Marilyn Monroe: not a suicidal blonde in summer 1962 (Donald Spoto and Ralph Roberts' Mimosa)

In 1993, Donald Spoto wrote his revealing bio of Marilyn Monroe. After reading the likes of Haspiel, Heymann, Margolis, Slatzer, Summers, and Wolfe, picking up Spoto's biography feels like a revelation. Spoto was a very experienced biographer who was not shy about controversy. His biographies of Alfred Hitchcock and Laurence Olivier reveal sides of their personalities that they tried to conceal. Spoto is also quite thorough in obtaining and then pouring over primary sources. Finally, he respects himself and his subject, which allows him to question sources before arriving at a judgment on someone's credibility. This last quality allowed him to arrive at what is the most satisfactory conclusion about the death of Monroe: accidental overdose. 

During the production of Bus Stop, a young publicist named Patricia “Pat” Newcomb was assigned to handle Marilyn’s press and so would enter Marilyn’s inner circle. A few years later Newcomb would become one of the major players in the last months of Marilyn’s life. Newcomb was also known to have a volatile temper—she would slam her office door so hard that a framed picture of Dean Martin would fall off the wall, shattering the glass “every other day.” Rupert Allan, who handled most of Marilyn’s press relations, told biographer Donald Spoto that Pat Newcomb would take phone messages for Marilyn—many from men wanting to meet her. “Pat intercepted Marilyn’s messages,” Rupert Allan asserted that Newcomb went through “a lesbian phase” but also dated men. The head of Marilyn’s public relations firm, Arthur Jacobs, recommended she give Newcomb another try. Newcomb entered Marilyn’s life again, but this time the two would become very close. Rupert Allan and Ralph Roberts (among others) would come to believe that Pat Newcomb became obsessed with Marilyn. “It’s Pat Newcomb who knows more about Marilyn Monroe than anyone else,” Jeanne Martin (Dean Martin’s wife) commented once. Newcomb was at Marilyn’s side at almost every major event in 1961–62, hovering protectively on the sidelines. Some say Newcomb wanted more from Marilyn than she was prepared to give. But—at this stage in her life—Marilyn needed someone who extended complete dedication, unconditional love. This is what Newcomb offered. 

In return—as she did with anyone who was devoted to her—Marilyn made extreme demands. If Marilyn tried to call Newcomb at home and got a busy signal, she would become hysterical. When she finally got through she would scream and yell. Eventually Marilyn had a separate phone line installed in Newcomb’s apartment so she could reach her at all times. As always, Marilyn would do her best to repay Newcomb’s loyalty. After she complained that her car wasn’t working well, Marilyn gave Newcomb a new Thunderbird. And after wearing them a few times, Marilyn gave Pat a valuable pair of emerald earrings Frank Sinatra had given her. But after Marilyn’s death, Newcomb seemed to want to distance herself from their intensely personal and multilayered relationship. Michael Selsman, who also worked with Newcomb at the Arthur P. Jacobs agency, claims that there was a lot of talk about a possible lesbian relationship between Marilyn and Pat Newcomb—and it wasn’t only coming from the show-business community. 

The rumors spread among people in Marilyn’s circle “who knew her and worked with her.” Susan Strasberg pointed out that “the adrenaline rush that came from Marilyn’s involvement with Pat Newcomb became somewhat sexualized.” Marilyn began discussing Newcomb in her sessions with Dr. Greenson, with homosexuality a major concern. “She could not bear the slightest hint of anything homosexual,” Greenson wrote. “She had an outright phobia of homosexuality and yet unwittingly fell into situations which had homosexual coloring, which she then recognized and projected onto the other, who then became her enemy.” In his correspondence Greenson gave an example of Marilyn’s relationship with a girlfriend named “Pat,” who had put a blond streak in her hair, close to Marilyn’s color. Marilyn interpreted Newcomb’s emulation as an attempt to “take possession of her,” feeling that identification meant “homosexual possessiveness.” Newcomb’s perceived passionate feelings threatened her. But—with everything in her life becoming more confusing and unclear—she pressed ahead with the relationship. “She could be very touching,” Newcomb recalled. “I always felt a kind of watching out for her. But deep down at the core she was really strong. And you’d forget it because she seemed so vulnerable.” Sometimes Marilyn’s suppressed angst surfaced, and she would say something “quite cruel,” Newcomb revealed. “She could be quite mean.” Newcomb declined all offers to publish a memoir of her time with Marilyn. This may seem an odd stance for a woman whose entire career has been devoted to maintaining the public image of Marilyn Monroe. She only gave interviews to Donald Spoto, Anthony Summers, Lois Banner and Gary Vitacco-Robles. 

“Marilyn’s vocabulary included words I’d never ever heard of, and she wielded them like a sailor with no embarrassment,” Susan Strasberg once said. “She had quite a temper when she lost control.” On Friday afternoon, August 3, 1962, Marilyn filled two prescriptions at a pharmacy on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. One was for Phenergan, a drug used to treat allergies, and the other for Nembutal. Greenson and Engelberg had been weaning Marilyn off of Nembutal for weeks, substituting the milder drug chloral hydrate. Marilyn would take that with a glass of milk before bed. That evening Pat Newcomb had dinner with Marilyn in a Santa Monica French restaurant. When talking to Donald Spoto she said, “Afterwards we came back to the house. We just sat around—” Then Newcomb indicated the journalist’s tape recorder, stating, “I want to shut this off.” On Saturday, August 4, 1962, Mrs. Murray found Marilyn quiet and contemplative. She had tentative plans of going to Peter Lawford’s house for dinner in the evening. Legend has come down through the years that Marilyn’s foul mood toward Newcomb was because she had been able to sleep for twelve hours straight while Marilyn slept very little. However, there was something else going on that Pat Newcomb has been silent about for decades. In December 1961 Marilyn's psychiatrist Dr. Ralph Greenson labeled her a 'borderline paranoid schizophrenic' in a letter sent to Anna Freud. Rather than work in a vacuum, Dr. Greenson obtained a second opinion by consulting psychologist Dr. Milton Wexler. After taking a doctorate at Columbia University, studying under Theodor Reik, a disciple of Freud, he became one of the country’s first nonphysicians to set up in practice as a psychoanalyst. Also a member of the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society, Dr. Wexler would go on to become a pioneer in the study and treatment of Huntington’s disease, forming the Hereditary Disease Foundation. Wexler also felt strongly that Marilyn Monroe suffered at least from borderline paranoid schizophrenia after sitting in on three sessions with her at Dr. Greenson’s home. “Yes, I treated her,” he said in 1999. 

“I will say that I agreed with Dr. Greenson that she presented borderline symptoms of the disease that had run in her family. I found her to be very proactive in wanting to treat those borderline symptoms, as well. One misconception about her treatment is that it was Dr. Greenson’s idea that she move in with his family. She never moved in with the Greensons. Instead, it was my suggestion that she spend as much time there as possible in order to create the environment that she lacked as a child. That was my theory at the time and Dr. Greenson agreed.” From the first day they worked together in private sessions in the Strasberg apartment at 225 West Eighty-sixth Street that spring of 1955, Lee Strasberg gave Marilyn the strongest paternal-professional guidance of her life—a kind of total psychological mentorship that soon provoked the resentment of both Milton Greene and Arthur Miller. Strasberg fully encouraged Marilyn’s resentment of the movie industry in general and Fox in particular, for he believed their abuse of good actors and writers was standard operating procedure. This disaffection was based on his own experience, for in 1945 that studio had denied him the opportunity to direct Somewhere in the Night, which he had co-written with Joseph L. Mankiewicz. On June 6, 1962, Sidney Guilaroff, a good friend of Marilyn, came to visit her to Fifth Helena but he was brusquely turned away by Greenson, “I went to see her,” Guilaroff recalled, “but Greenson kept me out. He kept a lot of people from her.” She had suffered a fall while she was taking a shower and  for over a week, she was virtually recluse at home until her bruises healed and was forced to decline social invitations she might otherwise have attended. Among these was an invitation from Pat and Peter Lawford, who were to be guests of honor at the home of Robert and Ethel Kennedy in Virginia. Her telegram of regret to the Kennedys, dated June 13, linked her struggle with Fox to the famous “Freedom Riders” fighting on behalf of civil rights for minorities.

