Author: James DiEugenio

VI

Robert Slatzer first brought up the idea of Marilyn’s Red Diary of Secrets and that Bobby Kennedy was involved with Murder Incorporated. (DiEugenio and Pease, p. 362) This was ludicrous on its face. Murder Incorporated—Mob contracted killings—began in New York and first operated in the thirties and forties under Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky. It was passed on to Louis Lepke and Albert Anastasia. It was exposed by prosecutor Thomas Dewey and was effectively finished by the mid-forties. In 1940, Bobby Kennedy was 15 years old, he enlisted in the Navy in 1943, he attended Harvard and then the University of Virginia for his law degree. This is more Slatzerian junk. Especially in light of what we know about RFK’s feelings about the Mob.

But what of the diary? As McGovern notes, no one ever heard of this red diary until years after Marilyn was dead. Neither Mailer nor Capell used it. But Robert Slatzer says that Marilyn allowed him to read parts of it. It was from that diary that Slatzer heard things like references to Murder Incorporated; that Bobby had promised to marry Marilyn; and even references to the Bay of Pigs. Slatzer has Marilyn saying that, since the president’s back was bothering him that day, Bobby was handling the Cuban invasion. (DiEugenio and Pease, p. 362)

Again, I wish that was a joke. But it’s not. Even back in 1974, one could easily discover that Bobby Kennedy had little at all to do with the Bay of Pigs. That operation was run by the CIA, much to President Kennedy’s chagrin. It was not until after that debacle that Bobby Kennedy became involved with President Kennedy’s foreign policy management and also in supervising the CIA.

But then what of another diary Marilyn allegedly kept? The one that Ted Jordan saw. Jordan was mostly a TV actor who, like Slatzer, claimed he knew Monroe over a number of years. But like many in the field, he did not write about the relationship until much later, twenty-seven years after her death. There are as many problems with Jordan’s story as there are with Slatzer’s.

As McGovern notes, Jordan could not have met Marilyn as he says he did, through the Blue Book Modeling Agency in 1943. She did not work there until 1945. (McGovern, pp. 105-110) In 1943, Monroe was a housewife in Van Nuys married to Jimmy Dougherty. And Jordan could not have picked her up at her Aunt Gracie’s home, since her aunt was living in West Virginia at that time. (McGovern, p. 109) I could go on in this vein for pages, since McGovern slices and dices Jordan’s work like a Veg-o-matic.

Jordan’s book is also heavy on character assault. Grandison turns Marilyn into Mata Hari. Jordan turns Marilyn into a low life barroom prostitute, who is also addicted to drugs and alcohol. (McGovern, p. 113) Jordan married the stripper Lili St. Cyr in 1955. Jordan writes that Marilyn joined the couple in a three way bed romp. (ibid)

After Jordan was divorced, he was living off of Doheny Drive. One night, in the summer of 1962, Marilyn showed up at his apartment. Jordan characterizes her as looking awful and living in a fantasy world. She walked to his place from Brentwood—a distance of several miles—in a kimono with a bottle of champagne in her hand. And she dropped off her diary. (McGovern, pp. 117-19) The question then becomes, if her diary was with Jordan—as he says it was, since he did not give it to the authorities—then what was Grandison reading? Because, according to Jordan, the contents of the diary he read were much more prosaic than what Grandison said it was.

As noted, Robert Slatzer began this whole diary farrago. But as was often the case, he changed his story about it. In his first book, published in 1974, he said that Marilyn told him he was the only one she allowed to look at her diary. But then, in 1992, in The Marilyn Files, he accommodated a newcomer to the follies, a woman named Jeanne Carmen. (McGovern, p. 254) What is weird about this is that Carmen is not mentioned in Slatzer’s first book. One may also wonder:  if Slatzer was her male best friend and Carmen her best female friend, should they not have run into each other? Yet she is not in Slatzer’s 1974 book and he is not in her 2006 book. (McGovern, p. 131)

In her first descriptions of the diary, it was not the little Red Book of Secrets as described by Slatzer. It was more like a notebook. But then, in 2006, in her memoir, she reverted to the Slatzer version of what it looked like. And now she said she had seen it laying around Marilyn’s place many times. Her version of what was in the diary went beyond Slatzer’s and approached Grandison in sheer bombast. Carmen noticed references to the Mob, Sam Giancana, John Roselli, J. Edgar Hoover, and Jimmy Hoffa. For the same reasons I faulted Grandison, I consider Carmen’s version a fabrication also. Needless to add, Summers used Carmen’s name over 60 times in Goddess. Incredibly, with all the holes we have exposed in Slatzer’s pile of bird droppings, Summers was also vouching for Slatzer as late as 2006. (McGovern, p. 348)

But the diary tale is actually worse than all the above. Because it turned out that Marilyn did have a diary. It was recovered in one of her storage boxes years after a dispute was resolved over her estate. It was nothing like Grandison, Slatzer, or Carmen said it was. The bulk of her estate was given over to the Strasberg family, since Monroe greatly appreciated what her acting coach, Lee Strasberg, had done for her. Those notebooks were compiled in a book called Fragments in 2010. There is no mention of Giancana, Roselli, Hoover, or Tony Accardo. Frank Sinatra is not in there and neither is Castro. Nothing about any romance with the Kennedy brothers or her desire to be First Lady. The only mention of the Kennedys was in notes she made for an interview, in which she said she admired them, as she did Eleanor Roosevelt, because they represented hope for young people. (McGovern, pp. 264-71)

But to show the reader just how off the cliff our culture is on this matter, Grandison’s book was published in 2012. Two years after Fragments. We have now entered the world of high camp.

VII

As the reader can see, the whole charade about the diary was really about a necessary stage prop, one that fit in with the original 1964 scenario concerning Capell’s baseless story about Robert Kennedy being exposed by Monroe. The two playwrights, Capell and Slatzer, refined it as a fictional device in 1974 for the latter’s book.

Grandison then surpassed himself. Not only did he find the diary, but there was also a publicity release in her purse. The release said that there would be a press conference at the LA Press Club. Marilyn would answer questions based upon her Diary of Secrets. I am not kidding. That is what it said and McGovern reproduces it in his book. (p. 557) Of course, no one ever saw it except Grandison. One wonders, since there was no such Diary of Secrets, what was the conference going to be about? Her failed marriages? Her thoughts on her acting career? Because, as one can see, that is what she wrote about in her diary, her real one, not the Slatzerian creation.

The diary was a dramatic necessity, because it would provide ammo for the press conference. But in addition to there being no such diary, according to Mike Selsman, there was no such press conference scheduled for Monday August 6^th. Selsman worked for Arthur Jacobs and his firm ran Marilyn’s public relations. Selsman said that if any such press conference would have been called, he or Jacobs, who were handling her account, would have heard about it. Either through a typed up press release or through one of the big name Hollywood reporters, like Vernon Scott of UPI or Jim Bacon of the AP. (McGovern, p. 564) Selsman knew Pat Newcomb, who was Monroe’s press contact, so if there was a press release, she would have given it to him.

