Norma Jeane Baker, better known as Marilyn Monroe, died of a drug overdose on August 4, 1962 in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California. The blonde bombshell was well known for her modeling, singing, and movie roles, all of which led to her being named one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950’s and 60’s. Even today, Marilyn is considered one of the sexiest women to have ever lived; a beauty for girls everywhere to aspire to. But her death is not an open and shut case. There are many questions, some leading to murder.
To understand Marilyn, you must know her history. She was born Norma Jeane Mortenson (later baptized as Norma Jeane Baker) on June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles California. Her mother, Gladys Pearl Baker struggled both mentally and financially, and had to place her daughter in the care of evangelical Christian foster parents, Albert and Ida Bolender. In 1933, she was able to purchase a small home in Hollywood, and Norma came to live with her.
One of Marilyn’s earliest memories of her mother was of her trying to smother her in her crib with a pillow. In January 1934 however, Gladys had a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. She spent several months in a rest home and was later committed to the Metropolitan State Hospital. She would spend the rest of her life in and out of hospitals.
As for Marilyn, she was taken in by a friend of her mothers, Grace Goddard. Marilyn was later quoted saying, “My mother spent many years at the hospital. Through the Los Angeles County, my guardian placed me in several foster families and I spent more than a year at the Los Angeles Orphanage. I haven’t known my mother intimately, and since I’m an adult, and able to help her, I have contacted her. Now I help her and I want to keep helping her as long as she needs me.”
Though she didn’t elaborate on her time in the foster system, Marilyn endured multiple sexual assaults. She admitted to being raped when she was only 11, and ultimately dropped out of school by the age of 15. She believed her only escape was through marriage, and in 1942, at the age of 16, Marilyn married her boyfriend Jimmy Dougherty – a merchant marine.
In April 1944, Dougherty was shipped out to the Pacific. Marilyn moved in with her in-laws and began working at the Radioplane Company, a munitions factory in Van Nuys. It was there that she met photographer, David Conover, who had been sent by the US Army Air Forces’ First Motion Picture Unit to take “morale boosting” pictures of the female workers. Although pictures of Marilyn were not used, she quit her job at the factory and moved on to modeling full time for Conover and his friends.
Dougherty was greatly opposed to this move, but she did it anyway. She straightened her hair, dyed it blonde, and eventually changed her name to Marilyn, after actress Marilyn Miller, and taking her mother’s maiden name. She appeared in numerous magazines and became the most well-known pin-up model in US history. She and Dougherty divorced in September 1946.
Over the years, she became one of Hollywood’s most famous actresses. Her films grossed more than $200 million with the most notable being All About Eve“>All About Eve (1950), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes“>Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), The Seven Year Itch“>The Seven Year Itch (1955), and Some Like It Hot“>Some Like It Hot (1959).
To the audience, Marilyn was a dream. She was beautiful and successful. She could be linked to actors Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, director Elia Kazan, and even former President John F. Kennedy. She married baseball great Joe DiMaggio, and later, famous playwright, Arthur Miller.
Appearances were clearly deceiving however, as her life was not as happy as it seemed. Her marriage to DiMaggio was a last-minute event, quicky scheduled to fit both their schedules. They went to Japan for their honeymoon, where he had baseball business to attend to. While there, Marilyn was asked to travel to Korea to perform for the American troops, leaving her new husband behind.
Back home, things did not get better. They wanted a normal life, but their careers made that impossible. He wanted her to be a stay-at-home wife. She wanted to work. He didn’t approve of her “sexy” image. According to Marilyn, he said, “…exposing my legs and thighs, even my crotch – that was the last straw.”
Their marriage lasted only 274 days, with Marilyn citing mental cruelty. Despite this, he still loved her. In a letter after her announcement, he said, “I love you and want to be with you. …There is nothing I would like better than to restore your confidence in me. … My hear split even wider seeing you cry in front of all those people.”
Marilyn’s relationship with playwright Arthur Miller started as an affair, as he was already married. She was drawn to him for many reasons, one of which it gave her the outward appearance of being a serious actress. More, she yearned for the love and security he could provide her. At first he didn’t want to leave his wife, but his desire to be with Marilyn was too strong. In a letter, he told her, “I believe that I should really die if I ever lost you.”
