Summary Part 2
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Continued. . .
RETURN TO SEATTLE
Wednesday, April 13th. I met with Rosemary Carroll at her Hollywood
office. She indicated her suspicions about Courtney's involvement in Kurt's
death. Among other things, Rosemary told me Courtney wouldn't let her or
anyone else see the alledged "suicide"note. I decided to return to Seattle
for further investigation.
Thursday, April 14th. I went to the Lake Washington house. Courtney was
sitting at the dining room table. As I approached and sat down to talk, she
said, "I guess I really found the right P.I. this time." The flattery was
nice, but it didn't make much sense.
After some conversation, Courtney got up to get a cigarette. A lady
walked over to where I was sitting. She was wearing a black T-shirt that
read, "Grunge Is Dead." I assumed she was a relative of Kurt's, maybe a
sister or cousin.
She stood in front of me and asked. "You're the investigator?"
I nodded while she continued, "What do you think?"
Not knowing who she was, I replied, "I don't know. What do you think?"
She answered by introducing herself. "Well, I'm Kurt's mom, Wendy. I
don't know. Something doesn't seem right. Why didn't Dylan look in the
greenhouse?"
I told Wendy I'd like to sit down and talk to her sometime in the next
few days. She agreed and said she'd like to talk to me too.
I noticed Courtney looking over her shoulder as Wendy and I talked. She
seemed to be concerned about our conversation. As she walked back towards us
Wendy began walking away. Courtney put her arms around Wendy and kissed her.
Then I noticed Courtney whisper something in Wendy's ear. The rest of the
time I was at the house, Wendy seemed cool towards me, almost evasive.
Courtney took me upstairs where we sat on her bed and talked. Since she
wouldn't even let her close friend and attorney, Rosemary Carrol, see the
suicide note, I had to come up with a way to get a copy for myself for closer
examination.
"I heard you read the note on TV the other day," I told her. "I was
confused about something. It sounded like the note said, "I'm lying here on
the bed..." If Kurt was lying on the bed when he wrote the note, why was the
bed was so neat when I came in here the other night? It didn't look like
anyone had been on this bed."
"No, Tom, I was lying on the bed," Courtney answered and repeated, "I was
lying on the bed recording the message to Kurt's fans."
"Are you sure that's what you said, " I asked. "I got the impression it
was Kurt saying HE was lying on the bed."
"No. Here, I'll show you," she said, and reached over to retrieve a
folded paper from under a pillow. Handing me the note, Courtney pointed out,
"It's only a copy. The police have the original."
I studied the note as if looking for the phrase in question, then
remarked, "I can't read this without my glasses. Can I go downstairs and
make a copy on your fax machine? I'll look at it later."
"Yeah,....sure," Courtney mumbled as her eyes dropped out of an icy
stare. When I came back up, Courtney was kneeling on the floor looking in a
phone book. A telephone was on the floor next to her.
"Would you wait downstairs Tom?" she snapped.
A few minutes earlier she was friendly,...now she seemed irritated!
Later I drove Courtney and her friend Kat Bjelland to the Carnation
property. Eric Erlandson was supposed to go with us, but Courtney went in
another room with him and talked to him in private. Then Eric left alone in
his van. As he was leaving I commented, "I thought Eric was going with us."
Courtney replied, "He'll meet us there."
During the drive to Carnation, Courtney began talking about the "son of a
bitch" who gave the story to the Associated Press saying she had overdosed on
April 2nd. She became agitated as she grumbled, "I'm going to find out who
the hell it was and sue that motherf...er for libel. I can prove I was at
the hotel. People saw me there. It was a total lie."
"You told me YOU planted that story," I reminded Courtney.
"Huh,... Oh,..." she responded, and turned to look out the window.
On the way, Courtney wanted to stop twice for snacks. We also missed the
turn off, getting lost temporarily and having to solicit directions from a
nearby farmer.
This seemed a little strange when I later discovered one of the houses on
the property had just been built. Courtney must have been out there several
times while the house was under construction and it wasn't all that difficult
to find. Were these delays in our trip deliberate?
When we arrived at the Carnation property, I noticed the two houses on
the property reflected Kurt and Courtney's individual personalities. One is
an old weathered cabin with furniture and bedding. The other is a brand new
mansion, vacant and unfurnished.