And what about Newcomb? When one of Marilyn’s photographers, Bruno Bernard, phoned her years later for an article he was writing, he asked her if she knew anything about Robert Slatzer, supposedly her ex-husband. Newcomb said she never heard of him. Bruno went on to detail Slatzer’s ideas about a murder plot involving a cover up by the LAPD, Robert Kennedy and the FBI. A stony silence now ensued for about 2 minutes. Bernard asked if she was still there. Newcomb replied: “Bruno, if I hadn’t known you for such a long time, I would have hung up long ago listening to that trash.” Bernard then described what happened next:  “She banged down her receiver with a discernible thud.” (Susan Bernard, Marilyn: Intimate Exposures, pp. 180-81)

But then what about assistant DA John Miner and his “tapes”? Miner had a veneer of respectability to him and his story was heavily promoted by the LA Times. In 1962, Miner was part of the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office medico-legal division. He observed Monroe’s autopsy and allegedly interviewed Dr. Greenson. Greenson revealed to Miner that Marilyn had made two streams of consciousness type tapes for him in the weeks before her death. Miner asked the doctor to play them for him. Before he did, Greenson made Miner promise never to reveal their contents. Miner so complied and the lawyer said he made extensive notes on them. (McGovern, pp. 458-59)

There were two things that were odd about his story. First, in the summer of 1962, Greenson was talking to Monroe every day, sometimes twice a day. So why would she need to make stream of consciousness tapes for him?

In 2005, Miner released the notes to the LA Times. They treated it as a major feature story—posing no serious questions to the attorney. It was done so credulously that even someone as smart and experienced as Debra Conway of JFK Lancer bought it.

If one reads that story, one would believe that Miner presented tapes or documents; the latter would be a transcript of the tapes that could be checked. This was not the case. All Miner had were notes. And the point here is that Miner told three stories about when he composed them. And here is the second problem inherent with Greenson:  if the doctor made Miner promise not to reveal their contents, why would he let him take contemporaneous notes? That would indicate Miner intended to make them public, which would be a violation of doctor/patient privilege. So Miner switched to, well, he did not make them in Greenson’s presence, but later that day. He then changed it to he made them many years after. But then, how could one recall them that closely? (McGovern, p. 461)

It turned out—as it almost always does—there was a cash motive behind Miner’s late arrival on the Monroe scene. In 1995, Miner had attempted to sell his notes to Vanity Fair. But in that version, he had only a few pages on a legal pad, which implies he made no contemporaneous notes and it is unlikely that he did them the same day. (Lois Banner, Marilyn, eBook edition, p. 419; McGovern, pp. 463-64) Even at that, Miner tried to incite a bidding war by saying he had been offered six figures by a competitor. This was obviously not true. But it’s even worse than that. Miner had fallen on hard times. He had been terminated from the DA’s office, had his license suspended—for more than one reason—and declared bankruptcy (McGovern, p. 465; Banner, p. 419) This is why he needed payment for the notes. Further, although he told others he had interviewed Greenson, he likely had not. (Banner, p. 419) After further discussion, and further revelations about his history of sexual harassment and obsession with enemas, Lois Banner concluded Miner had created the notes. (ibid, p. 422) Are we to believe that the LA Times did not know any of this in 2005? When even on their face, there were real problems with the Miner notes? (Click here for details)

But let me add one other point about Miner. He was also involved in the inquiry—rather the cover up—of the Robert Kennedy assassination. As anyone who reads Lisa Pease’s book on that case, A Lie Too Big to Fail, the alleged assassin of Robert Kennedy, Sirhan Sirhan, could not have killed the senator. Further, Sirhan showed signs of being hypno-programmed that night. The man who all but admitted to hypnotizing Sirhan was William Joseph Bryan. It turned out that when Bryan died, the attorney for his estate turned out to be none other than John Miner. The night of Bryan’s death, Miner sealed Bryan’s home. (Pease, pp. 67-69, 446)

VIII

One of the most telling parts of Murder Orthodoxies is when McGovern uses the calendars of President Kennedy and Attorney General Kennedy and matches them with the two Monroe day-by-day books previously mentioned. (pp. 176-86) Monroe met Robert Kennedy four times, each time was in public with other people around. President Kennedy met with Monroe on three occasions. At one of those, in March of 1962 at Bing Crosby’s desert estate, there is evidence they had some kind of dalliance. And that is it. Biographers Randy Taraborrelli and Gary Vitacco-Robles agree with this record.

What this means is that for any other encounter—in which the time and geographic calendars don’t match—the evidence must originate with anecdotal sources. To accept anecdotal evidence as superseding the black and white record is usually not an acceptable practice. But further, to accept the most problematic testimony, by “witnesses” who 1.) Clearly have an agenda, and 2.) Pose very serious evidentiary problems, and to expect that to surmount the above record, to me that is a practice that should be looked upon with strong skepticism.

Jeanne Carmen first appeared in the Monroe literature due to Summers’ 1985 book, Goddess. (McGovern, p. 120) She then made even more prominent appearances in books by Donald Wolfe and David Heymann. As McGovern notes, right off the bat, she poses problems for the discerning reader, since she posited two different places where she met Marilyn. In one version, she met her in Los Angeles; in another, she met her on the opposite coast in New York. What makes it worse is that there is no supporting evidence for either meeting. (Ibid, pp. 124-26) Since the latter meeting was at the The Actor’s Studio, where many people were friends with Marilyn, that makes it even more puzzling.

Carmen says she knew Monroe for a decade and they became the best of friends, yet she was never able to produce a photo of them together. (McGovern, p. 128) If Monroe had just been an ordinary person, this could be excused. But Monroe was a major movie star during the last ten years of her life. People take pictures on celebrity occasions. I have framed photos of myself with Oliver Stone in my apartment. I have taken photos of people who wanted a picture with Stone. The above factors all raise suspicions about Carmen’s story—and we have not even gotten to that story yet.

In her memoir, Carmen said that Marilyn had a sexual encounter with John Kennedy at the Democratic convention in Los Angeles in 1960. As the author demonstrates through the method reviewed above, Monroe was not in LA at that time. (McGovern, pp. 146-47) Carmen also had her version of what happened between the president and Monroe after the famous 1962 rally in Madison Square Garden, where Monroe sang Happy Birthday to the president. As McGovern shows, this is also wrong since Monroe’s time before, during, and afterwards is all accounted for by neutral witnesses. She was escorted to the event by her former father-in-law and she kindly met with her New York fan club after the fund raiser. Randy Taraborrelli agrees that no such encounter happened. (McGovern, pp. 217-18)

Carmen claimed that she once observed Marilyn partaking in sexual activity with Joe DiMaggio and she added that Marilyn liked having witnesses to these types of affairs. This goes against everything we know about how demure Monroe was about her personal life. Carmen also said she used Valium to subdue DiMaggio on one occasion. This was a decade before the FDA approved the drug and it became commercially available. (McGovern, p. 131) I could go on, but the credibility of Carmen is, to say the least, quite questionable.

