number and name of the detective dealing with the charges in LA, along with supporting copies of any statements and a copy of the polygraph test results. (Scan of this memo is provided at end of this section). On Monday March 11 1996 at 0955: Kirkland informed “X” that he should contact the LAPD. Kirkland also requested that “X” supplied copies of the polygraph result charts and statements. (Police report). On Tuesday March 12 1996 at 1000: Detective Kirkland received a copy of an article which appeared in the Edmonton Journal of that date (March 12 1996), written by Mark Lepage. The article reported on a forthcoming book by Max Wallace and Ian Halperin. In the article, Ian Halperin spoke about El Duce’s claims that Courtney had offered him $50,000 to murder Kurt. Halperin also said that El Duce had passed a polygraph test. Halperin claimed that sources in the Seattle police had indicated they were going to reopen the case and file charges of murder-conspiracy against someone within a week. (See scan of this police report at the end of this section). A copy of this article, see scan above, was supplied amongst the Seattle police reports which I obtained in 2004. March 12th 1996 (continued) at 1320: Detective Kirkland received a phone call from Santina Leuci of the Hard Copy show, asking questions about Kurt. When Kirkland informed her that he had just read a copy of the Edmonton Journal article, Leuci became very irate and informed Kirkland that Hard Copy, who had scheduled to run a segment on Kurt could now not run it. She provided Kirkland with phone numbers for Dr Gelb, Steve Bloom of High Times (who had just co-written an article on Kurt’s death with Tim Kenneally), and Max Wallace. Leuci then told Kirkland she’d send him a copy of the High Times article. (See scan of this police report at the end of this section). It looks to me like Wallace and Halperin took Hard Copy’s developing story for the purpose of publicising their “forthcoming” book, which wasn’t published until almost two years later in 1998. Maybe that’s why Leuci was irate. On Wednesday March 13th 1996 at 1035: Detective Kirkland received a phone call from Max Wallace, who asked if Kirkland had referred “X” to the LAPD. Kirkland confirmed this. When Kirkland questioned Wallace about Halperin’s claims that said he had sources in the SPD, in the Edmonton Journal dated March 12 1996, Wallace replied that Halperin had been misquoted. (Police report). March 13 1996 (continued) at 1215: Mark Lepage, author of the Edmonton Journal article dated March 12 1996 called Kirkland and asked why Kirkland would refer “X” to the LAPD. Kirkland informed Lepage that if a crime had been committed in Los Angeles, then it wasn’t in the jurisdiction of the Seattle police and that charges would have to be filed in LA. Lepage then informed Kirkland that Ian Halperin had told him that he (Halperin) had sources in the Seattle Police Department. (Police report). March 13 1996 (continued) at 1425: Ian Halperin called Kirkland demanding to know why Kirkland had referred “X” to the LAPD. According to Kirkland, Halperin was argumentative over this matter. (Police report). On Thursday March 14 1996 0800: D’Arcy Butler of CBC 6 Montreal called Kirkland asking him to confirm the information in Lepage’s second article (on W & H’s book, dated March 14 1996), that Kirkland had told Lepage that the SPD were not reopening the Cobain case. Kirkland confirmed that and requested Butler FAX him a copy of the article. Butler said he’d send it. (Police report). On Thursday March 14 1996 (continued) at 1055: Included amongst the SPD reports obtained is the above mentioned Edmonton Journal article, which was faxed to the SPD at 1055. This article, by Mark Lepage, reported on the conversation he had with Detective Kirkland on March 13 as follows: “Our investigation showed that it was a self-inflicted death. We don’t have any plans to arrest or charge anyone.” He also called a report that Seattle police are preparing to file murder-conspiracy charges against someone as “a bald faced lie.” Yesterday, Halperin said that on Monday he was emphasizing that he had a secret source in the Seattle police, that the information was garbled in the telling, but that charges are forth-coming, maybe from the FBI maybe from a joint Seattle-LAPD effort. In any event, the scene has shifted to Los Angeles, where Halperin said a man called Il Duce is going to be contacting police to tell them Courtney Love offered him $50,000 to kill her husband. Kirkland of the Seattle police says “As you well know, if Courtney Love offered $50,000 to somebody in Los Angeles to kill somebody, then that is a crime which took place in Los Angeles and the Seattle Police Department has no jurisdiction