Original subtitles

-Ah, Chris Cornell -He was a literal rock star.

He performed like a rock star.

He was a really electric performer.

I mean, I can't think of any other voice that's similar.

Obviously, very, very good looking, kind of a Jesus

walking on earth situation there.

One of the greatest singers of all time.

And on top of that,

an incredible artist and a humanitarian.

Was it clear that he'd struggled with depression

and emotional darkness? Absolutely.

Singer Chris Cornell has died at the age of 52.

A statement from his representative said

Cornell died in Detroit on Wednesday night.

I was like, "Oh, my God, I can't believe

Chris Cornell killed himself."

Cornell was in Detroit on tour

and the statement calls his death sudden and unexpected.

The final autopsy report

indicated that he did die from suicide by hanging.

However, there are still several questions

in this case that we have not answered.

It was very shocking to think that, you know,

someone who definitely seemed to be on a better uptick

with regards to his life would commit such an act.

My first instinct was, you know, disbelief.

I think when it comes to any rock star

who dies suddenly, there's this baked in unwillingness

to accept the official story.

There must be something at work here.

911 Emergency.

The official narrative doesn't tell the whole story.

But you really have to look at everything.

You still have to go down that rabbit hole.

You still have to go down that path.

When a celebrity dies, the search for answers moves online

and the truth may be one click away.

May 2017, Chris Cornell and Soundgarden

played to a packed house at Detroit's historic Fox Theatre.

It's great to be back here.

I love you guys up there on the top shelf,

but you got to stand up and show me something.

I have bragged about Detroit crowds for 30 years,

so stand up and make some noise.

2 hours later...

Detroit 911.

What is the address of the emergency?

1777 Third Street, the MGM Casino.

...Cornell is found hanging from the bathroom door

of his hotel room.

I have a non-responsive guest in a hotel.

It's gonna be a 50 year old male inside of Room 1136.

He's not breathing?

No.

Thank you very much, you guys.

Thank you.

In the mid-1980s, a new music genre emerges

from America's Pacific Northwest.

How ya doing, bro?

Fusing punk rock and heavy metal.

It is labeled grunge.

Early stars of the dark, nihilistic genre include

Alice in Chains, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam.

And in 1991, Chris Cornell and his band Soundgarden

released the double platinum album

"Bad Motor Finger"

and joins them as stars of radio and MTV.

He is arguably one of the most talented

rock and roll singers of our time.

In 1997, at the height of their success,

Soundgarden calls it quits.

It's the end of the band,

but for Cornell, it's a new beginning.

Unlike a bunch of other grunge acts,

Chris Cornell keeps his career

going through the '90s into the 2000s.

After Soundgarden breaks up, he forms Audioslave.

Has a bunch of huge hits with them

and sort of caps it all off in 2006,

when he recorded the theme song for the massively successful

James Bond film "Casino Royale".

By 2017, Cornell has reunited with his Soundgarden bandmates,

and they hit the road for an extensive US tour.

There's something really great about the... that first,

it's either half a song to, like, the first two songs,

however long it takes to kind of settle in.

That's, like, the biggest rush.

The news of Cornell's passing shocks

his fans, who are left trying to figure out

what could have led to the successful singer's death.

I was just like, "How could this be?"

He just did it all,

and so I think all of us were heartbroken.

And, you know, I think the world is feeling it right now,

and so...

Investigators immediately ruled Cornell's death a suicide.

And within 24 hours, the case is closed.

But family and friends aren't buying it.

And while the police are no longer

investigating the cause of death,

there are thousands of amateur sleuths

and armchair detectives online who never stopped.

I was heartbroken.

I really didn't like what was being reported.

I was mad.

It made me want to try to get to the bottom of it.

To date, there are thousands of posts picking apart

Chris Cornell's death,

and the belief that Cornell did not commit suicide

has taken hold across all pop culture.

Amateur investigators hit the metaverse

looking for answers.

I remember Chris Cornell's death

almost like it was yesterday.

He's in the background of every single happy memory of my youth.

