The Death of Marilyn Monroe

[Pat Speer]

There were several things that Clemmons considered strange.  First, although dr. Greeson discovered the body at 12:30 am the police were not called until 4:25 am.

Second, although an overdose of sleeping pills usually causes a victim to suufer convulsions and vomiting, there was no vomit present.

Also, the question arose how Marilyn swallowed the sleeping capsules since there was no drinking glass present.

My question to Raymond Carroll is: I assume you use water when you swallow your capsules?

How many members believe Marilyn Monroe swallowed 50 capsules without water?  About the only thing more preposterous than that, I suppose, is the single bullet theory.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I believe this is all covered in Noguchi's book.

[Tim Gratz]

Pat, if you have his book can you briefly summarize Noguchi's answers to these questions?

Thanks!

[Tim Gratz]

Pat wrote:

Tim, Noguchi explains the absence of pills in her stomach, claiming she died over several hours and her body had the time to digest the capsules.

Pat, it was the point of Wolfe's book that the barbituates were sufficiently concentrated to have killed her quickly and once her heart stopped digestion would have stopped. Wolfe's book quotes medical experts on this point.

It would seem this might be a fairly easy issue to resolve but is probably beyond your expertise (certainly beyond mine).

If Noguchi was wrong, Monroe was murdered. It seems as simple as that.

Perhaps one of us knows a pathologist or physician who can comment on this.

Of course, even if Noguchi is correct, it does not rule out a murder. And there are other reasons beside the toxicological report to suspect murder, such as the absence of a drinking glass, leading to the obvious question how Monroe could have swallowed in excess of fifty pills without water AND why she would do so anyway if she was not in fact suicidal (which her psychiatrist said she was not).

Edited April 24, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[James Richards]

For once, James is wrong!

It was not an LA Cop. It was a Bevery Hills police officer named Lynn (male) Franklin who stopped a dark Mercedes on Olympic Boulevard in Beverly Hills. Franklin immediately recognized Peter Lawford as the driver. He was amazed to see Attorney General Kennedy in the back seat. Seated in the back seat next to Kennedy was a man Franklin later identified as Dr. Ralph Greeson. Lawford told Franbklin he was driving Kennedy to the Beverly Hilton Hotel on an urgent matter. (Tim Gratz)

Thanks, Tim.

Tht puts RFK in Los Angeles when he was supposed to be in San Francisco. Interesting indeed.

James

[J. Raymond Carroll]

For once, James is wrong!

It was not an LA Cop. It was a Bevery Hills police officer named Lynn (male) Franklin who stopped a dark Mercedes on Olympic Boulevard in Beverly Hills. Franklin immediately recognized Peter Lawford as the driver. He was amazed to see Attorney General Kennedy in the back seat. Seated in the back seat next to Kennedy was a man Franklin later identified as Dr. Ralph Greeson. Lawford told Franbklin he was driving Kennedy to the Beverly Hilton Hotel on an urgent matter. (Tim Gratz)

Thanks, Tim.

Tht puts RFK in Los Angeles when he was supposed to be in San Francisco. Interesting indeed.

James

Lynn Franklin wrote a book called "The Beverly Hills Murder File," which tells of the alleged and suppressed murder of Marilyn Monroe by former United States attorney general Robert Kennedy.

http://www.booksamillion.com/ncom/books?pi...20500&ad=FGLBKS

The subtitle is "Damn, If I had only issued that speeding ticket I coulda been somebody"

Ray

"Do not block the way of inquiry" C.S. Peirce

[James Richards]

Lynn Franklin wrote a book called "The Beverly Hills Murder File," which tells of the alleged and suppressed murder of Marilyn Monroe by former United States attorney general Robert Kennedy. (J. Raymond Carroll)

Thanks, Ray. Interesting indeed.

Does anyone have a reference regarding the suggestion that John Roselli visited Monroe on the 4th, the night before she died and that RFK was in Los Angeles for a secret meeting with Roselli? One would assume that if any such meeting was scheduled, it would be about the Castro assassination plots.

John Roselli - Strategist, below.

James

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Tim Gratz wrote: According to Wolfe, computer evidence indicates she would have had to swallow from 27 to 42 Nembutal capsules to reach a blood level of 4.5 mg per cent.

The blood also contained 8.0 milligram per cent chloral hydrate. She would have had to swallow from 14 to 23 chloral hydrate tablets to reach a percentage of 8.0 milligram per cent.

She also had 13.0 mg percent pentobarital in her liver. According to Wolfe, she would have had to swallow an additional 11 to 24 Nembutal tablets to reach this percentage.

