The young girls, identified only by their first names Valentine and Aurelie, ages 12 and 13, took their lives Wednesday in the town of Somain, near Lille, in northern France. The pair of self-proclaimed Nirvana fans left behind a note in which they professed their love for Cobain--who died in his Seattle mansion of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in April 1994.
After finishing their goodbye note, Aurelie and Valentine shot themselves in the head with a .22-caliber rifle owned by the father of one of the girls.
"The girls had written notes which left no doubt about their intentions. School friends tried to talk them out of it without success," Public Prosecutor Jean-Marie Descamps told reporters. "No adult was aware. This seems to have been a sort of adolescent secret."
"There seems to have been a sort of adoration, of veneration for members of Nirvana, and especially of the singer who committed suicide," he added.
Just last November, the journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior ran an article on the impact of Cobain's suicide on impressionable, young Nirvana fans. "We were truly shocked by what didn't happen," wrote David A. Jobes, after researchers found only a small number of copycat suicides modeled on Cobain's.
Earlier this month, Courtney Love put her Seattle house up for sale. She said the site had become a mecca, of sorts, for Nirvana pilgrims who wanted to see where grunge's poet laureate died.