The Murder of Marilyn Monroe (3 page)

That same Friday of Marilyn’s final birthday, having worked briefly with Elizabeth Taylor in Rome, Italy, for a
Cosmo
report on the filming of
Cleopatra
, George Barris approached Marilyn on the set of
Something’s Got to Give
. As he later told Jay Margolis, “When I arrived, she said, ‘What are you doing here?! I heard you were in Rome with Elizabeth Taylor! So, you found a new girl, huh?’ ‘No, we were just doing the story. She’s impossible to work with.’ ‘Can you imagine they’re paying her a million dollars for that picture?’ They later brought out the cake and we all sang ‘Happy Birthday’ with me at her side.

“I was supposed to meet her at the studio Monday to start on our story. She wasn’t there when I got there. She called in. She was a very frail person. They sent their own studio doctor [Dr. Lee Siegel] to investigate if she was really sick. He confirmed she was
really
sick. The studio was desperate. They had all these technicians, cameramen, and actors and actresses on salary. They’re paying them and they were going broke. They had paid Elizabeth Taylor on
Cleopatra
a million dollars. The studio was in bad shape financially.”

Marilyn was fired from
Something’s Got to Give
on June 8. She and Barris began their joint projects the following day through July 18. “I don’t think anyone was ever more determined,” he’d remember, “and I never encountered a model who worked as hard as she did.”

“I will never believe that she took her own life,” Barris wrote. “It will always be my conviction that she was murdered.”

To Jay Margolis he stated, “I’ll never forget her because she was kind and she was honest and she was lovable, and she was a girl who became what she was because she was determined and she had been through her whole life making everyone happy. She was always a caring person. She was a timid person but also a very lonely person. Unfortunately, her marriages were not very successful. Only if Marilyn had a child, I think that would have saved her life.”

Learning of the tragic news of her passing, Barris relayed to Margolis, “When I was in the country, I was with my brother-in-law. We went to a local grocery to get some milk and bagels. I sat in the car and he went in to buy it and he came running out. And he looked at me, ‘It just came over the radio.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘Marilyn is dead.’ ‘You shouldn’t make jokes like that. It’s not nice.’ ‘No, it’s true. Honestly.’ I couldn’t believe it. I was just in a shock. I dropped him off then I drove all the way back to New York where I lived at Sutton Place. It was about a hundred miles. Luckily, I didn’t get a ticket or in an accident, I was driving so fast. When I got back, the doorman told me that there was a bunch of press and photographers and reporters looking for me. ‘If they come back, tell them I’m not here.’ I went upstairs. I put on the television and radio. All that came over was ‘Marilyn is dead. Marilyn is dead.’ It was too much. I shut everything off. I couldn’t take it.”

Actress Jane Russell was also suspicious of the circumstances surrounding Marilyn’s death. When interviewed on November 29, 2010, by Jay Margolis, Jane Russell confirmed a story about an unpleasant run-in with Robert Kennedy: “I met him one time after his brother had been killed. I was working with this organization. We called it WAIF to get kids adopted. You couldn’t get them from the United States but you could from other countries. The kids would come in with the parents that had all been picked, and he happened to be there one of these times. He met other people, and he was very friendly and nice. Then he was introduced to me, and the face just went
huh!
It was not friendly at all. I thought, well boy, something’s funny there. So I guess he thought I knew all about whatever went on . . . I just think there was something very strange. When the Lord gets here, we’ll know exactly what happened . . . There were things that she looked forward to. The studio had said okay. There were so many things that were happening that she wanted to happen.”

An intriguing article by author Wendy Leigh appeared in the United Kingdom on March 3, 2007. After interviewing Jane Russell, Leigh discovered the actress believed her friend had been murdered: “I don’t think she killed herself,” Russell stated. “Someone did it for her. There were dirty tricks somewhere.”

“I suggest that Jack and Bobby Kennedy—both Marilyn’s lovers—may have been involved, and Jane nods darkly,” Leigh wrote while adding that Russell told her, “Soon after Marilyn died, I met Bobby Kennedy and he looked at me as if to say: ‘I am your enemy.’”