Therefore, she would have had to swallow a minimum of 52 to a maximum of 89 capsules!

Undisputed Facts, anyone?

The following is quoted/paraphrased from Chapter 23 of the 1993 biography of MM by Donald Spoto Ph.D.

Shortly after 4.30 am on Sunday August 5, 1962 Los Angeles police began arriving at Marilyn Monroe's home at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive. MM appeared to have been dead for some time, probably since before midnight on Friday night..

On her bedside table, police found

1.(a.)....an empty bottle that had contained twenty five 100-Milligram NEMBUTAL capsules,

(b.) a prescription dated (Friday) August 3 1962, authorized by Dr. Hyman Engelberg

2. (a) Ten capsules remaining from an original bottle of fifty 500-milligram CHLORAL HYDRATE capsules,

( a prescription dated July 25 and refilled on July 31, 1962 (Tuesday) on authorization of Dr. Ralph Greenson

Dr. Engleberg was MM's internist and Dr. Greenson was her psychiatrist. Engleberg was in the middle of a traumatic martial breakdown during MM's last weekend.

Spoto claims that Greenson thought he had weaned MM off nembutal and did not know that Engleberg had prescribed nembutal on Friday. .

.So 25 nembutal capsules went missing in a period of 24 hours or less, but 40 chloral hydrate capsules may have been consumed over four or five days.

MM appeared under the influence at around 3 pm on Saturday and may have been downing capsules (nembutal?) at intervals throughout the day, which would explain the high concentration of nembutal in the liver. The absence of capsule residue in the stomach argues against a sudden large ingestion, ie against suicide.

The blood level of chloral hydrate was almost twice that of nembutal, but none of the chloral hydrate had been absorbed by the liver. Therefore the nembutal had been ingested first, probably over a period of many hours.

Spoto asserts that chloral hydrate interferes with the enzymes that metabolize nembutal, so the introduction of chloral hydrate would lead to a buildup of nembutal in the blood. He implies that, without the introduction of chloral hydrate to block the absorption of the nembutal, the level of nembutal in the blood would not have risen to 4.5 mg, which Spoto says is more than a lethal dose.

Spoto's solution to this conundrum is to theorize that Dr. Greenson ordered a large dose of chloral hydrate by way of enema (Noguchi had ruled out an injection). He points out that MM's colon bore "marked congestion and purplish discoloration" consistent with a rectal administration of barbituates or chloral hydrate.

Dr.Spoto, whose PhD is in New Testament studies, is apparently contradicted by Mr. Wolfe. According to http://marilynmonroepages.com/essays2.html Wolfe dismisses the enema theory and points out that MM had been diagnosed with ulcerated colon in 1961.

Personally, I'm not sure what to make of this, except that it is undisputed that two doctors had prescribed different drugs, doctors differ and patients die. Side effects from prescription medications are one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. Some drugs don't mix well for some people.

I'd like to hear more about Wolf's computer analysis of the number of capsules required to generate the blood levels seen at autopsy. I'd be concerned that he might have got the decimal point in the wrong place. Still we do have 65 missing capsules which is above the minimum required by Wolfe's computer.

Incidentally, Spoto does not believe that MM's bedroom door was locked, though it is not clear why anyone would pretend it was locked, if it wasn't. He also says MM was never romantically involved with JFK or RFK, and that Anthony Summers, like Norman Mailer, is a charlatan.

Ray

"Do not block the way of inquiry" C. S. Peirce

[Tim Gratz]

James wrote:

That puts RFK in Los Angeles when he was supposed to be in San Francisco. Interesting indeed.

There are a lot more witnesses than Franklin putting RFK in LA the day Monroe died.

According to "The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe", citing Sommers' book "Goddess", Twentieth Century Fox publicist Frank Neill saw RFK arrive by helicopter at the studio's heliport near Stage 14 early Saturday afternoon. RFK hurried into a waiting limousine. Neill saw Peter Lawford in the limousine when the door opened. The security logs of the studio indicated a helicopter had been granted permission to land that afternoon, adding support to Neill's story.

Wolfe's book also quotes former mayor Sam Yorty as stating that Chief Parker had told him that RFK had arrived on saturday and checked into the Beverly Hilton Hotel. In his memoirs, former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates wrote: "The truth is we knew Robert Kennedy was in town on August 4th."

Eunice Murray was Marilyn Monroe's housekeeper and was present when her body was discovered. In October 1985, in an interview at the Mirimar Hotel in Santa Monica, Murray told New York Post correspondent Jack Schermerhorn that she had seen RFK arrive at Monroe's house that Saturday afternoon and she had been asked to leave.

