The Mysterious Death of Marilyn Monroe

A lot of theories and rumor about MM's death but the simple fact is that her whole life was on a downward slide at the time. Clark Gable, her co-star in The Misfits, had died less than a year earlier - from a heart attach that was largely blamed on MM, because she was so perpetually late getting ready to be filmed that he had killed time doing stunts with horses. The Misfits had been written for her by her husband, Arthur Miller, but her behavior during the filming was so bad that her marriage to him broke down even before Gable's death. Miller had divorced her and married his next wife only a few months before MM's death. Her career seemed to be going downhill and at age 36 she couldn't keep playing the ingenue. She evidently had delusions of seducing JFK into divorcing Jackie and making her First Lady - the sort of wild fantasies aided by a diet of booze and pills - and went JFK shut her out, she went into a spiral of despair and substance abuse.

As always solid work in providing a great thread!

RA, you always manage to get me interested in subjects and conspiracies I've never had a deeper look into before!

Thank you so much, members like you make ATS a great place to be around!

Excellent work

I have never believed the suicide story.. the only question for me has always been "who dunnit"
The same applies to John, Robert and John Jr.. And I think you have addressed this very well.

JFK may have been a shocking womaniser, but he kept the USA and the world out of war for as long as he was alive.. We need another man like him.

I watched a documentary that asked if JFK had not been assassinated... would the Vetnam War have happened at all... the conclusion.. NO VIETNAM WAR..

The recordings of Kennedy talking with Generals etc was really interesting.. all of them were pushing for war hard and saying he and the USA would look weak if they didn't.. He didn't give in to them on at least 6 occasions where they wanted war... He was like the only sane person in the conversations. Kudos to Kennedy.

reply to post by Whateva69


Hey Whateva.

Yeah, I think I can remember you mentioning something about this case in a PM before, or maybe I mentioned it I can't even remember now. You're right, It's never a good idea to clean out the PM box, lol.

Thanks for your post anyway, I hope you got a chance to read the thread and everything. And thanks for reminding me I had to do this thread too.

reply to post by butcherguy


Hey BG,

Yeah to be completely honest I still think It's very possible she did kill herself as the official story goes - I don't think It's fair to rule it out as a possibility anyway. But with the story constantly changing, with the issues surrounding the aftermath and autopsy, with the plausible sounding theories tied in with other key events (which I mentioned in one of my last posts) I think suicide can't be taken as the only possibility because, like I said before, I really think it could go either way. For me It's tough to know for sure and have that confidence in saying either one.

Thomas Noguchi is quite an interesting person as well. I'm not sure if you got to that part of the thread but did you know he also did the autopsy on Bobby Kennedy? The same autopsy where he concluded he was shot from behind with the bullet travelling at an upward angle (while the alleged shooter from in the front face on). In regards to Monroe he asked for the case to be re-opened a few times as far as I know but at the same time he feels skeptical about claiming murder happened - Although the official cause of death was only "probable" suicide.

Here's an interesting article about him that I posted in the thread. To me he seems like quite a level-headed individual, someone who looks for a rational conclusions and so on which is always a good thing really: Telegraph: Dr Thomas Noguchi: LA coroner confidential.

reply to post by Rising Against

Yep i read the thread its fantastic, but i have to go back and read the links, getting there slowly, give me a week or two to get through it all

I love her so much, Its just a shame people took her friendship for granted, similar to Anna Nicole in a way. Both sensitive and vulnerable lady's.

love and harmony
Whateva

reply to post by neotech1neothink


Checks havent changed much in 50 years.

Another great thread and again, a raising of the benchmark in relating information.

It's strange how we swing back and forth on theories, I first thought that she was
'done in' by sinister forces and then as I read more about the case, I came to the
conclusion that it was suicide.

But there's a niggle... was it Bob Kennedy in the car that was pulled over?
If so, then what was he doing there?
Some of her aquaintences have her as a young sensible woman with a craving
to learn more about life, others portray her as one-demesional sex-kitten who
craved attention, who was Marilyn Monroe on that fateful evening?