I'm Deanna Thompson,

and I have been in information technology for over 20 years.

I have my Bachelor of Science degree

in information technology, and I'm also an Internet sleuth.

I spend time online trying to get

some sort of evidence and information about crimes

that have been committed on the Internet.

And usually, these are for people or animals

that normally would not be getting attention.

I have, like, this super hyper fixation on injustice.

I don't like when people get away with things.

The chatter online is that Chris didn't kill himself.

It made me want to try to get to the bottom of it.

Set the record straight.

Jennifer Bucholtz is an author and criminal investigator

living in Colorado.

My background is in Army counterintelligence.

I also have experience and training in forensic science

and criminal justice.

I teach courses in both of those at the university level.

I'm a true crime author and I am a criminal investigator

for my local sheriff's department.

As an investigator who has worked on many

different types of death cases,

this case really caught my eye

because it's not your typical suicide.

What happened in those minutes that made him flip the switch

and decide to hang himself?

I haven't been this pissed off about a fake suicide cover up

since... Kurt Cobain.

For more than ten years, investigative journalist

Justin Ling has been analyzing and debunking outlandish

conspiracy theories online.

He has made it his mission to separate fact from fiction

and find the truth.

One thing I think every good investigative journalist

wants to do is to dig into how systems can exploit

and even destroy people.

I love you guys up there on the top shelf,

but you got to stand up and show me something.

Cornell and Soundgarden played to 5,000 fans in Detroit.

They were performing at the Fox Theater.

The Fox Theater's like a really famous theater.

Got a lot of history with Motown.

It's really an iconic landmark in Detroit.

According to band insiders,

the night started like any other,

and that Chris was his normal, affable self before the show.

But when they hit the stage at 9:15 PM...

- Thank you. - ...something seems different.

That's the spirit.

Some fans who had seen him play repeatedly said it seemed

like he wasn't totally there.

He is not singing correctly.

He is missing key moments of songs.

- He's forgetting words. - The band had to cover up

when he just stopped singing.

The singer's erratic behavior doesn't go unnoticed on stage.

The band mates even kind of, like,

were looking at each other, like, "Should we stop?"

The band manages to finish the show,

and at 11:30, Cornell heads back to the hotel.

And not long after he gets on the phone with Vicki, his wife.

According to a later interview with her,

it is immediately apparent to Vicki

that something is not right with her husband.

He's groggy, he's slurring his words,

he's confused, and it sets off alarm bells.

And she says, "Chris, what's going on?

I'll fly out there.

I'll be there as soon as possible.

What's going on? Is everything okay?"

And he says, "I'm just tired.

I might have taken an extra Ativan or two."

There must have been something that Vicki knew

about Chris' history that did raise alarms with her

when she spoke with him that night.

After they hang up,

Vicki is unable to shake the feeling

that something is seriously wrong with Chris.

So she calls back at 12:15, but Chris doesn't answer.

So she calls Martin, his bodyguard, and says,

"You know, I'm a little worried about Chris.

Could you please go check on him?"

The door is locked and latched, meaning the key won't work.

And security is like, "Well, you know,

you're not on the room.

You're not... We can't let you in."

Martin relayed this information to Vicki,

and she asked him to just kick in the door.

He kicks down the door,

walks in to find the bathroom door closed.

He sees the door to the bathroom and the light's on.

He said he could see Chris' feet on the floor.

Cornell's sitting on the floor.

There's blood coming from Cornell's mouth

There's about a 12-by-three-inch,

like, strip of blood,

and then up the bathroom tub,

the bath, there's, like, spray of blood.

But perhaps most importantly, there is also

what seems to be a red band wrapped around Cornell's throat.

Is anyone doing CPR?

Okay, so they found out that the guest

was attempting to hang himself.

So they're trying to get him down

so they can assist with CPR.

At 12:56 in the morning, Dawn Jones,

a medic for the MGM Hotel, arrived to Chris' room.

Dawn and Martin both attempted

to remove the stretchy red band from Chris' neck,

and Dawn took over CPR from Martin.

But it's pretty clear he's long gone.

