The Mammoth Book of Celebrity Murders (19 page)

Marilyn talked with Eunice and decided not to go out to the beach after all; instead she chose to listen to music and call some friends. Eunice Murray said that at around 8 p.m. was the last
time she saw Marilyn alive: in her bedroom listening to Frank Sinatra. Eunice said that at around 10 p.m. she passed by Marilyn’s room and saw a light shining under her door, but decided not
to disturb her.

At around midnight Eunice woke up to use the bathroom; on passing Marilyn’s door again she noticed that the light was still on. She decided that she should check on Marilyn and called her,
but didn’t get a reply. She knocked on the door and still didn’t manage to rouse Marilyn. When she tried to open the door, she realized that it was locked.

It was then that she decided she needed help and the first person she called was Dr Greenson. He arrived and also tried to gain access to Marilyn’s room but was unable to get in. Eunice
then suggested that they might be able to get in through the French doors from outside. Dr Greenson went outside and tried the door, but found it locked. He looked in and saw a lifeless Marilyn
lying on the bed. Realizing that he needed to get to her quickly, he smashed the glass and entered the room. He found Marilyn lying face down on the bed, bare-shouldered and with the telephone
handset clasped firmly in her hand; presumably she was trying to make a telephone call when she was dying.

Dr Greenson then opened Marilyn’s bedroom door and informed Eunice that Marilyn was dead, before calling Dr Engelberg to come and formally pronounce her dead.

During the evening Marilyn made and received various telephone calls. One was from her friend Henry Rosenfeld, at some time between 8 and 9 p.m. He said that Marilyn answered her own telephone
and his conversation with her was not unusual; although she sounded groggy, he wasn’t unduly concerned. Later in the evening she called Sidney Guilaroff, her hairdresser, probably to arrange
an appointment with him – not what you would expect from somebody planning their imminent suicide. Later still, at some time between nine-thirty and 10 p.m., Marilyn received a call from her
former lover, José Bolaños; he had a brief conversation with her but was not alarmed or concerned by their brief discussion.

Possibly her final call of the evening was to her friend Jeanne Carmen, to ask her again to come and visit; but by now it was after 10 p.m. and Jeanne declined the invitation, saying that she
would call her back the following day.

On reading these “facts” it would be easy to conclude that Marilyn had died due to a suicide bid, whether intentional or accidental. This was the initial finding of the investigation
team which had been appointed by the corner, Dr Theodore Curphey. After the initial investigation, it was rebadged “probable suicide”. The problem was that the “facts”
continued to change and contradict one another, depending on who was being asked to provide details of the order of that evening’s events.

The carpet in Marilyn’s bedroom had recently been replaced with a very luxurious thick pile, so thick that there could have been no chance that any light could pass underneath it.
Therefore it would have been practically impossible for Eunice to have seen that there was a light on in the bedroom. The windows were reported to have been fitted with blackout blinds, therefore
Dr Greenson couldn’t have seen the lifeless body of Marilyn lying face-down on her bed. But also there were reports that in fact the French doors had been left ajar to let air circulate,
owing to the high temperatures in early August.

By the time that the police were eventually called to Marilyn’s home, she had been dead for some time – possibly a number of hours. By the time the undertaker, Guy Hockett, arrived
to remove her body, she was quite rigid with the effects of rigor mortis; he noted that it was difficult to straighten her body out sufficiently to get it on to the gurney to remove it. It would
appear that by this stage she could have well been dead for around seven hours. This would mean that she had died not long after her last telephone conversation, which was at around 10.30 p.m. She
was then taken under the cover of a blue blanket to the county morgue in the Los Angeles Hall of Justice.

The timing of events was to prove difficult to tie down, as Mrs Murray was rather confused when giving her description of the events. At one point she said that after noticing that Marilyn was
still awake at around midnight, she didn’t call the doctor immediately, but instead went back to bed and fell asleep until around 3.30 a.m., when she then called for the doctor.