On August 1, 1962, three days before her death, Marilyn Monroe was rehired by Twentieth Century-Fox to complete shooting on
Something’s Got to Give
and signed a one-million-dollar, two-picture deal. Just over three decades later, in July 1993, her stand-in, Evelyn Moriarty, told Richard Buskin, “There’s no way she killed herself. I spoke with her the Wednesday before she died and she was so excited about going back to work. She told me they’d be shooting Dean Martin’s close-ups first and then placing Dean for her close-ups—she was really up. She had to finish this picture at Fox because she was going to film
I Love Louisa
at United Artists with Frank Sinatra, produced by her publicist Arthur Jacobs. She also talked about having three pictures to do in Europe; two of them with Brigitte Bardot. It was all ‘We’re going to do this’ and ‘We’re going to do that’—she had battled the studio, she had won, and she was really looking forward to all of those projects.”

George Erengis, a Twentieth Century-Fox security guard, relayed to Richard Buskin, “On the Monday following her death, I went into Marilyn’s dressing room on the Fox lot and it had been cleared out. Nothing, not a trace of her had been left. I was shocked. She had earned that studio a fortune but they didn’t waste any time trying to erase her memory.”

For her part, actress Debbie Reynolds relayed to Britain’s
Daily Express
newspaper how she told Marilyn to watch herself when dating the Kennedy brothers: “I saw her two days before she died and warned her to be careful. She was such a sweet and innocent girl but she was used by men. I believe she was murdered because too many people were afraid the truth would come out.”

In an earlier interview, Reynolds remembered, “Her life was very sad. And the ending was very sad indeed. And those of us who knew Marilyn, always were kind of dreaming for that great white knight to arrive and really love her and not take advantage of her.”

Joe DiMaggio was that great white knight. As for Marilyn’s second marriage on January 14, 1954, former FBI agent Monte Hall revealed to Jay Margolis, “I was at the wedding. Marilyn was married by a judge in a San Francisco courthouse. I happened to be there at the time. I knew Joe quite well. A lot of us in the San Francisco office knew Joe DiMaggio.”

Morris Engelberg (no relation to Marilyn’s physician Dr. Hyman Engelberg) was one of DiMaggio’s best friends and the executor of his estate. According to him, “Joe DiMaggio was in love with Marilyn Monroe until the moment he died . . . ‘I’ll finally get to see Marilyn,’ were his last words . . . He ached at the thought of how close they had come to remarrying . . . The date of their second marriage was set: August 8, 1962.”

When Engelberg asked Joe Jr. if he concurred with his father’s conviction that the Kennedys were responsible for Marilyn Monroe’s death, the younger DiMaggio replied, “She didn’t die of natural causes, and she wasn’t going to kill herself, not when she was about to remarry my father.”

Jane Russell told Jay Margolis, “I think she was going to remarry Joe DiMaggio.” Russell explained how she learned of the marriage plans from mutual friends shortly before Marilyn’s death.

Marilyn’s niece Mona Rae Miracle revealed, “Berniece’s heartbreak at handling Marilyn’s funeral was ameliorated by the help Joe gave her with arrangements. ‘They were going to remarry,’ says Berniece. ‘Marilyn was thinking ahead to that.’”
³

BOBBY KENNEDY BROUGHT ALONG ONE OF HIS TWO LONG-TIME PERSONAL BODYGUARDS TO SEDATE MARILYN IN THE AFTERNOON

Peter Lawford recalled how, at approximately two o’clock on the afternoon of August 4, 1962, he and Bobby Kennedy arrived at Marilyn Monroe’s home. Lawford told biographer C. David Heymann she had set aside some Mexican food, which suggested she was expecting Bobby’s visit. Heymann wrote that the buffet included “guacamole, stuffed mushrooms, spicy meatballs . . . plus a chilled magnum of her favorite beverage, champagne. Lawford poured himself a glass and went out to the swimming pool so Marilyn and Bobby could talk.” An existing receipt proves she purchased this food from Briggs Delicatessen the day before in the amount of $49.07. Regarding Bobby and Marilyn, Lawford informed Heymann:

They argued back and forth for maybe ten minutes, Marilyn becoming more and more hysterical. At the height of her anger she allowed how first thing Monday morning she was going to call a press conference and tell the world about the treatment she had suffered at the hands of the Kennedy brothers. At this point Bobby became livid. In no uncertain terms he told her she would have to leave both Jack and him alone—no more telephone calls, no letters, nothing. They didn’t want to hear from her anymore. Marilyn presently lost it, screaming obscenities and flailing wildly away at Bobby with her fists. In her fury she picked up a small kitchen knife and lunged at him. I was with them at this time, so I tried to grab Marilyn’s arm. We finally knocked her down and managed to wrestle the knife away. Bobby thought we ought to call Dr. Greenson and tell him to come over. The psychiatrist arrived at Marilyn’s home within the hour.

