The Murder of Marilyn Monroe (16 page)

A 1992
Hard Copy
documentary featuring Anthony Summers surprisingly endorsed Walt Schaefer’s and Murray Leib’s original testimony via a key player the night she died. American writer John Sherlock relayed what his friend Dr. Greenson had told him. “She died in the ambulance going to St. John’s or St. Joseph’s or wherever in Santa Monica,” Sherlock stated. “And they turned around and took her back.”

In its October 1993 issue,
Runnin’ Wild: All About Marilyn
printed Walt Schaefer’s retraction of his original hospital statement. It had been soon before his death that Schaefer explained why he lied about Marilyn Monroe being taken to the hospital: “Eighty percent of my business came from the County and government agencies.”

In his 1992 book
The Marilyn Files
, author Robert Slatzer wrote: “Schaefer admitted he’d lied to [LAPD Sgt. Jack] Clemmons the first time and confirmed his story to me . . . The Kennedys were involved and he knew his business would be ruined if he talked.”

Sylvia Leib volunteered to Margolis, “Murray didn’t like the owner who owned the ambulance. Schaefer lied. Later on, he admitted he lied, didn’t he? They asked him why he lied and he said, well, most of his business was the movie industry and they trusted him. But Murray wouldn’t have said anything that wasn’t true.”

Taking Schaefer’s retraction into consideration, we can conclude that Marilyn Monroe was never at any time transported to Santa Monica Hospital. Sylvia Leib, the late Walt Schaefer, and the District Attorney’s Office all agree that Murray Leib went to Marilyn’s house that night under the name Murray Liebowitz. “I don’t want to be involved in this,” a frantic Murray Leib told Anthony Summers over the phone in 1985. “I wasn’t on duty that night. I heard about it when I came to work next morning . . . I’m not worried about anything, there’s nothing to worry about. Don’t bother to call me anymore.”

Publicly, for over thirty years, Murray Leib never rocked the boat but simply followed Walt Schaefer’s initial story: Hall was not there that night, Marilyn was taken to the hospital, she died there, and was then transported back to her home in Brentwood. The important point to note here is how Sylvia Leib remembered her husband Murray admitting that James Hall
was
his partner when they both saw Hall on television. Mrs. Leib could not have mistaken Hall for Ken Hunter because Hunter was never on television and his photograph was never circulated in the media.
¹⁵

MURRAY LEIB AND THE MYSTERIOUS CAR WASHES

Edgardo Villalobos volunteered to Jay Margolis, “Murray bought himself a car wash on Pico Boulevard.” Meanwhile, Leib’s widow Sylvia denied the stories about the Kennedys bribing Murray with enough money to buy car washes following Marilyn’s death. Importantly, Mrs. Leib has assumed all these years that the genesis of the bribery allegations involving car washes began and ended with one man: James Hall.

Hall said in 1992 that Murray Liebowitz has “been interviewed by numerous people and he won’t talk. On a radio talk show, an attendant who later rode with Liebowitz called in and said that everyday Liebowitz would stop at six different car washes.”

According to Hall, Murray Liebowitz volunteered to his fellow Schaefer Ambulance attendant, “Well, you remember I told you I’d tell you what happened to Marilyn that night? Well, I’m not going to tell you that, but I will tell you this . . .”

Liebowitz then admitted that the Kennedys did in fact bribe him, “After her funeral, I came into a very large sum of what you would call hush money and I bought these car washes. I own them. And the only reason that I’m still working at Schaefer’s is to keep up appearances.”

“When we were watching that television program, Murray was laughing,” Mrs. Leib told Jay Margolis. “He was hysterical at what this man [James Hall] was saying. He thought it was funny. It was just a regular routine ambulance call . . . He [James Hall]
was
there. He was with Murray when they took her to St. John’s. When he got there, Murray said, ‘She was dead’ and I believe him because he wasn’t one to lie about it. He had to take her and have her declared dead. The ambulance driver is not allowed to declare her dead. As many years as he was on the ambulance, he certainly knew a dead person when he met one. When he got there, apparently someone had called the hospital because they knew he was bringing Marilyn in and they would not let him bring her into the hospital.