It was noted by Los Angeles police Sergeant Jack Clemmons that the room was extremely tidy, and that Marilyn’s bed appeared to have fresh linen on it. Mrs Murray had indeed been laundering
bedlinen before the police arrived, though she doesn’t appear to have offered a sufficient explanation for this late-night laundry session. On Marilyn’s bedside table there were, among
other things, several bottles of tablets, apparently used in her suicide bid: but there was no drinking vessel at hand. How could she have taken a large number of pills with no means of using any
water, or anything else, to assist her in swallowing them? When questioned, her friends confirmed that she had difficulty in swallowing tablets, even with the aid of a drink.

Strangely, when pathologist Dr Thomas Nohuchi performed an examination of the contents of Marilyn’s stomach, he could not find any trace of the Nembutal capsules (a barbiturate sedative),
of which Marilyn was believed to have swallowed in excess of 40. Nor could he locate any of the contents of these capsules, namely the drug itself. He concluded that he could not locate any
barbiturates in her stomach, nor could he find any of the tell-tale yellow colouring which is associated with Nembutal use.

Toxicology reports were to prove more successful in locating drugs in Marilyn’s system. Expert Ralph Abernathy managed to find high doses of barbiturates in Marilyn’s bloodstream; so
high was the concentration that the amount she’d taken had been enough to have killed several people. The amount of Nembutal found in her body was around ten times the prescribed normal
therapeutic dose, and the chloral hydrate levels were twenty times the usual recommended dose. Either of the doses were high enough to kill her, but both taken together was considered a massive
overdose. The precise readings he recorded were four and a half milligrams percent of barbiturates and eight milligrams percent of chloral hydrate (a strong sedative, often used as a treatment for
sleeplessness).

Incidentally her blood was also tested for the presence of alcohol, and this gave a negative result – so on her last night alive, Marilyn didn’t enjoy her favourite tipple,
champagne. Her liver was also examined and it was found to contain 13 milligrams percent of barbiturates. Unfortunately, with the autopsy not being a full one, there were many organs which were not
examined and indeed some of her organs were destroyed. Strangely all the medical photographs and slides produced from her specimens were lost, and this impeded any further investigations into the
cause of her death.

The problem was deciding how Marilyn had managed to take such high doses of strong drugs without there being any trace of them in her stomach. If they had all been taken at once, there would
definitely have been some residues of the gelatine capsules left behind for the pathologist to find. It may have been that she had taken the drugs over the course of the day or even the evening;
but the high doses would have prevented this from occurring, as she would have been too overcome by the effects of the drugs to consume them over any sustained period of time.

The next most obvious method of taking such a high strength dose of drugs would be to have taken them intravenously, but after a detailed examination of Marilyn’s skin with a magnifying
glass, neither Dr Noguchi nor his assistant John Miner were able to find any evidence of the puncture wounds associated with intravenous drug use. As the intravenous method of administration was
discounted, it left toxicologists to come up with other suggestions as to how Marilyn may have overdosed. The methods put forward were that they could have been introduced into her body by way of
an enema or a suppository, but after investigating these possibilities it was thought highly unlikely that this was how she received the drugs. The corner reluctantly came to the conclusion that
Marilyn had acute barbiturate poisoning due to ingestion of an overdose: she must have swallowed the tablets, but this was by no means a satisfactory conclusion.

It was not just the unusual or even unexplained method of the drugs being introduced into Marilyn’s system but also the unaccountable time lags in between the events of the evening.

What happened between Marilyn’s last telephone conversation and the following morning, when her body was removed from her home? Was her previous relationship with John F. Kennedy and
subsequent affair with his brother Robert her downfall? She had threatened to hold a press conference, and this could well have been extremely embarrassing – not only for the famous brothers,
but also for their families and friends. There is a very fuzzy picture of events which could implicate the Kennedys; they were definitely sufficiently concerned with her recent mental instability
to feel that she might well make life very difficult for them. They stood to lose everything: their jobs and possibly their marriages could be in jeopardy.

