Muchacho: I know nothing about what you're doing. I must admit, I'm intrigued... but a little skeptical.

Richard Lee: I wouldn't be.

M: Why is that?

RL: You should be skeptical of the cops, not me.

M: What do you mean?

RL: Well, you know... Ask 100 people on the campus of the U of A how Kurt Cobain died, and 100 out of 100 that know who you're talking about will say, "Oh, he killed himself." But what's that really based in?

M: Well.. it's based on news reports and...

RL: Yeah, but ultimately, what is it based in?

M: Pure faith, I guess.

RL: No, I mean ultimately, factually, it's based on what some cops said. And how do you know this cop wasn't Detective Mark Fuhrman.

M: Yeah, but even though we don't know who they are, what reason do we have to doubt them?

RL: They're cops. If you believe everything the cops said, we wouldn't need to have judges or courtrooms or prosecutors or defense attorneys. The police would merely make an accusation and they'd cart someone to prison.

M: But if we believed nothing that they said, we wouldn't have a use for those institutions either.

RL: Yeah, but the point is that's what makes a fake suicide a perfect murder. There's no trial... and there's no ongoing investigation. I mean, shoot somebody in the back of the head and they're obviously murdered. So the case is open for the next hundred years or more.

M: So if we should be skeptical, who's behind it?

RL: Well, the first thing you should be skeptical about is the bottom line result, which is Kurt Cobain committed suicide. You have to ask yourself what the source of that information is -- in this case, the Seattle Police Department. I don't know what the cops are like down there in Arizona, but these guys are like wannabe L.A. Cops. They want to be rough, tough, badboys like the LAPD. There just isn't enough action in Seattle to accommodate their steroid fed fantasies. And yet, you'll find that they like to dig into whatever mischief they can, you know? At the time that Cobain died there was actually a television program on called "Tramps" starring George C. Scott and that guy from MTV -- Dan Cortese. They were a young cop, old cop team. It was only on for like half a dozen episodes, but that program was allegedly about the head of Seattle Homicide... who actually looks something like George C. Scott, but like most TV programs its pure fantasy. George would pour over his unsolved case files all night and Cortese, his step-son would come down and say "Still working on the old cases? Still burning the midnight oil?" and George C. would say, "Yup, I just can't get these poor fallen victims out of my mind. God, I've gotta keep working these cases." When, in fact, the way that the Seattle homicide really works is: for instance, they've never done an investigation of a controlled substances homicide in the history of the department. In the county north of here, if a person dies in your house dies of an overdose, the police are going to be asking you a whole lot of questions about who supplied the narcotics because that person, in the state of Washington, is guilty of a controlled substances homicide for providing a lethal dose of narcotics. They never investigate that kind of thing in Seattle -- they never have. So if a junky or an apparent drug user ends up dead, it's really easy to say it's an accidental overdose and an accidental thing. Or, they call it a suicide. So yesterday, for instance, it was the 2 year anniversary of Kristen Fan, who was the bass player in Hole. She was the third person to die in this strange string of homicides that started with Cobain. The second was Detective Teri, who was investigating this very subject -- that is, who provided the alleged dose of alleged narcotics that allegedly were involved in Kurt Cobain's death.

M: So you think they were all connected somehow?

RL: Well, they all WERE connected... whether the cause of their deaths is connected cannot be said with absolute certainty. They're all dead, that's for sure. They were all connected to the Nirvana Phenomenon -- that was the bass player in Hole and Detective Teri, whom I spoke to at one point, knew a lot, apparently, about certain things about Cobain's death. And believe me, if I can figure it out, Detective Teri could've figured it out as well.

M: Who do you figure is behind all this, that's the big question, right?

RL: It is the big question, and it's one that L.A. private investigator Tom Grant has been eager to answer in pointing the finger absolutely at a few individuals. Chief among them, Courtney Love.

M: Well yeah... she's obviously profited quite a bit from Kurt's death.

RL: She sure has... but don't leave out Chris and Dave.

M: I guess that's true... I didn't really think about that.