Paramedics arrived a little after 1:00 AM.

He's brought to hospital, but pronounced dead by 1:30.

Martin had actually told Vicki the paramedics

had declared her husband Chris dead.

Cornell's body is transferred

to the Wayne County medical examiner.

And as people's fascination with celebrities go,

news of the tragedy begins to leak online.

But it is what happens next that proves controversial

to many observers.

Less than 24 hours after Cornell is pronounced dead,

a preliminary autopsy is released.

The preliminary autopsy reports list the cause of death

as suicide by hanging.

The report quickly hits the Internet.

And for those still digesting the news,

the speed of the announcement is surprising.

For the medical examiner to come out

and make a public statement on the manner of death

less than 24 hours after somebody had passed away

is a little out of the ordinary.

There's no way that the police had completed

their full investigation into Chris' death.

Unhappy with the preliminary autopsy results,

Vicki Cornell disputes the finding through a statement

by her lawyer.

She has said, "While the coroner

does say this was a suicide, we disagree.

We think it's too soon to call this a suicide."

They were like, "Nothing's even been investigated yet.

What do you mean, it was a suicide?"

Like, that doesn't make sense.

You have to like... What was in his system?

What happened?

Vicki Cornell was especially disturbed by the inference

that Chris had knowingly

and intentionally taken his own life.

It just seemed such an odd time for him to go.

"Yeah, okay. I'm 52.

I've lived this long. I'm going to end it now."

We need to look deeper into those clues.

Just didn't make any sense.

There's blood at the scene, his shirt is ripped.

I want to get to the bottom of it

and I want to find out what really happened.

We have a rock star who's at the top of his game.

People like that don't just die unexpectedly.

Looking at the photos of the hotel room,

some people say the evidence is not consistent

with suicide by hanging.

They really believe that this was murder.

I have a non-responsive guest in the hotel.

It's going to be a 50 year old male inside of Room 1136.

He's not breathing?

Early morning, May 18th, 2017.

Just a couple of hours after performing a show

in Detroit with his band Soundgarden, rock star

Chris Cornell is found unresponsive

on the bathroom floor of his hotel room.

His death is ruled a suicide by hanging.

When Chris Cornell died, the death was suspicious

because that wasn't supposed to happen.

My name is Mike Rothschild.

I am a journalist and author who studies conspiracy theories,

hoaxes, and fringe beliefs.

We have a rock star who's at the top of his game.

People like that don't just die unexpectedly.

2 hours before he is pronounced dead,

Chris has a phone conversation with his wife, Vicki.

She reports that he was completely incoherent.

Vicki stated Chris was slurring his words

in their last phone call,

and then he sounded incredibly sleepy.

Her account and the actions

he had to go through to commit suicide don't match up.

Something here is off.

His name was popping up everywhere

on a whole bunch of conspiracy message boards

and social media pages and chat rooms.

QAnon had become absolutely fixated on Chris Cornell's death

and are convinced that it's evidence of some deeper plot.

They really believe that this was murder.

Looking at the photos of the hotel room,

some people say the evidence is not consistent

with suicide by hanging.

While you're sleuthing and you're watching videos

and you're watching conversations happen,

there's other sleuths out there who are looking at these photos

and looking for the same thing I am.

They're looking for inconsistencies in the room.

Was there a struggle?

On YouTube and TikTok,

the blood spatter that's going up the tub caused a huge ruckus.

The bathroom floor, the blood splatter from your head

is, like, not on the right spot of the floor where it should be.

They also point to autopsy evidence of what they believe

to be excessive injury to Chris' body.

In Cornell's autopsy, reveals that he has nine fractured ribs

and Cornell's shirt was ripped when he was found

They're posing the question of why would

someone have a ripped shirt

if they hanged themselves?

Which again, adds credence to this idea

that there was a fight or struggle just before his death.

If he's in a physical altercation with somebody

and the other person has some sort of weapon

and Chris took a blow to his chest,

that could very well have fractured some of his ribs.

Fans all over the world begin investigating the possibilities.