there.” The story leaks on, while Halperin and Wallace keep crucial sources to themselves until the book comes out................... The article also reported that: The Wallace and Halperin book has yet to be published and nobody around here has read it yet. It may contain compelling evidence. We’d better see some soon. It makes perfect sense for two guys who’ve written a contentious book to stir-craze interest in it with radio segments that leak tantalizing bits of info.... In W & H’s second book on the subject, published in 2004, the above timeline of events following El Duce’s polygraph test, was reported as: The results of Hoke’s polygraph exam were too compelling to ignore. On March 6 1996 one of Hoke’s friends took it upon himself to call the Seattle Police Department and report the test’s findings. For once, it seems, the SPD paid attention. We received a call a few days later from a source in the Seattle Police Department telling us that the Cobain case had been reopened for the first time in two years. Hoke’s claim had caused a “flurry of activity,” our source said, adding that if the story could be proven, it might be enough to have Courtney charged with conspiracy to commit murder - the usual charge for attempting to hire a hitman. Curiously enough, Sergeant Cameron denied the Cobain case had been reopened when a reporter asked him about it the same week, (page 254). As can be seen from cross-referencing with the above articles and police reports, it is obvious that it wasn’t Cameron who denied the case was going to be reopened, it was Kirkland. When Kirkland asked Max Wallace about Ian Halperin’s claims to have sources in the SPD, he was told by Wallace that Halperin had been misquoted. However, the author of both articles, Mark Lepage, clearly stated to Detective Kirkland that Halperin had told him that he (Halperin) had sources in the SPD. Scans of Kirkland’s two page report on his communication with “X,” Santina Leuci, Mark Lepage, Max Wallace and Ian Halperin, are provided at the end of this section. In the above Edmonton Journal article dated March 12 1996, Halperin was claiming that sources in the Seattle Police Department: “indicated they will reopen the case and file murder-conspiracy charges against someone within a week.” Strange a Seattle cop said that, given the issue of jurisdiction. In Cameron’s memo to Kirkland of March 10, Cameron was very specific in requesting that Kirkland advise “X” to go to the LAPD and request “X” to supply the SPD with subsequent case number and the name of the Los Angeles detective who was dealing with the case, along with a copy of the polygraph chart and any supporting statements“X” could provide. See scan at the end of this section. It seems that El Duce’s polygraph test and Hard Copy’s development of this story was in vain because after the above fiasco the SPD and LAPD seemed to lose interest in it. Leuci’s above comment to Kirkland regarding the withdrawal of the story from the Hard Copy show also seemed to have occurred because POV’s March 1997 edition reported that Hard Copy didn’t run the story. All of which was an unfortunate turn of events, leaving El Duce to deal with the consequences as best he could. Of Karush Sepedjian’s polygraph test, Max Wallace and Ian Halperin reported: In fact, Sepedjian, an admitted junkie, took a polygraph as well but, according to Gelb’s office, he kept dozing off -a common symptom of heroin addiction- and the results were dismissed as “inconclusive”. (‘Who Killed Kurt Cobain?’ page 133). In June 2004 I called Dr Gelb to question Wallace and Halperin’s above report and was informed that Sepedjian had been questioned twice, once on March 1st 1996, and once after El Duce had completed his polygraph test. Dr Gelb informed me that the questionaire Sepedjian had filled in was written in a firm hand, and that Sepedjian had stated that he’d had 10 hours sleep and hadn’t used drugs or medication for 12 hours prior to the test. When I asked Dr Gelb if Sepedjian’s results would be classified as “inconclusive” or “deceptive” he replied that they were, in fact, “deceptive.” This deception specifically relates to the question as to whether Sepedjian was in earshot when Courtney Love made the offer of money to El Duce, to murder Kurt. Dr Gelb stressed, though, that El Duce’s test results were without deception, the only caveat being that El Duce thought Love may have been joking. Wallace and Halperin reported: Love and her legal representative’s refused to confirm or deny whether she was in Los Angeles during this period, (the end of December 1993 when El Duce claimed she approached him at the Rock Shop on Wilcox Ave, Hollywood), despite Wallace and Halperin’s repeated requests. W & H told them that if they