Keep up the good work, Rising!

reply to post by Rising Against


Well, RA... as per usual another stellar and well thought out thread!! I very much enjoyed the read and as in many of your other threads I learned quite a bit more on a subject that until this thread I had given little thought to.

As to neotech1neothink's request in trying to find a Reader's Digest article on this topic I did a little research to try to find if for them, and while in a google search (key word string "Reader's Digest Marylin Monroe murder") I stumbled across this article that had some other interesting points I did not see in your original OP. I am not sure if this is the article neotech1neothink was thinking of but I thought I would mention it just the same.

Some of the points that stood out to me in this article are as follows:

Monroe's internist, Dr. Hyman Engelberg,told the D.A.'s investigators that he had prescribed only one of the medications that killedher. If so, asks Karch, where did the other medications come from? The records arecontradictory on how the police and coroner's staff handled the many drugs found at thehouse. A coroner's document indicates that nothing was removed from the scene. Thebedside table was still littered with pill bottles the following day; Monroe's businessmanager, Inez Melson, the first person allowed access after the police left, told me shesimply threw them away. Why, then, do other documents indicate that eight medicationcontainers were analyzed at the coroner's laboratory?

Not long before she died, a D.A.'s report shows, Monroe discussed suicide with an actressfriend, Jeanne Carmen. Were she ever to kill herself, she said, she "would dress in a whitenightgown, take an overdose of pills and go to bed. The sheets and spread would be whiteand she would have her hair and makeup done. A friend would be informed of the suicide tomake sure that after her death she was neatly positioned and the bedroom was in order."

This one above in particular I found interesting because it made me wonder if she already had suspicion that something was afoot and this was an attempt to let someone know that IF she was found in any other manner than described above it was not suicide but murder instead? No one will ever know though it's just something that struck me as odd and gave me pause to think a little bit on it.

Monroe seemed to gravitate to left-wingers. Her doctors, psychiatrist Greenson and internistEngelberg, had both been involved with the Communist Party. Her housekeeper's brother-in-law Churchill Murray, who introduced Monroe to diplomats in Mexico, was a member of the group of Communists in exile there. Field deemed Monroe's politics "excellent." She wasof the left, odd though it may seem to a public that recalls only the blond bimbo of hermovies. Her psychiatrist's daughter, Joan Greenson, told me that Monroe was "passionateabout equal rights, rights for blacks, rights for the poor. She identified strongly with theworkers." The FBI, a document shows, deemed her to be "very positively and concisely leftist"

While in Mexico, the FBI learned, Monroe chattered about the night she met Robert Kennedyand the long political conversation they had. She told José Bolaños and Field that they haddebated U.S. policy on Cuba.

No foreign policy issue was more sensitive than Cuba in early 1962. The Cuban missile crisiswas only months away. Robert Kennedy was directing secret American attempts tooverthrow Castro, and anything he said on the subject would have been of interest to theCubans and the Soviets. Some of the American Communists in Mexico City, the newdocuments indicate, were in touch with Soviet-bloc embassies.

When she was found dead, according to her psychiatrist, Monroe had a phone "clutchedfiercely in her right hand." Whom had she been calling as she slipped into unconsciousness?Los Angeles chief of detectives Thad Brown told Virgil Crabtree, the U.S. Treasury's assistantchief of intelligence in Los Angeles, that a White House number, scrawled on a piece of crumpled paper, had been found in the dead woman's bedclothes. "It was determined,"Brown's aide, Inspector Kenneth McCauley, told me, "that she had called John Kennedy justbefore she died"

Sourced article for all above quotations

Sorry for such a long response, but I wanted to get this in here in case you found it of any relivance what so ever. I found the article particulary interesting when added to the evidence you provided in your OP.

Again, thank you for the well done thread, RA!

Cheers,
~MMIMO

ETA: Here is the original 2006 Reader's Digest Article, which is exactly the same as the sourced article above, just in case the first link gives anyone a problem

First, thank you for all the wonderful threads you've put together on this site. I have to say that I really enjoy them and they are some of my favorite reads here.