When it comes to any celebrity death,

there's always a fan base that sort of deputize themselves

to dig into the death and see if there's other things at play.

What's really interesting about Chris Cornell's death

is that it's not his fans, for the most part,

who have been trying to uncover these secrets.

It's been this broader conspiracy movement

that's latched onto his death to help propel their own theories.

In this case, it's a movement called QAnon,

an online conspiracy group

that peddles many outrageous theories,

like there's an elite ring of celebrities and politicians

who are trafficking children.

This movement is rooted in a 2016 thread

on 4Chan dubbed Pizzagate.

Pizzagate is a conspiracy theory that arose right before

the 2016 election,

that Clinton campaign chair John Podesta,

Hillary Clinton, and other DC elites

were using Comet Ping Pong Pizza,

a real pizza place in DC,

as their hub of child trafficking.

This idea absolutely takes hold of a bunch of people

who become absolutely convinced

that there are two camps of people...

The evil child sex trafficking Satanists

and those who are trying to stop them.

On the good side is Donald Trump and people around him.

On the bad side is Hillary Clinton

and a whole raft of celebrities, from Tom Hanks

to Jeffrey Epstein.

And with Chris Cornell's situation,

members of the conspiracy theory movement

are proposing one particularly dark idea

that begins to spread online in Reddit forums.

This theory goes that Cornell was murdered

because he was on the verge of exposing

a massive child sex trafficking ring.

And Cornell's death also ignites a whole new conspiracy

within the group's faithful followers.

While they're pretty sure most celebrities

are part of the conspiracy, something really interesting

happens after Chris Cornell's death.

They become absolutely fixated on the idea

that Cornell was part of a project

to expose this child sex trafficking ring

and bring all these Satanists to justice.

In the darker corners of the Web,

Chris Cornell's death was not a suicide, but a murder.

He was suicided.

He was taken out and made it look like a suicide.

QAnon believers and other conspiracy believers

think that Chris Cornell was taken out

because of his funding or his involvement

with a documentary on human trafficking called

"The Silent Children".

This theory also links Cornell's death

to that of other celebrities.

This one blog is probably the most popular QAnon blog

out there that has dubbed the whole thing Suicide Weekend.

So apparently, because the deaths of Anthony Bourdain,

Kate Spade, Chris Cornell,

Chester Bennington all kind of happened in the same time,

usually around weekends,

they've decided it's impossible that it's a coincidence.

People start looking for a pattern.

They start to look for culprits

who are taking out multiple people,

than multiple people taking their own lives

who really don't have anything to do with each other

other than their manner of death.

Must be part of this evil plot from the Illuminati Deep State.

They even have a clock here

that's like a calendar of all these dates.

Apparently proves that this is just an effort

to take out their critics.

This idea that both Chester Bennington and Chris Cornell

were killed by the Deep State elites

becomes incredibly popular in some of these circles.

We're talking about posts that are regularly racking up tens,

hundreds of thousands of views, maybe into the millions.

Every QAnon adjacent sect believes this to be true.

Chris Cornell was an extremely well-known figure.

He was a famous musician.

He was a literal rock star, very well-known person,

very well known music,

and so the feeling among conspiracy believers

is if he's involved in something and they kill him off,

this is going to scare other people away.

This is a message from the from the deep state, from the Cabal.

"Don't be involved in this.

If we could get a rock star, we can get you, too."

Two years later, a high profile arrest reconnects Cornell

to this supposed cabal of Deep State pedophiles.

When Epstein was arrested,

the volume of theories about him

and about what he had done became deafening.

And there were people who thought that he was

implicated himself in these crimes.

There were people who thought he was there

and gave the orders or directly killed Chris Cornell.

Jeffrey Epstein's infamy as a sexual deviant,

as a powerful individual with lots

and lots of powerful friends,

has played into this narrative really well

because it's as though if you're looking for a villain,

you couldn't create a better one than Jeffrey Epstein.

While proponents of this farfetched theory

maintain that Chris Cornell had enemies who wanted him dead,

there seems to be no physical proof.