Another witness who Summers used was Senator George Smathers. Smathers had been a friend of JFK during his days in the senate. Again, his first appearance in a Monroe biography is in Summers’ Goddess. Smathers told Summers a lot and he was then used by Donald Wolfe, Randy Taraborrelli, David Heymann, and others. According to Summers, he used the Florida senator, because no one else in Kennedy’s circle would talk to him about Monroe. Smathers ended up being the kind of witness no one should use.

On pages 204-05, McGovern makes out a list of almost 20 Smathers generated quotes, which are risible in their contradictions and/or falsity. For instance, Smathers said that it was really RFK who had an affair with Marilyn first and then JFK. But he later said that RFK and Monroe did not engage in an affair. Like Carmen, he said that Monroe had an illicit assignation with JFK at the Democratic Convention in LA in 1960., something which, as we have seen, could not have happened. Smathers also once said that JFK ended his affair with Monroe after the encounter at Bing Crosby’s estate. But he then said that Kennedy spent the night with Monroe after the Madison Square Garden fundraiser! As noted above, no such thing happened. One could deduce that Smathers told so many whoppers he couldn’t keep track of them.

But perhaps the biggest howler Smathers ever uttered was that Monroe would often visit the White House and sometimes she would show up unannounced. (McGovern, p. 204) He even said that Monroe visited Washington and took a ride on a presidential yacht with Kennedy and Senator Hubert Humphrey. In rebuttal, I can do no better than quote the author on this point:

In fact, Marilyn never visited the White House and, in fact, she never appeared there unexpectedly and unannounced, like a waif with her suitcases, night gowns, and tooth brushing gear; and to assert that she did so is, and was, absolutely ridiculous on its face. (p. 217)

McGovern writes several pages on why Smathers may have told so many BS stories about his alleged former friend. Although Smathers was a Democrat, he was much more conservative than John Kennedy. While Kennedy was endorsing the Brown vs. Board decision in public in 1956 and 1957, Smathers was signing the segregationist Southern Manifesto. Smathers then resisted the civil rights program that JFK started through congress. In 1960, Smathers entered the Florida presidential primary as a favorite son candidate. And he stayed in even after Kennedy requested he withdraw. (McGovern, p. 194) Like Ben Bradlee, Smathers turned out to be Kennedy’s false friend.

Just how far out into the world of the X-Files do these fantasies go? Well, according to Dr. Donald Burleson, they ascend into outer space. In his 2003 book UFO’s and the Murder of Marilyn Monroe, he offers the theory that President Kennedy had revealed to Marilyn the secrets of space aliens and UFO’s and, like everything else she never knew, Monroe was going to go public with the knowledge. (McGovern, pp. 18-19) How did the plotters know of her plan? Her house was bugged. As McGovern notes, Monroe’s home must have had more wiretaps and surveillance microphones than an NSA listening base, since everyone was bugging her house. Yet, consistent with the diaphanous nature of this case, there are no tapes to be heard. And the two men most often mentioned as doing the bugging—Bernard Spindel and Fred Otash—failed to mention any such thing in their books about their careers. (McGovern, p. 439, 443) Further, intelligence analyst John Newman has shown that certain documents that allege to reveal such ET knowledge by Monroe are forgeries. (DiEugenio and Pease, pp. 360-61)

IX

Let us close with the last week of Monroe’s life. As anyone familiar with the tall tale understands, this involves Monroe going through a hellish weekend at the Cal-Neva Lodge in Lake Tahoe. This wild, unbelievable weekend has evolved over time into a veritable phantasmagoria. In the ultimate Heymann/Chuck Giancana form, we have Peter Lawford, Frank Sinatra (who owned the club at the time), and Sam Giancana doing everything they could to stop Monroe from holding the press conference she was not going to hold with the Secret Diary that did not exist. This weekend featured drugs, alcohol, and all kinds of sexual abuse—in some versions, lesbianism. (McGovern pp. 414-19) How and why was Giancana there? Well, he was a major sponsor of Monroe’s career, which is another myth that McGovern exposes as utterly false. (McGovern, pp. 397-408) Why Sam would want to stop Monroe from hurting the Kennedys is part of the illogic that prevails in these fantasies. By 1963, Bobby Kennedy was making Giancana’s life a painful endeavor. The AG had surveillance on the Chicago mobster, both electronic and human, everywhere he went—including the golf course. The idea that Giancana would want to help the Kennedys could only live in the pages of the trashy book Double Cross.

Marilyn went to Cal-Neva with Joe DiMaggio at the invitation of Dean Martin. She wanted to thank Martin for his support during her struggle with the studio over her last film, Something’s Got to Give. They also discussed a future project. Martin also wanted Monroe to marry DiMaggio again, which reportedly she agreed to do. (ibid, p. 417) But, of course, that won’t sell a lot of books or get you a spot on tabloid TV, which brings us full circle to the day of Monroe’s death again. Summers, Wolfe, Heymann, Matt Smith, and an array of other writers, like Milo Speriglio, have worked triple overtime trying to get Robert Kennedy into Brentwood on August 4^th. The problem is that there was compelling evidence that Bobby was in Gilroy, near San Jose at a ranch owned by John Bates, a prominent attorney in San Francisco. But not only did these authors persist in the belief that RFK was at Monroe’s, some writers said he was there twice that day. The solution, as first proposed by Norman Mailer, was that somehow Bobby Kennedy got there by helicopter and landed near Lawford’s home. (McGovern, p. 273) As this book shows, there was no helipad near Lawford’s home.

What McGovern does with this helicopter tale, as refined by later authors, is worth the price of the book. He gives us a short history of the development of the chopper and summarizes the available models at that time. The average cruising speed of possible 1962 helicopters would be about 105 MPH. Therefore, it would take over three hours to make the journey one way. And you might have to stop for gas outside of Los Angeles. No helicopter could have landed near the Bates ranch, due to the topography and high-tension wires. (McGovern, pp. 288-89) Therefore, a car must have taken Bobby to the San Jose airport. And since there was no helipad at Lawford’s, nor one in Brentwood at that time, Kennedy must have landed perhaps at Fox studio. And someone drove him to Brentwood. As we will see, this could have only happened at night, for the idea that RFK was there in the afternoon is impossible. Yet to fly over the Santa Cruz mountains in darkness in 1962, would be foolhardy. For one thing, the Venturi Effect could cause an altimeter malfunction and a crash. But authors like Heymann need a great dramatic scene in Brentwood with Monroe coming at RFK with a knife, so they insist—against all the evidence and logic—that Kennedy was there. (McGovern, p. 151)

Bobby Kennedy was going to make a speech in San Francisco on Monday for the ABA. Bates invited him to spend the weekend at his ranch, while he was in the area. (Bernard, p. 185) The FBI liaison to the AG made out two reports covering his itinerary for that weekend. (McGovern, pp. 281-82) Bobby was picked up at the San Francisco airport by Bates and driven to Gilroy late on August 3^rd.