“The only doctor Murray spoke to was the doctor at St. John’s who came out to declare her dead. A doctor came out and examined her and signed the death certificate. And Murray said to the doctor, ‘Well, what am I supposed to do with her if I can’t leave her here?’ They would not let him leave her there. The doctor said, ‘Just take her back to her house,’ and that’s what they did. By the time he got her back home, the cops were there and the place was surrounded with police and he never pretended to know anymore.”

Mrs. Leib repeatedly told Jay Margolis over the course of three comprehensive interviews that, even though she disputes Hall’s account, her husband did relay how Hall was in fact Murray’s partner on the night of August 4, 1962. Murray and Sylvia Leib had watched James Hall on television. In fact, Mrs. Leib still refers to James Hall as “the man on television.”

“He did nothing but tell lies,” she asserts. “I saw him on television once interviewed. He told them whatever it was they paid him for. One of the questions they asked him on television was ‘What did Murray do with all this money?’ and he said, ‘Well, he bought a car wash.’

“My husband Harry Siegel and I built that car wash on Venice and Sepulveda . . . He died after about seven years. Then I was alone with it for about three-and-a-half years before I met Murray. I owned that car wash for about ten years before I met him . . . That’s how I met Murray; he was a customer at my car wash for a lot of years. There were three managers and we worked hard. Our car wash was between three studios and all of those people were our customers, so we had our share of celebrities . . . The car wash is still there and fully in business. All the years we owned it, it was called Double Wash Car Wash because every car was washed twice.”

Mrs. Leib said she first met Murray in 1967, five years after Marilyn died. At this time, Mrs. Leib claims that she retained total and complete ownership of the car wash and that Murray never had any interest in the property. “HLW Corporation is not owned by Sylvia Siegel and HLW Corporation wasn’t listed as the owner of the car wash,” asserted HLW Corporation Vice President John Watkins. “It was listed as the owner of the land . . . Today, it would require a huge investment about four million dollars or so to buy a car wash.

“Back then you might have been able to get into something like that for fifty-thousand or a hundred thousand dollars . . . Now HLW owns the car wash also but they didn’t back in 1967; they just owned the land . . . There was another name Sylvia Leib . . . She had leased it from 1957. The lease officiated in 1957. She constructed the improvements and they were marginal . . . If they really had money from hush-up money, they would have been able to buy the land too and put up something much more significant than a car wash that was operating on marginal improvements. They were just leasing the land.”

In fact, Mr. Watkins is correct. A court document stated: “HLW Corporation has owned the property at 11166 Venice Boulevard, in Culver City (the subject site) since July 6, 1955 . . . HLW Corporation has leased the subject site to various tenants for use as an automobile washrack and gasoline sales station since February 22, 1957.” Sylvia Leib told Jay Margolis that she owned the car wash with her first husband Harry Siegel from 1957 until his death seven years later then she became the sole owner. Mrs. Leib stated, “Harry was born in 1913 and died at fifty-one years old on July 19, 1964.” After her first husband passed away, Murray became an employee of Mrs. Leib, befriending her. “No one else ever owned it,” continued Sylvia Leib. “But Murray did work there. He was an employee, a sort of helper but as far as owning it, no. Never . . .

“Murray was in the service and was in two wars. He was in World War II and in Korea. He was 89 when he died on January 24, 2009. He was born November 14, 1919. We were married exactly 40 years. We were not married when Marilyn died, but very shortly after. He was briefly married before and locally. His ex-wife, I think, was a customer, too, a couple of years before I met him. I remember that woman. She was a beautiful woman with long black hair. Beautiful, beautiful woman. I don’t even remember what her name was. They weren’t married very long because she was an alcoholic. I think she went somewhere on a trip or something, came back sick, and died . . . I married Murray on October 5, 1968. We were married in a Jewish Temple but in Las Vegas by a rabbi not in the court or anything. At that age, I definitely didn’t want a wedding . . . I sold the car wash I would say in 1975 or 1976. I moved into this house in 1980 . . .

“I had full ownership of that car wash,” Mrs. Leib asserted. “After Harry died, I’m the only one that owned it. No one else ever owned it . . . You can go down to City Hall to see who owned the car wash. Not only did we own it, we built it. Murray never owned it . . . That driver [James Hall] that he had with him the night Marilyn died, well, he somehow got the idea that Murray bought that car wash with money that the Kennedys gave him but that’s not true. I owned that car wash for at least ten years before I even met him.”