Another possible explanation for his sudden death emerges,

and the clues can be found in Cornell's

own bizarre behavior the night of May 17th, 2017.

There are photos and videos of him

performing on stage that night,

and some of those show the back of his head,

where there appears to be an anomaly.

I did read some information that Chris Cornell

had hit his head at the Fox Theater.

I don't know why this supposed head injury

was not mentioned in the autopsy report.

Hi, sweetheart.

I bore her with this at home.

In my experience as an investigator,

photos are always incredibly valuable to me.

And the photos of Chris' hotel room

were of great interest.

There were a couple of photos from the bathroom

where Chris' body was found.

Laying on the floor with some kind of stretchy red band

around his neck, which helped me understand

how much blood Chris actually lost.

To many online, the volume of blood found in the bathroom

appears inconsistent with hanging.

Another theory begins circulating on the Internet.

Cornell may have suffered head trauma earlier in the day.

This theory takes hold amongst many online detectives,

and it revolves around his reportedly bizarre behavior

earlier that evening.

Behavior that seemed to change suddenly,

just before he hit the stage at 9:15.

Several of the stagehands, and not just one,

talked about it.

That he was not doing well at that show.

During sound check, he was fine.

So something happened from soundcheck

to when the show started that things changed.

So what changed?

Well, some think that the answer

lies in footage of Cornell's performance earlier that night.

There are photos and videos of him

performing on stage that night with his band,

and some of those show the back of his head

where there appears to be an anomaly.

This video sends Internet sleuths

and armchair detectives online

to begin trying to piece together

what exactly could have happened the night Chris Cornell died.

And one thing in particular stands out.

I found a topic that a lot of people

have been talking about online,

and that's the theory, that he may have suffered

a head injury the night of his death.

But the fact that none of this was noted or documented

must provoke us to question.

I did read some information that Chris Cornell

had hit his head at the Fox Theater.

But it's something much more definitive than an unclear video

recording that points to head trauma

as a possible factor in the singer's death.

I found a report from one of the paramedics

that responded to his hotel room

saying they called it in over the radio,

that he had a head injury.

P order, EMS's are roughly... Possible head injury.

- Trauma to the back of the head. - You guys hear it.

This was mentioned to the EMT

that there was trauma to the back of the head.

Yet on the autopsy report,

none of this was reported in the initial findings.

Chris' wife, Vicki, added some fuel to this theory

because she actually said she felt it was very clear

that there was a sizable gash on the back of his head.

Despite appearing in the paramedics report,

there is no mention of head trauma in the official autopsy.

I don't know why this supposed head injury

was not mentioned in the autopsy report.

And the room where Chris' body was later found

also supports the possibility of head trauma.

We know it's a fact that some blood

was found on the bathroom floor of Chris' bathroom

where he was found hanging.

This does lend to the theory of a head injury.

One theory holds that Cornell could have fallen

sometime prior to the concert and suffered a concussion.

That sort of injury might explain

his widely reported strange behavior on stage that night

and possibly what happens after the show.

And then because his brain was not functioning correctly

and he had suffered a concussion

and basically a traumatic brain injury,

did that somehow lead him to commit suicide?

In fact, according to researchers,

the risk of suicidal thoughts

tripled after sustaining a traumatic brain injury.

The only way to know for sure if a head injury did in fact exist

would be to exhume the body,

an idea rejected by the Cornell family.

Still, the debate over the Soundgarden singer's death

continues to rage, and some sleuths believe

they may finally have enough information

to answer some of the most burning questions.

My goal in this was trying to figure out

did Ativan contribute to Chris Cornell's death?

And I took it really personally because I'm an Ativan user.

Vicki said he was overusing the drug.

She said he was taking upwards of 20 pills

over the course of about a week and a half.

Vicki stated that he had changed.

He started forgetting things.

He was a different person,

and that was the year before he died.

When somebody has a substance use disorder

and they are misusing substances,

that places them at higher risk

for having suicidal behavior.

In 2017, rock icon Chris Cornell

is found dead and bloodied

in his Detroit hotel room after a sold out concert.

