COURTNEY LOVE ASSAULTS TWO CONCERTGOERS WHO CALL HER "MURDERER" BOSTON, MA--On May 22, 1999, during the "Q101 Jamboree" at the New World Music Theatre in Tenley Park, Illinois--in a story that has gone completely unreported by the press--Courtney Love assaulted two young women who accused her of being a murderer. The sisters, Eve and Camille Besser of suburban Chicago, may be filing a lawsuit against Love. When Love and her band Hole walked out onstage, the young women, wearing Kurt Cobain t-shirts and holding homemade signs, used the opportunity to protest the murder of Kurt Cobain, calling Love a "murderer" and "killer." Within minutes, Courtney Love attacked the pair in front of the Jamboree audience, repeatedly punching both and leaving Eve Besser with a severe black eye. However, Courtney Love's best performance that night was reserved for a private audience of one. After Hole ended their set, Love invited Camille Besser to the band's private dressing room, where, for over ninety minutes, she "talked" to the young woman she had just assaulted. For the first time, Camille Besser discusses in detail their conversation and what occurred the night of May 22nd (with Eve Besser making additional comments). _______________________________________________________________ Matthew Richer: What happened when Hole came out onstage? Did Courtney Love see your signs? Camille Besser: Well, Eve and I were in the fifth row, holding our signs up high, just as Hole was coming out onstage. But then some security guard, a funny looking woman with lots of makeup, cleared through the audience and started yelling, "What do those signs say? I can't read those signs." And then she came over and confiscated the signs. What did the signs say? What did they look like? Eve Besser: They were big white cardboard signs. Camille wrote "You Killed Kurt" in fluorescent yellow and I wrote "Die You Killer Bitch." They were big signs. It wasn't that hard to see them, even from far away. MR: Did security give a reason for taking the signs? EB: Not really. She said that signs weren't allowed. But other people had signs and she didn't take any of theirs. What happened next? CB: Well, Courtney dedicated some song to Kurt Cobain, then complained that "Kurt had to go and kill himself." That got both of us really mad. And then Courtney started pulling people up on stage. EB: Yeah, Courtney yelled, "Everybody come down to the stage. Don't worry, the guards will let you." She was really trying to get a rise out of the crowd. And then Courtney said to all the girls, "Show me your tits! Flash me! Then I'll let you come up on stage." Lots of girls started doing it and they got up on stage. And when did Courtney Love approach you? CB: Well, during the next song she moved over toward our part of the stage, so Eve and I rushed forward. She sat down on the front of the stage and started singing. Did she pull you up onstage? CB: No, I just jumped right up there. I stood right beside her and started yelling, "You killed Kurt!" "You killed Kurt!" right into the microphone. How many times did you say that? CB: Maybe fifteen to twenty. And then she put her hand on my cheek and gave me this look like 'Oh, you poor baby,' so I pushed her hand away and said, "Don't you touch me." And then she started touching my shirt, trying to touch the picture of Kurt on my shirt, still with the same expression on her face. It was all so fake. And then what happened? CB: I pushed her hand away again and then she hauled off and slapped me hard with her left hand. Whack! Just like that. It really hurt. Right then the security guards ran over and grabbed me, but Courtney kept swinging, with closed fists this time. But security dragged me away before she could land another one. Eve, you weren't so lucky. Can you tell me what happened to you? EB: Well, when Camille was yelling "You killed Kurt" I just stood there right in front of Courtney and said nothing because I wanted Courtney and the audience to hear Camille. And then all of a sudden she smacked Camille and started swinging at her like wild. So then I yelled out, "You killed him" and right away Courtney turned and wacked me with her right hand. I think she was still holding the microphone when she hit me because it hurt way more than a punch should. I mean, I really felt it. And then she slapped me hard with her left hand and then security came and took me away before I even had time to react. What did Security say to you? CB: We went to the security office and filled out incident reports. The security office circled "offender" on the report, rather than "victim." They claimed we hit Courtney first, but that's a total lie. Every time Courtney kept trying to touch me, I pushed her hand away, hard. But I never hit her. She was the one who started the whole thing. EB: Yeah, they just refused to listen to either of us, even though my left eye was all red and swollen. It started turning green after a few minutes. We told the Tenley Park Police too. They were right there backstage, but they wouldn't take us seriously. And you should have seen how bad my eye was. It was two weeks before the swelling went down and the coloring came back. I have pictures. Camille, how did you end up meeting Courtney Love? CB: Well, we were still backstage dealing with security when Hole finished playing their set. Right after they got off stage the theater manager walked up to me and told me that Courtney wanted to talk to me. She took me to her dressing room and then I heard Courtney saying, "Hey, where's that girl?" while she walked down the hall. What happened next? CB: Well, Courtney took me into her dressing room and she asked her band to leave saying, "Can you guys get outta here. I have to talk to this girl who thinks I murdered my husband." They all laughed and walked out of the room. What was Courtney Love's mood? How did she behave? CB: Courtney was acting all sweet and polite, saying, "Do you want anything to eat? Do you want anything to drink? Do you want a cigarette?" You would never have known she had just hit me and my sister. And then she started smoking cigarettes. She was chain-smoking the whole time she was talking to me. Did she