could provide concrete evidence that she wasn’t in LA at the time of El Duce’s claim, they would dismiss the story as a fabrication. (‘WKKC?’ p 133). W & H reported that: Love’s lawyers refused to provide information on her whereabouts at this time but have tried to discredit other parts of El Duce’s claims. Her attorney Seth Lichtenstein pointed out El Duce said in one interview that he was seated on a bench outside the Rock Shop when Courtney approached to make the offer. Lichtenstein correctly asserts that there was no bench outside the store and concludes that El Duce must therefore be lying. Wallace and Halperin failed to report that Nirvana did a gig at The Great Western Forum Inglewood, CA on December 30 1993 (‘Cobain by the editors of Rolling Stone’ p 142). The distance between the Great Western Forum and The Rock Shop on Wilcox Ave, Hollywood, is approx 17.3 miles (using mapquest.com). It’s well known that Courtney travelled with Kurt, so the chances are pretty high that she was in LA on December 30th 1993, which would support El Duce’s claims. The LA Times’s Jan 1 1994 edition reported that the Western Forum December 30 1993 gig was a benefit for FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting). Note: Several months after I uploaded this section Borzillo reported that Courtney Love was backstage after the above mentioned Great Western Forum show, (‘Eyewitness Nirvana’ by Borzillo, p 166). To summarise: 1. In spite of Seth Lichtenstein’s reluctance to confirm to Wallace and Halperin Love’s whereabouts in December 1993, and in spite of Wallace and Halperin’s inability to place Love in LA/proximity to El Duce in December 1993 -Courtney was in LA at the time stated by El Duce. 2. El Duce passed a polygraph test proving he wasn’t lying. 3. It’s undeniable that Courtney knew El Duce quite well. 4. The overall description of both El Duce’s and (possibly) Sepedjian’s claims fit into the framework of a planned murder, and they go a long way in explaining Courtney’s otherwise illogical and contrary behaviour during the time Kurt was missing. NICK BROOMFIELD’S INTERVIEW WITH EL DUCE Source: Broomfield’s film ‘Kurt and Courtney’ as shown on BBC 2 October 31 1998. Scene, Broomfield is taken to meet El Duce at his abode in Riverside, LA, by Divine Brown’s pimp, who is a close personal friend of El Duce. Pimp: There he is, El Duce. Broomfield: Where? Oh yes. Pimp: There he is right there. This is him, El Duce. El Duce: Yaaargh. Where’s the booze? Pimp: He’s just perverted! El Duce: Yeah, a warped er, intoxicator, most of the time. Broomfield: So you er, did some deal with Courtney right? El Duce: Yes. Here Broomfield interjected the interview explaining that under British libel laws he was forced to cut these allegations. It was impossible to substantiate any of El Duce’s allegations. Broomfield: That’s a fact is it? El Duce: (laughs). Broomfield: People might think that you are not the most reliable witness. El Duce: Well, that’s too bad. You may not be the reliable witness your own self, now think about that! (laughs.) Broomfield again interjected with: “El Duce, I found out was well known in the LA music scene. A wild man with a strong following. He claims to have known Courtney over the years and that she came to the Rock Shop and made him an offer. Unfortunately it is this offer we were unable to substantiate. An offer that El Duce claims was very extreme. And that there was no way that it could be reproduced without having hard evidence that it was true. And under British libel laws as they stand today, that would be impossible.” El Duce: I just didn’t think she was serious, (laughing.) Broomfield jumps in with: Unfortunately he was just a bit too wild and brilliant for the English libel laws. But she didn’t say anything about making... El Duce cuts Broomfield off with: Make it look like a suicide. Broomfield: Well, yeah, but if you just blew his brains out like you said, it wouldn’t look like a suicide, it would look like you blew his brains out. Come on Nick! It was widely and hastily reported that this was a suicide. It has been widely accepted by the press and Seattle Police Dept that it was a suicide. All this acceptance whose foundations are built on a flawed investigation and dubious information supplied by none other than Courtney Love and unnamed sources. There are at least two photographs published of Kurt holding a gun to his head, one of which was taken by Youri Lenquette in a February 1994 session in Paris. Although Wallace and Halperin reported that Lenquette later admitted asking Kurt to strike that pose (‘WKKC?’ p 87), this doesn’t seem to be the case. In an interview published in Loaded’s June 1994 edition, Youri Lenquette stated that Kurt insisted on