Kurt Cobain is legally recognized to have committed suicide. However, several theories have surfaced suggesting that the frontman of Nirvana was murdered. The main proponent of the existence of a conspiracy surrounding Cobain's death is Tom Grant, the private investigator employed by Love after Cobain's disappearance from rehab. Grant was still under Love's employ when Cobain's body was found. Grant believes that Cobain's death was a homicide. This section covers the main points in Grant's theory, as well as the rebuttals to those points by various sources: * The heroin level in Cobain's body at the time of his death Grant cites a figure published in an April 14, 1994, article by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, purportedly from the official toxicology report, which claimed, "the level of heroin in Cobain's bloodstream was 1.52 milligrams per liter."[25] Grant argues that Cobain could not have injected himself with such a dose and still have been able to pull the trigger.[26] However, several different studies on heroin use have noted the difficulty in pinpointing the level of heroin that an addict can tolerate. In a 2004 story, Dateline NBC questioned five medical examiners about the figure from the toxicology report. Two of them noted the possibility that Cobain could have built up enough of a tolerance through repeated usage to have been able to pull the trigger himself, while the three others held that the information was inconclusive.[27] Grant does not believe that Cobain was killed by the heroin dose. He suggests that the heroin was used to incapacitate Cobain before the final shotgun blast was administered by the perpetrator.[28] * The suicide note While working for Love, Grant was given access to Cobain's suicide note, and used her fax machine to make a photocopy, which has since been widely distributed. After studying the note, Grant believes that it was actually a letter written by Cobain announcing his intent to leave Courtney Love, Seattle, and the music business. Grant believes that the few lines at the very bottom of the note, separate from the rest of it, are the only parts that sound like a suicide note. He believes that those lines are written in a style that varies from the rest of the letter, suggesting that they were written by someone other than Cobain. While the official report on Cobain's death concluded that Cobain wrote the note, Grant claims that the official report does not distinguish the questionable lines from the rest of the note, and simply draws the conclusion across the entire note. Grant claims to have consulted with handwriting experts who support his assertion. Other experts disagree, however. When Dateline NBC sent a copy of the note to four different handwriting experts, one concluded that the entire note was in Cobain's hand, while the other three said the sample was inconclusive.[27] One expert contacted by the television series Unsolved Mysteries noted the difficulty in drawing a conclusion, given that the note being studied was a photocopy, not the original.[29] * The length of the shotgun Grant suggests that if the shotgun that Cobain used was positioned to match the findings of the autopsy report, his arm would have been too short for him to reach the trigger. Grant claims that Cobain would have had to fire the weapon with his toe, yet he was found with both shoes still in place. * The police report Grant also cites circumstantial evidence from the official report. For example, the report claimed that the doors of the greenhouse could not have been locked from the outside, meaning that Cobain would have had to have locked them himself. Grant claims that when he saw the doors for himself, he found that the doors could be locked and pulled shut. Grant also questions the lack of fingerprint evidence connecting Cobain to the key evidence, including the shotgun. Several experts have noted that it is not unheard of for fingerprints to be absent from the weapon used in a suicide. However, Grant notes that the official report claims that Cobain's fingerprints were also absent from the suicide note and the pen that had been poked through it, and yet Cobain was found without gloves on his hands. None of the circumstantial evidence directly points to murder, but Grant believes it supports the larger case.[30] * The Rome incident After Cobain's death, Love insisted that Cobain's overdose in Rome was a suicide attempt.[31] Grant believes that such an assertion was not made until after Cobain's death, and that people close to Cobain, including Nirvana's management Gold Mountain, specifically denied the characterization prior to Cobain's death. Grant believes that if Rome had truly been a suicide attempt, Cobain's friends and family would have been told so that they could have watched out for him. Others have asserted that the claims by Gold Mountain and others were simply efforts to mask what was happening behind the scenes. 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."[32] * Rosemary Carroll Grant claims to have spoken to Cobain's attorney, Rosemary Carroll, at her office on April 13, 1994. He says that she pressed him to investigate Cobain's death, and claimed that Cobain was not suicidal. She also told Grant that Cobain had asked her to draw up a will excluding Love because he was planning to file for divorce. Grant claims that this was the motive for Cobain's death.[33] Carroll has not commented publicly on the matter.