RL: Well, the general theory that I've advanced is that nothing can be said with absolute certainty. O.J. Simpson committed his murders, if he was guilty and he probably was, according to the basic Columbo school of how to commit a perfect murder. Which is, do it an hour before you leave for Chicago and stuff the dirty clothes in a duffel bag. So, he had a plan it pretty much worked and gee, wasn't he pretty much out of town at the point, you know? If this crime was conceived along those lines, which evidently it was, it had to have a mastermind or a chief coordinator right at the center of it -- and that would be Courtney Love.

M: So what makes this different than O.J.

RL: It happened before O.J. You know, Geraldo Rivera's been going around saying he's the guy who stuck with O.J. to the bitter end, but I began this two months before the O.J. thing even happened. My first broadcast was April 13th, 1994 -- 5 days after they discovered the body. And I'm still on it... this is week 114.

M: What's your interest in this? Do you get paid?

RL: No, it's a public access television program. The program is "Now See this Person to Person" and it was on for a year before the Cobain thing happened. I was using public access and the fact that I own a $1000 camcorder and do something that nobody that I know of has done before, which is take your own private camcorder and go out and cover political events.

M: So what do you make of the post-mortem Kurt Cobain phenomenon... you know, how he's considered the "Voice of our Generation" or whatever.

RL: Well... the Post-mortem Phenomena, if you want to know the truth... I mean, I joke about this among my friends, and on the air I refer to it in a serious way which is basically braintrusted by myself and no one else. I mean, I've been calling this a likely murder or a murder since like 5 days after it began and if you want examine the way that this has moved through popular culture, you will notice the distinct influence on the apprehension of the television networks, entertainment executives and everyone else to dabble in Nirvana because they all know. They all know. By this point they're asking for trouble because its all going to be documented in the work that I'm doing. For instance Newsweek came to Seattle and did a cover story, a story on Michael Kinsley about four weeks ago, and there were all this kind of veiled references to mystery. There was one reference to Kurt Cobain in a Linda Berry cartoon that they commissioned. But, otherwise, they just beat around the issue completely. And it is an amazing thing. When I did this political show, early on in the Cobain thing, nobody really cared about my show. But now, psychologically... and I know it'll sound like I'm overstating the case, it's at the center of the psychology of the entire city. Everyone who's examined it closely knows that I'm completely right and all of the people who are in the leadership in this city are completely wrong.

M: So what do you think is motivating them to not reopen the case?

RL: You mean, Them meaning the politicians?

M: Yeah... or whoever is in charge...

RL: Well I'll tell you why that is: they've screwed it up once and they got caught. Now they don't know what to do about it.

M: So, you think it's just a pride thing... or do they have some other vested interest?

RL: No... if the Seattle Times comes out and says, "We knew all kind of different things on April 8, '94 about the likelihood of murder but we never bothered to tell you, but we've stated in our pages 8 dozen times in the last 2 years that Cobain was a suicide" then their credibility would be blown to kingdom come, and they'll cease to exist as any type of entity that anyone will trust. So they have to perpetuate the lie. It's an absolutely unique situation. In this particular case, it involves the murder of a rock star, a beloved rock star in this area and across the world. They know that when the truth gets out, they're going to be in a hell of a pickle.

M: So you think they all know about this?

RL: They all knew about it immediately. They all knew he was murdered.

M: What other evidence is there?

RL: The primary evidence is that there was no blood at the scene of the crime. That's what I mean when I say that everybody knew that he was murdered on the day it happened.

M: No blood at all? I would think a shotgun wound would be pretty messy.

RL: Precisely. And if you want to talk about this being the perfect murder, that was the stroke of genius, really, on the part of the murderer. What you do is set up a situation where the cops really want to make a suicide out of it, but anyone that gets a peek in that window where the body was situated would know that it's all a lie. So, essentially, what you do is bring the power structure of the city, meaning its media, in on the crime. And they succeeded in doing that.

M: Is there a lot of money involved in this somewhere?

RL: The stakes are enormous. On June 29th we've got Planet Hollywood opening here, and Planet Hollywood is now the centerpiece of the Seattle. The Space Needle will always be there, but the Space Needle is not in downtown, strictly speaking. Now, downtown is apparently going to built up around Planet Hollywood. Some 16 screen Cineplex Odeon is going up next to it, and that'll be the primary tourist draw in Seattle. Cineplex Odeon is MCA, which is the corporation over David Geffen. So, it's almost as if Cobain was knocked off and now this corporation has moved in to take over the town. It reads so much like a Clint Eastwood western that it's not funny.