Another theory was that this was punishment of the Kennedys, carried out for the Mob, because of Robert’s fight against organized crime. It could be that Marilyn’s death was a
warning to the Kennedys that the Mob meant business, and by murdering the most famous Hollywood star – and their former love interest – the Mob proved their point, quite shockingly.

By the morning of Sunday, 5 August, the press had already been tipped off about Marilyn’s death and were starting to congregate outside the front of her home. They were not welcomed by the
police, and totally unwanted by the friends of the star who were calling round to her home for reassurance, as they were totally shocked by the rumours of her death. They needed to visit her to put
their minds at rest, but on arriving they were goaded by the press, eager to have something to report which would gain an edge on their competition. Pat Newcomb was one such friend who had called
at the star’s home; she was kindly greeted by the press pack, to whom she gave something to report by calling, “Keep shooting, vultures.”

Peter and Pat Lawford were described as being totally shocked and devastated to hear of the death of their mutual friend. Peter, being one of the last people to speak to Marilyn, was overcome
with grief. The couple took the opportunity to get away from the whole sorry affair and they decided to take a break away from prying eyes. So too did Mrs Murray; she was surprisingly allowed to go
to Europe, considering that she was one of the key witnesses in the police investigation. After police had questioned Mrs Murray they reported that she appeared quite evasive and extremely vague in
her recollection of the events leading up to the police’s arrival at Marilyn’s home on the morning of Marilyn’s death. Why then was she not questioned further and cross-examined,
to enable her to give a satisfactory picture of what had happened? And more especially how was she able to leave the country while the investigation was still underway? Some felt that she had been
scripted and had rehearsed the responses that she would offer when being questioned; the only problem was that she was unable to keep to the prearranged script and would get confused between true
facts and the version of events which had been offered to her.

When Dr Greenson was questioned by Deputy District Attorney John Miner, three days after Marilyn’s death, he was reported to have aired his opinion that she had in fact been the victim of
a murder. Because of doctor–patient confidentiality, his interview was never made public, although this did not stop the press from speculating heavily on what they thought had
transpired.

One key witness, Walter Schaefer, who was working for the ambulance service which was called out to Marilyn’s home on the morning of her death, claimed that an ambulance was sent out at
around 1.00 a.m. and that she was taken to Santa Monica Hospital. He also implied that she was accompanied by Peter Lawford, and that it was he that made the decision to have her body taken back to
her home, when it was clear that she was dead. Although Peter never admitted to being at her property on the evening of her death, it was thought that he had even gone to the trouble of tidying up
her bedroom before the police were called. Nobody will ever really know what he was tidying away, and whether he removed any incriminating evidence that could have embarrassed his brother-in-law,
Robert Kennedy. He may well have come across notes from the Attorney General; possibly there was one with the toy tiger which she had received on 4 August. Peter was not formally questioned by the
police until several years after Marilyn’s death, and is no longer able to tell his version of events as he passed away in 1984.

Some people believed that Robert Kennedy visited Marilyn on the evening of her death, although he was staying with his wife Ethel at the home of their friends, the Bateses, in San Francisco.
Kennedy was believed to be at the ranch until 10 p.m. that night and attended church the following morning a little after 9.30 a.m. so if he did leave to visit Marilyn he must have made the 60-mile
journey during the night. He may well have wanted to clear the air with her and let her know that it wasn’t his decision to end the affair, but that of his wife. If she threatened to divorce
him, it would end Robert’s career and possibly also that of his brother. He may well have wanted to talk her out of going public and holding her threatened press conference, and to explain
the gift that she had received earlier in the day. He would have been keen to collect from her any incriminating evidence which she owned – it was highly likely that they had exchanged notes
and gifts. More importantly, Marilyn was renowned for keeping a diary, and it may well have been this that Robert was keen to take from her.