According to Ralph Roberts, a very close friend of Marilyn, she decided on her own to reject her biological father's wishes to meet her. One afternoon, after returning from Greenson's therapy, the phone rang, recalled Roberts, and he heard Marilyn say loudly: “Tell him he can contact me through my lawyer, Mickey Rudin.” A shudder racked his body when Marilyn confessed to him: “That was the daughter, the legitimate daughter of my father. She wanted me to talk with him. He’s in the hospital and wants to talk with me. I knew his name a long time ago. In 1952, when I finally was signed with Fox and knew that there was some kind of security ahead, I took a train to the city he lived. I walked into the office, and told the secretary my name, and would like to see him. I heard him tell her, ‘Tell her she can contact me through my lawyer.’ I turned around, left, and that statement ended that.” Ralph Roberts heartily agreed that Marilyn was in very good spirits during the summer of 1962, despite of her troubles with Fox studio. 

“She was really taking control of her life and asserting herself that summer,” Roberts said, sentiments echoed by Rupert Allan and Susan Strasberg, among others. Roberts recalled that during the last months of her life, Marilyn was more optimistic than she had been. She nurtured a close friendship with Wally Cox and renewed one with Wally’s friend Marlon Brando. “And she saw,” Roberts added, “that Greenson was severing all her close relationships, one by one. He had tried to cut me and the Strasbergs and Joe out of her life—and now Marilyn said he thought it would be better if she dismissed Pat Newcomb, too. By the end of July, Marilyn realized that if she was going to have any friends left, any life of her own at all, she might have to disconnect from Greenson.” “Marilyn just couldn’t stand her living there anymore,” said Pat Newcomb of housekeeper Eunice Murray. “The truth is that Marilyn at last felt in control of things, and so she fired Mrs. Murray. It was over.” Her last day of work for Murray would be Saturday, August 4. This was only the beginning of Marilyn’s healthy self-assertion, but the real challenge still lay ahead—confronting Greenson with her new autonomy. 

Now Ralph Greenson was himself retreating into a psychoneurotic fear of abandonment and rejection, precisely the mental attitudes Marilyn was learning to put behind her. In mid-afternoon, Jule Styne, who was looking forward to composing her songs for I Love Louisa, telephoned from New York with another idea. He proposed to Marilyn a film musical version of Betty Smith’s novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which had been a successful Fox film in 1945. To this idea she responded enthusiastically and added that since she was coming to New York the following week, they could meet in his office. Thus an appointment was fixed for the following Thursday, August 9, at half past two: “She was very excited about the idea,” recalled Jule Styne, “and she would have been wonderful in it. We spoke of Frank Sinatra for the other leading role.” A few minutes after eight on the morning of Saturday, August 4, Eunice Murray arrived at Fifth Helena for her last day of work, which was to include supervision of the garden plantings. The theory of suicide by deliberate Nembutal overdose would have been an action entirely inconsistent with everything in Marilyn Monroe’s life at the time—especially after the call to Marilyn from Joe DiMaggio, Jr., as reported by him and by both Murray and Greenson.

In the unlikely scenario she had suddenly decided to commit suicide, she would have taken a large dose at one time (not a quantity of capsules throughout the day). The barbiturates would have reached a toxic level rapidly, and she would have died. But in that case, there would almost certainly be a residue of pills in the stomach: “Forty or fifty pills simply are not going to dissolve so quickly in the stomach,” as Dr. Arnold Abrams reported. “The odds that she took pills and died from them are astronomically unlikely.” The possibility of barbiturate injection must also be rejected. A dose large enough to be lethal, injected intramuscularly or intravenously, would have resulted in an instantaneous death and a much higher level of barbiturate in the blood. And because the level of chloral hydrate was twice that of the Nembutal (which had accumulated in the liver, having been ingested gradually over many hours), it is clear that the chloral hydrate was administered after the Nembutal pills had been taken. In his haste that last evening, Dr. Greenson perhaps overlooked one crucial factor, the adverse interaction of the two drugs. Chloral hydrate interferes with the body’s production of enzymes that metabolize Nembutal. It was the chloral hydrate that pushed Marilyn over the edge. 

She was, after all, the most famous movie star in the world, so Dr. Ralph Greenson could never tell the truth of his mistakes and malpractice. And herein lies the tragedy of Marilyn Monroe’s death. Something brave, new and mature was emerging inside her those last months, as every interview, personal interaction and performance witnesses. Marilyn Monroe was finally taking control of her life, as those closest to her testified; she was in some inchoate way banishing the crippling ghosts that had so long surrounded her. —Sources: "Marilyn Monroe: The Biography" (2012) by Donald Spoto and "Mimosa: Memories of Marilyn" (2021) by Ralph Roberts

Bombshell, The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

Bombshell (2021) by Mike Rothmiller is both unconvincing as an argument and poorly written in general. And no, if he took this to any court he would not get a conviction, unless they chose to investigate all of his crooked dealings as a cop and prosecute him instead. A former (somewhat) bad cop talking about other somewhat bad cops at LAPD OCID while greatly exaggerating his importance and 'insider' knowledge writes on a key historical event about which we can only take his word. He read mystery police files from filing cabinets while not busy performing his primary task of sharpening pencils at OCID headquarters. Without vetted copies of documents, without recorded audio proof of his revelatory {if accurate} conversation with Peter Lawford, around which the substance of this narrative hinges, we can not evaluate his veracity. It's all hearsay. Unfortunately all of the pictures/taped recordings the author has seen or heard have not been shared to prove his statements. And all of the main characters are of course long dead so it is easy to make claims which they cannot refute or confirm. We are given a lot of information about gangsters and LAPD officers that I think we could have done without. There isn't a single photograph in the book apart from the cover photo of Marilyn. 

Despite his “growth and evolution” in the groovy Sixties, Bobby Kennedy was supposedly a homophobe and anti-Semite. From Roy Cohn to Bayard Rustin to J. Edgar Hoover, he seemed to despise gays. As for Jews, Bobby took after his dear old dad, Joe Kennedy, who once described Jews as “pants pressers.” In 1962, Bobby was assigned to arrange for Marilyn Monroe to sing at JFK’s 45th birthday fundraiser at Madison Square Garden. Then Bobby called up the movie producer she was working for, a Jewish lawyer named Henry T. Weinstein, and demanded she be given a couple of days off. The producer balked, Weinstein later told Seymour Hersh, and Bobby reacted in his usual way. “He called me a ‘Jew bastard’ and hung up the phone on me.” ‘I’m not having an affair with Bobby,’ Marilyn confided to her masseur Ralph Roberts. ‘I like him, but not physically.’ Marilyn met with Bobby in June 1962, at the Lawfords residence. The following day, Bobby called on Marilyn alone at her bungalow in the Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood. According to her housekeeper, Eunice Murray, Marilyn ‘did not seem bubbly or excited by his visit.’ 

Marilyn had recently been fired by Twentieth Century Fox following repeated absences from the set of Something’s Got To Give. At the time, Bobby’s book about organised crime, The Enemy Within, was being considered as a film project at Fox, so Marilyn maybe hoped he would use his influence to get her reinstated. She called Bobby at the Justice Department six times in July, concluding with an eight-minute call on July 30th. ‘Robert Kennedy was such a sympathetic kind of person,’ Bobby’s secretary, Angie Novello, told Anthony Summers. ‘He never turned away from anyone who needed help, and I’m sure he was well aware of her problems with her studio. He was a good listener and that, I think, was what she needed more than anything.’

Among the slew of books purporting to solve the ‘mystery’ of Marilyn’s untimely death, only a few are worth the paper they were written on. David M. Marshall’s The DD Group is one, and Donald R. McGovern’s Murder Orthodoxies another. Gary Vitacco-Robles, author of Icon : The Life, Times, and Films of Marilyn Monroe, will publish his own interpretation in 2022. The remainder, unfortunately, tend to propagate wild conspiracy theories involving the Kennedys, the Mafia etc. Bombshell was featured mainly in the UK tabloids The Sun and the Daily Mail, with the following blurb: "With his training and investigator’s knowledge, Rothmiller used confidential information to get to the heart of the matter, to the people who were there the night Marilyn died and the wider conspiracy to protect the Kennedys." Curious to know more about Rothmiller, I consulted McGovern’s Murder Orthodoxies. If you’re considering purchasing Bombshell, I suggest you read McGovern’s thoughts on the author first.