M: Why did they need to knock him off. He was on Geffen, right, and they profited immensely from him.

RL: Well, they wouldn't profit by having him defect... and they certainly wouldn't profit by having him defect and them become a critic. When you're dealing with these media corporations, you're dealing with the most viciously ambitious corporations that you can possible imagine, you know? They know they the stakes are: either be relegated to something that is basically scrap for the mega-media conglomerate that is emerging, or have your corporation prevail and be among the most powerful people in the United States. MCA has always had that ambition... and it didn't work out for them. They didn't merge with Time-Warner for instance, they merely were acquired by Seagrams. There's no television network involved, the way Disney-ABC now has a network and a creative force to be reckoned with. Now MCA is out in the cold -- a studio with a few star players, Spielberg and Stallone. It's a corporation in trouble. When it was revealed, as it is being revealed to the world, that the star young entertainer, Kurt Cobain, was murdered, you can see that corporation hitting the skids more and more. The only reason that I'm making these comments to you at a college paper is that people at a college might find this kind of theory interesting.

M: I certainly do.

RL: On the other hand, even if I went on the TV program and said that sort of thing, people would think I'm some kind of pinko that doesn't like corporations. Really, it's a complaint against this particular corporation, which has been considered part of the Mafia for some time. So, there are considerable reasons that the average American citizen should not want MCA becoming any more powerful. And, of course there are considerable reasons that these sorts of people could be involved in something as heinous as the murder of Kurt Cobain.

M: Sowhat do you think of people who dismiss you as a conspiracy theorist?

RL: It's pretty tiresome, really. The first mention I ever got in Melody Maker (the key British music magazine)... they never mentioned anything about my show until 3 or 4 weeks ago. And the mention was in an interview with a local Soundgarden fan and the subject of the conversation turned toward a local public access television show called "Kurt Cobain was Murdered..." the gist of which is "..." So, they're just trying to make it out that Soundgarden or whoever aren't afraid to bring up the subject of my program and, presumably ridicule it... that it's nothing actually worth discussing.

M: You don't think they're supportive of what you're doing?

RL: Oh hell no!

M: Why not?

RL: Well, it's in the web page. The wording I used there was, "These British rock mags know the way to get along in the Nirvana Phenomenon is to suck up to the people in power in the Nirvana Phenomenon. And to their disadvantage, they fail to identify me as a person with any power at all in the grand scheme of how Nirvana is going to be interpreted. They decide to favor the corporate players, who are totally without imagination and who will fall to their own, you know, feeble imaginations -- I'm talking about Chris and Dave and Courtney.

M: So the Soundgarden people aren't down with you?

RL: They've been giving the same interview for two years. They get in with these British interviewers or interviewers elsewhere and when the Kurt Cobain suicide comes up they just say, "Kurt Cobain suicide this... Kurt Cobain suicide that..." and it's spelled out to people that they do, in fact, believe that Kurt Cobain committed suicide and they are, in fact, close to the situation.

M: So you don't think they were just duped? Are they in on it too, somehow?

RL: No, I think they're just doing what everyone else in town is doing. They think that they're scoring points with the local media conspiracy, for lack of a better word, by saying "Kurt Cobain's suicide..." because everyone who says "Kurt Cobain's suicide" in the press gets little brownie points from the Devil. Ultimately, they know it's dangerous but they think they're actually scoring some points with the people who matter here in town. Basically, I think they're correct. My prediction is that ultimately sense will prevail and people will understand that I'm right and everyone else is wrong.

M: I guess what I don't understand, is what information you have that blows this case wide open -- besides the blood. It seems to me that there has to be something more than just a motive and a couple of coincidences... What confirmed it for you?

RL: What confirmed it is the pathologists in the autopsy revealed that they lied about certain things and once that became clear to me, I understood fully well why there was no blood at the scene of the crime. That is because Kurt Cobain did not die of a shotgun wound.

M: So where is that information that they lied coming from?

RL: The death certificate says that it's a contact perforating contact wound to the head. Perforating means that the shots goes in and the shot comes out. After I found video that had never been seen before and aired it on June 1, 1994, basically 6 or 7 weeks into this thing, they then changed their description of the wound. It wasn't a perforating shotgun wound, but a penetrating shotgun wound. What does that mean?