posing with the gun: I’m looking at the contact sheet of Kurt Cobain’s last photo session. There he is, larger than life, grinning like a manic child, a deranged look in his mascara-ed eyes, a pistol nozzle pushed against his temple. In another pose he takes aim at the viewer, one eye closed, the other looking down the barrel of his gun. Then there’s the final sequence which Yuri Lenquette, the photographer, has refused to leak to the press. Here Cobain seems to be rehearsing his own death in some detail, posing with the gun in his mouth, then widening his eyes in pretend horror as he mimes the shock of impact. Throughout, and this is the scary thing, he looks like he’s having a good time. Which, as it happens, he was. “Kurt was like a child playing with a new toy,” Lenquette says as we peruse the photos together. “He wasn’t in a bad mood or feeling depressed when we did those photo sessions.” At one point the Nirvana singer even agreed to don a ridiculously large feathery hat. He refused, however, to pose for a single photo without the gun. (Loaded, June 1994). So, according to Lenquette, Kurt was just fooling around, playing with the gun. In one of the photos taken, Kurt pointed the gun at Grohl’s head, but it didn’t mean that he was literally going to kill Grohl, any more than, when he held the gun to his own head it meant he was intending to kill himself. Kurt has been in print saying about blowing his brains out. It wouldn’t be difficult for a determined and manipulative person to abuse and twist it to make out that Kurt was “suicidal.” The photos and quotes could easily have been used as the blueprint for murder. How many times have I/You held two fingers to my/your heads pretending it was a gun and that I/You were going to pull the trigger? As a joke! Unfortunately for Kurt these actions appeared in print and were later used as examples of his suicidal nature, used one must add, by a widow who stood to inherit a fortune from his death by “suicide”. And remember, Kurt was in the process of writing a new will which was to exclude Courtney, and he was going to leave her, divorce her. Many people contemplate and talk about suicide, but that doesn’t make it inevitable that they will die by suicide. After the above mentioned photo session: Kurt subsequently rang Lenquette from the south of France where “he sounded very bored” and from Munich where “he seemed really depressed. He complained of stomach pains and a sore throat and told me he didn’t want to finish the tour”. They talked to each other two days before the singer overdosed in Rome. (Loaded June 1994). In the September 1996 edition of Photostory (a French publication, see cover, left) Youri Lenquette said that when he showed Kurt pictures of Cambodia, Kurt had been very interested and that Lenquette asked Kurt if he would like to go to Cambodia when the In Utero European tour of Feb/March 1994 ended. Kurt had been very enthusiastic and even asked Lenquette as to how he would go about getting a visa. Lenquette said that people shouldn’t believe that Kurt was always sad, because he had a lot of humour and that he didn’t talk of suicide to Lenquette. Thanks to Karim, Romuald and Olivier for the translation. NICK BROOMFIELD’S INTERVIEW WITH EL DUCE, CONTINUED: El Duce: Right, but er, I told Alan, (looks up sheepishly towards Divine Brown’s pimp)- I mean er, my friend who (starts laughing) aah, I’ll let the FBI catch him, but er, (laughs, that's just the way it’s done. End of Story (laughs again). Hey 50 grand does a lot of talking. You buy me a beer I might do some more talking, (laughs, looks into the camera, and after a short pause-) Yaaaaargh! Broomfield: And that seemed to be the end of the interview. I didn’t know quite what to think. El Duce had passed a polygraph test, even though his main witness (Sepedjian,) had nodded off before its completion. The polygraph was completed almost a year before Broomfield started making the film, so Broomfield could have treated the interview from the standpoint of an informed documentor, rather than the slightly bungling fool. Nick, why didn’t you follow up on why the LAPD and SPD didn’t pursue the investigation further? W & H reported:About a week after El Duce’s interview with Broomfield, on April 19, 1997 El Duce was killed by a train in Riverside, LA. The events surrounding his death are murky, rather like the events surrounding Kurt’s death. W & H reported that at 5 pm Duce arrived at his house with a man he said he had just met. He introduced this man to his roommates. After a while they left the house to go to the liquor store saying that they would be back shortly. They never returned. At 9pm Duce was hit by a train and died instantly. There were no witnesses. Police were unable