The Murder of Marilyn Monroe (9 page)

For his part, John Miner conceded to biographers Brown and Barham, “A cursory examination of Monroe’s kidneys found them to be clear of drugs. This should have indicated that the stomach may have been bypassed. And the only way that could have happened was by injection.”

The 1982 District Attorney’s Report attempted to discredit James Hall’s testimony by stating: “According to Hall, the doctor ultimately plunged a giant syringe filled with a brownish fluid into her heart, after which she quickly died while on her back on the floor . . . Minor streaks of lividity were . . . found on her back. These minor traces disappeared upon touch. This finding is consistent with the normal practice of transporting bodies from the death scene to the mortuary or Coroner’s Office . . . If the mysterious ‘doctor’ had given Miss Monroe a fatal shot of pentobarbital, leading to her rapid death as described by Hall, the level in her liver would not have been as high as it in fact was because her body would not have had time to metabolize the ‘hot shot.’”

Marilyn Monroe died shortly before midnight and Thomas Noguchi began the autopsy after 9:00 a.m., leaving plenty of time for postmortem lividity to hide the needle mark. Still, this doesn’t mean Noguchi discovered no needle marks. Testimonies for this book by the likes of Raymond Strait, Allan Abbott, and a confidential source lead to the conclusion that Noguchi inexplicably disregarded his own findings when he wrote the statement: “No needle mark.” An admirer of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, as expressed in his 1983 book and in magazine articles, Noguchi did initially note needle marks on other areas of Marilyn Monroe’s body before omitting this one on the official autopsy report. Could it be because he knew a needle mark in the heart might implicate Kennedy? In fact, Anthony Summers reported that Noguchi “said he could not be positive the actress was not murdered by injection.”

Marilyn died on her back. Regarding the drugs found in her body, the district attorney’s report did not consider the possibility that the high Nembutal concentration in the liver was due to several factors: some oral intake throughout the day, the pentobarbital shot in the afternoon, evening pentobarbital injections, and an enema containing thirteen to nineteen Nembutals (as well as seventeen chloral hydrates). This combination would in a matter of hours travel from the blood to the liver to detoxify the substance. Over this period of time, the liver was allowed to reach that very high Nembutal concentration. It could only reach higher levels while she was still alive. John Miner explained the 13 mg. percent of Nembutal in the liver is a “high concentration” and said, “It indicates that however the drugs were administered, hours and not minutes were involved before she died.”

Suicide Team member Dr. Robert Litman agreed and explained, “High content in the liver just means she died slowly, the chance to be absorbed.” In contrast to the 13 mg. percent of Nembutal, the chloral hydrate in the liver was not tested since it would reveal a much smaller amount, incongruent with a suicide.

John Miner told Donald Spoto, “Dr. Curphey in one of his more exuberant moments said, ‘Oh, she gobbled 40 pills all at one time.’ That’s not possible . . . Why in the hell under these circumstances would the housekeeper be doing laundry at midnight makes zero sense unless the bed clothing had become soiled as a result of the administration of these drugs? . . . Contact with a noxious substance such as the barbiturates, which is an organic acid would account for the discoloration in the large intestine we saw at the autopsy.”

Indeed, it took several hours for the liver to absorb a lethal amount of pentobarbital whereas Dr. Greenson’s undiluted Nembutal shot to the heart would have killed Marilyn Monroe regardless of the amount injected. “That’s murder,” Elias Amador, M.D., told Jay Margolis regarding the undiluted heart injection. “That is point-blank murder. That’s never done for any reason except to kill.”

Sgt. Clemmons said that, when he arrived on the scene at 4:45 a.m. and saw Marilyn’s lifeless body in the master bedroom (to where it had been moved following the departure of ambulance attendants Hall and Liebowitz), Greenson was “cocky, almost challenging me to accuse him of something.” Clemmons’ suspicions were on target as Greenson’s guilt was immediately apparent.

Peter Lawford explained how Robert Kennedy had instructed Greenson, “Marilyn has got to be silenced.” Lawford relayed, “Greenson had thus been set up by Bobby to ‘take care’ of Marilyn.” The psychiatrist achieved this by an undiluted Nembutal injection to the heart. After all, what better way for any witnesses to assume it couldn’t have been anything but an adrenaline shot? This was a common method used to save patients from an overdose.