Within 24 hours,

the local coroner declares his death a suicide.

But his family, friends, and diehard fans don't buy it.

In fact, they are 100% certain

that Cornell would never have committed suicide.

Whenever there's a suicide, we're left with wondering

whether there was any foul play involved.

As rumors swirl and theories begin to formulate,

there is one possible explanation

that seems to gain steam online and in the tabloids.

It's being driven by Chris' struggles

with addiction and depression.

Struggles that had plagued him

for the better part of three decades

and began before he was ever in a band.

I was having a pretty hard time struggling with substance abuse

and an addiction that I didn't think was ever going

to really affect me.

I didn't think I would ever be someone that had that problem,

and then I did.

Chris Cornell admitted to using some pretty heavy duty drugs.

He said he was using PCP as young as 13 or 14.

As a result of his drug use, Chris spirals into depression.

He drops out of school and almost never leaves his house.

Chris talked about his depression often.

It was such a part of who he was.

He basically stayed in his bedroom for almost two years.

So from 14 to 16 at a really, really important age

for young men, he was agoraphobic,

and I think that that really shaped his mind.

Cornell turns to music to help him fit in.

Music was always something

that was really important to him.

It seemed to be what brought him together with other people.

The results are astounding.

And in 1984,

Cornell becomes the frontman of the band Soundgarden.

Dubbed by one music journalist as music's most lethal genre,

the grunge music scene is a dangerous place

for anyone with a history of depression or addiction,

and has lost many iconic stars to drugs,

including Alice in Chains' Layne Staley

and Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland.

And in 1990, Chris is personally touched by the dangers of heroin

when he loses his roommate and close friend,

grunge pioneer Andrew Wood, to an overdose.

If he had survived, he would have been

probably the biggest rock star on this planet.

His band, Mother Love Bone,

was actually the precursor to Pearl Jam.

Chris was devastated.

12 years after his friend's death,

Chris' own struggle with addiction

is reaching a breaking point.

And in 2002, his bandmates in the newly formed group

Audioslave become so concerned for Chris' well-being

that they convince him to finally enter rehab.

After successfully completing his rehab,

Cornell remained sober for 14 years.

So now I get to be that person that someone else can look at

as an example and go, "Oh, yeah, wow.

Well, if he did it and made it happen,

then I guess I can."

By the mid 2000s, Chris Cornell

had basically kicked drugs and alcohol.

He even stopped smoking and was living a sober lifestyle

and said he was really happy with it.

Speculation spreads online that Cornell had a relapse,

and the same illegal drugs he spent the last 14 years

trying to avoid seeped back into his life

and may have ended it.

According to the initial report,

there were no illegal drugs found in Cornell's system,

a fact that causes many to exhale.

I was expecting to read the articles

and see, you know, drug paraphernalia were found,

was found in the room, and, you know, there...

It was probably an accidental overdose.

There was nothing like that.

But the report did find evidence

of other drugs in his system,

legal ones, including barbiturates,

caffeine, and Lorazepam,

also known as Ativan, a common anti-anxiety drug.

Indeed, on the night he dies,

Cornell tells his wife that he has taken extra Ativan.

Lorazepam is a type of medication

in the benzodiazepine family.

This family is a family of medications

that were known as sedative, hypnotic medications.

They are used to help people sleep or treat their anxiety.

Used properly, Ativan is not considered to be dangerous.

But according to his own wife,

Cornell's usage went well beyond doctor's orders.

Vicki said he was overusing the drug.

She said he was taking upwards of 20 pills

over the course of about a week and a half.

Vicki stated that he had changed.

He started forgetting things.

He was a different person.

And that was the year before he died.

Shortly after his death, Cornell's wife,

Vicki, issues a statement,

insisting that Chris could not have been in his right mind

and suggests that it was Ativan

that led the singer to hang himself.

My goal in this was trying to figure out,

did Ativan contribute to Chris Cornell's death?

And I took it really personally because I'm an Ativan user.

So I simply searched for benzodiazepine,

suicidal thoughts Reddit

because Reddit will have a lot of personal stories,

and I found a thread immediately.

