The Murder of Marilyn Monroe (25 page)

On October 7, 1985, Milt Ebbins told his “story,” which was riddled with inaccuracies. All the things he said didn’t happen on Marilyn’s last night actually
did
happen. “I talked to Peter on the telephone several times that night,” Ebbins recalled. “He never left his beach house in Santa Monica. Bobby definitely was not in Southern California that night and neither man went to Marilyn’s house. Forget about the ambulance. It just couldn’t have happened. Peter called in the afternoon and asked me to dinner with Bullets Durgom and Joe Naar and his wife—and Marilyn. I declined. He called again to say Marilyn couldn’t come and that she was anxiety-ridden. He was upset and wanted to go to Marilyn’s house in Brentwood. I told him not to. We all knew Marilyn took too many pills and was drinking heavily.”

Unembalmed blood sent out for testing later showed no alcohol was consumed that last day. Ebbins continued: “I suggested we call Mickey Rudin, Marilyn’s attorney, and her psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, Mickey’s brother-in-law, and ask them to go to her house. I got Mickey and told him about Peter’s apprehension.

“Mickey called me about 7:30 to say he had talked to Mrs. Murray, a psychiatric nurse hired by Greenson, who said she looked in on Marilyn. Murray told Mickey, ‘She does this every night. She takes the pills, calls somebody and falls asleep. She’s fine.’ Mickey said Mrs. Murray had looked through the drapery of an outside window and saw Marilyn lying on the bed asleep. The lights were on and the radio was going. I told Peter this and he insisted on talking to Mickey. Mickey called Peter and convinced him all was well but Peter was still apprehensive and wanted to go to Marilyn’s. I told him Mrs. Murray would tell him the same thing she told Rudin.

“This was no conspiracy to kill Marilyn, you know, involving Mickey and Mrs. Murray, for God’s sake. Peter called me twice more when he was getting a little drunk, expressing his fear that Marilyn was very ill. Peter called me once after midnight and he was bombed. By this time Mort Sahl had stopped by to talk to me. Mort was there when, about five minutes to 4:00 a.m., Mickey called. And I asked him, ‘How’s Marilyn?’ He said, ‘Not good. I’m here with Dr. Greenson and Dr. Engelberg. We broke into her bedroom. They pronounced her dead. We just called the police.’ I was stunned and told Mort. We were the first to know, except for Mickey and the two doctors. I tried to call Peter but he had pulled the phone jack from the wall—which he did every night—and I couldn’t reach him. So I went to bed and later when I did reach Peter, he had already been told.

“Peter was guilt-ridden because he hadn’t gone to Marilyn’s house. I told him that Marilyn was doomed. She had tried to commit suicide five or six times previously. This time she made it. I never heard Bobby’s name mentioned, much less about him arriving at Peter’s house in a helicopter that night. Peter was my closest friend. He would have told me if Bobby had been here or if Marilyn had been taken away in an ambulance.

“That is the unadulterated story of the night Marilyn died. The rest of that stuff is pure fantasy. How could Bobby be in town that night? He was in Northern California with his wife and children. And he and Peter were never close friends. If Peter had bailed Bobby out of a jam, don’t you think they would have been friends for life? But when Pat and Peter divorced, Peter became persona non grata with the Kennedys. Bobby never called Peter when he came to town, neither did Teddy or any other family member. The authorities are satisfied Marilyn committed suicide and died alone. The stories going around are circulated by people who want their names in the papers.”

Ebbins clearly did not have a firm grasp regarding the time element that night. He said, “Mickey called me about 7:30 to say he had talked to Mrs. Murray.” Rudin told the police he called the housekeeper at 9:00 p.m. In 1975, Lawford informed the police that 7:30 was when Marilyn was going under. Fifteen minutes earlier, at 7:15, Marilyn had happily finished her phone call with Joe DiMaggio, Jr. Also, Ebbins’ account contradicts many of the things we know. Without a doubt, an ambulance arrived at Marilyn’s home. And after midnight a helicopter did, in fact, transport Robert Kennedy from the Lawford beach house in Santa Monica to Los Angeles International Airport. He subsequently took a private plane back to San Francisco.