Donald  McGovern: “Prior to the publication of Donald Wolfe’s The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe, his 1998 exposé about Marilyn’s alleged murder, only four persons claimed to have seen Marilyn’s diary and read some of its pages: Robert Slatzer, Jeanne Carmen, Ted Jordan, and Samir Muqaddin [aka Lionel Grandison], a clerk in the county coroner’s office. Donald Wolfe added a fifth name: Michael Rothmiller, a Los Angeles police detective. Wolfe, according to his source notes, interviewed Michael Rothmiller in 1998. Rothmiller, a Los Angeles Police Department detective, was a member of the Organised Crime Intelligence Division (OCID), otherwise known as LAPD’s infamous Gangster Squad. In 1978, Rothmiller worked in the OCID file room which housed confidential data including the police department’s files regarding Marilyn and the LAPD’s investigation into her death. Those files, according to Rothmiller, contained not Marilyn’s original Red Book of Secrets but a copy thereof. Neither Rothmiller nor Wolfe explain when the copy was made. In 1982, making copies of documents and books was not as easy and convenient as it is today or as it was in 1998. Rothmiller told Wolfe that Marilyn’s diary was more like a journal; and some of her entries memorialised her conversations with the middle Kennedy brothers. Apparently, Wolfe relied on Slatzer, certainly a questionable tactic. Samir Muqaddin’s memoir, however [Memoirs of a Deputy Coroner, 2012], offered a much more detailed view. It is definitely difficult, if not impossible, to conclude that Marilyn’s Red Book of Secrets actually existed based on Michael Rothmiller’s testimony. By 1998, the year Wolfe interviewed the LAPD detective, two decades had elapsed since he allegedly saw the copy of Marilyn’s diary. Why did he wait so long to reveal that this copy existed, to tell the world what he allegedly observed? Where was he in 1982 during the LAPD’s threshold investigation? 

Oddly, neither Robert Slatzer nor Jeanne Carmen nor Samir Muqaddin nor the 1982 LADA Summary Report regarding that investigation mentioned Michael Rothmiller. But then, the mythology surrounding Marilyn’s diary, as it relates to her death, is so ingrained in her story, that is entirely remarkable that more persons have not appeared with similar stories to Rothmiller’s. The assertion that the little red diary existed in a storage room filled with secret files fits neatly into the conspiracist’s mindset and their conspiracy puzzle: for them, the diary has become the missing piece which will bring into focus for the conspiracists, the complete picture of Marilyn’s untimely death. Still, Rothmiller’s testimony remains uncorroborated and unverifiable. Wolfe apparently expected his readers to accept Rothmiller’s testament on faith, a quantum leap that I, for one, cannot make.

Many biographers and many conspiracists have delineated over the years a Marilyn Monroe that did not exist. She was neither a helpless victim nor a silly girl of fantasy swooning over or gripped by the passion of an infatuation. When we compare the actual writings of Marilyn Monroe [collected in Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters, 2010] with the writings certain individuals have alleged were Marilyn’s, a large chasm between what those individuals have alleged were Marilyn’s and what we now know is real becomes painfully apparent… It is their word against history: no diary of the type described by Slatzer, Carmen, Jordan, Rothmiller and Muqaddin has, in fifty years, been found. Besides and in fact, not one person in Marilyn’s inner circle ever mentioned seeing a diary of the type described by our witnesses, not Pat Newcomb nor Susan Strasberg nor Ralph Roberts nor Joe DiMaggio nor Arthur Miller, not even Eunice Murray, who allegedly possessed it briefly, ever mentioned a little red diary.” Source: themarilynreport.com

A mysterious box of Marilyn Monroe documents sealed until 2039 could prove she was killed by her obsessed psychiatrist, claims a private investigator. The papers belonged to Dr Ralph Greenson, who found her body and who is suspected by some of administering the barbiturate overdose which killed her in 1962. Private detective Becky Aldrige found 'Box 29' stored at UCLA library where it will remain sealed to the public for another two decades, despite a list of contents showing it contains  a trove of files about Monroe. Aldrige claims that Dr Greenson remained haunted by the actress' ghost. Aldrige told The Sun that she was stunned to find that Dr Greenson, who died in 1979, had a sealed box of papers. 'I spent hours looking at everything I was allowed to - I couldn't make copies or take pictures so I just took notes.'  'I discovered he was obsessed with Marilyn Monroe because he had every book, every magazine, every newspaper that was ever written about Marilyn Monroe, everything. Then there were letters that were written to him, people telling him to kill himself because they thought it was his fault, she was dead. I remember thinking "Why did you save this?" 'There is also letters in there to Marilyn Monroe from other people - and letters she wrote to other people - why does he even have those? There's also some of his confidential medical files, and another file that doesn't say what it is.' Aldrige says that in a previous Monroe's suicide attempt she had left a note, but on the night of her death there was none. Source: thedailymail.com

The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy, Sirhan Sirhan

Gov. Gavin Newsom is not likely to ever free Robert F. Kennedy’s killer from prison — nor should he. That’s just a guess based on Newsom’s stated admiration for Kennedy and the fact that he’s no political dummy. He also apparently understands that assassin Sirhan Sirhan unforgivably changed American history for the worse, committing a crime against the nation. If Newsom could announce now that he would never allow Sirhan to be paroled, he’d probably leap at the chance. If Sirhan’s release still has the green light, the governor could block it. Of course, just because RFK is a hero to Newsom and Sirhan spoiled history doesn’t necessarily mean the governor wouldn’t feel compelled to release him. Under California law, to be released on parole, a prison lifer must be considered no longer a danger to the public. Asked at his hearing whether he’d ever kill again, Sirhan replied: “I would never put myself in jeopardy again.” That wasn’t exactly a statement of remorse. But Sirhan at another point said: “Sen. Kennedy was the hope of the world … and it pains me … the knowledge for such a horrible deed — if I did, in fact, do that.” Source: www.latimes.com

Dan Moldea, author of the book, "The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy", participated in a recent television special on the RFK assassination. Using, laser sights, stand-ins, and a re-creation of the Ambassador Hotel pantry in which the assassination occurred, Moldea purported to account for the six assassination victim's wounds using no more bullets than Sirhan's gun could hold. Moldea's television explanation, the same offered in his book, has several fatal shortcomings. One particularly critical conclusion by Moldea ensures that, under his scenario, no less than 9 shots were necessary to account for the victims' wounds. Problematically for Moldea, Sirhan fired an 8-shot revolver, which he unquestionably did not reload. Ironically, in a book which concluded that Sirhan B. Sirhan acted alone, Moldea actually offered a shooting scenario that demands two shooters! And what was Moldea's fatal mistake? He concluded that one of the victims (Paul Schrade) was struck in the forehead by a bullet that struck nothing else first. I made Moldea aware of his error in 2003 during a lengthy phone conversation. He sidestepped the issue, saying, "I wrote the book almost ten years ago. Honestly, I've forgotten the details [of the trajectory scenario] and put the RFK assassination behind me." Moldea ended the pleasant conversation by giving me some genuinely friendly advice: spend more time with your family and let the RFK assassination go. The key to understanding how Moldea's single-assassin shooting scenario, if correct, actually proves conspiracy, begins with an understanding of the number of victims and wounds they suffered. These wounds are undisputed:

1. RFK - Shot in the head, no exit.

2. RFK - Shot in the right rear armpit, with the bullet coming to rest in the flesh beneath the skin at the base of the back of the neck. The bullet was recovered at autopsy.

3. RFK - Shot in the right rear armpit one inch above shot No. 2. The bullet exited through right front chest below the clavicle.

4. RFK - Entry and exit of a bullet which passed through the rear right shoulder of RFK's suit jacket. The entry and exit were both behind the yolk seam at the top of the shoulder, and penetrated only the outermost layer of fabric.

5. Paul Schrade - Shot in the forehead above hairline near the apex of the head. Bullet fragments remained in the head, with a majority exiting through an exit defect several centimeters behind the entry point.

6. Ira Goldstein - Shot in the left buttock/thigh. The bullet was recovered during surgery.

7. Ira Goldstein - Entry and exit of a bullet that passed cleanly through his left pant leg without striking him.

8. Irwin Stroll - Shot in the left shin. The bullet was recovered during surgery.

9. Elizabeth Evans - Shot in the center of the forehead one inch below the hairline. Fragments of a bullet recovered during surgery were too light to comprise a full .22 round. There was no exit point in the scalp.