In 1956, Marilyn risked losing the love and support of her fans when she publicly supported Miller when he was accused of having ties to Communism. She had been counseled to distance herself from him, but she refused. “This is the first time I’ve been really in love,” Marilyn said.
They married in 1956 before departing to England so she could work on The Prince and the Showgirl with Laurence Olivier.
The movie shoot didn’t go well, and she clashed with her co-star Olivier. She even happened upon some notes Miller had been making about her. The exact details of the notes are unknown, however it has been reported that they related how disappointed he was in their marriage, and even that he found her embarrassing.
Marilyn told her mentor, Lee Strasberg, and his wife Paula about what he had written. “How he thought I was some kind of angel but now he guessed he was wrong. That his first wife had let him down, but I had done something worse.” She had believed in him, in their relationship, and now all she felt was betrayed.
They didn’t give up though, and Marilyn even tried cooking and being a housewife. But then came her inability to have a child. In 1956, she suffered a miscarriage, then lost an ectopic pregnancy in 1957. She began taking pills and drinking to the point of excess. Then 1958 brought more sad news – another miscarriage.
As time went on, she grew resentful of her husband. When she had an affair with co-star Yves Montand, she was crushed when Miller didn’t seem to object or care in any way. She wanted him to fight for her, but he didn’t.
Then came the movie, The Misfits“>The Misfits. The script was based on a short story by Miller and was to star Marilyn. When it came time to start filming, she disliked the script, even saying, “Arthur said it’s his movie. I don’t think he even wants me in it. It’s all over. We have to stay with each other because it would be bad for the film if we split up now.”
Miller did nothing to help, he kept rewriting scenes, and she was forced to learn last-minute dialogue. It’s hard to say if it was stress, or simply addiction, but her substance abuse problems continued, and she was eventually hospitalized for a week in Los Angeles. She was able to complete the movie, but her marriage was over. They divorced on January 20, 1961.
In March 1962, the most salacious of affairs began. It is believed that is when Marilyn met President John F. Kennedy at a party at singer Bing Crosby’s home. Their next “public” encounter would happen at a Democratic fundraiser on May 19, 1962. On stage Marilyn, wearing a dress that gave the illusion that she was naked, sang her now famous rendition of “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.” Afterward, JFK responded by saying, “I can now retire from politics after having had ‘Happy Birthday’ sung to me in such a sweet, wholesome way.”
Those, however, were only their public encounters. It is said that they both attended the April in Paris Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City in April 1957. It is said that they did not meet at this time, after all, Marilyn was with her husband Miller, and JFK with his wife Jackie.
In 1961, the two were rumored to have been at a dinner party hosted by actor Peter Lawford at his home in Santa Monica, California. Lawford’s wife, Patricia, who also happened to be JFK’s sister, was a close friend of Marilyn’s, leading one to believe the rumor could be true.
Then there was the party at Bing Crosby’s home in March 1962. In his book, Marilyn Monroe: The Biography, biographer Donald Spoto quotes Ralph Roberts, Marilyn’s masseuse and close friend. Roberts claims that Marilyn had called him that weekend to ask for professional massage advice. Not only did he hear what sounded like JFK’s voice in the background, JFK also allegedly took the phone and spoke with Roberts himself.
“Marilyn told me that this night in March was the only time of her ’affair’ with JFK,” Roberts said. “A great many people thought, after that weekend, there was more to it. But Marilyn gave me the impression that it was not a major event for either of them: It happened once, that weekend, and that was that.”
Another of Marilyn’s close friends, actress Susan Strasberg, corroborated this story in her unpublished memoir. “It was O.K. to sleep with a charismatic president, and Marilyn loved the secrecy and the drama of it, but Kennedy was not the kind of man she wanted to spend her life with, and she made that very clear.”
But was that truly the way she felt?
According to Biographer, Christopher Andersen, the affair not only happened, but Marilyn called Jackie Kennedy to inform her that JFK had promised to marry her. Jackie’s response? “Marilyn, you’ll marry Jack, that’s great,” she replied. “And you’ll move into the White House, and you’ll assume the responsibilities of the first lady. And I’ll move out, and you’ll have all the problems.”