McGovern’s book referenced Susan Bernard’s 2011 volume of photographs, Marilyn: Intimate Exposures. When I turned to pages 186-87, a wave of shock went through me, which quickly changed to disgust. On those two pages, Bernard features ten pictures of Bobby Kennedy at the Bates Ranch on August 4^th. He was taking his kids horseback riding, swimming in the pool, a hike up a hill, and partaking in a touch football game. These pictures had existed since 1962. And no one in nearly fifty years ever saw them, or chose to print them? I don’t believe that. It is more likely that they have been suppressed. With these pictures, the nearly dozen witnesses at the ranch, the FBI reports, the article in the local paper on the following Monday about Bobby Kennedy being in church the day before, with that kind of evidence, all the reports about RFK being in Los Angeles that day are tossed into the trash bin. (McGovern, p. 273)

But, again, let us be fair. After both families arranged dinner for the kids, and then for themselves, Bobby worked on his speech and then retired:  could the helicopter scenario be enacted then? There were two gates to the ranch. Bobby Kennedy would have had to wait for his wife to fall asleep first, therefore it would be about 10:45. One of the men in the arriving car would have had to somehow crash both gates. If we then allow for the drive to the airport, the flight to some kind of landing field in LA, and then the drive to Brentwood, there is a problem, and it’s a big one:  Monroe is already dead. Or at least beyond saving.

Perhaps the only part of the book better than McGovern’s review of Robert Kennedy in Gilroy is his examination of the Monroe autopsy. After a 21-page analysis, he concludes that the latest time she could have died would have been at 2:30 AM on August 5^th. Dr. Cyril Wecht places that time earlier, at 2:00 AM. And she would have been in a comatose state at least an hour earlier. (McGovern, pp. 488-89) Bobby Kennedy would have arrived at about 2:45, and that is making good time.

In that chapter, the author addresses the questions that people like Slatzer and Wolfe have posed about the autopsy. It was not uncommon to have ingested the pills Monroe did and not have them show up as residue in the stomach. Simply because Monroe’s stomach was empty and the organ keeps on working until the subject has passed on. (McGovern, p. 483). Also, the manufacturer of Nembutal used a color dye that did not bleed from the gelatin capsules once swallowed, which explains why no dyes were found in her stomach. (ibid, p. 482) Not only did Wecht agree with Thomas Noguchi’s autopsy, so did Dr. Boyd Stevens for the DA’s office review of the case in 1982. McGovern also proves through the barbiturate levels in Monroe’s liver and blood that she was not injected or given a “hot shot”. Later on in the book, he also shows that it is highly unlikely that Marilyn was killed through a rectal suppository, as was proposed in Chuck Giancana’s clownish book Double Cross. (McGovern, pp. 514-15)

Today, after the Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson cases, Monroe’s doctors would have been placed on trial for their irresponsible overprescribing of pills and also for the dangerous combination the prescriptions created:  Nembutal, Chloral Hydrate, Librium, Phenergan, and (most likely) Triavil. The two drugs that killed her are the first two.

Don McGovern has written a quite commendable book. One that swims against some sick cultural tides. As he shows, no one was “protecting the Kennedys.” Those who used that rubric were engaging in the most outrageous practices of evidence manipulation and character assassination; not just of the Kennedys, but of Marilyn Monroe. Monroe was not a Mafia moll, nor was she a high level intelligence agent. McGovern has shown these to be part of a ludicrous and unfounded sideshow. There is a standard in writing nonfiction: sensational charges necessitate sensational evidence. That rule was completely discarded in this field a long time ago, specifically by Norman Mailer. This opened the door to the likes of Slatzer, Grandison, Carmen, and Smathers. Supporting and aggrandizing each other, they created a three ring Ringling Brothers circus.

Don McGovern’s book applies the torch to their circus tent.

I

Back in 1997, I wrote an essay for Probe Magazine concerning the Sy Hersh/Lex Cusack affair. This involved an alleged extortion racket, run by Marilyn Monroe to force the Kennedy family to arrange a trust for Monroe’s mother. Lex Cusack’s father had been involved with part of Monroe’s estate and Lex said he found the documents in his father’s papers. Hersh fell for them hook, line, and sinker. The documents were later exposed as forgeries. I found the attendant controversy fascinating and decided to write about it. (Click here for details)

One of the reasons I did so was that many people within the JFK critical community had taken this MSM meme seriously, e.g. Larry Hancock, Peter Scott, and Paul Hoch. In its totality, that meme went: Monroe had affairs with John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy; she was more or less a Sam Giancana/John Roselli moll; and to top it off, J. Edgar Hoover actually helped cover up the Kennedy/Mafia role in Monroe’s death! (I’m not kidding.) I found all this to be rather wild. My essay made the argument that is was based on quite dubious grounds. Yet, Medusa-like, this idea persisted in the critical community, even after I wrote my essay—which was one of the most popular articles Probe ever published.

I am moved to write about the topic again, because of the appearance of a new book on the subject: Murder Orthodoxies: A Non-Conspiracist’s View of Marilyn Monroe’s Death. The book was written by Donald R. McGovern with a foreword by Gary Vitacco-Robles—the latter is one of the better biographers of Monroe. McGovern’s book is salutary in its intent. I say that because, having been exposed to what passes for literature on the subject, I understand just how toxic the waters in the field are. I once compared it to swimming in a sewer and having to be fumigated afterwards.

That was back in 1997. Since then, with the likes of Donald Burleson, Christopher Anderson, David Heymann, John William Tuohy, and Donald Wolfe, it actually got worse. We are now in the realm of Marilyn and space aliens and Marilyn and the KGB. I wish I was kidding. But, as Don McGovern proves, it’s no joke. Egged on by the expansion of cable television, talk radio, and the rise of self-publishing, the field has now literally reached the Outer Limits.

McGovern begins his book in a simple, but pointed, way. He describes Marilyn Monroe’s last day, August 4, 1962, at her home in Brentwood. He follows what she did and who was there. This included, Pat Newcomb her assistant and publicist; Larry Schiller a photographer; Eunice Murray, her housekeeper; Norman Jefferies, Murray’s son-in-law who was a handy man; and her psychiatrist Dr. Ralph Greenson, who arrived in the early afternoon. There was a disagreement between Schiller and Newcomb over whether Monroe should pose for pictures for Playboy Magazine and Newcomb left. (McGovern, pp. 3-4) Monroe was also involved in a dispute with 20^th Century Fox over her behavior during the production of the film Something’s Got to Give. But this had been resolved on terms favorable to her.