10. William Weisel - Shot in the left abdomen. The bullet was recovered near the spine during surgery.

The story of the girl in the polka dot dress has been a lingering theme in accounts of the events just after midnight on June 5, 1968, when Kennedy was gunned down in the hotel pantry after claiming victory in the California Democratic presidential primary. Witnesses talked of seeing such a female running from the hotel shouting, "We shot Kennedy." But she was never identified, and amid the chaos of the scene, descriptions were conflicting. Through the years, Sirhan has claimed no memory of shooting Kennedy and said in the recent interviews that his presence at the hotel was an accident, not a planned destination. Under hypnosis, he remembered meeting the girl that night and becoming smitten with her. He said she led him to the pantry. "I am trying to figure out how to hit on her... That's all that I can think about," he says in one interview cited in the documents. "I was fascinated with her looks. It was very erotic. I was consumed by her. She was a seductress with an unspoken unavailability." During Sgt. Hernandez’ polygraph testing of Jerry Owen, Hernandez seemed to display something of that attitude: “I’ve talked to twenty three people that say they saw a girl in the polka dot dress. They are all--they're all fibbing.”  (Tape #29272, July 3, 1968; Lt.Hernandez of SUS interrogation of Jerry Owen, page 46 of transcript). 

   

Larry Hancock: It does seem clear that Sgt. Hernandez shifted from being an detached polygraph interviewer to an aggressive police interrogator during the course of the interview with Sandra Serrano. In the end, Hernandez gave Sandy Serrano a choice, she could accept his appeal to recant or she would be talking to police forever… and possibly worse. Serrano quit her job and moved back to Ohio. Much later, in 1988 after the LAPD files were made public, Serrano had one more comment. In a brief radio interview she said simply: “I don’t ever want to have to go through that again….that sort of everyday harassment…being put in a room for hours with polka dot dress all around you. It was a bad scene and one that as a young person I was totally unprepared to handle. I was just twenty years old and I became unglued. I said what they wanted me to say.” It is should be mentioned that a great many of the witnesses which LAPD discounted were rejected based on interviews with Sgt. Hernandez. Chief Houghton describes one instance of this in his description of how the police handled Sandra Serrano’s observations. He relates that supervisor Manny Pena knew that if Serrano stuck to her story nothing could dispel the polka dotted dress girl “fever”, only Serrano herself could “put the spotted ghost to rest”.

In his book, and with no apparent concern, Houghton described their tactics, beginning with Manny Pena calling the SUS (Special Unit Senator) polygraph specialist and asking him to take Ms. Serrano out for a “SUS bought steak” dinner. He did just that, first with an informal dinner with Serrano and her Aunt, then isolating Serrano at the police station for a impromptu series of aggressive and emotional interviews, including a lengthy polygraph interrogation lasting until very late that night. Conflicting statements and evidence, which the defense seems not to have been aware of (or certainly did not take up in court) did not become public knowledge until years and in some cases decades had passed. It became public only as the result of almost constant pressure from private investigators and researchers. Lisa Pease details the statements of the “five best” witnesses who were described by LAPD as being in a position to see both RFK and Sirhan. All confirm a distance between them of “three” to “several” feet. The closest man to both, Karl Uecker, later went on record as stating that “There is no way that the shots described in the autopsy could have come from Sirhan’s gun. When I told this to the authorities, they told me I was wrong. But I repeat now what I told them then: Sirhan never got close enough for a point-blank shot.” 

The coroner’s report on the wounds, the eyewitnesses to Sirhan’s distance from RFK and the witnesses who reported other men with guns in the pantry – all suggest an alternative scenario of the shooting: Robert Kennedy entered a relatively long hallway with side doors and progressed into the section of the hallway which served as a pantry. As he moved through the pantry, he approached Sirhan. Then Sirhan moved out as if to shake his hand and began firing a pistol at Kennedy. As Kennedy fell back and down, one of the men whom Kennedy had passed, stepped up behind him and fired with a concealed weapon (a weapon probably held at waist level where it had been concealed under a newspaper). Kennedy was fatally wounded from one of these shots fired at extremely close range and sagged to the floor. At that point the shooter and the women withdrew as others ran forward; they slipped out one of the side corridor doors into the Embassy room, observed by several witnesses in the corridor and around the doors. Sirhan, drawing attention because he was firing a now very visible weapon into the oncoming crowd, was wrestled down, his pistol coming out of his hand. There is little doubt that some of Sirhan's writing was done in an abnormal state of mind. Certain of his notebook entries were done in highly repetitive fashion, very suggestive of automatic writing, a technique that does involve auto-suggestion and visualization, suggesting Sirhan had practiced a form of self hypnosis and did have the ability to force himself into a trance like state. Research into Sirhan’s activities disclosed considerable evidence that he had indeed been highly interested in the occult, had appeared at a Theosophical Society meeting and studied its literature, joined the Rosicrucians and studied their literature and practices (which included auto-hypnosis) and at the time of the assassination had a book by Manley Hall, founder of the Philosophical Research Society and a master hypnotist. 

It seems virtually certain that there was a conspiracy involved in the murder of Senator Kennedy. He had been stalked in the weeks and days immediately before his death; Sirhan himself had been present at the Ambassador the prior weekend, reported in both areas where the Senator was to speak and in the general area of the hotel kitchen. Credible witnesses place Sirhan in the company with the same set of individuals throughout the evening of the assassination and Sirhan was clearly “positioned” on the route which the Senator had used to enter the stage on which he gave his victory speech. The fatal encounter was no random accident. In addition, Sirhan’s notebook entries clearly reveal a focus on the Senator and specifies the date at which he would have to be killed, an obvious date given the timing of the California primary. Sirhan’s knowledge of the actual shooting may be debated, his claim to have no recollection at all of any of his notebook entries, of various notes about RFK on other pieces of paper or of other events is questionable. It is unwise to use Sirhan himself as a reliable source of information. The same can be said for many aspects of the LAPD investigation. There is substantive reason to challenge a good deal of their ballistics and forensics data. Much of their witness investigation work raises questions, including witness evaluations based on department polygraphs. All of this leaves us with a most unsatisfactory situation, with ample evidence to recognize a conspiracy, with clues to possible accessories, with profiles of the people who were repeatedly reported in association with Sirhan – and with justice very definitely incomplete. Source: www.maryferrell.org

Marilyn Monroe: 65th Anniversary of "Bus Stop"

Picture Marilyn Monroe and you'll see platinum blonde hair, bright red lipstick, and a white dress fluttering over a subway grate. But right after immortalizing exactly that image in 1955's The Seven Year Itch, Monroe reinvented herself. Under her own company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, and with a new studio contract under her belt, Marilyn Monroe delivered what remains one of her best performances in Bus Stop. Marilyn Monroe makes it worth remembering on the 65th anniversary of its premiere: August 31, 1956. The film, penned by The Seven Year Itch co-writer George Axelrod and directed by Joshua Logan, is based on a William Inge play. It follows Beau Decker (Don Murray), a bad mannered and rambunctious cowboy who's never left his ranch before. He sets out by bus from Montana to Arizona in the hopes of winning a rodeo – and bagging himself a woman. 

When he sees Monroe's Chérie performing at a bar, he's immediately smitten, and decides they'll be married the very next day. No matter how often Chérie turns him down or tries to escape, Beau won't be deterred, and she is eventually won over at the film's titular bus stop on their way back to Montana. Despite branching out into other genres earlier in her career, playing the femme fatale in 1953's Niagara and appearing in noirs The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and Don't Bother to Knock (1952), 20th Century Fox was determined to keep her pigeonholed in the airy, comedic roles she was so adept at playing. This didn't work for Monroe, who was intent on being taken seriously as an actor. Her contract at Fox had her underpaid, with no say in what she appeared in. She refused to film the comedy The Girl in the Pink Tights, so Fox suspended her. A resolution seemed to have been reached when Monroe agreed to play a supporting role in 1954's There’s No Business Like Show Business and star in Billy Wilder's The Seven Year Itch (complete with a hefty bonus) – but the battle was far from over. Monroe made her commitment to changing her image clear. She ditched her acting coach and took up classes at the prestigious NYC Actors Studio. She would not appear in Fox's next choice for her, a comedy called How to Be Very, Very Popular. 