According to Anderson, while it was known that JFK had cheated on his wife with several women, none bothered her so much as Marilyn. “Marilyn was a loose cannon who could go public at any time, causing a scandal that would obliterate her husband’s reputation, destroy her marriage and hold her up to public ridicule,” Ander said in the biography.
The scandal that was the Marilyn-JFK affair brought out one private-eye detective, Mr. Fred Otash. Otash was a former Los Angeles detective who setup his own bureau specializing in “fact-checking” for celebrity gossip magazine, Confidential. “When the original Lawford house was wired, Monroe was not part of the plan. It was to find out what the Democrats were up to on behalf of Howard Hughes and Nixon. Monroe became a by-product.”
Shortly before his death, Otash told Vanity Fair, “I would have kept it quiet all my life. But all of a sudden, I’m looking at FBI files and CIA files with quotes from my investigators telling them about the work they did on my behalf. It’s stupid to sit here and deny that these things are true. Yes, we did have Lawford’s house wired. Yes, I did hear a tape of Jack Kennedy fucking Monroe. But I don’t want to get into the moans and groans of their relationship. They were having a sexual relationship – period.”
Otash bugged Marilyn’s home too.
Not only was it rumored that Marilyn was having an affair with JFK, new rumors swirled that she was also having an affair with the attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy, JFK’s brother. This rumor has since been given some credence after President Donald J. Trump released the JFK files in October 2017. Within these documents was a letter from the FBI to Robert that warned him that a book was planning to reveal the details about their rumored affair.
Some say that Marilyn took these affairs seriously, and when she felt she was being used, passed back and forth between the two, she threatened to go public.
None of that mattered anymore on August 5, 1962. Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her home, having died the night before.
Her death was labeled a suicide after an empty pill bottle was found next to her. The prescription was days old, and investigators found another 12-15 medicine bottles on the nightstand by her bed. Marilyn had been seeing psychiatrist Dr. Ralph Greenson, for a while. Earlier, around 5:15pm on Saturday, August 4, she had spoken with him. She complained she was unable to sleep, and he told her to go for a ride.
Later that evening she received a call from Peter Lawford, who was hoping to persuade her to attend his party that evening. Lawford reported that she sounded as though she were under the influence of drugs, especially after she told him to, “Say goodbye to Pat, say goodbye to the president, and say goodbye to yourself, because you’re a nice guy.” The call ended there, and when he was unable to reach her again, he called Dr. Greenson, then later called her lawyer, Milton A. “Micky” Rudin. Rudin called her house and was assured by the housekeeper, Eunice Murray, that Marilyn was fine.
That night, Murray claimed to have seen her head to her bedroom at approximately 8pm. At around 3:25am, she woke up, “sensing that something was wrong,” and saw that Marilyn’s light was still on. The door was locked and when she didn’t get any responses, she called Dr. Greenson. Greenson told her to go outside and look in through a window, after which she reported seeing Marilyn lying face down in her bed, covered by a sheet, and clutching a telephone receiver.
Dr. Greenson rushed to Marilyn’s home where he broke the window to get in and found Marilyn’s dead body. He called her physician, Dr. Hyman Engelberg, who arrived at the house around 3:50am and pronounced her dead. The Los Angeles Police Department was notified at 4:25am.
Over time, these stories would change.
Marilyn’s autopsy was conducted on August 5. Based on the advanced state of rigor mortis at the time her body was discovered, it was estimated that she died sometime between 8:30 and 10:30pm on the 4th. Toxicology concluded that her cause of death was acute barbiturate poisoning; she had 8mg% of chloral hydrate and 4.5mg% of pentobarbital (Nembutal) in her blood, and an additional 13mg% of pentobarbital in her liver. Interestingly, her stomach was empty. While Nembutal was known to leave a yellow residue, there was none; no residue, no sign of the pills, and no glass, empty or with water, was found in her room.
The deputy coroner, Thomas Noguchi, explained the lack of pills in her stomach could be a result of her addiction. Addicts are able to absorb these drugs more rapidly than non-addicts. He also denied that Nembutal leaves dye residue. It is suggested that the drugs were administered via enema, given that there were no needle marks on her body – which is also suspicious since she routinely received injections from her doctors. Noguchi later explained that only very recent needle marks were visible on her body.