McGovern describes certain other events of that day: attempted calls by her former stepson Joe DiMaggio Jr, a walk on Santa Monica beach, Murray taking Marilyn shopping, a second visit by Greenson, a phone invitation to Monroe for a dinner gathering by Peter Lawford at his Santa Monica home. Her stepson finally did talk to her, Greenson left at about 7:15, Monroe turned down two Lawford invitations, and Greenson had asked Murray to stay the night with Marilyn due to his concerns about her mental state. (McGovern, pp. 7-8)

Murray later suspected something was wrong with Marilyn when she woke up past midnight and saw a light on in Marilyn’s bedroom beneath the door. (McGovern, p. 545) She called her name, but there was no reply. This worried her, since it was unlikely she was asleep with the light on. She then knocked on the door, but there was no answer.

She called Greenson who advised her to look into the bedroom from outside. She did so and then called him back to tell him Marilyn was nude on her stomach, but her body looked strange and unnatural. Greenson dressed and drove over. He pounded on her bedroom door with no answer. He took a fireplace poker outside and broke a pane in the window and then rolled open the sash. He slid through, approached the body and when he saw the hue, he knew she was dead. (ibid)

As the author notes, this is really all we know that happened that day and night. We cannot, of course, know what happened behind Marilyn’s closed bedroom door. The problem, as the author notes, is simple: some people—like Schiller and Murray—have altered their stories. (McGovern, pp. 7-8, pp. 538-39) The other problem is that many people would not accept the official verdict in the case, which was one of “probable suicide”. But more important to the development of the cottage industry of books on Monroe was the constant expansion of a growing legerdemain about the facts of her life and death. This aggrandizement was performed by people who either greatly exaggerated, or completely invented, their roles in both.

We can begin by noting two examples dealing directly with the crime scene. Sgt. Jack Clemmons was the first police officer to arrive at Marilyn’s home. When Robert Slatzer talked to him for his book on Monroe in the early seventies, Clemmons was no longer a policeman. He had been forced to resign due to his role in a libel conspiracy case. The target of that plot was California Senator Thomas Kuchel. The idea was to smear Kuchel in a homosexual tryst. Why would Clemmons take part in such an enterprise? Because, as Clay Risen reveals in his book The Bill of the Century, Kuchel had been the strongest Republican ally to Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Senator Hubert Humphrey in their struggle to get John Kennedy’s civil rights bill through the senate in 1964. Obviously, Clemmons was no friend of Kennedy liberalism. And, as the author writes, “Jack Clemmons did not have a problem corrupting the truth.” (McGovern, p. 546)

Glass is usually cropped in books and on TV shows

Clemmons was accommodating to Slatzer. The policeman told him that the bedroom scene at Marilyn’s looked staged to him. For example, he said a “drinking vessel was not on Marilyn’s night stand or near her bed.” Further, he could not find a glass in the nearby bathroom either. (ibid, p. 547)

Clemmons was up to his old tricks, because:

Police photographs snapped that morning revealed that Marilyn…had a glass at her bedside. One of these photographs depicted a policeman’s hand pointing at Marilyn’s cluttered bedside table, indicating the many prescription bottles resting thereon, and that photograph clearly revealed a glass… (p. 547)

I do not like policemen who manufacture evidence or deceive the public about key facts in a high-profile case. Being familiar with the RFK assassination, I am fully aware of this type of behavior by the LAPD in 1968. And the Slatzer/Clemmons interview took place after that event.

But this was not the only alteration that Robert Slatzer elicited about the crime scene at Marilyn’s home. As mentioned previously, Eunice Murray said that what had her worried about Marilyn was being able to see a sliver of light underneath her door after midnight. This indicated to her that the actress—who suffered from insomnia—was not able to sleep. Years later, Murray changed her story. It was not a sliver of light she saw. That was changed into a phone cord. Who helped her change her story? Robert Slatzer again. Twelve years after the tragedy in Brentwood, Slatzer convinced Murray that she could not see anything under the door, because of new carpeting being installed. As the author notes, the idea of having carpeting so thick that it blocked any door clearance is rather dubious. To prevent any light passage usually requires specially designed seals. (McGovern, p. 552)

Don McGovern will reveal much more about just how pernicious Robert Slatzer was in the Monroe case. In so doing, he achieves something I would not have thought possible. He proves Slatzer was even worse than I thought he was.

II

How did the Marilyn mythology begin? And why? As hinted at above with the Clemmons/Kuchel plot, it was politically motivated. No president did more to tear down the walls of segregation in the South than John Kennedy. No one was more instrumental in that destruction than Attorney General Robert Kennedy. (Click here for details). In fact, as Clay Risen notes in his book, The Bill of the Century, the main reason RFK stayed on as Attorney General into 1964 was to make sure his brother’s bill passed through congress. After that happened, the Attorney General resigned and ran for the senate in New York. As he said, his goal was to represent the Kennedy wing of the Democratic Party in the senate.

There were some conservatives who did not wish RFK to succeed in that race. For the senate seat was perceived as a springboard to the White House. They did not want one Kennedy replaced by another Kennedy, who—because of his epochal stewardship of civil rights—was even more liberal than his brother. They were aided in their cause by journalist Dorothy Kilgallen who, in a column written the day before Monroe died, hinted at some kind of affair between Bobby Kennedy and the movie star. As the author notes, there was no basis for this insinuation. (McGovern, p. 21) Her alleged source was a person, Howard Rothberg, who had no connection to Monroe’s circle. But with the help of this tinder, three arsonists set a fire.

Maurice Reis ran the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. This group was a leftover from the McCarthy era and it terrorized the movie business in the fifties. (See the film Trumbo.). Reis kept files on anyone in Hollywood suspected of being a communist or a sympathizer. Because Monroe had been married to playwright Arthur Miller—pegged as a sympathizer—Reis had files on her. Sgt. Jack Clemmons, who we have already met, was part of the Fire and Police Research Organization, a similar anti-Communist group. Frank Capell started his Red hunting career in Westchester New York as an officer in the Subversive Activities Department. The three men knew each other and, in the autumn of 1962, Reis informed the other two about his files on Monroe. He then spun a tale: Marilyn thought Bobby Kennedy was going to marry her, but the Attorney General backed out of the proposal. Monroe was angered and threatened to reveal the affair; thus, the Kennedys had her eliminated. As McGovern notes, there was no evidence to back this up. But Clemmons and Capell wrote summaries of this wild theory and forwarded them to J. Edgar Hoover’s pal, columnist Walter Winchell, who printed much of it. (McGovern, pp. 24-25)

In August of 1964, Capell wrote a pamphlet titled The Strange Death of Marilyn Monroe, the publication of which coincided with RFK’s entry into the New York senate race. It was essentially the Reis concept, padded out with filler: Bobby Kennedy had Monroe killed by communist agents, because he romantically betrayed her and she was going to expose that betrayal. (James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease editors, The Assassinations, p. 360) As more than one biographer has noted, the anti-Kennedy forces circulated this fruity screed in New York to hurt his candidacy. In order to make his spurious thesis credible, Capell criticized both the investigation into Monroe’s death and the autopsy, in order to suggest her death was a murder disguised as a suicide. Capell’s pamphlet did not gain any real traction, but it was the intellectual basis for a similar effort that did gain wide currency. And, as we shall see, Capell also cooperated on a similar effort beyond that.

