| CASE OUTLINE PAGE 3 |
| This section contains revised information I have condensed from Roger Lewis'- "Dead Men Don't Pull Triggers" essay. |
| CASE UNPARALLELED IN SUICIDE & OVERDOSE REPORTS Thousands of reports were reviewed and were narrowed down to eliminate those cases that involved either no information of morphine blood levels or anything other than overdose. For the purposes of Roger Lewis' report, over 3000 of these deaths were reviewed, and out came 1526 deaths, determined to be specifically related to overdoses amoung addicts involving intravenous use of heroin or morphine. These cases show 26 insances where the blood morphine levels were equal to or above Cobain's, an occurance rate of 1.7 %. None of these 1526 cases invovled a gun or violent suicide and where data was avaliable, it was remarkably clear in presenting images of addicts with tourniquets in place, syringes in hand and other evidence of abrupt death. Cobains case has no parallel in the references reviewed concuring with Burston's (Self-Poisoning, Drugs of Addiction 1970) finding that 'self poisoning with morpihine or heroin is very uncommon' and that ' the effects of heroin is of such short duration and is so intense that it inhibits any type of physical activity, either criminal or non criminal'. Also, no case of violent or traumatic suicide reviewed compared well woth the Cobain case. Gatter (A Study of Suicide Autopsies 1957-1977 - 1980) studied "1862 postmortem examinations of suicide carried out in north west London over a 20 year period from 1957-1977," with only 20% (369 cases) committing suicide by physical injury, none of which involved opiates. |
| CASE CONSISTENT WITH HOMICIDE PATTERNS The idea that a person could intentionally kill someone is hard to truly accept, and it is even harder to imagine someone staging a murder to look like a suicide. It seems normal to ask "does this really happen?" Yes, it does happen and staged deaths are unfortunately not rare. Furthermore, criminology textbooks clearly state that when someone who is drugged supposedly commits suicide, the "fair supposition" is murder. Also, when an adult goes "missing", the chances of suicide is very slim. From Charles E. Ohara's "Fundementals of Criminal Investigation 1975"- Beck examined forty suicides, who's sculls were smashed...Naturally in such cases the muzzle of the barrel must be placed directly under the chin or in the mouth. It is not therefore impossible that a murder may be commited in this way, and all the more likely as it lends itself easily to the suspicion of suicide; it is a fair supposition that a person alseep, stupified, or bound, may be thus killed." A review of Lester's book on murder statistics, (The Murderer and His Murder, 1986) shows the conflicting nature of much the research into the possible relationships between homicide and suicide, yet establishes very clearly that, "Narcotics were more likely to be present in the homicides", that the "victims of murder are usually men, killed more likely at home, killed more often with guns and the most vulnerable age group in men is between the ages of 25 and 34 years of age." Another study showed, "...murderers more often attacked people they knew." A 1972 study in New York City by Baden, (Evaluation of Death in Methadone Users 1974) found "...215 homicides, 19 suicides and 46 accidents among narcotic addicts. Narcotic homicides (versus other homicides versus other addict deaths) were more often male." O'hara remarks on the common phenonemon of "Simulated Suicides", that "These are usually planned by persons wishing to defraud insurance companies or to arrange for a change of spouse." That "the search for motives should include an inquiry to the insurance policies", as well as a concept especially relevant to this case, the "Incapacitating Sequence: Certain combinations of wounds suggest a physical impossibility. To draw conclusion of suicide, the wounds should be physically not improbable". Additionally, he makes the point, "Murder: The conclusion that a particular homicide is a murder is often made by the exclusion of accident and suicide." Truthfully, Cobain's death should have been treated as a murder from the start; as the victim he should have recieved the benefit of the doubt. |
| 2,000 TO 1 ODDS AGAINST SUICIDE AMONG MISSING PERSONS O'Hara's findings regarding the rarity of suicide among missing persons. It must be noted that this data does not specifically regard heroin addicts, and reflects the findings of one criminologist, yet it provides a general indication as to the rarity of suicide among missing persons. He describes how the myth of a suicidal missing person perpetuates homicides staged to look like suicides; "To the layman the suicide theory is one of the first to suggest itself in a disappearance case. Statistically, however, it can be shown that the odds are greatly against the suicide solution. Approximately one out of 2,000 missing persons cases develops into a suicide case...A voluntary disappearance is motivated by a desire to escape from some personal, domestic, or business conflict...A disappointment in love seldom results in a self-inflicted death...In the disappearance of approximately 100,000 people annually in this country, it is to be expected that personal violence should play a significant part in some of the cases." "Murder, the unspoken fear of the relatives and the police, must always lie in the back of the investigator's mind as a possible explanation. The suspicions of a shrewd investigator have not infrequently uncovered an unsuspected homicide. The two most popular motives for this type of homicide are money and love." Thus it is made clear that the police and relatives routinely view the possibility of murder with a certain degree of horror, while the investigator must remain suspicious to a degree which others may find ghoulish and/or paranoid, but which is nonetheless the call of duty. |