Eventually, Monroe proved to be too big a star to lose, and she got a new contract with Fox at the end of '55. It was a huge win, paying far better and giving her more control over her career, including approval over directors and her films' subjects. MMP's first picture would be Bus Stop, and before cameras rolled, its leading lady put the final stamp on her transformation with a legal name change from Norma Jeane Mortenson to Marilyn Monroe.  If Bus Stop had starred anyone else, it's doubtful the film would stand the test of time. Monroe disappears into her role, with her signature blonde hair dyed a darker shade, her famous low, breathy voice exchanged for a high-pitched Ozark accent, her skin tone made chalky with makeup (Chérie works nights and hardly sees the sun), her singing warbly, and her dancing awkward – just contrast her faltering performance of the film's "That Old Black Magic" with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' knockout "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend." Monroe even found her own bedraggled costume, turning down one she thought looked too polished, and putting her own holes into her fishnets. Behind the scenes, she worked busily with her acting coach Paula Strasberg to perfect her performance, painstakingly going over every line of every scene. 

The hard work paid off. Director Joshua Logan, who before the cameras rolled protested that "Marilyn can’t act!", was entirely won over, going so far as to call her "one of the great talents of all time." The New York Time's review mirrored his about-face: "Marilyn Monroe has finally proved herself an actress in Bus Stop. She and the picture are swell! This piece of professional information may seem both implausible and absurd to those who have gauged the lady's talents by her performances in such films as Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and even The Seven Year Itch." By modern standards, Chérie's storyline is entirely misogynistic. It's disturbing to watch her give in to Beau's advances because he's the first person to accept her history with other men (apparently, it "averages out" because he has never had a girlfriend). Beau's "I like you the way you are, so what do I care how you got that way" would be sweet if not for all the time he's spent harassing – and literally abducting – Chérie, his inability to even pronounce her name right, and the fact that her transgression in his eyes is having been with other men. "That's the sweetest, tenderest thing anyone's ever said to me," Chérie replies.

That doesn't mean that Chérie is a character undeserving of Monroe's talents, though. There's something tragic in her speech on the bus about wanting whoever she marries to have "some real regard for me," as well as her dreams of making it to Hollywood when her talents aren't quite up to scratch. There is a meta tongue-in-cheek moment in which Chérie talks about her big plan to make it to Hollywood where “you get treated with a little respect.” It’s an overt dig at Zanuck and 20th Century Fox (which Marilyn famously called 19th Century Fox for its backward treatment of female stars). And one imagines that’s what the ingenue version of Marilyn might have initially thought with her grand plans to become a star. Except, unlike Chérie, she already grew up right next to Hollywood, her own mother a film cutter at RKO. Don Murray (Marilyn's co-star) was nominated to Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Source: www.gamesradar.com

James DiEugenio: Concerning Marilyn Monroe, there is no evidence of her closeness to the Mafia, or RFK. And there is no evidence of her doing a tell all on the Kennedy brothers. And if you read Donald McGovern's current article, she was not murdered. The pills were ingested, not injected. And what Mark Shaw does to try and get RFK into Brentwood was exposed by McGovern as nothing but photographic trickery. I say that because it is difficult to imagine that a lawyer/author could be that stupid. Also, there were many people who were not invited to her last rites proceeding, as Joe DiMaggio only invited 26. A lot of cheap hucksters have created a lot of smoke and mirrors out of a lot of nothing in order to create what, in reality, is a wild and lurid fantasy which libels Marilyn Monroe, RFK and JFK. Marilyn was not a Mob moll and she was not some kind of intel asset, or being tossed around by, of all people, RFK--who Hoover could not find anything on, even though he had agents following him around. What is incredible to me is that some people in the JFK critical community have actually take this rubbish seriously as Paul Hoch.

But the diary tale is actually worse than all the above. Because it turned out that Marilyn did have a diary. It was recovered in one of her storage boxes years after a dispute was resolved over her estate. It was nothing like Lionel Grandison, Robert Slatzer, or Jeanne Carmen said it was. The bulk of her estate was given over to the Strasberg family, since Monroe greatly appreciated what her acting coach, Lee Strasberg, had done for her. Those notebooks were compiled in a book called Fragments in 2010. There is no mention of Giancana, Roselli, Hoover, or Tony Accardo. Frank Sinatra is not in there and neither is Castro. Nothing about any romance with the Kennedy brothers or her desire to be First Lady. The only mention of the Kennedys was in notes she made for an interview, in which she said she admired them, as she did Eleanor Roosevelt, because they represented hope for young people. Grandison then surpassed himself. Not only did he find the diary, but there was also a publicity release in her purse. The release said that there would be a press conference at the LA Press Club. Marilyn would answer questions based upon her Diary of Secrets. I am not kidding. That is what it said and McGovern reproduces it in his book. Of course, no one ever saw it except Lionel Grandison. One wonders, since there was no such Diary of Secrets, what was the conference going to be about? Her failed marriages? Her thoughts on her acting career? Because, as one can see, that is what she wrote about in her diary, her real one, not the Slatzerian creation. Source: www.kennedysandking.com

Collateral Damage: Mark Shaw’s Public Atrocity

In Mark Shaw’s recent publication, Collateral Damage (2021), largely about the deaths of Marilyn Monroe and Dorothy Kilgallen, the author recklessly engaged in what Sherlock Holmes calls a capital mistake. An important foundational premise posited by Shaw in Collateral Damage is that some type of lengthy and abiding friendship existed between the film star and the gossip columnist. Kilgallen’s friends, Shaw asserts, “included stars from stage and screen like Marilyn.” Yet, the author does not offer any tangible evidence to conclusively establish this putative friendship. In an email communication with me regarding the Marilyn–Dorothy friendship alleged by Shaw, Marilyn biographer, Gary Vitacco-Robles, noted that he was “only aware of DK attending the event to promote” the romantic comedy, Let’s Make Love (1960). 

Extant photographs depict Marilyn, her costar, Yves Montand, and Arthur Miller with Dorothy Kilgallen. But an unbiased and forthright analysis of those photographs will lead to this conclusion: while Marilyn and Dorothy were together during that publicity event, they were not being friendly. In fact, Marilyn appeared to be completely disinterested in Dorothy’s presence, as the photographs reveal. In fact, the actual evidence suggests just the contrary: Marilyn and Dorothy were not friends. Also, Gary Vitacco-Robles informed me that Eunice Murray only returned to the hacienda on one occasion: with Marilyn’s sister, Berniece, and Inez Melson to select a burial dress for Marilyn. Shaw appears not to have done his homework on this.

The opinions offered by Cara Williams clearly undermine Shaw’s expressed purpose: to present Marilyn as more than just a sexpot, but to present her as an accomplished actress who reached the top on her talent; to present her as a woman of intelligence and humanity. Cara’s opinions pertaining to Marilyn did not provide Shaw’s readers with an insight into Marilyn’s life or her death. In fact, Cara’s opinions did not provide evidence of anything. Jane Russell, Marilyn’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes co-star, appears as one of Shaw’s sources at approximately the midpoint of his book. Unlike Cara Williams, at least Jane had some feelings for Marilyn and often referred to the blonde movie star as her little sister. According to his source notes, Shaw did not interview Jane. Instead, he relied on quotations from a biography written by Edwin P. Hoyt, Marilyn: The Tragic Venus, published in 1965; quotations which Shaw does not properly source, a common occurrence for him. According to Shaw, Jane informed Hoyt that her co-star “was always sweet and friendly with the stagehands and the crew” along with also being “a thoughtful person, a searching person.” 

Gianni Russo portrayed Carlo Rizzi in the 1972 movie, The Godfather. He reprised his portrayal in the movie’s 1974 sequel. Tracing the development of Russo’s yarn in the ever accommodating media has been humorous. The edges of his MM narrative changed constantly over the years, not unlike the edges of an amoeba. In 2006, for example, Russo announced on the Howard Stern Show that Marilyn was in her 20s when he first encountered her and their affair began. Shall we engage in some simple arithmetic? When Russo was born, Norma Jeane was 17. On June 1, 1946, Norma turned twenty. At that time, Russo was two-years-old, still in diapers no doubt and pulling on a pacifier. A decade later, Marilyn started her thirties on June 1, 1956, and she attended the premiere of The Seven Year Itch in Manhattan with Joe DiMaggio. At that time, Russo was a twelve-year-old boy. So, at the age of 12, he was taking on Joe D? Would Mario Puzo even write that? There’s more. Russo declared that his affair with Marilyn actually began when he was 16 and she was 23. Marilyn was 23 in 1949. Russo must have become an extremely advanced six-year-old in December of that year. But this is obvious: neither Norma Jeane nor Marilyn Monroe had an affair with Gianni Russo.