to locate the man seen with Duce that afternoon. (‘WKKC?’ p 134). Wallace and Halperin reported that music journalist and friend of El Duce, Al Bowman, said: “There is something very, very strange about his death. Anybody who knew El knew that you could make friends with him by offering to buy him a drink. He had a problem with alcohol,” (‘WKKC?’ p 134). When asked if he thought El Duce was suicidal Bowman replied: “No way. He was all exited about his upcoming tour. He was in good spirits. He didn’t kill himself. I’m convinced this has something to do with Kurt Cobain.” Note: This Al Bowman appeared in Broomfield’s film as one of the “stalkerazzi.” There are remarkable similarities between the way Kurt died and the way El Duce died. Bowman did not think El Duce was suicidal, look at his above quote again, it sounds remarkably like what Dylan Carlson, Kurt’s best friend, said when he was asked if he thought Kurt was suicidal: “Kurt was facing lots of pretty heavy things, but he was actually pretty upbeat. He was prepared to deal with things facing him. He was making all kinds of plans for when he got back from rehab.” Kurt and El Duce shared several constants in their lives: 1. Both of them got on the wrong side of Courtney Love. 2. Both of them were a threat to her. 3. Both died under mysterious circumstances. 4. Neither of them was suicidal. Why did El Duce die when he did? He had already performed the polygraph test, his claims were out in the open for a while before he died. At the time this whole murder was beginning to be widely accepted, it was, and still is, gaining strength and credibility. El Duce died shortly after his interview with Broomfield. During that interview he mentioned someone called Alan and immediately after he said that name, he said: “We’ll let the FBI catch him.” The interview ended fairly abruptly thereafter. That is something to think about. Note: I first wrote this article back in June 1999. At that time I thought El Duce’s name dropping could be important. However, once I started focusing on who was behind the unnamed sources which plagued this case and researched Kurt’s overdose in Rome, including Michael DeWitt’s presence in Rome, something Wallace and Halperin had failed to report in their first book on this case (and which they failed to show any interest in once I uploaded my article on the Rome incident onto this website in October 1999 -neither contacted me, year in, year out), armed with this previously missing information and context I concluded that El Duce’s name dropping was a false lead. “Another one is that professional journalism has always feared any sort of context. Because if you provide context and background to stories, it’s impossible to do that without coming to a conclusion, usually.” Robert McChesney, author of “The Problem of the Media”. Interview here. From July 1999 I was encouraging people to print copies of the articles I was sending out by email and which I uploaded to this website in October 1999. Thanks to those people and also the people who took the time to distribute the flyer made available from this website from September 2000- it meant that this information was being released, proving that the corporate media had failed to do its job of providing accurate, analytical and timely reporting of this case and that the job was being done by people who actually care about exposing that negligent reporting provided by the media, regarding this case. Given the fiasco that developed over El Duce passing the polygraph test and the way in which El Duce was left to face the consequences, it’s possible that it was made worth his while to help create a false lead, (it’s highly unlikely that El Duce would have been receiving any kind of witness protection) or that someone told him that “Alan/Allen” did it, and El Duce simply believed them. The police can no longer substantiate the theory that Kurt’s death was a suicide. It is becoming increasingly obvious that this verdict was contrived. Until there is a new independent investigation, possible witnesses will appear “evasive”, “reluctant”. They don’t want to wind up dead, like El Duce, Kristen Pfaff and Detective Antonio Terry. It’s up to the police to investigate suspicious deaths, not a private investigator. There is too much evidence of foul play. This case must be reopened/investigated. Public opinion is not illegal, and it can pressure to this end. Most importantly, though, is that justice is done for Kurt Cobain. Scan of memo sent from Sgt Cameron to Steve Kirkland dated 10th march 1996: Two page report by Detective Kirkland documenting his communications with “X”, Santina Leuci, Max Wallace, Mark Lepage, Ian Halperin and D’Arcy Butler: Back to Frances Barnett In Defence MAIN |