It had to be suicide. Accidental overdose was ruled out because of the high dosages found in her body were several times over the lethal limit and had to be taken “in one gulp or in a few gulps over a minute or so.” They say Marilyn was depressed, unkempt, uninterested in maintaining her appearance. While no suicide note was found, statistics show that less than 40% of suicide victims leave notes.
Marilyn had a history of mental issues, likely in part from her mother, and in part from her upbringing and pressures of fame. One of her most famous quotes illustrates that point. “Being a sex symbol is a heavy load to carry, especially when one is tired, hurt and bewildered.” “Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you $1,000 for a kiss and 50¢ for your soul.” “If I close my eyes and think of Hollywood, all I see is one big varicose vein.”
After her divorce from Miller, Marilyn checked into Payne Whitney psychiatric clinic – where she found herself locked in a padded cell. She admitted herself at the suggestion of her psychiatrist at the time, who later stated the choice of hospital was a mistake. Marilyn had been placed on a ward for severely mentally ill people with psychosis, where she was locked in a padded cell and was not allowed to move to a more suitable ward or even leave the hospital. Marilyn was able to leave after three days, thanks to her former husband, Joe DiMaggio.
Suicide is certainly a possibility and remains the official cause of death. But there are things that don’t quite add up.
Near the end, many people close to her reported that she was doing well, she was happy. She was getting back to work, she was spending time with Joe DiMaggio, and there was even rumor of a reunion. DiMaggio was devoted and never remarried. After her death, it was he who claimed her body and arranged her funeral. He barred Hollywood’s elite as well as members of the Kennedy family, including JFK, from attending. It is said that he never forgave Frank Sinatra for introducing her to the Kennedys. Arthur Miller chose not to attend, saying, “She won’t be there.”
In a quote from her first husband, Jimmy Dougherty, “I never knew Marilyn Monroe, and I don’t claim to have any insights to her to this day. I knew and loved Norma Jeane.”
DiMaggio organized to have roses delivered three times a week to her crypt for 20 years. In Dinner With DiMaggio, he is quoted as saying, “I’ll go to my grave regretting and blaming myself for what happened to her.” “Sinatra told me later that ‘Marilyn loved me anyway, to the end.’”
Marilyn was buried in her favorite Emilio Pucci dress, in what was known as a “Cadillac casket” – the most high-end casket available, made of heavy-gauge solid bronze and lined with champagne colored silk.
The accounts of the evening of August 4, 1962 have changed over the years. In 1975, Marilyn’s former housekeeper, Eunice Murray, published a memoir, Marilyn: The Last Months (co-authored by Rose Shade). Later, when she spoke with other biographers and journalists, she opened up and admitted that “the doctor” had been in the house when Marilyn was unconscious, but still alive.
Author Donald Wolfe theorized that Murray’s entire story was a lie. The phone call to Dr. Greenson could be estimated at both midnight and 3:00am. According to an interview with Murray’s son-in-law, Norman Jeffries, there was definitely more to the story.
Jeffries had been hired to do some remodeling work for Marilyn and claimed that Murray had participated in a cover-up. According to Jeffries, “the doctor” was Dr. Greenson, who arrived at the home while Marilyn was “not dead.” Twice, on two separate occasions several hours apart, Jeffries and Murray had been ordered to leave the property. In the afternoon, actor Peter Lawford and Robert Kennedy allegedly gave them money to buy food at a store, to which they had to walk as they had no vehicle.
That evening, again, the two were ordered to leave the property.
It has been reported by multiple sources that Robert Kennedy was at the home on August 4th, though he has denied it, and provided an alibi – that states he was in San Francisco at the time. But you also have to consider the tapes Otash had.
As mentioned before, private-eye Fred Otash had bugged Marilyn’s home. In an interview he claimed, “I listened to Marilyn Monroe die.” He didn’t elaborate but added that he had taped an angry confrontation among Robert “Bobby” Kennedy, Lawford, and Marilyn just hours before her death. “She said she was passed around like a piece of meat. It was a violent argument about their relationship and the commitment and promises he made to her. She was really screaming and they were trying to quiet her down. She’s in the bedroom and Bobby gets the pillow and he muffles her on the bed to keep the neighbors for hearing. She finally quieted down and then he was looking to get out of there.”