Second, I believe that it wasn't a suicide as well.

However, I do have to say that just because she made a hair appointment doesn't mean much to me personally. I know it seems odd but when you are in a state of mind like that, you don't always make rational decisions. Embarrassingly I tried to commit suicide as a teen and while on the way to the location I had chosen I noticed that I was running low on gas. For some reason I thought, "well I better get gas because otherwise I won't have enough to get back home."

Also from what I understand (I may be wrong but I've read this a few times in the past), sometimes when people choose to end their life they actually become happier because they come to an acceptance point/period. So, she may have sounded "normal" or "happy" but it was because she felt okay for once since she knew it would be over soon.

I don't know. Usually I have nothing to contribute to your threads so I just wanted to put my 2 cents in on this one. But like I said, I believe it was more than what meets the eye. I just wanted add some devil's advocate type thoughts as well.

I would like to add a little to RA's excellent posts with some paraphrasing from the 2011 book: "Marilyn Monroe" A Case for Murder" by Jay Margolis published in 2011. Also some of Dr. Noguchi autopsy findings are presented.

Note that what I am paraphrasing from the book is available as a free preview of the contents of the book.

As you mentioned Dr. Noguchi noted: "A slight ecchymotic area is noted in the left hip and left side of lower back." Ecchymosis means a discoloration of the skin caused by bruising. So had someone held her down, especially her lower body?

Dr. Noguchi also noted: "The colon shows marked congestion and purplish discoloration.".

So what caused this purplish discoloration in her colon? John Miner, a former L.A. County prosecutor involved with the Monroe case claims a drug-laced enema was administered to Monroe.

"The toxic level was so high she would have had to take 60 to 70 pills,"

He claims this is the only way such a massive dosage of drugs could have been administered, especially since the autopsy report claimed "The stomach is almost completely empty...No residue of the pills is noted."

John Miner told others that administering a drug-laced enema was an "almost perfect crime" and "an easy one to cover up." He also implicates Monroe's housekeeper Mrs. Murray, who apparently was, in the middle of the night "washing loads after load of linens". This washed linen, which was really crime scene evidence, was put into garbage bags then loaded to a waiting pickup truck and disposed of immediately at the county dump.

This may explain the "how" it happened. We know the why as you have demonstrated.

Marilyn Monroe: A Case for Murder

Noguchi Autopsy Report: this is quite morbid, search the internet if you really want to read it


Like many teenage boys, I had a crush on Marilyn, and I don't think she was a suicide, troubled yes.

Elton John wrote a song about Norma Jeane, which expresses my feelings for her better than I ever could:

reply to post by A boy in a dress


Always good to see you BIAD.

Yeah I agree with you, It's funny how it works. At first I thought suicide was the more likely conclusion (from what I've read about her, her life, her troubles etc), but as I started to read more and more my opinion began to change. And once I started reading even more it began to change yet again and so on. Right now though I'm just classing myself on the fence with it all - But like I said before, I really do think there might be a very real connection to the Meyers and Kilgallen case, and taking the Double cross theory involving the mafia there's a pretty eerie connection to Chappaquiddick also - In that a Kennedy family member was publicly embarrassed with the sudden death of a young woman (which they claimed was the original plan for Bobby but it failed).

But there's a niggle... was it Bob Kennedy in the car that was pulled over?
If so, then what was he doing there?

Yes. Lynn Franklin was the man who pulled them over I believe and he said Peter Lawford was driving, Bobby Kennedy (who he claims he knew fairly well) was in the car and there was another male as well which was later identified as Greenson.

The second video of this documentary at around the 3:50 mark is where he begins telling what he (allegedly) saw that night.

reply to post by MyMindIsMyOwn


Thanks fantastic Mind, thank you.

I was going to do a couple of searches for what Neo brought up a little bit later on (as I was busy today and have pretty much only just started to work on writing up replies although I got a couple in earlier on today still) so I guess you saved me a lot of work there for which I'm grateful. It has to be said as well you comment in a lot of the thread's I write up and in every single one you make a great contribution. You deserve a ton of credit in my opinion.