To Donald Spoto, Pat Newcomb confirmed Peter Lawford’s account: “I was at her house that afternoon until three and that’s when Greenson came and told me to leave. He wanted to deal with her . . . She was very upset . . . Greenson told Mrs. Murray to take her out for a walk on the beach in the car . . . And that’s the last I saw of her.”

When interviewed by biographer Maurice Zolotow in October 1973, Greenson stated that, when he arrived at Marilyn’s in the early afternoon, “It was clear she had taken some sleeping pills during the day.”

Attempting to mask why she was
really
upset, Dr. Greenson and housekeeper Eunice Murray claimed that Marilyn was mad at Pat Newcomb—who had slept over on August 3—because Pat had enjoyed a good night’s sleep whereas Marilyn, typically, hadn’t. “Pat had stayed overnight, and apparently had taken sleeping pills, perhaps some of Marilyn’s Nembutal,” Murray relayed to Rose Shade, her coauthor on the 1975 book
Marilyn: The Last Months
. “Pat was still asleep, and would sleep serenely until noon—the way Marilyn longed to sleep. Marilyn was not pleased. To sleep twelve hours in her house was like feasting in front of a starving person.”

“She resented the fact that Pat Newcomb had taken some pills . . . and slept twelve hours and Marilyn had also taken pills and slept only six hours.” Ralph Greenson told Maurice Zolotow. “I said that instead of Pat staying overnight, Pat should go home and Mrs. Murray remain the night. I didn’t want Marilyn to be alone.”

This contradicted Greenson’s earlier recollection, in a letter sent to his colleague Dr. Marianne Kris just weeks after Marilyn died, that it was actually
Marilyn
who had wanted Pat to leave: “I finally asked the girlfriend to leave because this was Marilyn’s request, and I asked the housekeeper to stay overnight, which she did not ordinarily do on Saturday nights.”

According to that housekeeper, “Dr. Greenson asked me if I had planned on staying that night. He asked this in a rather offhand way, without any special reason for my staying at her home, for Marilyn felt secure. She often told me that staying alone was no problem with her.”

What Greenson, Murray, and Newcomb didn’t want to admit was that Marilyn had been really upset over her row with Bobby Kennedy. Years later, Mrs. Murray would concede to Anthony Summers that the argument was indeed over Bobby’s earlier visit. In the 1985
Say Goodbye to the President
documentary, Murray and Summers shared the following exchange regarding Marilyn’s last day on August 4:

When Summers asked Mrs. Murray why she lied to the police, she conceded, “I told whatever I thought was good to tell.”

As for Pat Newcomb, she told Donald Spoto, “Marilyn seemed angry that I had been able to sleep and she hadn’t—but something else was behind it all.”
⁴

Robert Kennedy testified in a sworn deposition to Captain Edward Michael Davis that he arrived at Marilyn’s home in the afternoon. Later, Davis became LAPD chief during the years 1969–1978.

In 1978, former OCID (Organized Crime Intelligence Division) detective Mike Rothmiller actually saw the statement made by Bobby Kennedy about Marilyn Monroe and his secret trip to her home on the afternoon of August 4. Additionally, Rothmiller saw a copy of Marilyn’s diary, located in the OCID file rooms. Pertaining to Bobby Kennedy’s statement, Rothmiller told biographers Peter Harry Brown and Patte Barham that Bobby Kennedy “said he was involved with Monroe—but he wasn’t, implying a friendly relationship. He also said he had met with her several times during the summer.”

On August 4, 1962, Marilyn’s female next-door neighbor to the east and her friend Elizabeth Pollard were busy playing bridge with two other ladies as they did every Saturday afternoon. According to Dr. Greenson’s daughter Joan, “Marilyn found out that the neighbor who you could see from her property was a professor at the university.” This was UCLA professor Ralph Mosser Barnes (born October 17, 1900) from the Engineering and Production Management department. He taught at UCLA from July 1, 1949, until July 1, 1968. It was his wife Mary W. Goodykoontz Barnes (born October 25, 1904) who played hostess to that Saturday afternoon bridge party at 12304 Fifth Helena Drive the day Marilyn died. At the time, Mrs. Barnes refused to identify herself to Sgt. Clemmons, and because she passed away on March 12, 1964, her eyewitness account seemingly disappeared into the wind—until now. As for her UCLA professor husband Mr. Barnes, he died on November 5, 1984.