| WHY THIS CASE SHOULD BE REOPENED EVIDENCE THAT INDICATES HOMICIDE NO LEGIBLE FINGERPRINTS ON WEAPON There is an officially acknowledged lack of legible fingerprints on the shotgun. The weapon was handled by two or more people several times before Cobain's death, so it is possible someone wiped the gun clean to intentionally avoid detection. Another well known fact is that Cobain's credit card was used several times after death. Postmortem credit card use has, in and of itself, has been the sole precedent in reopening and solving at least one homicide case staged to appear like a suicide according to Burgess (The Medical-Legal Autopsy and The Cause of Death ). The missing persons report was filed by the widow, who told the SPD that Cobain had escaped a rehabilitation center, purchased a shotgun, and was suicidal. Truthfully, the purchase occurred before Cobain entered the rehabilitation center. The report seemingly predisposed the SPD to the idea that they were investigating a definite suicide, not a possible homicide. Despite SPD claims that the case was investigated as a possible homicide from the beginning, the SPD reports on the incident clearly state that the first officer on the scene viewed the case as a suicide. Furthermore, Cobain's behavior following his departure from the rehabilitation center included signing autographs at the Seattle airport, hardly the behaviour of a "missing person." Also, misleading accounts of details in the case have mistakenly claimed the room in which Cobain was found was barricaded. POSSIBLE NOTE ADDITIONS AND MOTIVE Additionally, the note found at the scene of Cobain's death was determined by the SPD handwriting expert to be a suicide note written by Cobain, yet significant disagreement among handwriting experts points to the definite possibility that the most crucial "suicidal" lines, i.e. the last four lines, were written by a separate person. The note reads like a retirement letter, written to Cobain's "fans," explaining his resignation from the music industry. This retirement included a refusal to perform for a major tour, thus forgoing an estimated $7 to $9.5 million dollars. The estimated revenue from Cobain's music is millions of dollars, clearly enough to be a motive for homicide. The widow continues to deny several reports claiming she and Cobain were about to be divorced and that she was involved in an extra-marital affair. CORONER DR. HARTSHORNE IN CONFLICT OF INTEREST The coroner, Dr. Nikolas Hartshorne, was interviewed by a newspaper reporter for the Vancouver Province in April 1996, and he insists Cobain died from a self-inflicted shotgun wound. The doctor's credibility has been questioned due to a conflict of interest, because he knew Cobain and the widow personally. Previous investigative reports indicated this conflict of interest, but the newspaper interview clearly confirms the problem. This was the first time it was ever declared, for example, that not only had Hartshorne booked Seattle "punk" bands frequently, he actually booked Cobain's band, Nirvana. Additional to the conflict of interest issues is the simple fact that even the best coroners make mistakes. The most common cause of mistakes made by coroners is basic human error. Gruver & Freis (1957), studied 1,106 autopsies, who concluded that "...lack of mental alertness or awareness on the part of the physician in attendance seemed to be a most common cause for diagnostic errors. More often than not, the correct diagnosis could have been made if the responsible physician had been less mentally stagnant about the problem. " DIAGNOSTIC DISCREPANCIES IN AUTOPSIES When a diagnostic discrepancy occurs in an autopsy, it is twice as likely to be due to something missed than something found, or, as Hill & Anderson (Missed Diagnosis: Toward an Undetstanding of Diagnostic Discrepansies 1988 ) say, "...significant underdiagnosis occurs more often than overdiagnosis by a factor of almost 2:1." This fact conforms with the Cobain case, where the massive level of blood morphine was mistakenly deemed irrelevant and thus "underdiagnosed." A study including over 6,000 autopsies, and provides statistics which show that it is far more likely that the Cobain case involved a serious "major" diagnostic discrepancy (a likelihood of at least 11.7% to 33.8%) than any other scenario put forth officially. Burgess wrote, in "Understanding the Autopsy", that "There are many jurisdictions in this country where you would not have to be half-smart to get away with murder, quite literally...the fact remains that, in all too many places, the investigation of possible murder is undertaken only after pressure is brought by relatives or other interested parties, and when such investigation is instituted, it is done so incompetently that murder after murder goes unsolved and unpunished." HOMICIDE AN OBVIOUS ASSUMPTION Dr. Cyril Wecht, in the forward to an article by Winek, stated that "One of the most useful and relatively new areas of toxicology has to do with the significance and practical importance of drug and chemical blood levels. Identification and more importantly, quantitation, of blood levels is essential in many civil and criminal actions involving drugs. Without such information, the cases become matters of pure speculation and are predicated on circumstantial evidence (which may or may not prove to be correct ultimately)." Winek's article, "Drug and chemical blood levels," mentions the following amazing case: "A lethal level of a drug or chemical found in an individual's blood does not by itself establish the cause of death. For example, a known narcotic addict was shot to death. Analyses of various body tissues (brain, bile, blood, etc.) revealed levels of morphine that have been found in other deaths attributed to overdose with heroin or morphine. However, in this case the cause of death was due to the bullet wounds!" The indication is that a morphine overdose simultaneous with a gun shot wound is an overwhelmingly rare phenomenon at most, and that in the only such incident reported, the most obvious conclusion was homicide. Roger Lewis~ A large dose of two drugs administered by intravenous injection thus appears to be a definite possibility. Specifically, Cobain was probably given an injection of no less 225 mg of some type of heroin and a benzodiazepine. The suggestion that Cobain's tolerance to heroin was so high that he could have withstood the dose described above is clearly mistaken. The addition of a benzodiazepine of any kind, especially in combination with Cobain's low body weight, points to complete incapacitation at best, and strongly, if not conclusively indicates Cobain was dead before the gunshot wound. The official statement that Cobain ingested triple the lethal dose of heroin is probably an underestimate, yet it must not be understated that triple the lethal dose of intravenous heroin is three times more than the amount which kills even the most severe addict. Dead men don't pull triggers. |
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