M: .. just that it went in, and never came out.

RL: Precisely. In other words, completely impossible. If you look at the JFK thing...

M: I was going to ask if you see any parallels there...

RL: Well, in as much as there was never a JFK autopsy photo until the early 90's, and there have only been a few people who worked that angle of it, but the first time you see that picture of Kennedy's head on the autopsy table you say to yourself, "What the hell is that?" You assume that you're going to be completely shocked by the sight of a dead president, but you get over that in about a second and a half. The real question that emerges is: why is it that I've seen film of him getting his head blown off and there's his head completely intact on the table of this autopsy examining room. And the explanation... I don't pretend to know all the details... there were FBI agents who inspected the body when it came in into Washington D.C.; surgery of their head is in their notes. Roger J. Liften is the chief guy that put together that material on the JFK autopsy. They're all very squeamish about this autopsy thing. The Globe ran photos of Selena's autopsy. For a second, you're like "Wow... that's the dead pop star" and then after that it becomes a pretty scientific thing. I mean, I wouldn't make any high claims as to why they ran the photos, but I think it was legal in Texas.

M: How are you spreading the word about your cause?

RL: I'm working on a publication arrangement...

M: So, a book?

RL: No... I don't have that yet.

M: ... but with enough interest, possibly?

RL: Well, it would be a great injustice to history if I were denied the opportunity to publish a book out there.

M: Are your tapes available by mail at all?

RL: No... I can't do that do that because the show is one hour and I make very liberal use of clips from Columbo and network news and that sort of thing. It's going to be a dodgy issue if I ever get around to doing a compilation tape to sell it. So much of my material is sampled. As much as I dislike MCA-Universal and am suspicious of MCA universal, they were the people who bankrolled "Columbo" which was the greatest detective series done on American television.

M: I have to agree.

RL: I ran lots of news clips on Admiral Borda a few weeks ago, because his case is stunningly familiar to both Vince Foster and Kurt Cobain. There are these alleged suicide notes that no one has ever seen -- one of the notes is addressed to the sailors and apologizes about any misunderstanding about him wearing the combat V's as a part of his decorations. At the same time you say, "Wait... does that mean he's going to kill himself." I mean, he's the highest ranking Naval official in uniform so of course it would be natural for him to write a letter to the sailors anyway explaining the situation. That doesn't make it a suicide note. The thing is, the people reading this are just going to say "This guy looks at all suicides and says, no really, they're murders." No, I'm not saying that... what I'm saying is Admiral Borda died at 2:30 in the Afternoon on Thursday and by like 2:30 in the morning, within 12 hours, the New York Times is on the streets saying that Admiral Borda was questioned by reporters and committed suicide.

M: This is the sort of thing that you see on TV. It seems to me that what a lot these conspiracy theories are, not to dismiss you at all, is a parallel between TV and modern life. It seems like you're making something complex out of something fairly simple.

RL: The Borda case is similar to the Cobain situation. If suspicions were to be developed in any particular direction, because you say maybe it wasn't suicide, then you immediately have to start looking at entertainment executives. You can bet that the press isn't going to go after entertainment executives, because they're basically in control of the media.

M: Well yeah, that's the nature of their work.

RL: With this grand interlinking going between all of the successful media entities in this country it means that nobody really wants to cross anyone else. Sooner or later, you thought you worked at ABC News and you wake up one morning and you're working for Mickey Mouse. Seagrams owns 15% of Time-Warner and 85% of MCA, and, as I understand it, they're the second largest contributors to the Clinton campaign. As of last week they started advertising hard liquor on a single station in Corpus Christi, Texas, with the intention of advertising hard liquor in markets all over the country.

M: I saw those reports too... they're doing pretty badly in the distilled spirits market, and I was under the impression that they were just pushing buttons to see what would happen.

RL: Well, if they can advertise Dion Warwick and the Psychic Friends Network on broadcast television, why can't they advertise booze?

M: That's a pretty valid point...

