The Murder of Marilyn Monroe Read online

  Copyright © 2014, 2016 Jay Margolis and Richard Buskin

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Brian Peterson

  ISBN: 978-1-5107-0234-9

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-0235-6

  Printed in the United States of America

  People say I am ruthless. I am not ruthless. And if I find the man who is calling me ruthless, I shall destroy him.

  —Robert Francis Kennedy

  Jack Kennedy could have been a movie star himself. He had the charisma, the charm, that come-hither quality that can never be duplicated. Is it any wonder he got elected president?

  —Marilyn Monroe to Lawrence Quirk

  It’s not what you are. It’s what people think you are.

  —Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction by Richard Buskin

  Introduction by Jay Margolis

  1. How Did Marilyn Monroe Really Die?

  2. Marilyn’s Close Friends Get Suspicious

  3. Bobby Kennedy Brought Along One of His Two Longtime Personal Bodyguards to Sedate Marilyn in the Afternoon

  4. A Surprise Evening Visit from Bobby Kennedy and Gangster Squad LAPD Partners Archie Case and James Ahern

  5. Schaefer Ambulance Attendant James Edwin Hall Told the Truth

  6. Hall, Liebowitz, Lawford, Newcomb, and Iannone Witnessed a Murder, Not an Adrenaline Shot

  7. The Soundman

  8. Walt Schaefer’s Involvement

  9. Who the Hell Is Ken Hunter?

  10. Famous Clients Were Commonplace at Schaefer Ambulance

  11. The Men at Beverly and Western

  12. The Santa Monica Hospital “Story”

  Photo Insert

  13. Murray Leib and the Mysterious Car Washes

  14. Detective Lynn Franklin Pulls Over a Very Drunk Peter Lawford

  15. Detective Franklin Connects the Dots

  16. Greenson’s Motives for Killing His Patient

  17. Does Greenson’s Official Story Check Out?

  18. Did Chief Parker Cover Up Bobby Kennedy’s Tracks in Los Angeles?

  19. Behind the Scenes at Marilyn Monroe’s Funeral

  20. Dr. Greenson Calls the Police to Say Marilyn Monroe Committed Suicide

  21. The Greenson and Engelberg Agreement

  THE KENNEDY VERSION

  22. Was Lawford’s Call to Ebbins a Cry for Help or Just a Really Good Alibi?

  23. Bill Asher Also Claims Lawford Phoned Him in a Panic

  24. Dolores Naar Claims Dr. Greenson Gave Marilyn Sedatives

  CONCLUSION

  Postscript—Case Confirmed: The Second and Third Shooters in the Robert Kennedy Assassination

  Timeline

  Autopsy Report

  Bibliography

  Endnotes

  Postscript Endnotes

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First, I would like to thank Richard Buskin, the best co-author anyone could hope for. We worked really well together, and the use of his interviews with Marilyn’s friends—including her stand-in Evelyn Moriarty and Twentieth Century-Fox security guard George Erengis—helped enhance this book.

  I am also grateful to Michelle Morgan for granting permission to use her 1997 James Hall interview in this book; James Spada for permission to quote from several of his interviews, including the late Fred Otash; Marilyn’s last professional photographer, George Barris, who has believed in me since the genesis of my first MM book; Raymond Strait, who was Jayne Mansfield’s press secretary for the last ten years of her life; the late Jane Russell, Marilyn’s co-star in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes; MM’s press agent Michael Selsman; Allan Abbott for spending several hours discussing her case with me; Devik Wiener for inviting me into his father’s archives at the Hollywood Vaults in Los Angeles; eyewitnesses Don Schulman and Irene Gizzi for providing key testimony with regard to the Robert Kennedy assassination; and Schaefer Ambulance driver Edgardo Villalobos for revealing previously unknown information not just about MM, but also RFK.