tell you why she invited you to her dressing room? CB: Yup. She looked me right in the eye and said, "I want you to tell me why you think I did it." Why do you think Courtney Love cared about your opinion? CB: Well, right before she asked that question, Courtney was sort of shaking her head and saying, "I never do this. I never, ever do this. But usually it's the guys who accuse me of all that stuff and you are a girl. And I like girls. Girls are special." Did you tell her why you believe she had Kurt murdered? CB: Yeah, I started to list all of the reasons Tom Grant gave to show that Kurt was murdered. No fingerprints on the gun. The forged note. The stool against the door. And then Courtney said, "Oh, yeah. I remember that stool. It had something written on it. We picked it up at a pawn shop." And then she said, "Oh, I don't even want to hear about the 'he had too much heroin in his system to pull the trigger' line." And then she said that Tom Grant was "full of crap." And I said, "Well, you hired him." And she said, "Yeah, I know. But he's full of shit." And then she started complaining about him, saying, "I told Tom to check the greenhouse." Courtney talked about how gruesome the crime scene was and then started to get all choked up. She said "there was blood all over the floor" and it was "so hard to look at." But it was all so phony. [It is also a lie. Witnesses to the crime scene have repeatedly drawn attention to the fact that there was only a small pool of blood by Cobain's left ear, and that his face and head were completely intact. Ed.] And then Courtney asked me if I had seen Andrew Amirault's site. And I said yeah, I email him sometimes too. He's a really cool guy. And then she started making all these disparaging remarks about him, but none of it really had anything to do with whether or not she killed Kurt. Then suddenly Courtney stopped and said, "You know, there's only one mystery in this whole thing?" And I said, "What?" "Where was he for those two days before he died?" "I don't know," I said. "Where was he?" "I DON'T KNOW!" she screamed. "I don't know where the f*** he was." Did you ask her anything else? CB: No. She just started volunteering information. It was unbelievable. She said, "Dylan Carlson was with him when he died." So then I said, "I thought you didn't know where he was during the two days before he died." And then she stopped and started stammering and said, "Uh, I mean, uh, not the day he died, but the days before." And then she started getting all flustered. She had totally contradicted herself. Did she share any more details about Kurt's death? CB: Not right then. She changed the subject and said, "You know what I miss most about Kurt? He was a really good f***." I was horrified, but she just kept on going saying, "He was hung like a horse" and "He used to toss me around the room." It was disgusting. What did you say to her? CB: Well, I asked Courtney how her daughter Frances was doing. She seemed relieved to switch topics and really liked talking about her daughter. Courtney told me that Frances was in the first grade and said, "Sometimes I invite all the school parents over to her house so they can see that her mommy is not some monster." She went on and on about how much she looked like her father. But she said she was worried about Frances' health, that she might have inherited her husband's stomach ailment. I interrupted and said that Kurt loved Frances. But Courtney cut me right off. "He didn't love her," she said. "He never loved her. If he loved her, he would have stayed." And then Courtney admitted doing heroin when she was pregnant. She said, "When you're doing stuff like that and you have a baby in your stomach you start to feel guilty." She said she was the one who wanted to stop using heroin, but Kurt didn't. She blamed all her heroin use on him. Courtney also said that Frances will be worth $50 million by the time she's 21 years old. She said, "That's too much money for a little girl. I'm only managing it for her. But some people are already trying to marry her off." Did she say anything else about Cobain's death? CB: Yeah, Courtney started talking about how she planted a story in the media a few days before Kurt's death. She said, "I gave the papers this story about me overdosing on heroin, so that Kurt would try to get in touch with me." Courtney was saying that if Kurt believed she was in trouble, he wouldn't do anything to himself because he would want to help her. And then she finally ended the conversation, saying, "Well, I have to get back to my band." So I just said, "Well, I'll pray for Frances." "Thanks," she said with a smile. "Now I have to give you a hug." Then she gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. And then I said, "I'll pray for you too, so that you finally get the courage to tell the truth someday." She laughed at that and said, "Well, you'll believe what you want to believe." And then I opened the door and walked out. What left the greatest impression about your conversation with Courtney Love? What were you thinking as you walked out of the room? CB: I kept thinking how weird it was that she hugged me and gave me a kiss. I mean, I just told her I thought she murdered her husband, you know. That was just really weird. But most of all, was the fact that Courtney Love never once denied it. She never even came close. I mean, I was in there talking to her for more than 90 minutes. That's a really long time. But during that whole conversation, all those questions and answers about Kurt's death, Courtney never said, "I didn't kill him." That says it all for me. _______________________________________________________________ The security office at the New World Music Theatre told Eve and Camille Besser that they could only obtain copies of their incident reports through a subpoena, and they would not respond to our requests to see the incident reports. The American Civil Liberties Union say their requirement of a subpeona is "dubious." Courtney Love's publicist, Pat Kingsley of PMK International, has had no comment thus far on these events. END (from ???, written by Matthew Richer, July 30, 1999) - - - - - - - - - - - - -