After the publication of Russo’s book by St. Martin’s Press in 2019, lawyer Donna Morel began to investigate Russo, specifically, his sensational revelations about Marilyn Monroe, his alleged relationship with the actress, and his assertions about her death. Donna uncovered two newspaper articles that she provided to me along with a press release pertaining to a series of photographs that had been taken at Cal-Neva Lodge that infamous July weekend; and the press release appeared to contradict several of Russo’s assertions. In May of 2019, Donna received a telephone call and a story about Russo’s photograph that completely contradicted the yarn spun by the Hollywood Godfather. Recently, Donna graciously provided me with the Married Guest’s telephone number. On Tuesday, August the 10th, 2021, at 10:00 AM, I engaged Donna’s source in a 90- minute conversation. The story I received confirmed what Donna had already reported to me. The individual to whom Donna and I spoke took the photograph, not Sam Giancana, who, according to the actual photographer, was not even at Cal-Neva that weekend. The Married Guest admitted to knowing the ganglord well and humorously commented: “Sam Giancana never took a photograph of anybody in his entire life!”

As you have probably already assumed, the man in the photograph was most certainly not Gianni Russo; the man was an employee, a roadie who worked for an entertainer who performed that July weekend. Unfortunately, the Married Guest could not recall the roadie’s name, but commented that he was a nice man, not boy. Furthermore, when I asked if Robert Kennedy was at Cal-Neva that weekend, I received laughter and a firm “absolutely not.” To my question about the presence of mobsters other than Sam Giancana, I received a precise answer: “There were no mobsters there.” To my question regarding the alleged yarns about all the bad things that happened to Marilyn Monroe that weekend, the Married Guest replied: “Nothing bad happened to Marilyn. It was a big party and everybody enjoyed themselves, including Marilyn.” According to the Married Guest, the blonde movie star “was a very funny gal, but she did get drunk one night.” I also hasten to denote this: two reliable sources who were also guests at the Cal-Neva Lodge that weekend, Betsy Hammes and the actor Alex D’Arcy, told Donald Spoto virtually 30 years ago that Giancana and his gang were not there. Their testimony has been completely ignored, not only by Mark Shaw, but the entire risible Marilyn-Was-Murdered-World.

Robert Kennedy was in Washington on Monday, July 30th, 1962, where he spoke to a large group of educators to open the President’s Council on Youth Fitness. “Energetic Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy gave a pep talk on the importance of physical fitness yesterday,” reported a Port Chester New York newspaper, The Daily Item, in its July 31st edition. From this established record, Robert Kennedy was not with Marilyn Monroe at Cal-Neva Lodge at any time during the weekend of July 28th, as absurdly stated by Gianni Russo. For a man of his ilk to assert as much, along with all the other rubbish he has uttered, borders on felonious behavior. But then, he maintains that is exactly what he was—a criminal, and a murdering criminal at that, along with many other illegal enterprises which Shaw ignores. Mark Shaw evokes Sgt. Clemmons as another source in Collateral Damage.

Sgt. Jack Clemmons was the first police officer to arrive at Fifth Helena Drive on Sunday, August 5th. “Someone can’t swallow that many barbiturates without throwing up,” Clemmons said, “therefore she could have gotten drugs in her body by another method.” According to Shaw, Sgt. Clemmons suspected that Marilyn had, in fact, vomited, but all traces of it “may been cleaned up before he arrived;” the sergeant also concluded that the murder weapon was possibly a suppository or an enema. Shaw also mentions that Sgt. Clemmons observed “additional empty containers” of pills and “scattered capsules and pills of another nature,” meaning obviously that capsules and pills had been dropped either in Marilyn’s bed or on the white carpeted floor, something I had neither read nor heard before. Eventually, Shaw recites Sgt. Clemmons’ story that he observed Eunice Murray operating a washing machine and clothes dryer close to dawn; obviously destroying evidence of vomit or another bodily discharge which could have proved Marilyn was murdered. In fact, Marilyn did not own a washing machine or a clothes dryer. She used a laundry service; but as with Gianni Russo, Shaw did not allow that fact to encumber him or his speculations about evidence Eunice Murray hypothetically destroyed.

Sgt. Jack Clemmons told his tales to many conspiracist authors from Robert Slatzer to Anthony Summers to Donald Wolfe, who became a close friend of Clemmons. I also traced the testimony the sergeant offered during his interviews during the many television documentaries he appeared in until his death in 1998. For 36 years, Sgt. Clemmons declared that Marilyn Monroe did not commit suicide: she was murdered by an injection administered directly into her heart by psychiatrist Dr. Ralph Greenson, which is a scientific impossibility, proven by Dr. Noguchi’s autopsy and Dr. Abernathy’s toxicological tests. But evidently—and like many in the MM trade—the once LAPD cop repeated the heart injection fantasy so often that he actually grew to believe it happened, when, in fact, it didn’t. Clemmons’ testimony was often inconsistent and contradictory; and his recollections of August 5th changed over the passing years. He even began to assert that Marilyn’s house and her bedroom were exceptionally tidy, and appeared to have been cleaned with all things neatly arranged. One look at the police photographs taken that August morning clearly indicated otherwise. Sgt. Clemmons’ career as a policeman came to a dishonorable end in 1965, due to his involvement with Frank Capell and the Thomas Kuchel libel incident. Like Frank Capell, Jack Clemmons evidently did not have a problem twisting the facts. Like most dutiful conspiracists, Shaw published the police photograph of Marilyn’s bedside table and, like his conspiracist compatriots, he published a cropped version, included below. Dutifully, he also noted that a drinking glass was not on Marilyn’s bedside table and one could not be found, neither in her bedroom nor her adjoining bathroom.

Displayed below is the actual, uncropped photograph taken that Sunday morning by police combined with an enlargement of the trash can area. Please note the drinking glass to the right of the trash can on the floor and to the left of Marilyn’s bed, a clearly visible drinking glass.

Shaw included what he asserted was the bedroom wing layout of Marilyn’s hacienda and he paraphrased Eunice Murray’s testimony about that tragic Sunday morning: “while on the way to her bathroom,” Shaw noted, “she [Mrs. Murray] noticed light visible beneath Marilyn’s door, causing her to become suspicious that something could be wrong.” However, Shaw doubted that testimony, calling it inconsistent and apparently a lie. On the night of August 4th, Eunice Murray slept in the smaller bedroom where Marilyn had positioned a cot, identified on the floor plan as “Guest Sleeping.” Pat Newcomb had slept in the same bedroom on the same cot when she spent Friday night with Marilyn. It is apparent that Mrs. Murray could have noticed light emanating from Marilyn’s bedroom on her way to the Jack and Jill bathroom and considering the arrangement of the bedroom’s doors, she could have stood at her bedroom door and easily observed Marilyn’s bedroom door. In the police photograph of Marilyn’s bedroom, looking across her disheveled bed at the opposing wall, clearly Mrs. Murray was preparing to enter the bedroom where she had slept, clearly visible from Marilyn’s bedroom door.

Finally, Shaw trotted out the famous thank-you note from Jean Kennedy Smith to Marilyn. During the Lawford’s 1962 February dinner party, Marilyn spoke to the ailing Kennedy clan patriarch via a telephone call instigated by Robert Kennedy. Joe Kennedy had suffered a serious stroke on December 19th in 1961, but he had yet to recover: he could barely speak. Robert must have felt that hearing Marilyn’s incredible voice would bolster the old man’s spirits. Sometime later, Marilyn sent a kind note to the senior Kennedy. In response to Marilyn’s kindness and her note, Jean Kennedy Smith wrote and sent Marilyn the aforementioned thank-you note. Both pages of the actual note are shown above. An innocent note, written and sent in response to a note that Marilyn sent to Joe Kennedy, Sr. It has always been of particular interest to conspiracists, including Shaw.  But in his book, he published the note’s second page only, which begins with: “understand you and Bobby are the new item!” Clearly, Shaw did not publish the first page of the note for obvious reasons. 