Ebbins’ story is further called into question because he appeared to have an answer for everything. Either he was covering up what he knew or, more likely, he didn’t know anything about what happened that night and simply agreed to go along with a pre-packaged story he rehearsed many times. Why would the principals involved tell him about what really went on? And if, as Ebbins himself admitted, he remained in his own home all evening, how can he be regarded as a reliable witness?

Although Ebbins said Lawford was “persona non grata with the Kennedys,” a
People
magazine article dated January 14, 1985, called Ebbins’ statement into question. Malcolm Boyes wrote that Peter Lawford remained “on good terms with the Kennedys. In fact, presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, after winning the California primary in 1968, was headed for a Lawford-hosted party when he, too, was killed by an assassin’s bullets.” James Spada questioned Dolores Naar about this:

Gloria Romanoff concurred with Ebbins that Bobby Kennedy was never Peter’s good friend, “I don’t think there was a lot of affection between Bobby Kennedy and Peter Lawford. I think Bobby Kennedy tolerated him because he was Pat’s husband. I don’t think he was terribly fond of Peter and Peter knew that.” Of course, Detective Lynn Franklin noted how, after getting the correct directions to the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Bobby Kennedy had chided Peter Lawford, exclaiming, “I told you, stupid!” Nonetheless, Bobby Kennedy and Peter Lawford continued to see one another even though, as many people attest, there was no love lost between the two men.
⁴⁰

BILL ASHER ALSO CLAIMS LAWFORD PHONED HIM IN A PANIC

In 1992, according to Milt Ebbins and director Bill Asher, the latter’s production company optioned the book
Double Cross
for a movie. This was the book that accused Chicago Mob boss Sam Giancana of sanctioning Marilyn Monroe’s murder. To Donald Spoto, Asher largely echoed Ebbins’s account of Marilyn’s last night, but he also added a new twist: the possibility of seeking the advice of a very important man.

Accustomed to Marilyn not turning up for her appointments, Asher claimed to have told his friend Peter Lawford that he wasn’t prepared to sit around and wait for her to appear at his dinner party. So, he returned home and received a call from Lawford at “about eight or nine,” saying he couldn’t reach Marilyn on the phone. Apparently, Lawford had talked with Marilyn earlier in the evening and, allegedly having consumed some wine, she had fallen asleep during their phone conversation.

“She’s wasn’t stressed at all,” Asher recalled being told. “She was a little slurry. She had a couple of drinks but it wasn’t anything that anyone would have been concerned about. There were times she would get incapacitated and you’d be worried about her.”

Later, according to Asher, at around midnight, he received another call from Lawford, suggesting they pay Marilyn a visit. “It’s the only thing I always felt badly about because we didn’t go,” Asher remarked. “I said, ‘Your brother-in-law’s the President of the United States! It might not be an appropriate thing for you to go over there’ . . . I know he called Milt . . . I told him to call the old man, Joe [Kennedy] . . .”

Donald Spoto’s research assistant Charlie relayed to Bill Asher how Joe Naar recalled getting a call from Peter Lawford, asking him to go to Marilyn’s house before then getting another call between 11:30 and midnight saying “Forget it. Everything’s fine.” Asher confirmed the timeline sounded correct, although he never heard anything about Marilyn doing fine.

If Asher and Naar told the truth about receiving those calls from Peter Lawford, there’s a hole in Lawford’s story that is bigger than the Grand Canyon. After all, why would he call Joe Naar at 11:30 at night, telling him to go by himself to check on Marilyn who lived just four blocks away, before then calling Joe back minutes later telling him not to bother? Furthermore, why would Lawford then call Bill Asher between midnight and 1:00 a.m., requesting that he accompany him to Marilyn’s place, if he had already told Naar not to go? Quite simply, the story doesn’t check out.
⁴¹

DOLORES NAAR CLAIMS DR. GREENSON GAVE MARILYN SEDATIVES

Talking with Jay Margolis, Dolores Naar claimed that, en route to the Lawfords’ dinner party, she and Joe were supposed to give Marilyn a ride there. However, there was a change of plans before they set out: “Peter called our house and said, ‘Don’t pick up Marilyn. She’s not coming.’”