RL: Well, the irony is that the head of Seagrams, Edgar Bronfman Jr. once wrote a song for Dion Warwick in his youth when he was dabbling with show business before he acquired MCA. So there is an interconnectedness which is very eerie once you start looking at it. And once you start talking about it, people wonder if you're not projecting... I mean, Edgar Bronfman writes a song for Dion Warwick, Dion Warwick is partying with O.J. a couple of weeks after he gets out... you start to develop this idea that there are all kind of people jerking around the American public because they happen to be a few thousand of the most powerful people in the media. And you start to wonder if you're living in a nation that's free of this media tyranny or whether in fact the nation is ultimately going to be put under the will of a few thousand, and maybe eventually a few hundred people, who hold power in the media.

M: That's a pretty dim view of humanity, though. You know, that people could actually act like that.

RL: I don't think everyone believes what they see on television...

M: But essentially what you're saying is these people are, essentially, evil.

RL: Well, the thing about being a rock star is that it sort of engenders that, I think. You know, you go out and play your drums or you bang your bass for an hour and a half in front of several hundred thousand crazy Brazilians, and they pay you like a hundred grand, you don't really relate to ordinary people the way you used to.

M: Sure, but how different really are rock stars? I mean, obviously I don't hang out with them, but there seems to be a basic, fundamental human nature to not screw people randomly.

RL: In the record industry? Everything I've heard about the record industry is completely the opposite. In fact, the record industry used to be an industry that had a fairly liberal element in it, but the last vestiges have been purged in the last few years. I man, they purged out the people at the top of Warner records to make room for Danny Goldberg. Who's Danny Goldberg? Nirvana's old manager...

M: Do you think that's just a coincidence?

RL: No, it wasn't a coincidence... but I also don't think it was a coincidence that Time-Warner wised up and bounced the guy out in less than a year. But how did Danny Goldberg become the chief most executive at the world's largest record company, having really never been a record company executive. He was Nirvana's talent manager... and what does a talent manager do? He takes care of the talent. So, by that definition doesn't that make Danny Goldberg the world's worst talent manager?

M: Well, he got them as far as he did...

RL: No, I don't think they got them anywhere at all... now, whether he got Kurt dead is another issue. Now I'm not saying he did it, but he sure as hell showed up right after the body turned up and had to whitewash the thing. He showed up in town lickedy-split and said, "I'm Kurt's lawyer. He killed himself. End of story." You've got to ask yourself what that was all about. And for that he's rewarded with the grandest job in the record industry? So when you talk about the possibility that people are deeply evil in the record industry, look at the Nirvana story.

M: Did you ever have the chance to meet Kurt when he was alive?

RL: No. I get asked that question all the time, with all due respect, it's a little bit tedious. I've met plenty of people who knew him and I have a pretty good feel for the guy's character at this point. Lest anyone think I'm doing this for money or want to get famous on the back of a dead rock star, if it was Eddie Vedder who turned up dead instead of Kurt, I don't think I would've spent more than a couple of weeks on it. But Kurt really was Captain America, you know? He really was great, and the idea that all of this happened to him: meaning the murder and the complicity of the local power structure here in Seattle... it really is the tale for our times. You want to believe that people aren't evil, but you look at the outline of this story and its not just Evil Courtney Love and her goofy makeup, foul language, and her propensity for violence. She's just a flashpoint. The real story is the infrastructure of evil all around the story.

M: So how come there hasn't been a Kurt Cobain made-for-TV movie yet? A Sid and Nancy for the 90's.

RL: Well, there was discussion early on about the networks doing that without using Nirvana music... but Nirvana music is all controlled by Nirvana Incorporated -- which is Courtney Love, basically. But, it's also Chris and Dave. And they aren't going to give it up for the NBC television network. They want a worldwide, Spielberg-type release on thousands of screens around the world all in one weekend, to make it the event of the generation, right? That's what they wanted to score right away -- if they could've gotten a movie made starring Brad Pitt and Keanu Reeves and Drew Barrymore, and believe me, that was the hubbub, that those three people were going to star. What is Keanu doing? He's in a band called Dogstar. Brad Pitt was in "Johnny Suede" where he plays this loser singer. And, Drew Barrymore, who has she been living with for the last few years? The Eric Erlinson guitar player in Hole, who was present when the bass player died. So if they'd succeeded in making that movie last year, they could've taken advantage of the worldwide interest in Kurt Cobain and made hundreds of millions of dollars immediately. Which, if you're looking for a motive for murder, scoring several hundred million dollars is a pretty powerful motive for people who are motivated, essentially, only by making money.

M: Why didn't it happen?

