By Anthony Summers from Reader's Digest October 2006
The circumstances of her death, from an overdose of barbiturates, have been the subject of conjecture.
Given such irregularities, Karch adds, “you can’t rule out the possibility that Marilyn Monroe was murdered. If I had my druthers, I would classify this death as ‘undetermined causes.’ To me — and I’m not by nature a conspiracy theorist — the circumstances of her death remain a mystery.”
The housekeeper and doctors claimed that Monroe was found dead at around 3:30 a.m. Their testimony is badly shaken, though, by an interview I conducted in 1985 with Natalie Jacobs, widow of Monroe’s press spokesman Arthur Jacobs. Word that the actress was dead reached the Jacobses, Natalie told me, while she and her husband were attending a Henry Mancini concert at the Hollywood Bowl. The concert was over by 11 p.m., which means some insiders learned Monroe was dead by then, at the very latest.
I interviewed Mrs. Murray six times while doing research for my book. She stuck more or less to her old account until our last conversation, a 1985 interview for a BBC television documentary. The camera crew was starting to pack up when 83-year-old Murray put her head in her hands and cried, “Why, at my age, do I still have to cover this thing? … It became so sticky that the protectors of Bobby Kennedy had to step in and protect him.”
Daryl Gates, who in 1962 was an aide to the Los Angeles police chief — he went on to head the force himself — is one such source. “Our records show that [Kennedy] was in Los Angeles,” he said this year. Several other senior police officers have said the same. One of the 1982 D.A. investigators told me that John Dickey, a Deputy D.A. in Los Angeles in 1962, said he, too, was told the Attorney General was in Los Angeles on Monroe’s last day alive. Ward Wood, a Lawford neighbor, told me he saw Robert Kennedy arrive at the Lawford house that “late afternoon or early evening,” by car.
Several people, including Monroe’s housekeeper, claimed that at some point that day the President’s brother did go to Monroe’s home.
At about 9:30 p.m. Monroe called Sydney Guilaroff, doyen of Hollywood hairdressers and a confidant of several stars. When I interviewed him for my book, he, like Bolaños, refused to reveal what she had said. Before his death in 1997, however, Guilaroff, in a little-noticed memoir, wrote that Monroe had sounded frantic. She had told him: ” ‘Robert Kennedy was here, threatening me, yelling at me … I’m having an affair with him … I had an affair with JFK as well.’ She said that Robert Kennedy had journeyed to Los Angeles that afternoon not merely to break off his own affair but to warn Monroe about ever phoning the White House again. ‘It’s over,’ he had told her. … Now Marilyn was sobbing on the phone. ‘I’m frightened … I know a lot of secrets about what has gone on in Washington. … Dangerous ones.’ ”
By Anthony Summers from Reader's Digest October 2006
On August 5, 1962, LAPD police sergeant Jack Clemmons received a call at 4:25 am from Dr. Ralph Greenson, Monroe's psychiatrist, proclaiming that Monroe was found dead at her home in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California.[132] She was 36 years old. At the subsequent autopsy, eight milligram per cent of Chloral hydrate and 4.5 milligram percent of Nembutal were found in her system,[133] and Dr. Thomas Noguchi of the Los Angeles County Coroners office recorded cause of death as "acute barbiturate poisoning," resulting from a "probable suicide."[134] Many theories, including murder, circulated about the circumstances of her death and the timeline after the body was found. Some conspiracy theories involved John and Robert Kennedy, while other theories suggested CIA or Mafia complicity. It was reported that the last person Monroe called was the President.[135][136]
On August 8, 1962, Monroe was interred in a crypt at Corridor of Memories #24, at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Lee Strasberg delivered the eulogy. The crypt space immediately to the left of Monroe's was bought and reserved by Hugh Hefner in 1992.[137] DiMaggio took control of the funeral arrangements which consisted of only 31 close family and friends. Police were also present to keep the press away.[138] Her casket was solid bronze and was lined with champagne colored silk.[139] Allan “Whitey” Snyder did her make-up which was supposedly a promise made in earlier years if she were to die before him.[139] She was wearing her favorite green Emilio Pucci dress.[139] In her hands was a small bouquet of pink teacup roses.[139] For the next 20 years, red roses were placed in a vase attached to the crypt, courtesy of Joe DiMaggio.[138]
In August 2009, the crypt space directly above that of Monroe was placed for auction[140] on eBay. Elsie Poncher plans to exhume her husband and move him to an adjacent plot. She advertised the crypt, hoping "to make enough money to pay off the $1.6 million mortgage" on her Beverly Hills mansion.[137] The winning bid was placed by an anonymous Japanese man for $4.6 million,[141] but the winning bidder later backed out "because of the paying problem". Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner, who never met Monroe, bought the crypt next to hers at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery. He affirmed that the initial success of his magazine directly correlated with Monroe.