Fred Otash was the private detective who was conducting electronic surveillance on Monroe's house, either for the CIA or for the Mafia or for Kimmy Hoffa, depending on who you believe. Otash was interviewed by ABC's Sylvia Chase for a 20/20 and he stated that the tapes recorded a violent quarrel between RFK and Monroe. Anthony Sommers states that he spoke in 1985 with a government contact who had also heard the violent argument on the tapes.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Otash stated that shortly after 2:00 a.m. Peter Lawford arrived at his Hollywood apartment and stated that he had just left Monroe's house and she was dead. He said Bobby had been there earlier. He said they had gotten Bobby back to Northern California. Lawford said Bobby and Marilyn had had a violent struggle. Lawford asked Otash to go to the Monroe residence and remove anything incriminiating.

How did RFK leave LA? Joe Hymans, a reporter for the Los Angeles Herald Tribune interviewed neighbors of Peter Lawford who stated they saw a helicopter land on the Santa Monica shore behind Peter Lawford's beach house in the early hours of Sunday morning. Billy Woodfield located records of the Connors Helicopter Service of Santa Monica which showed that a helicopter had been hired to pick up a passenger at the Lawford beach house at 2:00 a.m. on Sunday morning.

[Tim Gratz]

Geraldo Rivera was fired by ABC News in 1985. Does anyone know why he was fired?

Hint: It relates to this thread.

[Tim Gratz]

J. Raymond Carroll wrote:

Incidentally, Spoto does not believe that MM's bedroom door was locked, though it is not clear why anyone would pretend it was locked, if it wasn't. He also says MM was never romantically involved with JFK or RFK, and that Anthony Summers, like Norman Mailer, is a charlatan.

Summers sued Spoto for such derogatory statements in his book. The suit was filed in the Queren's Bench Division of the English Courts. On March 28, 1994, Spoto agreed in a settlement to pay Summers a sizeable sum and to print a retraction of his charges in any future editions of his book. Spoto's retraction in fact appears in the paperback edition of his book.

In his book, Spoto claims that Dr. Ralph Greeson and Eunice Murray had murdered Monroe by administering a fatal barbituate-laced enema. The motive was that she had fired them.

You know I tend to favor conspracies linked to Communists. Maybe Spoto was right about who did it! (I would certainly not like to think that RFK was a murderer.) This now deserves some comment.

According to former FBI agent Ernest Phillips Cohen, Dr. Greeson was an agent of the Comintern. Wolfe writes: "Once Marilyn Monroe became Greeson's patient. he became one of the most important Comintern members in America: he had access to the mind of a woman who often shared the bed of the president of the United States and was an intimate of the attorney general."

Eunice Murray was more than a simple housekeeper. She was a trained psychiatric nurse. She had been placed in Monroe's house by Dr. Greeson, apparently to spy on her. As Wolfe states: "...[T]o surreptitiously place a psychiatric nurse in a patient's house is an unorthodox procedure."

Moreover Eunice Murray also had Communist links. According to her son-in-law, Norman Jeffries, her husband John was "a devoted member of the Communist Party who had several identities and led a double life." Jeffries states that while he was dating John and Eunice Murray's daughter, the Murrays' house at 802 Franklin Street in Santa Monica was the scene of many meetings of the communist labor movement in Hollywood. Jeffies also stated that John Murray was a bright man who spoke six languages but he was gone most of the time. "He was either on the East Coast or in Mexico."

Later, the Murrays sold their house to Dr. Greeson and it was in his house where Dr. Greeson treated Marilyn Monroe. Monroe was driven to her sessions with Dr. Greeson by Eunice Murray.

In July of 1962, shortly before her death, Marilyn Monroe told Ralph Roberts that she was turning on Dr. Greeson and Eunice Murray, who she felt he had put with her to spy on her.

It is worth noting that in an interview with Robert Slatzer in 1972 Jack Quinn, who stated he worked for the Los Angeles Hall of Records claimed to have worked on reducing the Marilyn Monroe file to microfilm. Quinn told Slatzer that those records showed that Monroe's death involved "a communist-inspired plot." But Quinn failed to show up for a subsequent interview with Slatzer and Slatzer could not find a record of his employment by the Hall of Records. Wolfe notes, however, that in his 1972 interview Quinn had knowledge of many things that were not matters of public record until years later.