Like many American males, Norman Mailer had a liking for Marilyn Monroe. He tried to meet her once but, for whatever reason, she did not want to meet him. (McGovern, p. 31). In 1973, nine years after Capell’s political hit job was issued, Mailer published his own piece of hackery, Marilyn: A Biography. It was a coffee table book, featuring photos by several photographers, including Larry Schiller. Mailer’s accompanying essay suggested that somehow Marilyn’s death was actually a murder. He at least partly formulated this idea through Capell—even though Capell had surrendered on charges in the same libel action against Kuchel that Clemmons had resigned over.

But Mailer had a different reason for continuing the baseless smear. He admitted to Mike Wallace on Sixty Minutes that he needed the money. Unsaid were his alimony and child support payments. (McGovern, p. 33). What Mailer did was, as McGovern describes it, a use of paralipsis. That is, implying something could be true while knowing you have no basis for postulating it. Mailer even tried out the idea that maybe, if Bobby did not kill her, agents of the FBI or CIA did, in order to make it look like she had killed herself over unrequited love. Mailer could get away with this nutty speculation since JFK, RFK, and Monroe were all dead, so there were no legal consequences involved. The book made the cover of four magazines and became a huge bestseller. (See Norman Mailer: A Double Life, by J. Michael Lennon, pp. 467-68) But as author John Gilmore notes, it might be the worst of the lot. Because Mailer “originated the let’s trash Marilyn for a fast buck profit scenario.” Gilmore continued in his description of the genre:  “There are many others in the line; in fact, most every biography on Marilyn is part baloney sandwich peppered gingerly with so-called invention.” (McGovern, p. 36)

That description is probably too kind to apply to the next writer to follow in the Mailer/Capell fiction as non-fiction line. He is the previously mentioned Robert Slatzer. Slatzer’s The Life and Curious Death of Marilyn Monroe was published just a year after Mailer’s yarn, so it is hard not to conclude that the publishing company at least partly shaped and modeled their product on the success of Marilyn: A Biography. Especially since, as Michael Lennon points out, Mailer’s book had a combined hard cover and paperback sale of one million copies.

It turns out that Slatzer knew Kilgallen and, in fact, he wrote her column at times when she was on vacation. (McGovern, p. 38). In that column, he once wrote that he met Monroe in 1947 at Fox. In his book, he changed this to the summer of 1946. But this would only be a minor contradiction in a Slatzerian sea of them.

Slatzer was born in Ohio in 1927. He worked in the D movie business as a writer and director e.g. Bigfoot. In the seventies, he turned more to writing celebrity biographies: two on Monroe and one each on Bing Crosby and John Wayne. In his books on Marilyn, he depicts himself as her closest confidante. In fact, he maintained that he married her. It was a brief marriage. It lasted about 48 hours on the first weekend in October, 1952, the ceremony being performed in Mexico. (McGovern, p. 42) As the author notes, this poses an obvious question: Why would Slatzer wait until 12 years after Monroe’s death, and 22 years after their wedding, to reveal he had been married to her? This is where McGovern hits a double off the wall in left field. Nobody who reads this book will ever believe Slatzer again. (Perhaps excepting, as we shall see, Tony Summers)

III

According to Slatzer, after spending much of the previous day together, he and Marilyn left for Mexico on the morning of October 4, 1952. The couple booked a room at the Rosarita Beach Hotel. They then went to the Foreign Club for dinner and ran into the world-famous matador Carlos Arruza. Arruza happened to be an acquaintance of Slatzer and they shared a drink. At 8:30 that night, they took a cab and went to see a barrister in Tijuana. He informed them he could do the ceremony, but they needed two witnesses. The barrister could supply one, but he would only furnish another for a fee. Slatzer and Monroe happened to stumble upon still another friend of the writer: boxer and actor Noble “Kid” Chissell. The ceremony was performed and the couple then returned to the Foreign Club. They encountered Arruza again, with whom they shared a wedding night dinner. (McGovern, p. 46)

On the drive back, Marilyn seemed distracted by Joe DiMaggio’s voice announcing the World Series. When they arrived in LA, DiMaggio called Marilyn. Slatzer understood that, even though he was her husband, Marilyn was in love with the Yankee Clipper. Like Sir Galahad, he decided to be noble. On Monday night they returned to Mexico to have their marriage annulled. The same barrister said he could not do so that quickly, since it hadn’t been processed. But for a price he pulled the certification from a pile and burned it in front of the couple. When they returned to Los Angeles, Monroe promised never to say anything about their wedding. (p. 47)

McGovern slices this story open with a precision and mastery of fact that is riveting. There are two recent calendar type books on Monroe’s day-to-day life in Hollywood; one by Carl Rollyson and one by April VeVea. According to those two books, it is highly unlikely that Monroe was with Slatzer beginning on Friday night as he says he was. (McGovern, p. 49). Further, with the kind of money Marilyn was making at the time, would one not think the couple would buy wedding bands in LA and hire a photographer to shoot pictures of the ceremony? If you were going to marry one of the most famous film stars in Hollywood, would you not wish to have a picture of the ceremony? Slatzer never mentions a photographer and, according to him, they had to buy wedding bands in Tijuana. Need I add that no one ever saw those bands again.

The retired Carlos Arruza wrote an autobiography in 1955, which was translated into English in 1956. Since Arruza was in some films in his career, one would think that he would have mentioned having dinner with Marilyn Monroe on her wedding night. If only because, by 1955, Monroe was one of the biggest names in Hollywood. Apparently, Arruza did not think that dinner was notable. And somehow, Marilyn forgot all about meeting the great matador twice in one weekend. (McGovern, pp. 63-64)

Two of the most amazing things about this fairy tale concern Joe DiMaggio. McGovern tried his best to locate the broadcasts of the 1952 World Series. He found out that DiMaggio was not part of the broadcast team. Either on radio or television. (ibid, p. 54) The other utterly baffling part of this DiMaggio story is this: Marilyn was living with DiMaggio at the time. The house was located on Castilian Drive in Hollywood Hills. (Click here for a look) Does anyone believe that the powerful, six foot DiMaggio would let the short, portly Slatzer come over to his house and depart with his live-in girlfriend for a Tijuana weekend?

