The morbid fascination with celebrity deaths seems never ending. This week it’s Kurt Cobain’s turn under the spotlight – one more time – as rumors that Seattle police are reopening the Nirvana frontman’s murder case started circulating online on Thursday. They’re not, for all you conspiracy theorists out there. They most definitely aren’t, as the Washington Post reports, but read on to find out how the whole thing started.

Nirvana
Two decades later, Cobain's death still holds a morbid fascination for some people.

It was a report from a local news channel in Seattle, KIRO 7 that first sparked the rumors. The news channel aired a report claiming that Seattle police were “reexamining the case.”

KIRO 7 then promoted the report on Twitter, not providing any details, but claiming simply that the case had been reopened. Later on, the managing editor of KIRO 7 said on Twitter that the detective on the case told KIRO he had reopened it.

Gawker and Fox News later picked it up, as did thousands of eager twitter users. However, the news turned out to be a hoax. The rumors were so prevalent that a police spokesperson stepped in to clear the air.

 “No, we have not reopened the Kurt Cobain case,” Detective Renee Witt, a police spokeswoman, told The Washington Post on Thursday afternoon. She explained that a cold case detective was going through the details of the Cobain files again because the 20th anniversary of Cobain’s death, which was ruled a suicide, is next month, Witt said. This detective found some old and undeveloped film, which provided better-quality photos of images already out there, Witt says. The department may publish the photos on its blog, but they are definitely not case-altering evidence.