Exclusive: Frances Bean Cobain cut off from most of her fathers family

Photo from Frances Bean Cobain’s 16th party found on her myspace, which has since been removed
Last week we ran a story about Frances Bean Cobain’s “suicide-themed” 16th birthday party. Frances is the daughter of Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain, the former lead singer of Nirvana who died in an apparent suicide in 1994. I was contacted by a woman who claims to be an online friend of Frances, but who hasn’t spoken to her in some time. She provided photos and enough background to make her story seem credible. She said she has another friend who knows Kurt Cobain’s family and that they’re very interested in the news about the “suicide” party, as this is the first they’ve heard about it. Family members were said to be looking for more evidence of the party, but the photo album has since been removed from the myspace where it was found. According to the source, Frances has been cut off from most of her father’s side of the family, including her 80 year-old great grandfather, Leland, for years.

Frances is barred from contacting most of Kurt’s family
Courtney Love lost custody of her then 11 year-old daughter Frances from late 2003 to February, 2005, when she was going through problems with drugs and the law. Frances was with Kurt’s mom, Wendy O’Connor, at that time. Courtney eventually regained custody of Frances after she went to rehab, but is said to have cut Frances off from her father’s side of the family except for Kurt’s mother and his sister. It’s unknown how long it’s been since Frances has seen them, though. The source said “After Courtney won custody back, she completely shut out the entire family from seeing Frances except for Kurt’s mother Wendy and his sister Kim. ”

The source explained how she met Frances online and how she came to know friends of the family. She said that Frances was just looking for people online to talk with and that “A lot of people thought it was someone pretending to be Frances, but when she started posting polaroids of herself and friends and then on Courtney’s page you see Courtney’s polaroids with her band members and you can see that it was really Frances.”

On Frances’ feelings about rumors that her father was murdered by her mother
The source went on to say that Frances is very troubled by suggestions that her mother may have had a hand in her late father’s death, and that she was particularly bothered by a photo Courtney shot with famed photo artist Dave LaChappelle that featured her holding a dying Kurt lookalike with a baby at her feet. The photo was published in September, 2006 on the cover of a coffee table book by LaChappelle, “Heaven to Hell.”

The source explained, “She used to get a lot of hateful IM’s and it really upset her when people would talk to her about her Mom possibly having to do with her Dad’s death. She never really said anything about how she felt about his death or about not seeing her family, but you could tell from the poems she wrote and some of the things she said that she definitely has an empty spot in her soul because of her Dad not being here.”

Frances’ online friend gave me a few of the old myspace and other community website addresses she used to use but said that she vanished around September, 2006, which coincidentally was right around the time that photo of Courtney with the dying Kurt lookalike was published. (This is a conclusion I jumped to, and was not suggested by the source.) There are still accounts on the websites she provided, but they’re private and apparently Frances hasn’t used them. Her friend says that Courtney routinely used to take away Frances’ online accounts, which doesn’t seem that odd considering that she was just 14 at the time.

Hopefully Frances is getting back on her feet now that a couple years have passed. Maybe the suicide-themed party was a way for her to close the book on the pain she was carrying over the loss of her father. She did put “RIP Childhood,” on the cake and perhaps she was trying to gain some ownership and control of her father’s death and its effect on her future. Her mother is not doing her any favors by continuing to cut her off from most of Kurt’s family and reminding her of his death like this.

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