But what of Kid Chissell? He was a witness, right? No he wasn’t. The boxer was questioned by Marilyn photographer Joseph Jasgur about the subject. He admitted that, “No, there wasn’t a wedding between Bob Slatzer and Marilyn…I don’t think Bob ever knew Marilyn.” (McGovern, p. 99). Then why did he go along with the charade? Because, like a true con man, Slatzer offered him money for the backup baloney. And like any amoral hustler, Slatzer did not come across with the funds.

But further, Marilyn could not have been in Mexico on October 4, 1952, because she was on a shopping spree in Beverly Hills that day. She wrote a check for $313, about three grand in today’s currency. (Ibid, p. 100) And the address on the check is the house she rented with DiMaggio. How does it get worse than all this?

I usually try to give people the benefit of the doubt. But in this instance, there is no doubt. Robert Slatzer was a damned liar. His book took Mailer’s paralipsis and Capell’s suggestions further than either had. It was from Slatzer’s phony book that all the elements of a pseudo conspiracy to kill Monroe emanated: the Red Diary of Secrets; a Monroe milieu of not just Kennedys, but mobsters; Monroe’s inside knowledge of what was going on at the White House etc. But Don McGovern has unearthed information that goes beyond the above.

IV

For decades, Will Fowler was a fairly celebrated journalist, news director, and publicist in Los Angeles. His career extended back to the Black Dahlia case. Fowler said that Slatzer approached him in 1972 with an article proposal about the death of Marilyn Monroe. Fowler declined saying that if he had been married to her, now that would make an interesting proposal. Shortly after, Slatzer returned and told Fowler that, he forgot to tell him, but he had been married to her. (Click here for details)

This much had been known through a 1991 memoir that Fowler wrote about his reporting career. It turns out that it was not the whole story. Apparently, upon his death, Fowler donated his papers to California State University Northridge. In those papers, it was discovered that Fowler did not just walk away from Slatzer after their second meeting. On the promise that Slatzer would provide notes and tapes proving his relationship with Monroe, Fowler agreed to be part of a writing enterprise to produce a book on the Monroe case. (Click here for some of the documents)

As one can see from the linked documents, the third party to this literary enterprise was none other than Frank Capell. Capell was to produce evidence to ostensibly demonstrate the true character of Bobby Kennedy. This included supplying a pamphlet he had written about the deceased senator originally titled Robert F. Kennedy: Emerging American Dictator. (McGovern, p. 74) The reason I adduce for Fowler’s initial cooperation was his own innate conservativism—he worked on the Goldwater campaign of 1964—combined with the promise that Slatzer would produce tangible evidence of his relationship with Monroe. When such evidence was not forthcoming, Fowler began to have his doubts about Slatzer’s honesty. For if Slatzer did not have any real relationship with Monroe, then what was the point of the book?

One of the reasons that Fowler left the project is the fact that he was promised by Slatzer full notebooks proving his relationship with Monroe. These were to include letters exchanged between the two. Slatzer also said he had tapes of interviews he did with her. He never came up with either; thus Fowler departed. After he left, the end result was a cooperative writing venture by Pinnacle Books, with some of the writers being paid on a work for hire basis.

As McGovern points out, it is hard to exaggerate the impact of Slatzer’s business enterprise on the Monroe field. For example, Tony Summers invoked Slatzer’s name 179 times in his 1985 book Goddess. Donald Wolfe went beyond that. In his 1998 book, The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe, he found cause to mention Slatzer 266 times. (McGovern, p. 76). Wolfe did not mention Fowler but Summers did, and in an odd way. In his footnotes, he suggests he did a joint interview with the two and, in his text, he indicates that Fowler was backing up Slatzer as to a long relationship with Monroe extending as far back as 1947. He even has Fowler looking at Slatzer’s marriage certificate in 1952, which no one else has ever seen. Yet in Fowler’s 1991 memoir, he stated flatly that Slatzer was never married to Monroe. (Reporters: Memoirs of a Young Newspaperman, pp. 287-88)

One way to explain this apparent dichotomy is that Pinnacle and Slatzer threatened litigation against Fowler for voicing his disagreements with the enterprise after he left the project. (McGovern, p. 78). It turns out that the evidence in the Fowler archives strongly suggests that Slatzer forged a letter to Summers which he tried to pass off as Fowler’s. In a letter to TV critic Howard Rosenberg, Fowler said he only recalled one phone interview with Summers. In that call, he clarified that episodes like a description of a marriage certificate and Marilyn dancing nude, these were only anecdotes that were related to him by Slatzer. (Letter of August 7, 1991). In a memo to his file, Fowler recalled this experience further. He wrote that he told Summers that:

Slatzer informed me about the marriage license and that I had not seen it. And also, that in 1946 or 1947, Slatzer had seen Marilyn walk around at a party in the nude. This became the last interview I would have about Marilyn Monroe, because Mr. Summers, in his book, quoted me as having seen the marriage license and been at the party in the 40’s with Robert Slatzer. Not true. I never even met Marilyn Monroe. (McGovern, p. 81)

When contacted about this discrepancy, Summers said that he stood by what he wrote in his book. As McGovern notes, that might be fine for him, but it does not explain the material differences. (ibid, p. 85)

The letter to Rosenberg concerned a TV movie that was made largely out of Slatzer’s first book about the actress, The Life and Curious Death of Marilyn Monroe. The movie was 1991’s Marilyn and Me. If the reader can believe it, and you probably can by now, that production went even further than the book. For instance, there is a scene in Mexico with Marilyn having an abortion of Slatzer’s child on a kitchen table in Tijuana. Which would mean that while she was living with DiMaggio, she was carrying Slatzer’s baby. There were other additions to the film that are also not in the book. McGovern makes a strong case that these were all further deceptions. (McGovern, pp. 87-88)

V

The fact that Slatzer made a career—and considerable cash—out of his exercise in literary fraud was a signal to others that there were no boundaries anymore in the field. The fact that ABC made a film of his trashy fabrication and that talk show hosts and documentary film makers featured him on television, this clearly designated that the MSM would not perform due diligence on the subject. Therefore, it now became standard practice to posthumously libel Marilyn Monroe, President Kennedy, and Senator Kennedy. This meant one could construct a meme by utilizing one of the most unreliable—almost ludicrous—stable of witnesses ever gathered in one case. By using this methodology, the MSM allowed tall tales to sprout unchecked and then rise to heights (or sink to depths) of dreadfulness, to the point that they approach a kind of collective cultural dementia. If the reader thinks I exaggerate, let me demonstrate with three examples from McGovern’s book.