Like conspiracists before him, Shaw breathlessly pointed to the thank-you note as evidence and proof that Marilyn and Robert Kennedy were involved in an affair and the invitation extended by Jean Smith for Marilyn to join Bobby when he returned to the east has been used by the conspiracists as evidence that Robert Kennedy’s extramarital relationship with Marilyn had been accepted by the Kennedy clan, specifically the Kennedy women. As the first sentence of the thank-you note clearly stated, Rose Kennedy asked her daughter to write and thank Marilyn. That request “triggered the letter,” not something nefarious. During the decades since the note was sent to Marilyn by Jean Smith, its context has been completely disregarded by the conspiracists, including Mark Shaw. Obviously, the comment about Marilyn and Bobby being “the new item” was meant as a tongue-in-cheek reference to Marilyn’s twist teaching efforts during the Lawford’s February dinner party and the uproarious scene caused by Robert Kennedy attempting to dance with Marilyn Monroe. Evidently, Ethel constantly teased the Attorney General over that humorous scene, as frequently noted by John Seigenthaler, Robert Kennedy’s assistant.

That Jean Smith would invite Marilyn to visit Hyannisport seems only natural: who would not want Marilyn Monroe in their home for a visit? The conspiracists efforts to use that innocent note as proof of not only a romantic affair but the affair’s acceptance by the Kennedy clan and the Kennedy women is preposterous. That attempt should be viewed as manufactured since Sgt. Jack Clemmons, Frank Capell, Robert Slatzer, and Jeanne Carmen were all complicit in it. For an author—who is also an attorney—to place himself in such a dubious crowd is: well, its mystifying. “A guy known as The Doctor murdered Marilyn,” Russo testified to Michael Kaplan for a 3/2/19 New York Post article. The Doctor was a killer for hire and an actual MD who performed “major hits for the mob […].” This unnamed doctor “injected air into the vein near Marilyn’s pubic region,” which rendered the injection site invisible, Russo reported to Kaplan. Although Russo did not specify which vein or which part of Marilyn’s anatomy received the injection. While possibly the most inventive of Marilyn’s Murder Orthodoxies, Russo’s embolism tarradiddle is also certainly the most ludicrous. How could a venous gas embolism create the lethal concentrations of Chloral hydrate and pentobarbital in Marilyn’s blood and liver? Despite the ludicrous nature of Russo’s fairy tale, it has been reported by many newspapers, magazines, and Internet articles as the absolute truth. Yet, the most remarkable aspect of this curiosity is that Mark Shaw actually asserts that Russo’s incredibly imbecilic fairy tale has some credence. Once again, I am not being the least bit facetious.

An insane number of theories about the death of Marilyn Monroe have been developed and presented as fact during the past fifty-nine years: at least 12. The conspiracist authors who developed and presented those theories invariably contended that theirs was factual: the Last Word regarding the who, when, how, and why of Marilyn’s perceived mysterious death, her murder. Still, all of those theories did not satisfy Mark Shaw. Therefore, he developed one of his own. Let’s call his new theory Number 13. According to Shaw, Number 13 proceeds as follows. Sometime near midnight, unable to sleep, Marilyn “heard a noise at her front door.” Upon opening the door, two gloved men assaulted her and “stunned” her by placing “a chloroform-sealed cloth over her nose and mouth.” Once in her bedroom, the murderers removed any outer “clothing she was wearing such as a robe or panties” and they then carefully “positioned her nude body on the floor face down.” Also, Shaw failed to mention the concentration of pentobarbital in Marilyn’s blood, 4.5 mg%, quite a significant omission and a prime example of cherry picking in order to exclude relevant but unwanted evidence. Abernathy’s tests indicated a concentration of pentobarbital in Marilyn’s liver three times as high as the concentration in her blood. Explained by a branch of pharmacology called pharmacokinetics, that relationship is consistent with ingesting a large overdose and proves beyond a reasonable doubt and to a scientific certainty that the drugs were ingested. The drugs were not injected into Marilyn’s body, she did not receive a hot shot, and she was not murdered with a bulb syringe.

Amazing: Shaw began to question his own theory, his own explanation of what happened to Marilyn and led to her death. What time did the killers arrive? he questioned. Where was Mrs. Murray when the killers arrived and enacted the gruesome scene in Marilyn’s bedroom? Shaw speculates that the murder possibly occurred between midnight and 3:00 AM, contradicting his proclamation that the murderers arrived “at some point close to midnight.” Then, regarding the bruise on Marilyn’s hip, Shaw admitted that “other explanations exist as to how Marilyn could have bruised her left hip.” However, if that bruise was caused as he speculated, then obviously foul play had been involved in Marilyn’s death. He then wondered if Mrs. Murray had “knowledge of the attempt on Marilyn’s life,” which he admits could not be known. He then speculates that Mrs. Murray became spooked by “hearing noise near Marilyn’s bedroom,” which caused “Murray to wonder if Marilyn was in distress” and prompted her “to call either Greenson or Engelberg.” Eventually, Shaw’s speculations centered on Dr. Greenson, Dr. Engelberg, and Eunice Murray and their possible complicity with Robert Kennedy who “orchestrated Marilyn’s death via operatives sent to her home.” Frankly, it became self-evident as I read Shaw’s speculations and strange contradictions, that he likely did not even believe Number 13, which he himself formulated. So why should I? Besides, I know Shaw’s Number 13 is a fantasy founded on sensationalism. Marilyn was dead before midnight. Evidence, not speculation, confirms that and confirms that Marilyn certainly was not alive at 3:00 AM on August 5th. Unlike Mark Shaw, rigor mortis and fixed lividity do not speculate.

Dorothy Kilgallen’s columns following Marilyn’s death had been based on rumor and gossip, innuendo and sensationalism. All advanced by other luminaries in the gossip mongering field: Walter Winchell, Earl Wilson, Louella Parsons, and James Bacon. As of right now in America, rumor, gossip, and innuendo do not qualify as evidence. Still, Shaw promised his readers that he would reveal new and compelling evidence regarding Marilyn’s death. He didn’t. He merely recited, right on cue, what Sarah Churchwell accurately identified as the same tales and bromides. Why would he evoke discredited men like Frank Capell, Sgt. Jack Clemmons, and many others, including both C. David Heymann and the incorrigible fabulist, Gianni Russo? The answer is obvious: Shaw wanted and needed sources that confirmed his foregone conclusion, not unlike every conspiracist author who has written about Marilyn Monroe’s life and her death. If Mark Shaw really wanted justice for Marilyn, which, considering his use of Gianni Russo, I doubt, then Shaw would have let her rest in peace. But evidently that would be an empathetic compassion beyond a conspiracists' comprehension. Source:  kennedysandking.com

Refuting Rothmiller's Bombshell, Murder Orthodoxies by Donald McGovern

During the half century, plus nine years, that have elapsed since Marilyn’s untimely death, the debate concerning the why and how of that tragic event has continued loudly and unabated, almost attaining the ear piercing level of a cacophony. The theories that have attempted to answer all the lingering questions and thereby solve the lingering mystery have become even more bizarre and more sensational while becoming less substantiated. In short, the passing of time has not given rise to a clearer understanding of the facts, just foggier and goofier opinions. The last opportunist release is former LAPD police officer Michael Rothmiller's Bombshell (2021). The case is neither Robert Slatzer nor Jeanne Carmen nor Samir Muqaddin nor the 1982 LADA Summary Report regarding that investigation mentioned Michael Rothmiller. But then, the mythology surrounding Marilyn’s diary, as it relates to her death, is so ingrained in her story and so well known by most of humanity, it is entirely remarkable that more persons have not appeared with odd stories similar to Rothmiller’s. The secret diary mythology has flourished in the unusually fertile firmament of distrust and paranoia; and it has been continuously fertilized by a voyeuristic media and opportunistic individuals adept at manipulating the confusion caused by misinterpretation and misunderstanding, manipulated by those who can invariably grind confusion into monetary benefit. Marilyn’s death is not a complex polynomial nor a mysterious mathematical expression: it only appears to be one due to the overabundance of conflicting and contradictory testimony contained in the numerous pathographies written about her life and what has become her perversely sexualized death. But perhaps the most incredible and startling aspect of Marilyn Monroe is this: despite the horrid tales, despite the defamation, despite her lurid sexualization, she continues to thrive. However, I for one think it’s time for all the muckraking to end, even though, I admit sadly, I know it never will; and undoubtedly, the murder debates will also continue.

Reopening the investigation into the facts surrounding Marilyn's death, in 1982, the Assistant District Attorney at the time, Ronald H. Carroll, and an investigator, Alan B. Tomich, along with several other investigators, reviewed the case files in 1982 between the months of August and December, conducted additional interviews and addressed all the questions raised by various conspiracists. The district attorney’s office then published, in December of 1982, a twenty-nine page summary report, The Death of Marilyn Monroe: Report to the District Attorney, a copy of which I obtained directly from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. The published LADA report concluded: "Although factual discrepancies exist, the cumulative evidence available to us fails to support any theory of criminal conduct relating to her death. Based on the information available, no further criminal investigation appears required into Miss Monroe’s death."