  Other thanks go out to Lynda Nuñez, Juan Romero, Roy Turner, Lisa Urso, Gloria Romanoff, Marijane Gray, Sylvia Leib, Carl Bellonzi, Ruth Tarnowski, Rigo Chacon, Tony Plant, Mike Carlson, Robert Dambacher, Daniel Stewart, John Watkins, former FBI agent Monte Hall, the late Robert Joling, the late C. David Heymann, his widow Bea for her continued support, and both Anthony Summers and Donald H. Wolfe for their research into Marilyn’s death, Shane O’Sullivan for being the first to seriously investigate CIA presence at the Ambassador Hotel on June 5, 1968, and especially the late Professor Philip H. Melanson for interviewing Martha Raines who saw the non-uniformed third gunman fire a gun in the kitchen pantry, a major contribution to RFK assassination research.

  I am indebted to Greg Schreiner, the President of the Marilyn Remembered fan club, for always being available to help in any way he can; Elias W. Amador, M.D., for his medical expertise with regard to MM’s death; Michelle Justice, co-author of the fan newspaper Runnin’ Wild: All About Marilyn, for permission to use James Hall’s 1992 polygraph examination conducted by Donald E. Fraser, and for permission to use an October 4, 1962, photo of James Hall in his Schaefer Ambulance uniform removing a body from a residence (also from her fan newspaper Runnin’ Wild); assorted confidential sources; and last, but not least, my parents and friends.

  Jay Margolis, Los Angeles, April 2016

  INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD BUSKIN

  It’s the celebrity death to rival all celebrity deaths—the ultimate unsolved mystery surrounding the ultimate silver-screen icon. Marilyn Monroe’s sudden passing during the late evening of Saturday, August 4, 1962, has generated countless TV documentaries, magazine features, newspaper articles, and books asserting the troubled star accidentally overdosed on prescription drugs, committed suicide, or was murdered.

  Those insisting MM was a crime victim have concocted numerous theories regarding the reason for her killing, who was responsible, and how it was committed. Yet, despite the forcefulness of their allegations, none have been conclusive … until now. Featuring a cast of characters straight out of a blockbuster Hollywood drama—including the wayward celluloid superstar, her unethically opportunistic psychiatrist, the satyric President of the United States, his philandering Attorney General sibling, and their Tinseltown brother-in-law—The Murder of Marilyn Monroe: Case Closed utilizes unprecedented eyewitness testimony to explain, once and for all, the precise details of how and why one of filmdom’s brightest stars was brutally extinguished.

  This is a story about vulnerability, exploitation, self-interest, recklessness, and power; about how a woman who refused to be used and abused was ultimately eliminated by those with the motivations and means to execute a (near) perfect cover-up. As such, it provides a fly-on-the-wall view of the tragic, evil, largely uninvestig
ated events that took place inside Marilyn’s Spanish-style home on Brentwood’s Fifth Helena Drive—as well as a window into the nefarious behind-the-scenes activities of America’s most glamorized administration.

  “Sometimes I think it would be easier to avoid old age, to die young, but then you’d never complete your life, would you?” Marilyn Monroe once remarked to William J. Weatherby. “You’d never wholly know yourself.”

  After more than fifty years of rampant rumors and wild speculation, this book enables us to know Marilyn a little better while solving the mystery that’s shrouded her incomplete life. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the details—updated for this paperback edition to incorporate newly discovered information and answer more questions, illustrated with additional photos….

  Richard Buskin, Chicago, April 2016

  INTRODUCTION BY JAY MARGOLIS

  Welcome to the paperback edition of The Murder of Marilyn Monroe: Case Closed. This is an updated and revised version of the hardcover originally published on June 3, 2014. Much new material has been added. Included here for the first time are actual photographs of the two late LAPD detectives, James Ahern and Archie Case, who shortly before Marilyn’s death accompanied Robert Kennedy to her house on the night of August 4, 1962. Also in this edition are photographs of all five eyewitnesses to Marilyn’s murder. The name of the late soundman that accompanied Fred Otash the night Marilyn died is also revealed for the first time in history along with his photograph. Photographs of Marilyn’s two neighbors at 12304 Fifth Helena Drive are also in this edition.