RL: Because of a little public access television program called "Kurt Cobain was Murdered."

M: That's impressive... you really think you have that much power?

RL: Well I certainly didn't when I was reporting on the Dali Lama or the Vietnam veterans. Nobody gave a shit... I didn't get one piece of fan mail when I was covering politics. This story, it's really not about me. It's the Truth. People understand that the truth is that he was murdered. And so, for a lot of people who would've killed to be in on a project like that who wouldn't even answer Courtney's telephone calls. So, hopefully, the grander ambition for playing out Kurt Cobain's icon image for all that Courtney, Chris, and Dave can get out of it... hopefully those plans have been shelved and they're just going to have to live with themselves as wannabe billionaires that got caught doing something they never even should've considered doing.

M: So what do you make of the 'suicide attempt' in Rome a few months previous to his death?

RL: Well, in Newsweek magazine his doctor said it wasn't suicide, that it was an accident. Accidental mixing of alcohol and a sedative. There have been all these reports that everyone takes as factual that there were 40 or 50 pills involved -- but those apparently come from Courtney Love or someone connected to Courtney Love, so... Probably Kurt had some champagne, had some prescription pill, if at all... you have to understand that coma is a relative term. In this country there are like 7 stages of coma: the lightest of which isn't a whole lot different from sleeping. So, if you take a couple of valiums and have a couple of beers, you're going to go into a stage one coma or whatever...or a stage seven coma, however it works. You're going to be really, really sleepy. But that doesn't mean you tried to kill yourself and it doesn't mean that you're dead. Anyway, take a look at Black Widow -- that movie with Debra Winger. So what does she do with the champagne? She takes a hypodermic needle and injects something through the cork and when Dennis Hopper drinks the champagne he dies flat out. Obviously if you want to drug someone into a state of unconsciousness, it's really easy to do.

M: So why wouldn't he take off after something like that?

RL: Well, since Kurt apparently did not drink alcohol, it's possible that waking up in a hospital didn't panic him too much because half a bottle of champagne obviously doesn't knock anyone out, but if in fact he was using sedatives at all, you could see how the combination of sedatives and alcohol did something to him that he did not expect. Which, in fact, may be what happened. In any case, he never said it was a suicide. No one ever said it was a suicide attempt prior to his death. If that was a suicide attempt, why is it that Courtney Love never told his friend that bought him the shotgun, "By the way, don't buy Kurt a shotgun, because he tried to kill himself in Rome three or four weeks ago. And, you know, buying him any fire arms would be a real mistake." Why did that never happen? Why did she never tell any member of his family so take precautions, etc... Why did that never happen? Because it wasn't the truth, I determined. His doctor said so.

M: So why didn't he answer those claims? He just didn't feel like it?

RL: As I recall, he called his publicist after he saw something in the tabloids implying it was a suicide attempt. And he was out of his mind with anger that his publicist had allowed a tabloid to print anything that implied it had to do with a suicide attempt. And it's very interesting... Neil Strauss wrote an article for Rolling Stone which was published a few weeks after his death that said that he was out of his mind with anger because his publicist allowing the tabloids to print something that implied suicide. And then when they did their big cover story 3 or 4 weeks later on Kurt Cobain, Neil Strauss reprocessed that quote so that he was just out of his mind. Neil Strauss is the author of "The Downward Spiral," the central most piece in the whole Kurt Cobain Killed Himself cannon. Neil Strauss told me on tape on April 10th that he had already heard all kinds of conspiracy theories from people who were close to Kurt -- including murder.

M: He also writes for the New York Times, that's how I'm familiar with him.

RL: So, what is this guy telling me that maybe it was murder on April 10th then a month later he's the author of the primary piece of Cobain's death and it's just a reiteration of what the police claimed. It has absolutely nothing to do with Neil Strauss doing any kind of inquiry or investigation as to what really went on. He just decided that he would take the Seattle Police Department's word for it. So call Neil Strauss and ask him what he thinks of that.

M: Yeah, I don't think he's taking my calls these days.

RL: I don't think he's taking mine, either. Neil Strauss told me, "it's gonna be another JFK thing." In other words, Neil Strauss knew all sorts of things on April 10th that by April 13th or 14th he completely forgot then moved out of town.

M: Where can people find out more about your work?

RL: Stay tuned to the net.