by Patrick H. Moore
Beloved screen icon and sex symbol Marilyn Monroe was found dead in the bedroom of her Brentwood home by her psychiatrist Ralph Greenson at about 3:45 a.m. on August 5, 1962. He had been called by Monroe’s housekeeper, Eunice Murray, who had become concerned because her light was on and she would not answer the door. She was 36 years old at the time of her death. Her death was ruled to be “acute barbiturate poisoning” by Dr. Thomas Noguchi of the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office and was listed as “probable suicide”.
Many detectives — including Jack Clemmons, the first Los Angeles Police Department officer to arrive at the death scene — believe that she was murdered. No murder charges were ever filed. The death of Monroe has since become one of the most debated conspiracy theories of all time.
Many questions remain unanswered. Although there is a timeline describing Marilyn’s last hours (see below), it may (and probably does) have discrepancies including when she received her last phone calls and when her body was discovered. It has been verified that on August 3, Marilyn had filed a prescription for twenty-five Nembutal (a strong barbiturate which was prescribed to her for the purpose of inducing sleep) prescribed to her by her personal physician, Dr. Engleburg. This pill bottle was found empty at the scene of death when the police arrived in the early hours of August 5.
Time Line of Events Surrounding Monroe’s Death
~5:00 p.m.: Marilyn’s personal psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, leaves her Brentwood bungalow home after a therapy session. He was treating Monroe for her ongoing depression.
7–7:15 p.m.: Joe DiMaggio Jr., son of baseball player Joe DiMaggio (and thus Monroe’s former stepson) phones to discuss his broken engagement to a girl in San Diego. DiMaggio Jr. stated when interviewed that Monroe sounded cheerful and upbeat. Monroe received the call around 7 p.m. California time.
7:30–7:45 p.m.: Peter Lawford (President Kennedy’s brother-in-law) telephones Monroe to invite her to dinner at his house. According to Lawford, Monroe’s speech was slurred and was becoming increasingly indecipherable. After telling him goodbye the conversation abruptly ends. Lawford tries to call her back again but receives a busy signal. Existing telephone records show that this is the last phone call Monroe’s main line received that night.
8 p.m.: Lawford telephones Monroe’s maid Eunice Murray, who lives in Monroe’s guest house, on a different line asking Murray to check on Marilyn. Murray returns to the phone after checking and tells Lawford that she is fine. Lawford is unconvinced and keeps trying to get in touch with Monroe. Lawford telephones his friend and lawyer Milton A. “Mickey” Rudin, who advises him to stay away from Monroe’s house to avoid any public embarrassment that could result from her possibly being under the influence.
10 p.m.: Housekeeper Eunice Murray walks past Monroe’s bedroom door and later testifies that she saw a light on under the door but decided not to disturb Monroe.
10:30 p.m.: According to actress Natalie Trundy (later Mrs. Arthur P. Jacobs), Monroe’s agent Arthur P. Jacobs hurriedly leaves a concert at the Hollywood Bowl that he is attending with Trundy and director Mervyn LeRoy and his wife, after being informed by Monroe’s lawyer Mickey Rudin that she has overdosed. Trundy’s timeline fits with undertaker Guy Hockett’s (see below) estimation that Monroe died sometime between 9:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m.
12 a.m.: Murray notices the light under the door again and knocks several times but gets no reply.
1 a.m.: Peter Lawford is informed by Mickey Rudin that Monroe is dead. He informs Lawford that it was an overdose.
3:00 a.m.: Eunice Murray calls Marilyn’s personal psychiatrist, Dr. Greenson, on the second telephone line. She still cannot awake Monroe. She is sure something is very wrong after peeking into her barred bedroom window.
3:40 a.m.: Dr. Greenson arrives at the house. He looks through the French windows outside and sees Monroe lying on the bed holding the telephone and apparently dead, so he breaks the glass to open the locked door and checks her. He calls Dr. Hyman Engelberg. There is some speculation that an ambulance might have been summoned to Monroe’s house.
4:30 a.m.: Police are called and arrive shortly thereafter. The two doctors and Murray are questioned and indicate a time of death of around 12:30 a.m. Police note the room is extremely tidy and the bed appears to have fresh linen on it. They claim Murray was washing sheets when they arrived. Police note that the bedside table has several pill bottles but the room contains no means to wash pills down as there is no glass and the water is turned off. Monroe is known to gag on pills even when drinking to wash them down. Later a glass is found lying on the floor by the bed but police claim it was not there when the room was searched.
5:40 a.m.: Undertaker Guy Hockett arrives and notes that the state of rigor mortis indicates a time of death between 9:30 and 11:30 p.m. The time is later altered to match the witness statements.
6 a.m.: Murray changes her story and now says she went back to bed at midnight and only called Dr. Greenson when she awoke at 3 a.m. and noticed the light was still on. Both doctors also change their stories and now claim Monroe died around 3:50 a.m. Police note Murray appears quite evasive and extremely vague. She would eventually change her story several more times. Despite being a key witness, Murray travels to Europe and is not questioned again.
The pathologist, Dr. Thomas Noguchi, could find no trace of capsules, powder or the typical discoloration caused by Nembutal in Monroe’s stomach or intestines, indicating that the drugs that killed her had not been swallowed. If Monroe had taken them over a period of time (which might account for the lack of residue), she would have died before ingesting the amount found in her bloodstream. Monroe was found lying face down. There was also evidence of cyanosis, an indication that death had been very quick. Noguchi asked the toxicologist for examinations of the blood, liver, kidneys, stomach, urine and intestines, which would have revealed exactly how the drugs got into Monroe’s system. However, the toxicologist, after examining the blood, did not believe he needed to check other organs, so many of the organs were destroyed without being examined. Noguchi later asked for the samples, but the medical photographs, the slides of those organs, and the examination form showing bruises on the body had disappeared, making it impossible to investigate the cause of death.