We went into the old cabin first. Courtney and Kat went upstairs to the
loft while I stayed downstairs to look around. When they came back
downstairs, Courtney reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a cloth
pouch. "Look Tom. Kurt was here," she said, as she opened the pouch
revealing a syringe inside.
NO WAY! I thought to myself. This didn't look like something Kurt would
use to keep a syringe in. And why would he have left it here? I felt
Courtney probably bought the pouch with her.
A few minutes later we found five dead rats in the toilet. They'd been
there for quite some time.
It was obvious no one had used this cabin recently!
In the new house we found a sleeping bag, some cigarette butts, and some
soda cans scattered about. Courtney wanted to take these items back with us.
She said she wanted to get them fingerprinted.
What's the big deal here? I wondered. I also noticed Eric never showed
up at the Carnation property. Had he come and gone before we arrived?
Courtney apparently changed her mind about prints after a discussion we
had in the car. She said she was making a rubber hand from a cast she'd made
of Kurt's hand. She told us she was going to use it to slap people in the
face and say, "There, that's from Kurt!"
WHATEVER!?
I mentioned I'd worked with hand casts and it was amazing how you could
even duplicate fingerprints. Courtney apeared strangely discouraged. I
never heard any more about printing the items found at the Carnation
property.
Had this been part of a scheme to try to convince me Kurt had been to the
Carnation property after leaving the rehab in Los Angeles?
Conversation in the car indicated Courtney was still thinking more about
her career than about Kurt.
Courtney also talked to narcotics Detective Terry on my car phone. I
later learned she'd been talking to Terry quite a lot during the time Kurt
was missing. Detective Terry was even mentioned in the missing person's
report as having additional information about Kurt.
Remember Terry's name. It will come up again later.
While Courtney was out of the car at one time, I heard Paul Harvey
comment on the radio about a rumor that a suicide pact existed between
Courtney and Kurt.
This was typical of the type of planted stories I'd heard Courtney
originate on her own and then blame others for leaking information to the
press. I wondered if there was a connection between her fake "overdose"
Saturday night and her possible deliberate overdose and arrest Thursday
morning. Had she expected Kurt to die Saturday night? Had she expected us
to find his body Thursday morning? Had she tried to make this look like a
suicide pact?
Back at the house, I told Courtney I'd like to talk to Cali and Dylan
together. Courtney told me, "Cali went to rehab in El Paso, "or Georgia,...
no, he's in L.A. with friends." Courtney shouted to Eric, "Call Cali and
tell him to get back up here on the next plane."
Dylan arrived at the house while I was in the kitchen. Courtney took him
into her bedroom for about twenty minutes. When they came down it was
obvious Dylan had just gotten a heroin fix. I took Dylan into the kitchen to
talk. As I began questioning him, I noticed his response was canned as if
he'd just been prepared and rehearsed. He also kept nodding off from the
heroin. There was no sense in continuing.
I left the house and asked Eric to call my hotel when Cali got there.
After several hours, I called and spoke to Eric. He told me that after I
left, Courtney had him call Cali and tell him he didn't have to come to
Seattle. Eric said, "I don't know what's going here!"
Saturday, April 16th, Ben Klugman had flown to Seattle to work with me.
Ben and I went back to the Lake Washington house to talk to Courtney. The
lady answering the door told me Courtney was upstairs sleeping. I asked her
if Wendy was there. She said Wendy was downstairs. I asked the lady to let
Wendy know I was there and to ask her if we could talk. The lady left,
returning in a couple of minutes to tell me, "Wendy says she has nothing to
talk to you about."
The electrical supervisor who had been at the scene of Kurt's death, met
with Ben Klugman and I at my hotel room. He described the position of the
body and the shotgun. He also told us, "Kurt's hair looked like it had been
combed by a hairdresser. It was all spread out nice and even."
I realized this could just be one man's perception of what he thought he
saw while under stress, but I wanted to see the police photographs to see
what he was talking about.
I faxed off several documents, including a copy of the "suicide note," to
two document examiners in Los Angeles. The document examiners told me, based
on the photocopies they had examined, it was their opinion Courtney wrote the
letter left on the stairs, not Cali.
