Forensic investigators and a coroner later determined that Cobain had died on April 5, three days prior to the discovery of his body.

[1] The Seattle Police Department incident report stated that Cobain was found with a shotgun across his body, had suffered a visible gunshot wound to the head and that a suicide note had been discovered nearby.

[9] Cobain said that his stomach pain had been so severe during Nirvana's 1991 European tour that he became suicidal, and that taking heroin was "the only thing that's saving me from shooting myself right now.

I was so tired of it.In Charles Cross's biography Heavier Than Heaven, Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic is quoted on seeing Cobain in the days before his intervention: "He was really quiet.

"[15]: 332  Novoselic's offer to buy dinner for Cobain resulted in unintentionally driving him to score heroin: "His dealer was right there.

"[16] On April 1, 1994, Cobain left Exodus Recovery Center, the Los Angeles drug rehabilitation clinic he had checked into two days before, by scaling a six-foot wall.

[17] On April 2, Cobain took a taxi to a Seattle gun shop, where he purchased and received a receipt for shotgun shells.

[18] On April 8, Cobain's body was discovered in the greenhouse above the garage at his Lake Washington Boulevard East house by VECA Electric employee Gary T. Smith, who had arrived that morning to install security lighting.

The Seattle police report states that the shotgun was inverted on Cobain's chest with his left hand wrapped around the barrel.

The paper reported that the toxicological tests determined that the level of morphine in Cobain's bloodstream was 1.52 milligrams per liter and that there was evidence of Valium in his blood.

The report contained a quote from Randall Baselt of the Chemical Toxicological Institute and author of all 12 editions of the common forensic toxicology textbook Disposition of Toxic Drugs and Chemicals in Man (including its chapter on heroin)[27] which stated that Cobain's heroin level was at "a high concentration, by any account" but that the strength of the dose would depend on many factors, including how habituated Cobain was to the drug.

[29] On April 10, 1994, a public memorial service was held at Seattle Center, where a recording of Courtney Love reading Cobain's suicide note was played.

Danny Goldberg, founder of Gold Mountain Records, refers in his book Dispatches From the Culture Wars: How the Left Lost Teen Spirit to "the crazy Internet rumors that Kurt Cobain had not committed suicide but had been murdered," stating that Cobain's suicide "haunts him every day".

[34] Anthony Kiedis, lead singer of Red Hot Chili Peppers, expressed his feelings in his autobiography, Scar Tissue, writing: The news [of Cobain's death] sucked the air out of the entire house, I didn't feel like I felt when Hillel died; it was more like "The world just suffered a great loss."

[36]Some controversy arose after Cobain's death regarding whether his 1.52 mg/L blood morphine level indicates irrefutable evidence of a fatal overdose.

This study observed a highest non-fatal total blood morphine count of 2.11 mg/L in drivers who also tested positive for other drugs, indicating that being conscious enough to attempt driving a car is possible in extreme cases for subjects with a total morphine count significantly higher than 1.52 mg/L (the figure from Cobain's study).

Grant's theory has been analyzed and questioned by several books, television shows, and films, including the 2015 docudrama Soaked in Bleach.

Grant has stated that he finds the events surrounding Cobain's death to be "filled with lies, contradictions in logic, and countless inconsistencies.

Grant says he based this belief on his lack of knowing about any studies or evidence to indicate that such a high dose could be survived, although he does not rule out whether a counterexample might exist (for updated information on the question of how to interpret Cobain's blood morphine count, see Toxicological ambiguities).

Prior to the shooting, some close to Cobain, notably Gold Mountain Records, firmly denied he had wanted to die.

Grant believes that if that were true, Cobain's friends and family would have been told in order that they could keep a close watch on him.

Lee Ranaldo, guitarist for Sonic Youth, told Rolling Stone, "Rome was only the latest installment of [those around Cobain] keeping a semblance of normalcy for the outside world.

"[33] Grant counters the claim that he profits from the sale of casebook kits on his website by stating that it offsets some of the costs of his investigation.

Broomfield also spoke to the Mentors' bandleader Eldon "El Duce" Hoke, who claimed that Love had offered him $50,000 to kill Cobain.

However, he mentioned speaking to someone called "Allen" or "Alain", before quickly interjecting, "I mean, my friend", then laughing, "I'll let the FBI catch him."

[48] Broomfield incidentally captured Hoke's final interview, as he died days later when he was struck by a train in the middle of the night.

"[49] Journalists Ian Halperin and Max Wallace followed a similar path and attempted to investigate the murder theory themselves.

Over the next several years, Halperin and Wallace collaborated with Grant to write a second book, 2004's Love and Death: The Murder of Kurt Cobain.

[53]However, in 2015, in a piece she wrote for The Guardian, Gordon said that she had not been surprised to hear of Cobain's suicide, stating, "I'll always remember the day Thurston called to tell me Kurt had shot himself.

[55]On an AMA hosted on the Nirvana subreddit, bassist Krist Novoselic discussed the speculation when asked by a Redditor about what he would say if Cobain was able to listen to the forum: I can't believe people think that I would confess to them being part of a criminal conspiracy, especially on line.