On April 8th, 1994, an electrician arrived at a Seattle mansion to install a security system and found the body of the most famous musician on the planet. He'd been there for three days. Seattle Police ruled it suicide before the week was out. Thirty years later, a peer-reviewed forensic paper published in an international journal says they got it wrong.

So what does it mean when the official story has more holes in it than the investigation that produced it?

In this episode, Richard Baker and Dr. Nick Coatsworth go through what the evidence actually shows, what's been conveniently overlooked, and what the gap between those two things tells us.

• The toxicology report: heroin levels so extreme that forensic experts say he couldn't have physically pulled the trigger, and why that question was closed anyway
• The suicide note: what it actually says, the handwriting dispute, and the theory that the bottom half was written by someone else entirely
• Tom Grant, the private investigator she hired who became her most dogged accuser, and what he found that the police didn't look for
• The physical evidence: the wrong injection arm, the shotgun shell that landed in the wrong direction, and a scene that forensic specialists call suspiciously clean
• Whether this is a three-decade grief conspiracy built around a troubled man's tragic end, or the most under pursued murder case in music history

Some of this is documented. Some is genuinely unknown. And almost none of it is as settled as the people who closed the file want you to believe.

Join Rich Baker and Dr Nick Coatsworth as they suss it all out.

Contact the show at [email protected].

The Conspiracy Cabal doesn't promote conspiracy theories - we examine them. We search for the kernel of truth in every story, exploring how conspiracies start, why they persist, and what drives people to believe them.

Contact the show at [email protected]

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