Love and Death

On Friday, April 8, 1994, a body was discovered in a room above a garage in Seattle. For the attending authorities, it was an open-and-shut case of suicide. What no one knew then, however, is that the deceased — Kurt Cobain, the superstar frontman of Nirvana — had been murdered. Drawing on case tapes made by a P.I. hired by Courtney Love when her husband escaped from drug rehab and went missing — and on new forensic evidence and police reports obtained under the Freedom of Information Act — Love & Death explodes the long-standing theory that Kurt Cobain took his own life.

Award-winning investigative journalists Max Wallace and Ian Halperin have conducted a ten-year crusade for the truth, and in Love & Death they present a stunning, convincing argument that the whole truth has yet to be revealed.

On Friday, April 8, 1994, a body was discovered in a room above a garage in Seattle. For the attending authorities, it was an open-and-shut case of suicide. What no one knew then, however, and which is only being revealed here for the very first time, is that the person found dead that day—Kurt Cobain, the superstar frontman of Nirvana—was murdered.

In early April 1994, Cobain went missing for days, or so it seemed; in fact, some people knew where he was, and one of them was Courtney Love. Now a star in Hollywood and rock music, in early 1994 she was preparing to release her major label debut with her band, Hole, and what she knew then, though few others did, was that Cobain was planning to divorce her. Love & Death paints a critical portrait of Courtney Love; it also reveals for the first time the case tapes made by Love’s own P.I., Tom Grant, a man on a mission to find the truth about Kurt Cobain’s demise; and introduces us to a number of characters who feature in various theories about plots to kill Cobain. In addition, Cobain’s grandfather goes public, charging that his grandson was murdered. Drawing on new forensic evidence and police reports obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the book explodes the myths that have long convinced the world that Cobain took his own life, and reveals that the official scenario was scientifically impossible.

Against a background of at least sixty-eight copycat suicides since 1994, award-winning investigative journalists Max Wallace and Ian Halperin have conducted a ten-year crusade for the truth, and in Love & Death they are finally able to present a chilling and convincing case that each and every one of these suicides was preventable—and in doing so, they call for this case to be reopened and properly investigated.

Max Wallace is a recipient of Rolling Stone magazine’s Award for Investigative Journalism; he is also a documentary filmmaker. In 1998, he coauthored the international bestseller Who Killed Kurt Cobain? with Ian Halperin. He is also the author of Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight: Cassius Clay vs. the United States of America, and The American Axis: Ford, Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich. His first documentary film, Too Colorful for the League, was nominated for a Gemini Award (Canada’s equivalent of an Emmy). Max has been a guest columnist for the Sunday New York Times, and contributed to the BBC.

Ian Halperin is also a former winner of the Rolling Stone magazine Award for Investigative Journalism. He is the author or coauthor of five books, including the bestsellers Fire and Rain: The James Taylor Story, and Celine Dion: Behind the Fairytale, as well as a number of exposés on the modeling industry. He coauthored Who Killed Kurt Cobain? with Max Wallace. Ian is a regular correspondent for Court TV and has contributed to 60 Minutes 2.