So it is possible that the fatal dose of barbituates were administered to Monroe by Dr. Greeson. If there was a plot to implicate RFK in the death of Marilyn Monroe, perhaps it was not a Mafia plot but a Communist plot. There are reasons why Dr. Greeson's activities on the day of Monroe's death raised the suspicion of the Los Angeles police officer first on the scene. But time does not permit me to set forth all of the details in Wolfe's book.

Edited April 25, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[Tim Gratz]

I thought it worthwhile to publish this essay here. I should add that I do not yet fully suscribe to the "Bobby did it" scenario Ms. Barclay pushes in this essay but her point of view merits consideration.

Contributed by Melinda Barclay.

During the twilight hours of Saturday, August 4, 1962, Marilyn Monroe died as a result of an overdose of barbiturates, a prescription drug. The motion picture star’s death certificate reads “probable suicide” although all the evidence surrounding the death of the renowned movie star indicates one of the most covered-up murders of the time. “Strange sounds were carried on the wind during the night-shouting and the crash of broken glass. Neighbors reported that a hysterical woman had yelled, ‘Murderers! You murderers! Are you satisfied now that she’s dead?’” Reports later confirm that woman to be Pat Newcomb, Monroe’s best friend and companion of both R.F.K and J.F.K. 1 At the time of Monroe’s death, the public had not yet been made aware of the fact that Marilyn had had an affair with the President and that she was currently seeing the Attorney General. These relationships are the most substantial when proving her murder because, earlier on in day, Marilyn had threatened to tell the world of the affairs. This unquestionably would have destroyed the careers of both, John F. Kennedy as well as his brother, Robert F. Kennedy. “In a crush of time and extremity the film star’s home was carefully rearranged, telephone records were seized, papers and notes were destroyed-and a frantic phone call was placed to the White House.”2 Marilyn’s close confidant, Pat Newcomb had spent the night before her death at Monroe’s Brentwood home. “Newcomb said that when she left on Saturday, nothing indicated the impending tragedy. ‘When I last saw her, nothing about her mood or manner had changed…she even said I’d see her tomorrow.’” Five hours later Marilyn Monroe was dead.”3

When Clemmons, the first police officer to arrive at Monroe’s residence, examined the murder scene, he found Marilyn’s maid in a questionable situation. “Searching through the sparsely furnished house which seemed rather small and inelegant for the house of a film star, he found Murray in the service porch off the kitchen, where both the washer and dryer were running… Clemmons thought it odd that the housekeeper was doing laundry in the middle of the night while her employer lay dead in the bedroom.”4 “Murray admitted to Clemmons that she packed her things before calling the police, called the interior decorator to fix a broken window and did Marilyn Monroe’s laundry.”5 Murray claims that Marilyn’s window had been broken in an effort to get into the room when Monroe’s door was allegedly locked and the maid had felt uneasy about her light being on, and the phone cord being drawn out through the bedroom door. If Marilyn’s window had been broken from the outside to get to her as Murray maintains, the glass would have fallen inside the house rather than on the exterior of the residence as it was discovered. Signifying that Murray had fabricated her account of the story about breaking the window to get into the room, when in all likelihood, the perpetrators of the crime broke the bedroom window from the inside to make it look like that was how they got in.6 “Greenson, Monroe’s psychiatrist, stated that Monroe was found clutching a phone-probably trying to call for help. Clemmons found it odd that she didn’t just call to get her maid who was scarcely a loft down the hall.”7 Murray said she became alarmed at Marilyn being in danger by a light she saw under Marilyn’s door on her way to the bathroom. This is impossible because one cannot view Marilyn’s door on the way from the bedroom to the bathroom. Additionally, Marilyn’s rug covers up all the light from the bedroom. Therefore, she could not have possibly seen any light at all.8 Lawford said that while talking to Marilyn earlier in the evening, that the line on the phone went dead. He tried to call back several times but the line was busy. Marilyn had two phone lines. If he was so concerned, he would of called the other one as well.9