  Several have wondered whether Marilyn Monroe actually owned a washer/dryer. They ask, “If the washer/dryer did not exist then how could the housekeeper Mrs. Eunice Murray wash the soiled bed linens?” In fact, Lynda Nuñez, the daughter of the next owner of Marilyn’s house in September 1963, was kind enough to relay to me that the washer/dryer did exist and where it was located.

  As for updates in the Postscript regarding the Robert Kennedy assassination, there are several. Since the publication of The Murder of Marilyn Monroe: Case Closed on June 3, 2014, I re-interviewed Ms. Irene Gizzi on September 3, 2014, and she has now positively identified all five individuals she saw in the Ambassador Room downstairs shortly before the shooting upstairs in the kitchen pantry. This is significant because Ms. Gizzi saw two Ku Klux Klan terrorists (including the third shooter and his girlfriend) along with three senior CIA agents together in a five-person group, and one must wonder why Ku Klux Klan terrorists are associating in any way with CIA agents at all, let alone at the scene of the Robert Kennedy assassination! On October 20, 2014, I interviewed an eyewitness who saw the third shooter firing a gun in the kitchen pantry. Most intriguingly, one surviving photograph, which is very revealing, proves to be quite damning for the third shooter.

  Jay Margolis, Los Angeles, April 2016

  REED SUTTON WILSON, PRIVATE DETECTIVE FRED OTASH’S SOUNDMAN ON THE NIGHT MARILYN MONROE DIED, TO JAY MARGOLIS (07/22/2013): “What happened to the story that they were taking Marilyn to the hospital, where she was in the ambulance and Bobby Kennedy was in the ambulance with her? I remember that story from forty years ago! It’s bullshit. Total bullshit. Eunice Murray has told probably a dozen fucking stories from the night that it happened.”

  SYLVIA LEIB, WIDOW OF AMBULANCE DRIVER MURRAY LEIB, TO JAY MARGOLIS (04/25/2012): “Marilyn had called Bobby and she was so hysterical and she was threatening to tell a lot of stuff to the Enquirer. And he came down to talk to her. Bobby Kennedy had been there.”

  SUICIDE PREVENTION TEAM MEMBER DR. ROBERT LITMAN (08/18/1962): “At least in 1960, when I went through the medical literature on this very subject (because we were encountering this problem when consulting for Dr. Curphey back then), there was no case in the medical records where it could be authenticated that someone had died of barbiturate poisoning under the circumstances that they had become so drugged that they did not know what they were doing, and they took a lethal dose.”

  MARILYN MONROE’S CLOSE FRIEND AND MASSEUR RALPH ROBERTS: “That last weekend, I think she was in better shape than all those years I’d been around. And she was very excited about having her own house after all. I remember her saying, ‘It’s so good, laughing again.’ I called her at 6 o’clock [to confirm a dinner engagement with Marilyn at her house that night] and Greenson answered. He said, ‘She’s not here.’ It could have been so easy that she was busy, which I would have accepted … It would be easier to believe that she committed suicide but I don’t. I think somebody done her in.”

  AMBULANCE ATTENDANT JAMES HALL TO JAMES SPADA (06/03/1990): “Marilyn was in another room—not her own—when I arrived. Pat Newcomb was there … Bobby was there earlier. That’s been corroborated. That’s when they gave her knockout drops, I believe. That didn’t kill her and she made it through until I got there … I know Dr. Greenson killed her … He stuck a needle into her chest. One minute later, she was gone … If we had taken her away, she’d be alive today and Bobby Kennedy would be in jail.”

  MARILYN MONROE

  Norma Jeane Mortenson

  June 1, 1926–August 4, 1962

  HOW DID MARILYN MONROE REALLY DIE?

  In 1983, Peter Lawford discussed his friend Marilyn Monroe at length with biographer C. David Heymann for the latter’s biography on Jackie Kennedy. Apparently, out of deep guilt (he had always held himself responsible for her death), Lawford conceded to having been part of a conspiracy to murder Marilyn Monroe, labeling himself a co-conspirator along with his brother-in-law Bobby Kennedy and Marilyn’s psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson. The secret was kept all these years and the public was deceived into believing that Monroe’s death was accidental.