While one may question whether Peter Lawford’s account was second-hand therefore hearsay, James Hall insists Lawford himself saw the heart injection by Greenson. Because Lawford was Kennedy’s brother-in-law, that makes Lawford a primary witness. Hall’s partner Murray Liebowitz also assured Donald Wolfe that Hall’s account of Greenson and the heart needle was accurate.

Thus, there have been three eyewitness accounts detailing Marilyn Monroe’s death as a murder at the hands of her own psychiatrist. Not surprisingly, the other two eyewitnesses Pat Newcomb and Sgt. Marvin Iannone have refused to discuss their observations to protect the Kennedy family. In fact, in 1986, James Hall stated regarding Ralph Greenson’s shot to the heart: “I say, ‘Yes, I saw her get that injection.’ So did Pat Newcomb. She was there too. Will she come forward?”

In the documentary
Say Goodbye to the President
, photographer William Woodfield shared his recorded 1964 telephone conversation with Ralph Greenson in which the doctor discussed only what he said he could about Marilyn’s last night. Oddly, two years after her death, he was still deferring all inquires to the Attorney General: “I can’t explain myself or defend myself without revealing things that I don’t want to reveal. I feel I—I can’t, you know—you can’t draw a line and say well I’ll tell you this but I won’t tell you that. It’s a terrible position to be in to have to say I can’t talk about it because I can’t tell the whole story . . . Listen, you know, talk to Bobby Kennedy.”

According to James Hall, while watching Greenson administer the shot to the heart it was immediately obvious to him that the psychiatrist had never done this before. His line of work hardly necessitated him to carry a medical bag containing a large syringe with a heart needle already attached. Bobby Kennedy provided the syringe courtesy of one of his two long-time personal bodyguards James Ahern or Archie Case, who had accompanied him and Peter Lawford to Marilyn’s home earlier that afternoon and later that night.

Dr. Sidney Weinberg concluded, “Knowing the results of the toxicology examination and the negative findings in the stomach, one must seriously consider the possibility of an injection. If I had handled the case, I would have been remiss in my duties if I did not refer it to the district attorney for investigation.”

Donald Wolfe wrote that, later in the evening, with Bobby Kennedy present, Marilyn “was injected with enough barbiturate to kill fifteen people.” Wolfe, however, is wrong. As John Miner stated, “The amount of drugs found in Marilyn’s body was so large that, had it been administered by one injection [containing high dosages of Nembutal and chloral hydrate], the star would have died almost immediately. The body would have only had minutes in which to begin absorbing all those drugs.”

Rather, in front of Bobby Kennedy, LAPD partners Archie Case and James Ahern subdued Marilyn by throwing her onto the guest cottage bed. According to private detective Fred Otash and wiretapper Bernie Spindel, Kennedy then placed a pillow over her mouth to keep her from yelling while instructing Case and Ahern to give her Nembutal injections by stating, “Give her something to calm her down.”

When that didn’t work, the men then forcibly administered an enema containing broken-down Nembutal and chloral hydrate pills. Even though this didn’t kill Marilyn within minutes, as a lethal injection containing the same drugs would have done, it at least rendered her unconscious.

The last thing the president’s brother wanted was the most famous woman in the world fighting him to get out of her house and away from her two filing cabinets in the guest cottage. Bobby had been obsessively looking for Marilyn’s little red diary. So, later on, after the three men left, as James Hall attempted to revive her, in walked Ralph Greenson with a black medical bag from which he “pulled out a syringe with a long heart needle . . . filled it with a brownish fluid and injected it into Miss Monroe’s heart.”
⁹

THE SOUNDMAN

Jay Margolis is so far the only biographer to have interviewed the soundman who accompanied Fred Otash the night Marilyn Monroe died. In this case, a soundman is defined as a person who installs or removes surveillance equipment. On August 4, 1962, said soundman arrived on the scene with Otash
after
Bobby Kennedy had left 12305 Fifth Helena Drive with Case and Ahern and
before
Dr. Ralph Greenson injected Marilyn in the heart with the undiluted pentobarbital injection.

The soundman asked Margolis, “Do you really believe that Bobby Kennedy, who at that time was the Attorney General of the United States of America, would be there, putting a pillow over her face and involved in murdering Marilyn Monroe with all these people around? With Eunice there? Didn’t she have a nephew [son-in-law] or somebody there? Otash there? Security people there? Ambulance attendants there? You really think that Bobby Kennedy would stay there? You think he was
that
stupid?