The autopsy states that “the colon shows marked congestion and discoloration,” suggesting it was administered via enema or suppository. But according to Monroe’s N.Y internist, Dr. Richard Cottrell, she had episodes of colitis brought about by emotional stress, and in 1961 she was diagnosed as having an ulcerated colon.10 Nogushi, the younger medical examiner who performed the autopsy, clearly requested the reports on her kidney, stomach, urine and intestines, but the reports were never prepared.11 Before Monroe’s body had even arrived, “an array of specimen jars had been neatly arranged on a cart beside the embalming table. Name and case number tags were on each jar, Monroe’s name had already been written on the embalmer’s tags.” This was out of the ordinary since the medical examiner had not even been informed of the autopsy yet, and someone had already arranged the specimen’s. The question is where they got the specimen’s in the first place when her body had not even reached the examiner’s room yet. 12 The autopsy reveals that Marilyn’s stomach was completely empty with absolutely no signs of Nembutal, the fatal drug. “If Monroe had swallowed as many as forty or more capsules of Nembutal, as had been estimated, evidence of yellow dye should have been found in the digestive tract-especially in an empty stomach. Nogushi found no trace of yellow dye…sometimes the residue moves to the duodenum but they found none there either.13 Monroe would have had to of swallowed 52-89 capsules to achieve her percentages of the drug in her blood. No case has yet to be reported in which anyone has swallowed over 12 capsules without leaving any residue in the stomach. Marilyn had no residue at all. 14 “Clemmons noted there being no drinking glass in the room and wondered how she swallowed the Nembutal. The bathroom in her room had been shut off due to remodeling and Murray had said that Marilyn had not come out of her room at all, so how could she have swallowed all those pills? 15 “In one of the police photos, there appears to be a water glass next to the bed. Clemmons stated that it hadn’t been there earlier, when doctors helped him search the room for a drinking vessel…the vessel was never tested in the incomplete autopsy to discover the contents of it.”16

In Addition to an incomplete investigation, Nogushi began to notice his original reports had been altered. He noticed that the numerous bruises all over Monroe’s body, including a very prominent one on her left hip, and others on her arms and on the back of her legs, had been taken out of the autopsy report. According to Grandison, “This initial examination was part of a file that disappeared as the case began to expand.”17 Grandison, who was responsible for ensuing that anyone who died under mysterious circumstances be directed to the L.A county coroner’s office, discovered the first of many irregularities that led him to conclude that Marilyn Monroe’s death was covered up when her body never arrived at the coroner’s office. The body was later found at the Westwood Village Mortuary and “for that to happen, someone had to have called the mortuary and specifically asked for someone to come and pick up the body.” The workers at the mortuary were reluctant to release the corpse to the coroner for unexplained incentives.

The nonappearance of a few key identifications, as to the autopsy reports claims that Monroe died as a result of ingesting the drugs, as they assert to be the cause of death is extremely vital. The most significant factor is the absence of the odor of pear for the reason that the medical examiners would have smelled the scent if the drug was injected directly into the bloodstream rather than through the digestive tract. There were empty pill bottles found in Marilyn’s locked room, but no needles. Yet, no residue was found in her stomach either, proving she neither died of ingesting the drug nor from injecting it.19 In due time, “two of the most important people arriving in a probable-suicide verdict were Greenson and Miner, and both had changed their opinions.” 20

Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy was seen by scores of residents at the Monroe home late Saturday night along with his brother-in-law, actor, Peter Lawford . “Shortly before midnight a dark Mercedes sped east on Olympic Boulevard in Beverly Hills. Estimating the car to be driving in excess of 55 miles per hour, Beverly Hills police officer Lynn Franklin flipped on his siren and light and gave a chase… In the car was, Bobby Kennedy, Peter Lawford, and Marilyn Monroe’s psychiatrist, Ralph Greenson. 21 “Elizabeth Pollard, the neighbor directly across the cul-de-sac told Bob Slatzer, a man who claims to be Monroe’s ex-husband, that on the evening of Saturday, August 4, “One of her guests remarked, “Oh look, there’s Robert Kennedy!” They then watched him walk into the Monroe residence with two other men in the late evening.22

Eunice Murray and Dr. Ralph Greenson had waited four hours before calling the police. She said it was because they “had to get permission from the studio publicity department before we could call anyone.”23 Monroe was discovered well before midnight.“Then why wait until 3:30 to call the police? Deborah Gould, ex-wife of Peter Lawford, says the delay was to get Bobby out of town. Bobby Kennedy had chartered a helicopter that night back to San Francisco. Peter Lawford went to Marilyn’s house to clean up and do what he could before the press arrived.” 24 “Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, reporter Joe Hyams learned that Lawford’s neighbors were upset that a helicopter had touched down on the Santa Monica shore behind the Lawford’s residence in the early hours of Sunday morning, August 5, blowing sand into their swimming pools. Ward Wood, another neighbor, had told a police department contact that he saw Bobby