It talks about people experiencing suicidal thoughts

while they have been on benzos.

Is it possible the extra Ativan pushed him over the edge?

I think that Ativan might have triggered

some addict's chemical in his brain.

Chris Cornell's wife reported that he was slurring his speech.

In general, that can be a side effect of taking too much Ativan

and taking too much of them can have side effects.

These side effects can include being disinhibited,

losing kind of the executive function of your brain,

maybe causing you to make decisions

that are not well thought out.

Martin clearly stated that he gave Chris

the two nightly Ativan pills, but we don't know

where the additional Ativan pills were kept.

Often when individuals are struggling

with suicidal thoughts, when they become disinhibited,

when they have substances in their system,

they may be grappling

and fighting between themselves of doing it and not doing it.

This may increase the likelihood that they actually carry it out

or take actions and make an attempt.

But as people begin to dig into Ativan,

they find many people are struggling

with the prescription drug in the same way

Cornell may have.

I found story after story after story of people

that are asking questions like, "I want to get off my Ativan

and I'm struggling with suicidal thoughts."

Vicki Cornell and her family

also began researching the prescription drug.

They found when you either overdose Ativan

or when you withdrawal from it, it can cause suicidal thoughts.

After learning more about the drug's possible connection

to suicide,

Vicki Cornell hires a medical expert

to see if she can prove

that drugs did indeed play a part in her husband's death.

She alleges that Ativan had something to do

with the state of mind, to put him in the frame of mind

that he would want to commit suicide.

Over time, individuals can develop tolerance,

meaning that they have to take greater quantities

of the medication to get the effect.

And when they stop the medication,

they can actually feel withdrawal symptoms.

That can be life threatening.

After doing his own investigation,

Dr. Richard Cote of the Department of Pathology

at the University of Miami

comes to a very different conclusion

than the Wayne County coroner.

He issues a statement saying...

In November 2018, Vicki Cornell sues Dr. Robert Koblin,

claiming he negligently and repeatedly prescribed

Cornell dangerous, mind altering controlled substances,

which ultimately led to the singer's death.

Details of the settlement are not released.

But many believe it is further proof that drugs led

Chris to commit suicide.

Oftentimes, when people actually

go through the act of suicide,

substances may be involved,

and maybe those substances are things that are pushing them

a little bit further towards that action

and then they actually end up

killing themselves or attempting.

Without that Ativan, I 100% believe

Chris Cornell would be alive today.

The problem with suicide is it never makes sense, right?

But when you're predisposed to addiction and depression

and then you add on top of that the Ativan

with the underlying thoughts

that maybe you wouldn't have normally,

it makes sense for me that Chris Cornell killed himself.

The drugs may have actually impaired his judgment

and led him to do something

that he would not have otherwise done,

which makes it all the more tragic.

To many fans, celebrities are not just performers.

They become part of our lives.

And the speculation over Chris Cornell's death

stems from a common feeling among family,

friends, and fans alike.

They are in disbelief that the famous rock star

would have committed suicide.

We don't want to believe that Chris Cornell took his own life.

We want to believe that a powerful force took him from us.

Online chat rooms are abuzz with details from the scene

that seem to suggest foul play.

If he's in a physical altercation with somebody,

he could suffer broken ribs.

In reading Chris' autopsy report,

I discovered that he suffered from nine fractured ribs.

This could lend to the theory of homicide.

But deeper research reveals flaws in this theory.

There are several factors that lead me away from believing

that this was a homicide.

There is no sign of a struggle in the room.

There is no murder weapon.

There is no sign of anybody else being in that bathroom

or hotel room with him.

There is a logical explanation for Chris' fractured ribs.

The autopsy report did find

that nine of Chris Cornell's ribs were broken,

but that's not super abnormal.

The average number of ribs that get cracked

when performing CPR is around eight.

So that's totally in line with the norm.

But the sheer amount of blood in the bathroom

still feels suspicious to online detectives.

While EMTs were trying to save Chris Cornell's life,

it's extremely likely that they spread

some of that blood around the bathroom.