The Naars told biographer James Spada that they received the call from Lawford at about 7:30 p.m. “I read in one of the books that Bobby was upstairs,” said Dolores. “They were hiding him. I don’t believe any of it. There was no way Bobby Kennedy was there.”

According to Joe in his interviews with both Spoto and Margolis, Lawford called again at 11:30 p.m., this time to ask him to check on Marilyn. In Spoto’s interview with him, Joe quoted Lawford as saying the following: “I just talked to Marilyn and I’m scared. I don’t like the way she sounds. I think she’s taken some pills. Will you go check up on her?”

As we know, Joe agreed before a second call, a couple of minutes later, informed him there was no need to go. Dolores explained to James Spada that to her husband Joe over the phone, Lawford “said that he’d spoken to Marilyn’s doctor and [Dr. Greenson] had said that he had given her sedatives because she had been disturbed earlier and she was probably asleep, so don’t bother going. [Lawford] said, ‘You’ll just wake her up.’”

In a subsequent interview, Margolis returned to the same subject.

Perhaps Peter Lawford was alluding to Ralph Greenson’s undiluted Nembutal injection, which would not only put Marilyn to sleep but ensure that she’d never wake up. Even though she believed Marilyn died an accidental death, Dolores Naar still considered Lawford’s actions to be more than a little suspicious. She told James Spada, “Peter probably called Jack or Bobby and was told to take care of things—do whatever he had to do. And
do it yourself
—don’t involve anybody else under any circumstances.”

Spada made some chilling points: “These were an odd pair of telephone calls in an evening replete with oddities. Why did Peter, who had been worried about Marilyn since 7:30, wait until the Naars had returned home to indicate any concern to them over Marilyn? And why did he first ask Joe to go over to Marilyn’s (after being told by Mickey Rudin that she was okay) and then, just a few minutes later, tell him
not
to go?” Remember, the Naars only lived four blocks away from Marilyn. Dolores told Spada she believed Lawford’s two calls were “calculated to mislead us. Joe and I wondered, ‘Why did he call us the second time and tell us not to go?’ Maybe because by then he knew that Marilyn was dead.”
⁴²

CONCLUSION

Peter Lawford fed Joe and Dolores Naar a “story,” confusing many Marilyn Monroe biographers in the process. After the Naars left the party, Pat Newcomb arrived at the Lawford beach house at 9:30 p.m., according to George “Bullets” Durgom. Then, before Bobby Kennedy departed Marilyn’s house with LAPD partners Archie Case and James Ahern, someone called Lawford, telling him to get over there and hire a cleanup crew.

In turn, Lawford contacted private detective Fred Otash and they agreed to meet at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive. Otash brought along his soundman (who was interviewed by Jay Margolis). Next, Lawford drove Pat Newcomb from the Lawford beach house to Marilyn’s residence, arriving at around 10:30 p.m., soon after Bobby left with Case and Ahern. If Schaefer Ambulance attendant James Hall and his driver Murray Liebowitz had been allowed to transport Marilyn to the hospital, she would most likely be alive today.

She wasn’t yet dead when Hall arrived in the guest cottage and she was responding positively to resuscitation efforts by Hall and Liebowitz who had a resuscitator on Marilyn until Ralph Greenson suspiciously ordered its removal before injecting her in the heart with an undiluted Nembutal injection. Thus, there was a premeditated plan to murder her on the part of Robert Kennedy, Ralph Greenson, and Peter Lawford—a plan that, according to the British actor, had originated with the Attorney General.

None of the principals involved counted on Mrs. Murray calling an ambulance. After Marilyn died, Lawford would express deep guilt over what really happened to her. Marilyn Monroe had been murdered and he was involved. Lawford informed his friends that Marilyn had accidentally overdosed on sleeping pills. Joe Naar said to biographer Laurence Leamer, “I blame the changes in Peter and his final decline into the bottle on Marilyn’s death. Peter kept saying, ‘I should have let you go. I killed her.’”