The toxicology report shows high levels of Nembutal (38–66 capsules) and chloral hydrate (14–23 tablets) in Monroe’s blood. The level found was enough to kill more than 10 people. An examination of the body ruled out intravenous injection as the source of the drugs. Coroner Dr. Theodore Curphey oversaw the full autopsy. Apart from the cause of death as listed on the death certificate, the results were never made public and no record of the findings was kept.
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Analyzing the time line reveals several obvious discrepancies. First, if Monroe’s lawyer Mickey Rudin was informed at 10:30 pm that she had overdosed, why was a medical team/ambulance not sent immediately to Monroe’s house to investigate? Also, if Rudin informed Peter Lawford that Monroe was dead at 1:00 am, why — once again — was a medical team not sent to Monroe’s house? Even if Rudin and Lawford did not want their early knowledge of Monroe’s death made public, they could have still made anonymous calls to the proper authorities. A conspiracy theorist might reasonably claim that someone(s) was buying time to “get their ducks in order.”
Finally, at around 3:00 am, the housekeeper calls Dr. Greenson who rushes out to the house and apparently discovers Marilyn Monroe is dead. The police are not called until 50 minutes later. When the police do arrive they discover Monroe’s room is spotless — the linen appears to have been changed and Murray was washing sheets when they arrived. (People clearly are trying to arrange their “ducks” in a neat row.)
And why did both doctors also alter their story and claim Monroe died around 3:50 a.m., 10 minutes after Dr. Greenspan arrived at the house? And why did the police note that Murray appeared quite evasive and extremely vague? And why over the course of time did she change her story several times? And if she was a key witness, why was she never questioned again and allowed to get out of Dodge by traveling to Europe?
And why was the pathologist unable to find any trace of capsules or powder in Monroe’s stomach or intestines? And why did she apparently have enough Nembutal and chloral hydrate in her system to kill more than 10 people? And why when the pathologist Dr. Thomas Noguchi asked the toxicologist for examinations of the blood, liver, kidneys, stomach, urine and intestines, which would have revealed exactly how the drugs got into Monroe’s system, did the toxicologist refuse to run the tests and allow the organs to be destroyed without being examined?
Do we have a cover-up here? It appears that we may.
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Since Monroe’s death in 1962, numerous public figures have provided their accounts of what really happened. This information is readily available on Wikipedia and other sites so I will only discuss what I consider to be two of the most interesting theories in this post.
The JFK Connection:
In 1985, the American media publicized an investigation into Monroe’s death by British journalist Anthony Summers which led to a BBC documentary. In the BBC documentary, Eunice Murray admitted that Monroe had known the Kennedys. She volunteered that on the night of the actress’ death, “When the doctor arrived, she was not dead.” Murray died in 1994 without revealing further details. That same year a People Weekly cover story reported that 20/20 had canceled a segment about Monroe’s relationships with the Kennedys and the circumstances of her death. Barbara Walters, Hugh Downs and Geraldo Rivera were reported to have reacted angrily to the cancellation.
In April 2006, CBS’s 48 Hours presented an updated report by Anthony Summers on Monroe’s death. Through Summers, 48 Hours gained access to audio tapes of interviews conducted by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office in 1982.
According to Summers’ sources, Monroe attended social events at actor Peter Lawford’s beach home in Santa Monica, California, in the months before her death, at which President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy were present. The 48 Hours report quoted a former Secret Service agent as stating that it was “common knowledge” among his colleagues that there was an affair between Monroe and John Kennedy. Rumors of a relationship with Robert Kennedy were not confirmed.
In October 2006, under the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released thousands of pages of previously classified documents. In 2007, writer Philippe Mora discovered a three-page report among the papers titled “Robert F. Kennedy” that discussed Monroe’s death — which would later be included in the FBI index under “Marilyn Monroe”.
Written by a former unnamed FBI agent, the report details Kennedy’s affair with Monroe and claims Kennedy had promised Monroe he would divorce his wife and marry her. However, after Monroe realized he had no intention of doing so, she made threats to make the affair public. The report claims that to silence Monroe, who had a history of staging publicity-seeking fake suicide attempts, she was deliberately encouraged to do so again but was this time allowed to die. The report implicates Kennedy, Peter Lawford, her psychiatrist Ralph Greenson, her housekeeper Eunice Murray, and her secretary and press agent, Pat Newcomb, in the plot. The report is prefaced with a statement noting that author of the report did not know the source and could not evaluate the authenticity of the information.
The Medical Bungling Theory:
According to a compilation of the events leading up to Monroe’s death written by Rachael Bell for Court TV’s Crime Library, a sedative enema might have been administered on the advice of Monroe’s psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, as a sleep aid and as part of Greenson’s larger project to wean his patient off barbiturates.
Bell suggests that Greenson was perhaps unaware of the fact that his patient’s internist, Dr. Hyman Engelberg, had refilled Monroe’s prescription for the barbiturate Nembutal a day earlier, and that the actress may very well have ingested enough Nembutal throughout the day such that it would lethally react with the chloral hydrate later given to her. Bell writes:
(Dr.) Spoto makes a very persuasive case for accidental death. Dr. Greenson had been working with Dr. Hyman Engelberg to wean Marilyn off Nembutal, substituting instead chloral hydrate to help her sleep. Mickey Rudin claimed that Greenson said something very important the night of Marilyn’s death: “Gosh darn it! He gave her a prescription I didn’t know about!”
Bell goes on to suggest that the suspicious circumstances surrounding Monroe’s death are very possibly the result of an elaborate cover-up for what was, essentially, a tragic medical mistake.