Kennedy arrive in a Mercedes at the Lawford main “late Saturday afternoon or in the early evening.” A helicopter logged in for approximately 2 o’clock in the morning under the name of Peter Lawford.25 Guy Hockett, Marilyn’s mortician, said that when he arrived between 5:20 and 6:20 A.M, Marilyn’s body was in an advanced stage of rigor mortis. He estimated that she died between 9:30 and 11:30 Saturday night, between the same time dozens of neighbors reported seeing Bobby Kennedy and Peter Lawford enter the house along with Dr. Ralph Greenson.26 When a local attorney was asked to interview Monroe’s psychiatrist for an inquiry into her death, he expected Dr. Greenson to maintain his beliefs that Monroe had committed suicide. He was wrong. “According to Miner, they had met for several hours, during which, Greenson discussed ‘not only Marilyn’s habits, but also the private confidences she shared with her psychiatrist.’ Greenson expressed his firm opinion that Marilyn Monroe had not committed suicide. Then he played a half hour tape that Marilyn had made at her home on her own tape recorder. The contents of this tape also led Miner to conclude that she had not committed suicide.”27

Marilyn Monroe was not suicidal, at least not in her final days. According to Dr. Langone:

There are two types of suicidal people, the attempters and the committers. Attempters do not actually follow through with suicide; committers are the ones who do. Ninety percent of all attempters are females whose fathers are either physically or psychologically absent. Attempters are even further divided into three subdivisions. The second group of attempters is mostly made up of women who are crying out for help, attention and love; they go out of their way to make sure they are “discovered” in time to be saved and achieve their goal which is usually to influence the conduct of others. If Marilyn was at all suicidal, she was an attempter, not a committer. She fits into the category well, she grew up without a father, and the times she did attempt suicide, she always made sure someone ‘saved’ her…In her last few weeks, Marilyn showed no signs of possessing any suicidal tendencies. She had been making many plans for the future. She told Henry Rosenfeld that she would be coming to New York, she talked with Lena Pepitone about plans to throw a party in September, she talked with Gene Kelly about plans for a musical, she talked to Sideny Skolsky about making a film on Gene Harlow, Julie Styne talked with her about a musical version of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, she was planning on meeting friends for dinner on Sunday, August 5th, Monday she was going to fly out to New York…she had just purchased a house and was working on that too. None of the people she talked to that last week said she sounded depressed, in fact they said she never looked more better and was in great spirits. Marilyn herself said, ‘Let’s all start to live before we get old”…People who oppose any sort of murder theory bring up the fact that she tried to commit suicide several times in the past, but what better way to kill Marilyn Monroe than to make it appear like a suicide 28

Apparently, Bobby Kennedy had contemplated making the murder appear to be a suicide ahead of time.

Private Investigator, Otash, had been taping Kennedy for weeks prior to Monroe’s murder. The day of her killing, “Otash described a struggle in the Monroe bedroom and Kennedy yelling ‘Where is it? Where the hell is it? I have to have it! My family will pay you for it!’ At the conclusion of the struggle, Otash heard physical blows and a door slamming.” This is most likely how Monroe obtained the bruises all over her body. It is obvious that Robert Kennedy was looking for Monroe’s red diary.29 Los Angeles intelligence officer, Rothmiller says, “It was more like a journal. The majority of the entries were notes about conversations Marilyn Monroe had with John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. The subject matter ranged from Russia and Cuba to the mafia and Sinatra. I remember she referred to Castro as ‘Fidel C.’”30 Robert Slatzer remembers a phone conversation he had with Marilyn on the day of her death. “Has anyone else seen this book?” Slatzer asked. “Nobody. But I am so angry I may just call a press conference and show it to the whole world and let everybody know what the Kennedy’s are really like.” 31 Jefferies, the man Murray called to fix the broken window-which was never actually fixed, “said that on the night she died, her file cabinet was broken into and many of its contents were removed.” “Mr. And Mrs. Abe Landau, who lived to the immediate West of Marilyn Monroe, had returned home from a dinner party late Saturday evening and had seen an ambulance and a police car parked in the cul-de-sac in front of the film star’s residence. Near midnight, neighbors heard a helicopter overhead.” Perhaps Bobby had initially gone over to seize the red diary from Marilyn, gave her some drugs to come her down so he could look for it, but gave her far too many. Perhaps that is why there are records of a first ambulance being called before midnight with reports that Monroe was still alive and Bobby had been in the ambulance with her. Maybe that is why the ambulance turned around instead of going to the hospital. They had to get Bobby out of town.32