Most readers of this site will recall the whole Lex Cusack/Sy Hersh debacle. In 1997, ABC had purchased the TV rights for Hersh’s book The Dark Side of Camelot. Reportedly, Hersh had spurred interest in his hatchet job by claiming he had documents that proved a legal settlement between Monroe and the Kennedy family. In return for payments well into the six figures to her mother, Monroe would stay silent about an affair she had with John Kennedy and her seeing him associating with known gangsters, i.e. Sam Giancana. This agreement was made in 1960 and was signed by John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Janet DeRosiers (Joe Kennedy’s assistant), and Monroe’s lawyer, Aaron Frosch (DiEugenio and Pease, pp. 365-66). After noticing some problems with the documents, like using zip codes before they existed, ABC had them tested. They were forensically proven to be forgeries. That part of the story was written about at length. For example, by David Samuels in The New Yorker (November 3, 1997)

In the Samuels article, there was a passage that almost everyone overlooked. But it is important, because Samuels thought it may have given Cusack the idea to create the forgeries. In 1986, Cusack met a woman named Nancy Greene. She conveyed to him a bizarre claim to the Monroe estate, which his attorney father had partly represented. Lex concluded she was not in a well state of mind so he dismissed her.

The Samuels article upset Nancy to the point that she filed a legal action for defamation. The court found no merit in her claim and dismissed the lawsuit. Nancy later published a book in 2013. In that book, she claimed to be the illegitimate daughter of Monroe and JFK. Her last name was Greene by marriage. She later legally changed her last name to Miracle. But she was born with the last name Maniscalco. How do we know that? Because in the Cusack files there was a note from Jennie Maniscalco. The note said Marilyn Monroe could not be Nancy’s mother, “Because I’m her mother.” (McGovern, p. 230)

To go through Maniscalco’s story is to be amazed that anyone could listen to it with a straight face. To use just one example: she says Monroe was not born in California, but in Illinois. And the movie star’s name was not Norma Jeane Mortenson, but Nancy Cusamano. I cannot possibly explain how one became the other, but I will just say that mobster Vito Genovese was involved. (McGovern, p. 221). I don’t even think Nigel Turner would have touched that one.

But Donald Wolfe did. (McGovern, p. 227) He actually tried to prove the story was true. And that Monroe was really Nancy’s mother. This is what passes for investigatory literature in that field. Wolfe is a writer who believes both Robert Slatzer and Nancy Maniscalco. As Sarah Churchwell wrote about Wolfe, “There isn’t a conspiracy theory that Wolfe doesn’t endorse…If someone said it, that seems to be proof enough.” (The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, eBook edition, p. 96)

By now, the reader should understand that the money angle is a recurring theme in the Marilyn industry. We are about to encounter it again.

In 1982, as the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office was conducting a threshold investigation on the Monroe case, the man supervising that inquiry, Ronald Carroll, received an odd phone call. The caller said his name was Rick Stone and he told Carroll he had a story to tell about the Monroe case. (As we shall see, it was a story he intended to sell also.) He said he had been dispatched, along with his partner, to the Monroe home between the hours of 4-6 AM. When he got there, the body was in the guest house. Further, Monroe was not quite dead yet. He and his partner tried to revive her. But then a doctor arrived with a black bag. He pulled out a hypodermic and plunged it into her heart and that is what killed her. (McGovern, p. 515)

Stone’s real name was James Hall. He ended up selling his story to The Globe. Which is significantly below the National Enquirer as far as credibility goes. (ibid, p. 516) This story has been used, in one form or another, by various authors, including Slatzer in his 1992 book and Donald Wolfe. Why it would be used is the real question.

Monroe’s guest house was even more sparsely furnished than her home. As McGovern notes, it contained only a card table and chairs. (McGovern, p. 518) The concept seems to be to build on Sgt. Clemmons’ attempt to make the crime scene into something suspicious. But this story makes Clemmons look conservative in that regard, since not even he said the body was in the guest house. In fact, the first four witnesses at the scene—Murray, Greenson, her internist Dr. Engleberg and Clemmons—said Monroe’s body was in her bedroom. In fact, that Monroe was still alive at the 4-6 AM time frame also clashes with Greenson, Engelberg, and Clemmons. Her body showed signs of fixed lividity and advanced rigor mortis by the time Clemmons got there at 4:35 AM. (McGovern, p. 521) Finally, the idea that the medical examination—done just a few hours later—would not reveal the trail of a hypodermic into the heart, that seems beyond comprehension.

If one thinks the above two stories are bizarre, the one by Lionel Grandison might take the trophy. By 2012, Grandison had changed his religious affiliation, so his book about the Monroe case was issued under the name Samir Muqaddin. But since we are talking about the 1962 time frame, I will use the surname Grandison. Grandison wrote that, as a member of the coroner’s office, he came across Monroe’s diary in a purse that was retrieved from her home. He read it over two nights, took some notes, and tried to commit it all to memory. But after the second night, it disappeared from a safe he placed it in.

According to Grandison, we all had the wrong idea about Marilyn Monroe. Like Chuck Barris, she was actually a secret agent. She was originally recruited by the FBI to spy on her husband Arthur Miller. She then became closely associated with John and Robert Kennedy—although the dates he says she met them do not coincide with the actual calendar dates writers have adduced. (McGovern, p. 252) She had to divorce Miller, because her espionage work now advanced to a higher level in the Kennedy White House. She now began to attend high level intelligence briefings with FBI and CIA officers. She also met up with mobsters like John Roselli and Sam Giancana due to her knowledge about the CIA/Mafia plots to kill Castro—and the president was at those meetings. According to Grandison’s notes, one Mafiosi plan proposed shoving a poison pill into Castro’s rectum.

I really cannot go any further with this—although McGovern does. I have a hard time thinking anyone could dream up, let alone write down this malarkey. One of the biggest film stars in the world at a high-level briefing and no one mentions it—ever? J. Edgar Hoover would have had it in the papers within a half hour. John Kennedy was never at a meeting where the CIA/Mafia plots were discussed, since the CIA deliberately kept them secret from him. (1967 CIA Inspector General Report, pp. 62, 64, 118, 130-32) But beyond that, the CIA emissaries to the Mafia for those plots donned false identities as businessmen and met the mobsters on their home turf: those meetings did not take place in Washington, but in Miami and New York City at private establishments. And finally, Kennedy was not even president when they occurred. (Inspector General report, pp. 16, 18)

There is no excuse for this kind of publishing irresponsibility. The CIA Inspector General Report on the plots was declassified by the Assassination Records Review Board about 15 years prior to the publication of Grandison’s book. Therefore, this smacks of cheap sensationalism.

see The Marilyn Monroe/Kennedys Hoax – Part 2: The Mythology Soars into Outer Space