Anyway, I just read the entire article you posted, especially those snippets you quoted here, and It's an interesting one for sure, even if It's not the one Neo was originally thinking of.

To add interesting snippets to those you already chose to add to this thread for others to look over though I really thought these were quite interesting to say the least:

A senior forensic pathologist consulted by the D.A.’s office took the view that the original medical findings on Monroe were accurate. In an interview this year, though, Dr. Steven Karch, a retired assistant medical examiner for the city of San Francisco, pointed out what he sees as troubling flaws in the forensic evidence. Monroe’s internist, Dr. Hyman Engelberg, told the D.A.’s investigators that he had prescribed only one of the medications that killed her. If so, asks Karch, where did the other medications come from? The records are contradictory on how the police and coroner’s staff handled the many drugs found at the house. A coroner’s document indicates that nothing was removed from the scene. The bedside table was still littered with pill bottles the following day; Monroe’s business manager, Inez Melson, the first person allowed access after the police left, told me she simply threw them away. Why, then, do other documents indicate that eight medication containers were analyzed at the coroner’s laboratory?

Most disquieting is the fate of specimens taken from Monroe’s body during the autopsy. When Dr. Noguchi asked the head toxicologist to test tissue samples, he told the D.A.’s staff years later, he was told they had already been “destroyed.” Why? Toxicologist Dr. Raymond Abernethy refused to comment when I asked him for an explanation. “The last thing in the world you do is dispose of tissue,” Dr. Karch says today. “To throw away the tissue is, I think, astonishingly damning. There’s no justification, because you never know when you might want to go back and look again.”

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.”

By the time he and his superior got to Monroe’s house on the night of her death, Byron remembered, Dr. Greenson was gone. Milton Rudin, the attorney Monroe shared with Frank Sinatra, was there, and seemed to be in charge. “He’d probably told Mrs. Murray, ‘Don’t say anything,’ ” Byron told me. “My feeling was that it had all been rehearsed.” As for Rudin and Dr. Engelberg, the officer said, “There was a lot more they could have told us … I didn’t feel they were telling the correct time or situation.”

This is not something I was aware of. Why would he be gone? This seems to back up the Double cross theory about Lawford and Kennedy perhaps.

I asked former Assistant D.A. Carroll why his office had not interviewed Byron. “It beats me,” he responded. “We had his written reports. Still, he should have been interviewed.”

Both Byron and Clemmons suspected that the witnesses were covering up something in particular: the time frame of events on the death night. The account of one witness — yet another person the D.A.’s staff did not get to — suggests that suspicion was well founded.

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.

After my book was published, Juliet Roswell, a former employee of Jacobs, corroborated his widow’s statement. In an interview with me, she said her boss told her that he “went out there [to Monroe's home] at 11 o’clock.”

It really has to be said as well that the author of that article, Anthony Summers, is a very credible person, in my opinion he is anyway. Certainly not someone who jumps to conclusions but instead someone who looks closely to gather what facts are present yet tough to see.

I highly recommend people read that article you just linked, Mind.

Excellent thread Rising Against...however it would be remiss of me if I didn't point out to everyone this equally excellent thread by TheMythLives from a few years back...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

You should check out his whole series of case reviews, I think that you would enjoy them.

reply to post by Biliverdin


And here's a direct copy and paste of the first paragraph of this thread:

I've been wanting to write up this thread for a while now admittedly, only failing to make it until now due to being distracted by other topics which I also happen to find quite interesting. But this case in particular, the Marilyn Monroe case, is one I've always found to be a particularly fascinating one, ever since I read this thread posted by ATS member Themythlives a few years ago now in fact. This thread being one of the reasons why I stuck around ATS in the first place. Even so, In the past I've gone to the trouble of writing up threads similar to this case, such as this one on Lee Bowers or this one on Dorothy Kilgallen for example, as well as quite a few more - But now though I've finally got round to this thread giving my own thoughts, opinions and theories looking at the hidden story of one of the most well known names of the last 50 years, Marilyn Monroe.