A few hours before Marilyn had died, the actress told Slatzer that “Bobby Kennedy was here, and he threatened me, screamed at me, and pushed me around!” Slatzer said “now she was afraid and felt she was in terrible danger. Bobby felt she had become a problem and had said to her, ‘If you threaten me, Marilyn, there’s more than one way to keep you quiet.33 Sidney Guilaroff had also talked to Marilyn on that fatal night, “Marilyn was extremely upset. She was in tears and quite hysterical. She said that Bobby Kennedy had been to her house with Lawford, and that Bobby had threatened her. There was a violent argument. She was afraid-terrified.”34 At the same time Marilyn was having conversations with close friends, Bobby Kennedy was telling Otash “she’s ranting and raving. I’m concerned about her and what may come out of this.” 35 “For Robert Kennedy those night hours and the days that followed must have been the most harrowing of his life. If our reconstruction is essentially correct, the death of Marilyn Monroe had been is Chappaquiddick. Unlike his less fortunate brother Edward, he escaped public exposure, but only by a hair’s breadth.”36

Peter Lawford was also involved in Marilyn Monroe’s murder. “When Deborah Gould asked her ex-husband, Peter Lawford, how Marilyn had died he said, ‘Marilyn took her last big enema.’ Her colon showed congestion and purplish discoloration and it was shown impossible for her to have swallowed the pills or been injected with them.”37 “The loved one’s involved, according to Gould, were the Kennedy brothers. ‘That’s where Peter’s role came in,” she says, “to cover up all the dirty work, and take care of everything.’ Gould, quoting Lawford, says the Kennedy’s ensured there would be no proper inquiry into Marilyn’s death.”38

Various numbers of people were involved in the cover-up of the murder, but not the murder itself. “According to coroner’s aide, Lionel Grandison, Curphey (coroner) was actually covering up the case of Monroe’s death. ‘As I analyze my participation, my conversations with other staff members, and the thing I’ve seen, there’s no doubt in my mind that the Marilyn Monroe case, as we know it now, is not the true case. Some very sensitive areas have been covered up. Evidence was suppressed. Paperwork was taken

from the files, and people who have knowledge of what happened have not been listened to or sought out.’ Grandison also discovered that someone in the department was

removing and rewriting key material from the Monroe file.” 39 So what ever happened to the Monroe file? Lieutenant Marion Philips states, “In 1962 Chief Parker took the file to show someone in Washington. That was the last we heard of it.”40 “Correspondence between Parker and RFK in the Kennedy library reveals that Parker met with Kennedy on December 12 at the Park University motel in College Park, MD for a mutual matter of interest.”41 Joe Hyams, a reporter, tried to obtain Monroe’s phone records. A employee at the phone company told him “All hell’s broken loose down here. Apparently you’re not the only one interested in Marilyn’s calls. The tapes disappeared…. I’m told it was impounded by men in dark suits and well-shined shoes…. Somebody high up ordered it.”42 James Hamilton, as recorded by the Kennedy Library, was a very close friend of RFK. “It was Captain James Hamilton…who confiscated Marilyn Monroe’s phone records, and it was Captain James Hamilton who directed the cover up of information relating to the circumstances of Marilyn Monroe’s death.”43

Contemporary cultivation as well as revelations concerning the homicide of America’s most celebrated actress corroborates the person responsible for her death to be Robert F. Kennedy. The first police officer called to the scene told future police chief Iannone “You know what I think?” asked Clemmons, “I think Marilyn Monroe was murdered, and they’re covering up this whole damn thing because the Attorney General was involved!”44 The 700-page autopsy report including interviews, depositions, photographs, and documents have narrowed down to a mere 19-page report. To this day, the L.A district attorney’s office does not welcome any investigation into the murder of Marilyn Monroe. Any person who has ever tried to prove her murder publicly has received death threats from palpable sources. “Marilyn Monroe did not commit suicide. Technology of the modern world of forensic medicine gives the final verdict-case # 81128 was a homicide victim,” an innocent target of the reiterated dirty work of the infamous Kennedy clan. 45Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn’s ex-husband who was reported to be remarrying Marilyn later that week, knowingly excluded any member of the Kennedy family from the funeral procession. “…The most poignant moment occurred as the coffin was about to be closed. Joe DiMaggio leaned over to kiss Marilyn one last time. ‘I love you, I love you, I love you,’ Joe wept.”46 “In the wake of his brother’s assassination, Bobby’s murder somehow seemed inevitable. Just as Marilyn’s death had.” 47

1 Donald H. Wolfe, The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe (New York City: Donald H. Wolfe, 1998), 1.

2 Ibid.., 1.

3 Ibid., 19.

4 Ibid., 5.

5 Ibid., 6.

6 Ibid., 59.

7 Ibid., 7.

8 Ibid., 11.

9 Ibid., 23.

10 Ibid., 7.

11 Ibid., 34.

12 Ibid., 15.

13 Ibid., 30.

14 Ibid., 42.

15 Ibid., 7.

16 Ibid., 10.

17 Ibid., 29.

18 Ibid., 26.

19 Ibid., 31.

20 Ibid., 40.

21 Ibid., 1.

22 Ibid., 62.

23 Ibid., 6.

24 Courtney. “The Candle Burns Down, The Death of Marilyn Monroe.” [http://dogpower.net/m-doc.ctm].

May, 1998.