This wasn't logical. Courtney was still in Beverly Hills when this note
showed up on the stairs. If the document examiners were right, this woud
indicate a conspiracy of some type. But, I found their conclusions hard to
believe.
I went to the police station and met with Sgt. Cameron. I discussed
with him:
^Possible motives,...
*More money from a suicide than from a divorce...
*Kurt's record sales would probably take off...
*Courtney's career would probably take off...
^Numerous inconsistencies and contradictions in logic...
^The missing credit card and continued activity on the card after
Kurt's death...
^Courtney specifically told to Dylan check the greenhouse, and he
didn't do it...
^The Letter on the stairs from Cali seemed phony and didn't
make sense...
^Document examiners said Courtney wrote the letter on the stairs...
^Doubts about Kurt's handwriting on the note, especially the
bottom portion...
^The electrician's statement about Kurt's hair appearing to have
been combed.
I asked Sgt. Cameron why he had told me the greenhouse door was locked
from the inside. I explained anyone could have pulled that door shut after
locking it. Sgt. Cameron replied with a touch of resentment in his voice,
"There was a stool wedged up against the door."
Once again I assumed the police had evidence that Kurt was alone, but I I
still had some real problems with this case!
When I asked Sgt. Cameron if I could look at the photographs to see why
the electrical supervisor thought Kurt's hair had been combed, he responded,
"We haven't developed the photographs and probably never will. We don't
develope photographs on suicides."
"Nothing you've said convinces me this is anything but a suicide," Sgt.
Cameron informed me as we concluded the meeting.
CONTINUING THE INVESTIGATION
I spent the next few weeks trying to determine if my document examiners
were correct. Through my own testing I was eventually convinced they were
wrong. One finally admitted her mistake. The other stands by her opinion.
I don't believe in the accuracy of the work done by these two document
examiners. So even though it may have helped prove my case, I won't use it.
I want REAL evidence here, not false or misleading evidence.
I called Detective Kirkland and told him the document examiners had made
a mistake. He didn't understand the significance in the first place, so it
was obvious they had paid little attention to anything I had to say about
this case.
I studied media material and found it was full of planted stories and
misinformation. One story had Courtney grieving at home, while I know she
was actually at Canyon Ranch in Arizona sleeping with Billy Corgan. This was
only three weeks after Kurt died.
May 8, 1994, I sent Courtney a letter indicating my suspicions about
Kurt's death.
Dear Courtney,
I'm sure you know by now that my investigation has been somewhat more
active than you might have been aware of. The purpose of this letter is to
clarify my postion regarding our working relationship.
You may recall our trip Carnation on Thursday, April 14th. I
mentioned during the drive that I was beginning to turn over some "rocks"
that I wasn't sure you'd want turned over. I asked you if you wanted me to
continue digging. Kat, who was in the back seat, said, "Oh yeah, she wants
to know everything." You responded, "Yeah Tom, do what ever it takes. I
want to know everything that happened." Your instructions were clear, so in
the days and weeks that followed, I proceeded to "do whatever it takes."
As the investigation continued, my attempts to get at the truth often
seemed to be deliberately hindered. While reading some of the articles being
written in newspapers and magazines, I discovered the information being
released to the press was inaccurate and often cleverly misleading.
I consider the circumstances surrounding your husband's death to be
highly suspicious. My investigation has exposed a number of inconsistencies
in the facts of this case as well as many contradictions in sound logic and
common sense. I'm required to report findings such as these to the police,
so on Friday, April 15th, I spoke with Sgt. Cameron about some of what I've
learned so far. As I've experienced in past cases, police detectives don't
often welcome the work of outside investigators. I've learned it's somewhat
idealistic and naive to think the truth might be more important than
professional pride.
I've decided to continue working on this case until I see it to it's
conclusion, without additional charge. Attached you will find an invoice
which accounts for the charges billed for our services, including time and
expenses. As you can see, prior to my return to Seattle on April 13th, these
charges exceeded the retainer amount. However, please consider your bill
paid in full. There will be no further charges.
As I pursue the truth regarding the events surrounding your husband's
death, your cooperation and assistance will be appreciated, but not required.
Sincerely,
Tom Grant
THE GRANT COMPANY
Continued. . .
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