Thanks for the heads up still. I talk to Myth on skype from time to time, he's a very smart young man. His thread's were also always great to read.

I'll have to reply to others later on as well I think, unfortunate circumstances in real life are taking hold right now and I'm not in the right frame of mind to talk about this, or any other thread, right now. Sorry....

Originally posted by Rising Against
Thanks for the heads up still. I talk to Myth on skype from time to time, he's a very smart young man. His thread's were also always great to read.

He is a very, very smart young man, and, scarily perceptive...he can't half probe..he is a magician at NLP.

Good to hear he is well.

Psychiatric medication was only introduced in the 50'ies and it was very strong. I betcha she was chubby when on the medication and skinny when off it; mood stabilizers tend to make you hungry (and also mess up your insuline etc).

So she was zoned out when on meds and having all sorts of withdrawal symptoms when off meds.

My guess, she used her last night a suppository. She needed more but was to groggy and needed help. The maid prob. inserted an extra one or more. This killed her, cardiac arrest. She felt guilty and made up the whole light under door story. The people who had visited Marilyn (Kennedy etc). didn't want to be implicated in this tragedy and Kennedy most certainly didn' want to be outed as a adulterer.

Her death must have been peacefull, spaced out. And what would have happened to her after her sex kitten years? No husband, no children, no fame.

Originally posted by QueenofWeird
My guess, she used her last night a suppository. She needed more but was to groggy and needed help. The maid prob. inserted an extra one or more. This killed her, cardiac arrest. She felt guilty and made up the whole light under door story. The people who had visited Marilyn (Kennedy etc). didn't want to be implicated in this tragedy and Kennedy most certainly didn' want to be outed as a adulterer.

I never liked the maid. Or Greenberg, Marilyn's physician. And I agree that most of their actions was to cover up their own guilt in feeding her pills. They were paid by the studios to keep her on the go, so that they could squeeze every last penny out of her. Few realise what a meat market Hollywood was in those days, the actors got peanuts, and even kids like Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland were force fed upper and downers as and when it was deemed necessary.

reply to post by Rising Against


With old Joe Kennedy being involved with the Mafia and boot-legging booze
during the Prohibition years, it's no wonder that when Jack stepped into his
older-brother's shoes and wandered onto the political stage, the Mob would
come a-calling for favours.
Presumably, the Kennedy family would attempt to distance themselves from
organised crime and this would have ruffled a few feathers.

Bobby wanted to 'clean house' and with Jack being a womaniser that the media
were reluctant to broadcast, what better way than to drop a blonde bombshell in
the President's lap and watch him sink deeper into the mire.

Bobby also whet's his beak in the Munroe waters and realises that the Mafia would
now have two Kennedy's in their pocket, on top of Marilyn's little black-book and
loose-lips... it's a recipe for blackmail and something has to be done.

So what sort of autopsy would the most-powerful man in the USA like to hear?
Murder or suicide... which one, heh?

Great thread.

Originally posted by A boy in a dress
reply to post by Rising Against

 

With old Joe Kennedy being involved with the Mafia and boot-legging booze
during the Prohibition years, it's no wonder that when Jack stepped into his
older-brother's shoes and wandered onto the political stage, the Mob would
come a-calling for favours.
Presumably, the Kennedy family would attempt to distance themselves from
organised crime and this would have ruffled a few feathers.

Bobby wanted to 'clean house' and with Jack being a womaniser that the media
were reluctant to broadcast, what better way than to drop a blonde bombshell in
the President's lap and watch him sink deeper into the mire.

Bobby also whet's his beak in the Munroe waters and realises that the Mafia would
now have two Kennedy's in their pocket, on top of Marilyn's little black-book and
loose-lips... it's a recipe for blackmail and something has to be done.

Add into that mix that Sam Giancana evidently wanted Marilyn badly but she consistently refused...sour grapes.

I think it is in Anthony Summer's book about the case, that there is a story of a contractor who had to do some work on Marilyn's bungalow, after she had died. Climbing into the roof space, he claimed to have found the place 'bugged' up to high heaven.