It wasn’t until later that Otash learned that Marilyn had died when Lawford called him in the early hours of the 5th, asking him to remove any incriminating evidence from her house. Today, there is no record of what was removed, and all the alleged tapes have disappeared.
Most theories behind her death lead back to the Kennedy’s. Did Robert kill her? Some say he had motive. She was going to leak their affair; she was going to spill government secrets. She had a diary filled with incriminating information. The theory of this diary was laid out in a television report in 1982, which relies on a transcript that is published on the CIA website. This transcript claims that Marilyn indeed had a missing diary filled with information on a handful of international issues. This information included a detailed plan to kill Fidel Castro and was given to her by JFK himself.
Another report claims that after Robert broke off their affair, Marilyn threatened to go public. At this time, he and Lawford fed her drug and alcohol addiction, and when she accidentally overdosed, she was rushed to the hospital. However on the way, she died and was returned to the house, where her death was staged to look like a suicide.
To back up the Robert Kennedy theories, there is the time delay, from when Marilyn was pronounced dead, at 3:50 am, and the time police were called, 4:25 am. Many speculate that this time was used to stage her body to look like a suicide while giving Robert time to escape and secure his alibi.
There is the theory that the mafia killed her. There are allegations that renowned wire tapper Bernard Spindel had also bugged Marilyn’s home on the orders of union leader Jimmy Hoffa or Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana. Spindel has also come forward with claims to have heard Robert Kennedy fighting that night with Lawford present. There was a loud bang, thought to be at the moment of her death. We cannot confirm this, as the tapes were reportedly seized and destroyed in 1966.
According to biographer Darwin Porter, author of Marilyn At Rainbow’s End: Sex, Lies, Murder, and the Great Cover-up“>Marilyn At Rainbow’s End: Sex, Lies, Murder And The Great Cover-Up, Giancana wanted Marilyn dead – she allegedly had a relationship with his henchman, Johnny Roselli. He said she was “threatening to blow the lid off his operations.”
“A lot of people had a lot to lose if Marilyn spoke out,” Porter said. “She was making a lot of dangerous statements and didn’t realize she was playing with the big boys. I think Marilyn got in over her head.” His claim is that five Mafia hit men used a washcloth coated in chloroform to knock her out before stripping her naked and giving her a barbiturate enema.
Others claim that the Kennedy’s hired the Mafia to kill Marilyn in exchange for them “backing off” on their investigations. The claim maintains that the Kennedy’s wanted her gone before she had the chance to go public with incriminating information against them. This theory holds little weight. If Marilyn had secrets that would hurt the Kennedy’s, she would serve them better alive.
Some have said that Dr. Greenson was having an inappropriate affair with the star and killed her when she didn’t want to take it further.
Perhaps the most outlandish claim is that she “knew too much about aliens.” In the documentary, Unacknowledged: An Expose of the World’s Greatest Secret“>Unacknowledged by conspiracy theorist Dr. Steven Greer, claims are made that Marilyn was murdered by the CIA because she knew the truth about Roswell and planned to reveal it all. In the film, Greer produces what he claims to be a classified CIA memo which had been written just two days before Marilyn’s death. This memo claims that JFK told Marilyn that he had witnessed evidence of “things from outer space” at a secret air base.
“We have a number of smoking gun documents, including a wiretap of Marilyn Monroe the day [sic] before she died, which has never been declassified. She was threatening to hold a press conference to tell the world what Jack Kennedy had told her during pillow talk about having seen debris from an extraterrestrial vehicle at what the document calls a ‘secret air base.’ She was murdered for this.”
Could this theory hold any weight? With the recently declassified UFO reports, perhaps, though it’s still not the most likely.
Was Marilyn Monroe a victim of fame and mental health? Did she really kill herself? Or is it possible that her relationships with powerful men was her undoing? Could the Kennedy’s have something to do with her death? Who would benefit the most? We may never know the truth.
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