25 Wolfe, 58.

26 Ibid., 14.

27 Ibid., 39.

28 Courtney, 2.

29 Wolfe, 93.

30 Ibid., 37.

31 Ibid., 60.

32 Ibid., 1.

33 Ibid., 456.

34 Ibid., 46.

35 Ibid., 93.

36 Anthony Summers, Goddess: the secret lives of Marilyn Monroe (New York City: Anthony Summers,

1986), 405.

37 Courtney, 5.

38 Summers, 395.

39 Wolfe, 35.

40 Ibid., 64.

41 Ibid., 64.

42 Ibid., 49.

43 Ibid., 50.

44 Ibid., 62.

45 Ibid., 43.

46 Barbara Leaming, Marilyn Monroe (New York: Barbara Leaming, 1998), 428.

47 Fred Lawrence Guiles, Legend: The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe (New York: Fred Lawrence

Guiles, 1984), 47.

Edited April 25, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[Tim Gratz]

One significant item in the above is a quote from Peter Lawford's ex-wife that the delay in calling the police was to allow RFK to get out of LA (by a helicopter from the Santa Monica Beach).

Notice that the people who were at the scene and delayed calling the police were the housekeeper Eunice Murray and her friend Dr. Ralph Greeson.

[Tim Gratz]

In my first post on this thread I said:

It seems that if Monroe was murdered, it was either by Bobby or by the Mafia for the reasons cited above. I do not believe any other suspects have been proposed.

I was wrong. As noted above, Monroe biographer Spoto suggests Eunice Murray and Dr. Greeson murdered her (by an enema). I suggest Dr. Greeson could have given her a fatal "hot shot" in RFK's pesence without RFK even knowing what was going on. The question would be why he was doing it. Apparently Spoto's book suggests Greeson killed Monroe because she was going to fire him as her psychiatrist. Seems a rather weak motive to me.

[Pat Speer]

In my first post on this thread I said:

It seems that if Monroe was murdered, it was either by Bobby or by the Mafia for the reasons cited above. I do not believe any other suspects have been proposed.

I was wrong.  As noted above, Monroe biographer Spoto suggests Eunice Murray and Dr. Greeson murdered her (by an enema).  I suggest Dr. Greeson could have given her a fatal "hot shot" in RFK's pesence without RFK even knowing what was going on.  The question would be why he was doing it.  Apparently Spoto's book suggests Greeson killed Monroe because she was going to fire him as her psychiatrist.  Seems a rather weak motive to me.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Noguchi answers four questions. He says 1) that the stomachs of habitual drug users are conditioned to digesting pills very quickly, and that he did not expect to see any physical evidence of pills. He says 2) that the autopsy report does mention a red raw appearance in the stomach, consistent with having digested a large number of pills recently. He says 3) that the yellow color in Nembutal capsules does not run and would not be expected to line her stomach. And finally, he says that her body showed no needle marks even though she'd recently been injected because fine needle marks heal within hours and become invisible. He says his problem with the case, beyond the fact it took everyone so long to call the cops, was motive, because tapes made by Greenson and played for Noguchi's boss Miner indicated she was not suicidal. Since Greenson played Miner these tapes, even though he didn't have to, I tend to think he was not involved in any conspiracy, which would have wanted the suicide story to stick.

Having known a few roller-coaster women in my time, however, I wouldn't put much credence in Monroe's comments to her psychiatrist; she could very well have been lying.

[Tim Gratz]

Pat wrote:

[Noguchi] . . .says his problem with the case, beyond the fact it took everyone so long to call the cops, was motive, because tapes made by Greenson and played for Noguchi's boss Miner indicated she was not suicidal. Since Greenson played Miner these tapes, even though he didn't have to, I tend to think he was not involved in any conspiracy, which would have wanted the suicide story to stick.

Pat, thanks for the post.

You are correct that if in fact Greeson "did it" it would be strange for him to provide evidence that contradicted the suicide theory, although there is perhaps an answer to this. Wolfe states that Spoto's book seems to have been written for the express purpose of exonerating RFK from involvement. Apparently both Spoto and Wolfe agree Monroe's death was a homicide.