  Natalie Trundy, MM publicist Arthur Jacobs’s twenty-one-year-old girlfriend at the time, told biographer Anthony Summers that shortly after 10:30 p.m., Arthur “went to Marilyn’s house, and I don’t think I saw him for two days. He had to fudge the press.” Marilyn’s close friend and former publicist, Rupert Allan, told biographers Peter Harry Brown and Patte Barham, “It was carefully done and beautifully executed … It was decided to play up the ‘accidental death’ scenario but none of us believed it.”

  Referring to August 4, 1962, Marilyn’s friend, reporter George Carpozi, Jr., said, “Bobby then calls Peter Lawford and says to him, ‘Okay, this time she’s getting out of hand.’ Peter calls up Dr. Greenson—this was all organized beforehand—and says, ‘Look, doc, let’s get the show on the road,’ and right after that afternoon call, Greenson goes to Marilyn’s.” As for the months leading to her death, Peter Lawford told Heymann:

  Marilyn realized the affair [between her and Jack Kennedy] was over but couldn’t accept it. She began writing these rather pathetic letters to Jack and continued calling. She threatened to go to the press. He finally sent Bobby Kennedy out to California to cool her off….

  He tried to explain to her that the President was an extremely busy man, that running the country was an imposing task, that while Jack cared a great deal for her, he was already married and couldn’t very well simply sneak off and see a divorce lawyer.

  Although it probably wasn’t easy for her, she would have to accept this decision and stop calling the President. She took it pretty hard. Bobby felt for her. They met again the following day and passed the afternoon walking along the beach.

  It wasn’t Bobby’s intention, but that evening they became lovers and spent the night in our guest bedroom. Almost immediately the affair got very heavy, and they began seeing a lot of each other. Now Marilyn was calling the Department of Justice instead of the White House….

  Pretty soon Marilyn announced that she was in love with Bobby and that he had promised to marry her. It was as if she could no longer tell the difference between Bobby and Jack….

  According to Lawford, he told Marilyn to get her act together before it messed up her career, but she couldn’t accept how she’d been used by the Kennedy brothers.

  Intriguingly, Norman Mailer wrote in Maril
yn (Warner Books updated paperback edition, March 1975) how “through the generosity of Pat Newcomb was the opportunity to hear Marilyn talking casually on tape.” Furthermore, the British actor himself claimed to have heard the tapes she recorded for her psychiatrist Dr. Ralph Greenson, in which she freely spoke her daily thoughts, and Lawford stated that these revealed her love for the Attorney General and her desire to marry him despite he and his brother “passing her around like a football.”

  When neither brother would any longer accept her calls, she then began calling the First Lady at the White House and Bobby’s wife Ethel at their home in Hickory Hill. Talking with Heymann, Lawford mentioned something even more disturbing that he learned when listening to Marilyn’s private recordings following her death:

  I suppose the most surprising revelation in Marilyn’s own tapes was the fact that not only did Marilyn have an affair with both Kennedys, she was also sleeping with Dr. Greenson, who appeared to be deeply in love with her.

  Marilyn was a frequent houseguest in the home of Greenson and his wife, who presumably knew nothing about the affair … I also got hold of portions of the [Mafia-Teamster] tapes, and heard what seemed to be sounds of their lovemaking …

  Marilyn’s house was being bugged by everyone—Jimmy Hoffa, the FBI, the Mafia, even Twentieth Century-Fox. Jimmy Hoffa wanted to gather information on Monroe and the Kennedys for personal use; the FBI wanted to ascertain what Marilyn knew about Frank Sinatra’s connections to the Mafia; the Mafia was curious as to what she knew about the FBI. As for Twentieth Century-Fox—her former studio [sic]—who knows what they wanted … ?

  MM’s affair with Greenson took on a far greater meaning at the time of her death. Marilyn, as everyone later discovered, had threatened Bobby with the prospect of holding a press conference at which she planned to announce her assignations with both the President and the Attorney General. Such an admission would no doubt have resulted in a major scandal.