It's entirely possible that some of that blood

came from Chris Cornell's neck

or that he spit some of it out while he was hanging.

There are also other problems with the murder theory,

namely the lack of proof that there was anyone else

in the room with Chris that night.

Let's start with the scene itself.

Both the door to the hotel room

and the door to the bathroom were locked.

If you could explain to me how someone can get

into that bathroom, kill him, close the door,

latch it from the inside, close the hotel door,

latch that from the inside and leave

without anyone seeing them, I invite you to give me a call.

So unless the killer turned into mist

and left through under the door, Chris Cornell was not murdered.

And as for the supposed QAnon driven motive for murder,

it simply doesn't add up.

This idea that Chris Cornell was about to blow the lid

off this international child sex trafficking ring,

there's nothing to it.

This documentary that he was supposedly involved with,

"The Silent Children", he wasn't involved with it.

He didn't finance it.

The documentary was real,

but they shut down months before Chris Cornell died.

But of course, evidence never gets in the way of a good QAnon

conspiracy theory.

QAnon doesn't need facts or evidence or data.

All they have to do is believe strongly enough

and something becomes true.

That leaves the theory that some sort of head trauma

addled Cornell that evening

and he wasn't in his right mind leading up to his death.

It's worth noting that Chris just kind of

like wandered off stage and, like, was stumbling around.

And, I mean, it was clearly very obvious to the people

in his life that something was wrong.

Upon scrutiny, video of Chris' performance the night

he died appears to show a gash on the back of his head.

But despite what people believe they see in the video,

there is little physical evidence

to support the possibility of head trauma.

Head injuries bleed profusely.

So if he did have a sizable gash up on stage,

people definitely would have noticed blood.

The Detroit Free Press, who was there to watch the show,

mentioned nothing about blood dripping down

Chris Cornell's face.

This is just some made up conspiracy theory

on 4Chan, where, you know, they all come from.

And even Chris' wife, Vicki,

who first noted the possible gash,

very quickly offered a more plausible explanation

for the glistening spots seen in the video.

The 52-year-old rock star had the beginnings of a bald spot.

We may never know for sure how Chris Cornell

ended up on the bathroom floor

of a Detroit hotel room in May 2017.

But the answer likely lies in the two things

that had plagued him for most of his life.

The problem with suicide is it never makes sense, right?

But when you're predisposed to addiction and depression,

and then you add on top of that the Ativan

with the underlying thoughts

that maybe you wouldn't have normally,

it makes sense for me that Chris Cornell killed himself.

The drugs may have actually impaired his judgment

and led him to do something

that he would not have otherwise done,

which makes it all the more tragic.

It's a tragedy. Mental illness and personal trauma

and strife strikes anybody from,

you know, the wealthiest and best looking people to,

you know, the most vulnerable among us.

So to assume that someone who had a, quote, unquote,

good life on the surface

didn't have those struggles is again,

just hugely oversimplifying.

What doesn't make sense to me

is that people who have listened to anything Chris Cornell

has ever written believe that he didn't kill himself.

Chris Cornell's lyrics were often very somber,

not apocalyptic by any stretch of the imagination,

but they tended to lean pretty dark and deep.

And for a lot of people, it resonated with us.

You know, it's, "Wow, there's somebody out there

that feels the same way I do.

I felt like he understood me, right?

And if somebody like that can kill themselves, can I?

It's something about questioning your own mortality,

and it's so unbelievable.

And you're a little bit in denial

and you just want to make sense of it all.

- He was a person. - He was a human being.

He was a father.

He was a brother.

He was someone who struggled in his life,

someone who found incredible success in his life.

He was someone who lived many lifetimes at once,

and he was a complex person with many layers.

And I think that reducing the tragedy of his death

to Pizzagate

or suing his doctor or blaming his wife

or whatever conspiracy rabbit hole people want to go down to,

does an incredible disservice

to the person who gave us so much of himself.

Years after his tragic death,

Chris' wife Vicki still struggles to find answers,

saying in a recent interview...

Thank you.

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