“Bobby Kennedy was stupid because he was horny and so was his brother. They couldn’t resist the temptation of attractive women. Many guys in history, their weakness is sex. We all know that and they will do indiscreet and dumb things. The President did. Bobby did. But to be involved in
murder
? I don’t personally think that Bobby Kennedy was
that
stupid . . .

“There will never be closure to this. Marilyn was such a famous person admired by millions all over the planet . . . Do you know the connection between Greenson, the housekeeper, and Mickey Rudin? They’re all tied to the Kennedys. All the people surrounding Marilyn were all tied to the Kennedys. Their allegiance was all to the Kennedys, not to Marilyn. It was pathetic. Regardless of who did what the night of August 4, 1962, none of those people were on the scene on behalf of Marilyn. They weren’t working for Marilyn. They weren’t concerned with Marilyn. The Kennedys, her psychiatrist, her doctor, her lawyer, her housekeeper, Peter Lawford, his wife who was a Kennedy, they were all concerned with the political aspects of it.”

Jayne Mansfield’s former press secretary Raymond Strait assured Margolis that the soundman knew more than he was telling about Marilyn’s last night. “The soundman listened to the tapes and heard the whole damn thing,” Strait asserted. “So, he knows what was going on back there. But Fred [Otash] never wanted to mention his name out loud. He would just use his initials. After Marilyn’s death, the soundman went to work for the CIA in Washington for years. And that’s why I knew he would never talk about it. He doesn’t want anything to do with it. If he were to ever write a book, it would be an immediate bestseller but he wouldn’t do that because he’d feel his family would be in danger . . .

“I knew Otash better than anybody that’s living. Of course, the soundman knew him pretty well but not completely because he left him to go work in Washington. He doesn’t want his part to come to life because there would just be too many people that would be attracted to him that he wouldn’t want to be attracted to him, including certain members of a very prominent family. And he doesn’t wanna have his name come up in court.

“He was the soundman and he helped Fred take the bugs out. But Fred had all the files. The soundman didn’t have any of those, although he did listen to the tapes because he was the soundman on the damn thing, and for him to deny that he ever did any of that is another way of not being involved. He had nothing to do with anything to do with [moving] Marilyn’s body, only to do with the bugs. He listened to those tapes, so he knows what happened . . .

“I knew Peter [Lawford] was there because Fred told me . . . Peter was drunk and hysterical. Fred slapped the shit out of him because of the way he was so hysterical at Marilyn’s house. He was just like a hysterical woman, crying and carrying on. Fred didn’t have much patience with that . . .

“Fred was there in the house as she was dying . . . He told me in great detail everything that happened that day . . . Fred’s job was to clean the mess up . . . Peter got scared and hysterical so he called Fred . . . Fred says, ‘You meet me at Marilyn’s house.’ And Fred showed up with his sound man and Peter met him there and the sergeant I interviewed told me that Fred was leaving the house when he arrived on the scene.”
¹⁰

WALT SCHAEFER’S INVOLVEMENT

As far as James Hall was concerned, his employer, Walter Schaefer, was involved in the cover-up, and he cited Schaefer’s denial of ever having employed him as indicative of this.

“In 1985, I was contacted by the Flynt Distributing Co.,” Hall said with regard to the noted men’s magazine publisher. “They wanted to do an article on my story but they were not able to confirm my employment at Schaefer’s. Walter Schaefer told them that he had never heard of James E. Hall. I sent Flynt a copy of my Social Security Administration Statement of Earnings for the year 1962. They went back to Schaefer, showed it to him and he said, ‘I have never heard of James E. Hall.’ The earnings statement shows one employer for the year—Schaefer’s Ambulance.

“I then told Flynt that I was at a court hearing and Schaefer testified, ‘I am Walter Schaefer, owner of Schaefer’s Ambulance Service, and James E. Hall works for me.’ When they showed him the trial transcript he again said, ‘I do not know James E. Hall.’

“When Schaefer first started his ambulance service, it was a requirement of the state that a doctor of medicine ride in the back. Schaefer went to his family doctor and offered half of the business if he would be the doctor for the ambulance. Schaefer’s personal physician refused the offer. That physician was George E. Hall, M.D., my father! Dad went on to become the Retired Chief of Staff of the City of Los Angeles Receiving (emergency) Hospital System. Schaefer again said, ‘I have never heard of James E. Hall or this Dr. Hall.’ [Larry] Flynt then told Schaefer, ‘Up yours, you lying asshole,’ and printed my story.”