It is rich indeed that Joyce Carol Oates, who wrote Blonde—one of the most loathsome books ever written about Marilyn Monroe—should object to the proliferation of destructive literary works masquerading as biographies; but Oates’ corruption perfectly represented the horns of my dilemma: should I employ the word biography in relation to the books about Marilyn Monroe written by Ted Jordan, C. David Heymann, Anthony Summers and several others?  Most of the books written about Marilyn Monroe are, in fact, pathographies. Blonde is certainly and clearly a case in point; considering the number of books written about Marilyn Monroe, over one-thousand; yet it is difficult to find one that does not have a heavy and undeniable smell of offal. Jay Margolis and Richard Buskin, for example, reported that Ralph Roberts gave Marilyn her regular Saturday massage between 9:00 AM and 10:15 AM, before leaving by the front door. Carl Rollyson cited Ralph Robert’s presence along with Marilyn’s massage; but Rollyson reported that Laurence Schiller did not appear at Fifth Helena until 10:30 AM, a time which completely contradicted Schiller’s memoir. However, Donald Spoto, who interviewed Marilyn’s good friend and masseur, did not mention Ralph’s presence that morning or that alleged massage. Additionally, Gary Vitacco-Robles reported that Schiller arrived sometime before noon and that Marilyn took the photographer on a tour of Fifth Helena during his August the 4th visit. 

Gary Vitacco-Robles in Icon, considered by many the best Monroe biography, or at least one of the top three, also failed to mention that Marilyn received an early morning massage. Biographer Michelle Morgan mentioned a Schiller visit in her Marilyn biography; but she did not mention a tour of Fifth Helena. Donald Spoto did not mention a residential tour and neither did Schiller in his written memoir. Marilyn biographer, Randy Taraborrelli, did not mention a visit by Schiller at all. Likewise, the murder theorists Jay Margolis and Richard Buskin also excluded Schiller’s visit from their accounting of August the 4th’s events. I implicitly trust the assiduously researched, two volume Marilyn biography written by Gary Vitacco-Robles. I also trust Donald Spoto’s biography along with the volume published by Michelle Morgan and, to an extent, the one published by Stacy Eubank; on the other hand, I am not as trusting of Randy Taraborrelli or Lawrence Schiller's. On 16th July, according to Heymann, Marilyn attended a celebratory party thrown by the Senior Kennedy at Romanoff’s, a restaurant in Beverly Hills. Heymann alleged that Kennedy and Marilyn were together during that entire Saturday before the future president elect flew back to Boston, departure time not divulged.

On the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum website, those that are interested can view a video of his twenty-two minute acceptance speech as it was broadcast by CBS television in 1960. Occasionally, the television cameras scan the large crowd, probably searching for attending celebrities, considering the proximity to Hollywood. If Marilyn Monroe was there, arguably the biggest movie star in the world in 1960, the cameras never located her; and I find that strange indeed. Also, there are no contemporaneous media reports that Marilyn attended the Democrat convention in 1960; and that media void leads to obvious and pertinent questions: where was Marilyn and what was she doing during July of that year? She was attending pre-production meetings for filming The Misfits, to begin in late July, Marilyn departed for New York City on June the 25th. She arrived in Manhattan the following day. During the first week in July, Arthur Miller joined Marilyn in New York City where, beginning on the 5th, she performed several screen tests for The Misfits. On July the 13th, the fourth day of the Los Angeles convention, Marilyn located Ralph Roberts playing poker in Maureen Stapleton’s Manhattan apartment. Roberts agreed to give Marilyn a massage. Upon entering the Miller’s apartment, also in Manhattan, Roberts found her watching the Democrat National Convention via her television set as Arthur Miller slept in the couple’s adjoining bedroom. On July the 14th, Thursday, the conventions fifth day, Marilyn sent Ralph Greenson a telegram from Manhattan, accompanied by a bouquet of roses. The telegram noted that she would be in Los Angeles on Sunday evening, July the 17th. According to Donald Spoto, Marilyn attended a therapy session with Dr. Greenson on the 18th of July, and kept an appointment with her internist, Dr. Hyman Engelberg. She departed for Reno, Nevada, by airplane on July the 20th. 

The following day, John Huston filmed the first scene of The Misfits in Nevada. Regardless of the actual date Marilyn left New York City, she obviously did not participate in the events and shenanigans as asserted by C. David Heymann. Marilyn was not in Los Angeles during the week of July the 10th and she was not with John Kennedy during the Democratic National Convention in 1960. According to Gary Vitacco-Robles, Marilyn was en-route to Los Angeles on July the 15th; and therefore, she could not have attended John Kennedy’s acceptance speech at the Los Angeles Coliseum nor met him backstage on July the 15th. The lack of credible evidence to support a love affair between actress and attorney general should come as no surprise: Norman Mailer confessed in 1973 that he fundamentally fabricated that romantic link between Marilyn and Robert Kennedy. Besides, Marilyn invariably spoke highly of John Kennedy and his brother. Simply put, it is more than doubtful that she would ever have participated in such a fabled press conference. Neither John Fitzgerald nor Robert Francis Kennedy were involved in Marilyn’s death. Robert Francis did not visit Marilyn along with Peter Lawford on August the 4th in Los Angeles.  

Additionally, Pat Newcomb, Peter Lawford, Eunice Murray and Dr. Greenson did not induce Marilyn to commit suicide. Doing that would not have been possible, frankly, once we consider Marilyn’s willfulness. Anthony Summers admitted that Peter Lawford refuted the tales regarding John Kennedy’s affair with Marilyn. The ill and aging English actor termed the allegations thereof nothing but balls; and yet, since Lawford’s repudiation contradicted Summers’ entrenched belief, Summers asserted that the facts suggested otherwise. I am not exactly sure which facts Summers meant. Summers relied on quotations from various witnesses, Deborah Gould, for instance, who was married to Lawford in 1976; but as husband and wife, Peter and Deborah only cohabited for two months. Patricia Seaton informed David Johnston, a vocal critic of Heymann’s frequent use of fabricated and deceased sources, that Lawford could not have been interviewed by Heymann as the author had alleged. According to Patricia, Peter was close to death and hardly able to make coherent statements, much less conduct a lengthy interview. Did Heymann interview the dying actor? More than likely, I here assert, never. According to Patricia Seaton, Heymann invented all the quotations he attributed to her husband; and a considerable amount of what Heymann quoted, what he alleged came directed from Lawford, found its way onto the pages of Marilyn pathographies written thereafter; but the quotation most often mentioned in the same breath as the name Peter Lawford became the title of a BBC television documentary, Say Goodbye to the President, broadcast in October of 1985. 

Marilyn Monroe was not a fan of Peter Lawford. Their unique history suggests that Lawford fell romantically for Marilyn at the beginning of her movie career and he pursued her while they were both a part of the local surfing community; but she was simply disinterested. She apparently referred to him as a beach wolf more than once. LAPD interviewed Peter Lawford on 16th October 1974 at 5:00 PM. During that interview, Lawford asserted that Marilyn's last words had been: 'Say goodbye to Pat, say goodbye to Jack and say goodbye to yourself, because you’re a nice guy.' The preceding quotation is not exactly the same as the one reported by Summers and other conspiracists. Moreover, during his LAPD interview, Mr. Lawford also stated that most of what has been written by various authors, such as Robert Slatzer, Anthony Scaduto, Norman Mailer and others regarding the last days in the life of Marilyn Monroe were ‘pure fantasy’. Odd. No conspiracist of which I am aware has ever mentioned or quoted Lawford’s interview with the LAPD. A few conspiracists have alleged that Ralph Greenson and his associates wanted to gain control of Marilyn’s estate and the millions of dollars it would generate after her death; and so they murdered her. Such an orthodoxy, however, has a central flaw: how could those persons have known prior to Marilyn’s death that her estate would generate any income for any entity other than 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation or the photographer, Milton H. Greene? In fact, they could not have known that Marilyn would become, in death, the icon and symbol that she became. —"Murder Orthodoxies: A Non-Conspiracist’s View of Marilyn Monroe’s Death" (2018) by Donald R. McGovern