To his knowledge, Edgardo Villalobos said Murray bought two car washes, one within a year of Marilyn’s death located on 3131 West Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles, today called Pico Car Wash. The second car wash was allegedly purchased by Murray in 1967 on 11166 Venice Boulevard in Culver City, presently Shine & Brite Hand Car Wash.

Villalobos relayed, “Murray bought car washes, two of them that I know. The one I found out about first was the one on Manhattan and Pico, and years later, the one in West LA . . . Dick Williams was an ambulance driver and he told me about the one on Pico. He knew Murray and he’s the one that said, ‘That’s Murray’s car wash.’ He told me it was his. I keep hearing that Murray got some money from somebody, and there’s a scandal there, and he bought hot car washes. Somebody gave him money because that’s the next thing that happened. He took a lot of money. The reporters kept bugging me, saying I transported her, and I said, ‘No, I didn’t transport her.’ That’s when I start hearing that Murray took the money but it was quite a while after Marilyn’s death. Not immediately . . . I don’t believe she committed suicide. I have a feeling somebody took care of business there . . .

“The one in West LA they said was Murray’s, too. Sepulveda and Venice was probably right because I heard Murray had a car wash near the Culver City station, which was in that area. I knew Murray really well. He didn’t have anything. He didn’t own it before. He was poor. He was no wealthy person. Where did he get the money to buy the car washes? It’s a very expensive thing.

“The guys were out of hand in Santa Monica and not doing their job, so Mr. Schaefer said, ‘I want you to go work over there and manage the place,’ and that was seven or eight years after Marilyn died. So, I left the main house [on Beverly] to work at the Santa Monica station as a manager. That’s when I learned about the other car wash in West LA, over lunch. When I was working there in the Santa Monica station, the guys would get around, and that’s when I found out Murray wasn’t even working there anymore. I remember clearly, he stopped working on an ambulance. He completely left the ambulance service. It makes sense because of the car washes. I stayed there in Santa Monica for two years then came back to the main station.”

Mrs. Leib curiously added, “All the people that worked on the ambulance with Murray came to the car wash [on Sepulveda and Venice]. Murray spoke to them and I know he knew them.”

Although Mrs. Leib denies that her late husband Murray received bribes from the Kennedys, she nonetheless believes the Kennedys were directly responsible for Marilyn Monroe’s death. “The only thing that upsets me about the whole thing is that the Kennedys would get away with this,” Mrs. Leib said to Jay Margolis. “I don’t care about anything else. Somebody sat down and figured out how they were going to get away with this. I can’t see why the Kennedys shouldn’t be held more accountable than if I had done this. I think it’s terrible for one family to have this kind of influence. I do. The idea of passing her around like that from the President to Bobby Kennedy with a wife and kids and respectability is terrible. It’s awful. They used her like a dirty dishrag and she certainly was no match for the Kennedys. She knew a lot of things that they didn’t want her to know but that’s why she’s dead. If one of them did do it, I’d like to see them held responsible.”
¹⁶

DETECTIVE LYNN FRANKLIN PULLS OVER A VERY DRUNK PETER LAWFORD

In the
Say Goodbye to the President
BBC TV documentary, former LA Mayor Sam Yorty recalled, “Chief Parker told me confidentially that Bobby Kennedy was supposed to be north of Los Angeles. Some say he was making a speech. But that actually, he said he was seen at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles . . . on the very night that she died.” Detective Thad Brown’s brother Finis, also a detective, relayed to Anthony Summers, “I talked to contacts who had seen Kennedy and Lawford at the Beverly Hilton Hotel the day she took the overdose.”

At 12:10 a.m. on August 5, 1962, a very drunk Peter Lawford, driving a Lincoln Continental sedan, was heading east along Olympic Boulevard. His speed was estimated to be 70–80 mph. Franklin flashed on his red light. After reaching the intersection at Robertson, the Lincoln soon came to a stop. Based upon Franklin’s own book and his interview with biographers Brown and Barham, the following was the exchange: