Why So Many People Still Doubt The Official Story Of Marilyn Monroe’s Death

She was born unwanted, and she became unforgettable, and she died under circumstances that have haunted us for over 60 years. But to understand the mystery of Marilyn Monroe’s death, we have to start with the girl she was before the world knew her name.

Crime, conspiracy, cults, serial killers, and murder — all things that I love to consume, and I know you do too, you sick, twisted, beautiful, intellectually minded little freak. Today, this is a very highly requested video.

A lot of you guys watched or listened to my Princess Diana deep-dive video, and a lot of you requested I do the lovely Marilyn Monroe next, so here we are. Please let me know what other videos you guys want to see.

So, without further ado, let’s unbuckle our seat belts, go mock firefight down the highway, slam on the brakes, and bust through this windshield into the life and mysterious death of Marilyn Monroe.

On June 1st, 1926, in the charity ward of Los Angeles General Hospital, a baby girl was born at approximately 9:30 a.m. Her birth certificate bore the name Norma Jeane Mortenson, though she would later be baptized Norma Jeane Baker.

Her mother, Gladys Pearl Baker, was a 24-year-old film negative cutter who named her daughter after silent screen star Norma Talmadge, or so the story went. But Marilyn’s half-sister Bernice would later dispute this in her 1994 memoir, claiming the name came from a family friend, Norma Jeane Cohen Seedman.

The father listed on the birth certificate, Martin Edward Mortonson, Gladys’s estranged second husband, was almost certainly not the biological father. He had separated from Gladys months before conception and would later insist he never consummated the marriage.

The true father, as DNA evidence confirmed in 2022, was Charles Stanley Gifford, Gladys’s supervisor at Consolidated Film Industries. When she became pregnant, he wanted nothing to do with her or the child.

At 18, Norma Jeane finally tracked down his telephone number, and his response was devastating. He said, “I’m married. I have a family. I don’t have anything to say to you. See my attorney.”

Which is just so incredibly heartbreaking, like to track down your father and for him to just tell you to contact lawyers. He doesn’t want to deal with you, like you’re a speck of dust that’s just annoying to him.

It’s just horrible, not a great way to start out life. She would even try twice more to meet him, traveling to his dairy farm in Hemet, California, in 1950 and again in 1961.

There could be more meetups, but we don’t know for sure. Both those times he refused to see her.

If all that wasn’t enough already, mental illness also saturated Gladys’s bloodline. Her father, Otis Monroe, had died in an asylum from syphilis, and her mother, Della, suffered from what would today likely be diagnosed as bipolar disorder.

A great-grandfather had also died severely mentally ill. So, 12 days after giving birth, Gladys placed Norma Jeane with Albert Wayne and Ida Bolander.

They were a deeply religious evangelical couple in Hawthorne, California, who took in foster children for $5 a week. Norma Jeane would spend seven years calling them Aunt Ida and Uncle Wayne, believing for much of the time that they were her actual family.

When the child instinctively called Ida “Mama,” the woman corrected her sharply. She said, “Don’t call me mother. I’m not your mother. Let’s calm down a little bit. It’s a child.”

All right, but oddly enough, even though she had that reaction, the Bolanders did want to adopt her, but Gladys refused. What Norma Jeane didn’t know was that she had siblings as well.

Gladys’s first marriage to Jasper Newton Baker had produced two children, Robert Kermit Jackie Baker and Bernice. When that marriage collapsed in 1923, Jasper basically kidnapped both children and fled to Kentucky.

Jackie died in August of 1933 at 15 from kidney disease, shattering Gladys’s fragile equilibrium. Norma Jeane and Bernice finally met in autumn of 1944 and formed a genuine bond.

In the summer of 1933, Gladys purchased a small white bungalow at 6812 Arbol Drive in Hollywood. She took in lodgers, a British couple named George and Ma Atkinson, both actors, to help with the mortgage.

For a few months, mother and daughter lived together, but it would last less than a year. In January of 1934, Gladys suffered a complete mental breakdown and would be diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and committed to Norwalk State Hospital.

She would spend the rest of her life cycling in and out of psychiatric institutions, eventually outliving her famous daughter by more than two decades before dying in 1984. Over the next several years, Norma Jeane lived in approximately 12 different foster homes.

On September 13th, 1935, nine-year-old Norma Jeane became ward number 3,463 at the Los Angeles Orphans Home Society at 815 North El Centro Avenue in Hollywood, better known as Holly Grove. She remained until June 12th, 1937.

From the dormitory windows, the children could see the RKO Studios water tower. She would later say, reflecting on those moments where she was staring at the water tower, “I used to think there must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me dreaming of becoming a movie star. But I’m not going to worry about them. I’m dreaming the hardest.”

The Atkinsons took her first for roughly 16 months. Something happened in the house she would never fully articulate, and she developed a severe stutter and became withdrawn.

Psychiatrists say now that there could have been some abuse in that household that would have caused her to develop a stutter and to withdraw, but nothing is confirmed. But in another home, it would be confirmed that a boarder did abuse Norma Jeane.

When she reported it, her foster mom slapped her face, saying, “I don’t believe you. Don’t you dare say such things about that nice man.”

She had an incredibly, incredibly rough childhood. Grace McKee, Gladys’s best friend, became Norma Jeane’s legal guardian in 1936.

Grace adored movies and was obsessed with Jean Harlow. “Someday you’ll become an important woman,” she would tell little Norma Jeane, “a movie star.”

But Grace’s own life was chaotic, and she married Ervin or Doc Goddard, who allegedly abused 11-year-old Norma Jeane in 1937 as well. So, she’s going to multiple houses and she’s getting taken advantage of by these men that she thinks she should be able to trust.

They severely let her down and cause decades’ worth of trauma. Grace’s aunt, Anna Lower, provided the one true bright spot.

Monroe would say later in life, “She changed my life. She was a wonderful human being.” Norma Jeane would live with Anna in Sawtelle from 1938 to around 1941.

Not everything was darkness, because she excelled in English class and she loved writing and contributed to the school newspaper at Emerson Junior High. The girl who emerged from those 12 foster homes and that orphanage dormitory was not merely damaged; she was determined.

At the window of Holly Grove, watching the RKO water tower catch the California light, she had made herself a promise. She would dream harder than anyone and become someone the whole world would want.

In 1942, 15-year-old Norma Jeane faced abandonment again. Grace McKee Goddard’s husband had been transferred to West Virginia, but California law prevented them from taking their ward out of the state.

The alternative was Holly Grove, the orphanage, but Grace would have another idea. The Goddards’ neighbors included the Dougherty family, whose son James was a handsome 21-year-old working at Lockheed Aircraft.

Grace approached Jim’s mother with a business proposition. If Jim married Norma Jeane, she wouldn’t have to return to the orphanage.

Jim would later insist genuine affection developed between them after a Christmas dance in late 1941, but the primary catalyst was desperation, not romance. Now she’s just getting sold off to a random guy.

Anyway, on June 19th, 1942, 18 days after her 16th birthday, Norma Jeane became Mrs. James Dougherty at 432 South Bentley Avenue in Los Angeles, with a reception at the Florentine Gardens. To marry, she dropped out of University High School.

The marriage wasn’t miserable, and Jim was fundamentally decent; it was just said to be ordinary. She called him “Daddy,” which is a term revealing more than she intended about what she was searching for.

She had no really good father figure in her life, so now her husband — when she’s a child right now — her husband’s becoming her father. It’s just really messed up.

Years later, she would assess it honestly, saying, “My marriage didn’t make me sad, but it didn’t make me happy either. Actually, our marriage was a sort of friendship with privileges.”

In April of 1944, Jim shipped out with the Merchant Marine. Rather than wait passively, Norma Jeane got a job at the Radioplane munitions factory in Van Nuys, inspecting parachutes and spraying airplane parts with fire retardant for $20 a week.

Different times, I tell you what. For the first time, she was earning her own money.

In late 1944, Army photographer David Conover arrived at the factory, dispatched by Captain Ronald Reagan’s First Motion Picture Unit to shoot female war workers for morale purposes. Those guys needed pictures of gals, you know what I’m saying.

Conover spotted a pretty girl putting propellers on airplanes. He said, “She had curly ash blonde hair, and her face was smudged with dirt. I snapped her picture and walked on. Then I stopped, stunned. She was beautiful.”

He spent the next two weeks teaching her how to pose, recognizing something she had always suspected about herself. By August of 1945, Norma Jeane walked into the Blue Book modeling agency run by Emmeline Snively.

Snively’s assessment was measured: pretty, but not exceptional, better suited for pin-up work than high fashion. But there was something the camera might capture, and Norma Jeane threw herself into the work with surprising intensity.

By early 1946, she appeared on approximately 33 magazine covers. Snively saw unrealized potential, saying, “You’ve just got to bleach and straighten your hair because now your face is a little too round and a hair job will lengthen it.”

Different time. I mean, not really — even modeling agencies today, I feel like they’re even more brutal, so maybe it’s actually pretty light.

In February 1946, photographer Raphael Wolff paid for the transformation because he needed a blonde for a shampoo ad. At Frank and Joseph’s beauty salon, her brown curls were chemically straightened and lightened, and even her widow’s peak was removed through electrolysis.

Her blonde hair would become perhaps the most famous physical characteristic of the 20th century. Jim Dougherty, her husband at the time, asked her to give up modeling because he wanted the teenage bride he’d left behind.

But she now had a taste for attention and possibility, and the first glimmers of her childhood dream. Jim wanted to hold her back.

In 1946, she filed for divorce in Las Vegas, and the decree was finalized on September 13th, 1946. This was exactly 11 years to the day after she’d been admitted to Holly Grove as ward number 3,463.

Jim would learn that his marriage was over while aboard a ship on the Yangtze River. That’s got to be rough.

Let her live her dreams, but I guess there was no other way to tell him. At least she told him; she just didn’t go off and run around.

He would later become an LAPD detective and the department’s first SWAT trainer, giving interviews about Norma Jeane until his death in 2005. By the end of 1946, Norma Jeane was 20 years old, newly divorced, and standing at a crossroads.

His magazine covers paid the bills, but magazines weren’t movies. The RKO water tower she’d stared at through the Holly Grove window was no longer just a symbol; it was a destination.

The man who would give Norma Jeane a new name had once starred alongside the original blonde bombshell. Ben Lyon was a Fox executive in 1946, but two decades earlier, he’d appeared opposite Jean Harlow in Hell’s Angels.

When the 20-year-old model walked into his office that summer, he felt the past reaching forward. “It’s Jean Harlow all over again,” he would say.

Lyon arranged a screen test without full approval from studio head Darryl F. Zanuck. It was filmed in July of 1946 at 5:30 a.m. on a deserted soundstage belonging to a Betty Grable picture.

Cinematographer Leon Shamroy, a four-time Academy Award winner, watched through his viewfinder as Norma Jeane walked across the set, sat on a stool, and lit a cigarette. She wore a floor-length sequined gown, no lines, purely visual.

Shamroy described what he saw in near-mystical terms. Because most people looked worse on screen — like your girl here right now, that’s why I stand so far back from the camera — but Marilyn Monroe looked better.

The camera just loved her in a way that couldn’t be taught. Zanuck remained unimpressed, but when RKO showed interest in signing her, he agreed to a contract rather than lose her to a rival.

On August 24th, 1946, Norma Jeane signed with 20th Century Fox for $75 a week. Lyon suggested “Marilyn” after Marilyn Miller, the legendary Ziegfeld Follies star.

For the surname, she chose her mother’s maiden name, Monroe. Other names had been considered, like Carol Lind, Claire Norman, or Meredith, but Monroe felt right.

The legal change wouldn’t come until February 1956, but from August 1946 onward, Marilyn Monroe had taken Norma Jeane’s place. Marilyn Monroe was born.

Years later, she would reflect on what the old name represented, saying, “Unwanted, shy, an orphanage slave. But Marilyn Monroe would be wanted by everyone.”

The first six months at Fox were spent in classes: acting, singing, dancing. She also enrolled at the Actor’s Laboratory Theater, a school with progressive political leanings that would later cause problems during the Red Scare.

Their assessment was discouraging; she was “too shy and too insecure.” When her contract came up for renewal in August of 1947, Fox declined to extend it.

Columbia Pictures signed her in 1948, hoping to create another Rita Hayworth. She began working with drama coach Natasha Lytess, a Berlin-born teacher who would become one of the most important and controversial figures in her personal life.

Columbia gave her one film, Ladies of the Chorus, a low-budget musical. It was her first starring role; she could sing, she could move, and she had presence.

None of it was enough, and in September of 1948, Columbia dropped her, too. Two studios had now decided Marilyn Monroe wasn’t worth keeping.

What saved her career was a man who fell hopelessly in love with her, Johnny Hyde. Johnny Hyde was a vice president at the William Morris Agency who had helped build the careers of Rita Hayworth and Lana Turner.

He was 53, married, and suffering from a serious heart condition. When he met Marilyn in 1949, he had around two years to live.

Hyde became convinced she was destined for stardom and set about making it happen. He paid for acting classes, clothing, and cosmetic dental work.

He secured auditions impossible for an unsigned actress. He begged her to marry him — I feel really bad for his wife — promising his fortune, but Marilyn refused.

She wouldn’t marry a man she wasn’t in love with, not even for security. The orphan who had married at 16 to escape institutionalization had grown into a woman with principles.

In 1950, Hyde delivered the two auditions that changed everything. The Asphalt Jungle, directed by John Huston, gave Marilyn perhaps five minutes of screen time as the young mistress of a corrupt lawyer.

Huston had resisted casting her initially, suspecting Hyde was pushing his girlfriend. But when she auditioned, the nervous young woman disappeared.

“Marilyn didn’t get the part because of Johnny,” Huston said later. “She got it because she was damned good.”

Critics singled out “The Unknown Blonde” as a revelation. All About Eve truly announced her arrival.

Joseph Mankiewicz’s masterpiece starred Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, and Celeste Holm. Marilyn played Miss Claudia Caswell, a graduate of the Copacabana School of Dramatic Art.

It was a small role, but she played the dumb blonde with such precision that audiences couldn’t tell if she was in on the joke. That ambiguity suggested depth beneath the surface.

Watching her hold her own among titans, Zanuck finally understood what Lyon had seen four years earlier. Fox offered a new contract, but this time they meant to keep her.

The early 1950s became a blur of increasingly prominent roles, with Don’t Bother to Knock in 1952, which gave her a rare dramatic lead as a disturbed babysitter. Then came 1953, the year that transformed her from promising newcomer to a phenomenon.

Niagara cast her as a femme fatale plotting her husband’s murder. It was the first time her name appeared above the title.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, one of my favorites, paired her with Jane Russell. The centerpiece is Marilyn descending a staircase in a pink gown singing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.”

Oh, I love that movie. If you haven’t seen it, you’ve got to go watch it. It became one of the most iconic sequences in cinema history.

How to Marry a Millionaire teamed her with Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall. Three massive hits in a single year.

The orphan from Holly Grove had become the biggest movie star in the world. Natasha Lytess remained her primary drama coach, present on nearly every set.

Directors despised her constant presence, but Marilyn refused to work without her. In 1955, that dependence shifted to Lee and Paula Strasberg.

Lee ran the Actors Studio in New York, the temple of Method acting where Brando and Dean had trained. For those of you who don’t know, the Method demanded excavation of personal trauma in service of character.

For Marilyn, who had more trauma than most, it was both liberating and dangerous. The Strasbergs would remain central to her life until her death, and Lee would inherit the bulk of her estate.

In January of 1955, Marilyn did something unprecedented. She announced the formation of Marilyn Monroe Productions with photographer Milton H. Greene.

Time called her a shrewd businesswoman. Fox was forced to renegotiate her contract, granting approval over scripts and directors, which were rights virtually unheard of for any actor, let alone a woman in the ’50s.

The company produced Bus Stop in 1956 and The Prince and the Showgirl in 1957. Her performance in Bus Stop earned a Golden Globe nomination and the best reviews of her career.

By the late 1950s, Marilyn transcended movie stardom. The white dress billowing over a subway grate in The Seven Year Itch, filmed in 1954 and released in 1955, had become perhaps the most famous image in cinema history.

She proved she was more than the photograph with Some Like It Hot. Billy Wilder’s 1959 comedy cast her opposite Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon as Sugar Kane.

The shoot was notoriously difficult, and her insecurities required dozens of takes for simple scenes. But the finished film was a masterpiece.

Marilyn won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a comedy, the only major award of her career. She had reached the pinnacle at 33 years old, the most famous woman in the world, finally recognized as a legitimate artist.

But she was falling apart. To understand why she was falling apart, we need to step back a couple steps.

The marriage that America wanted to believe in lasted exactly 274 days. Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio exchanged vows at San Francisco City Hall on January 14th, 1954.

The press called it the marriage of the century: the baseball legend and the blonde bombshell, two icons joining their lives. They had met in 1952.

Marilyn expected a flashy New York sports type and was surprised to find a reserved, almost shy man who didn’t make a pass at her right away. That restraint intrigued her.

She was so used to people just throwing themselves at her because she was the sex icon of the century. DiMaggio took her to family dinners and introduced her to his Italian relatives.

He showed her what domestic life might look like. For a woman who had never known a real family, the vision was intoxicating.

But DiMaggio wanted a wife, not a movie star, not a sex symbol. He imagined she would be content with a quiet life in San Francisco, away from Hollywood.

He would be catastrophically wrong. As we’ve seen this in the past with the other guy who wanted to bring her down, Joe DiMaggio was just as bad, if not worse.

Their honeymoon took them to Tokyo. When Marilyn made a side trip to Korea to perform for troops, where over 100,000 soldiers gathered, she returned to the hotel glowing.

She said, “Joe, you’ve never heard such cheering.” His reply was, “Yes, I have.” Bombastic side eye.

This exchange would capture everything that would doom them. DiMaggio had walked away from that type of worship, and he just couldn’t understand why she couldn’t.

Her career was just starting and she was the queen. Don’t hold her back, man.

The breaking point came in September 1954, filming The Seven Year Itch. Marilyn stood over that subway grate where a fan blew her white dress up around her thighs.

Take after take, the crowd cheered, but somewhere in the crowd stood DiMaggio, watching strangers leer at what he considered his. The fight that night was reportedly savage.

On October 6th, 1954, Marilyn filed for divorce on grounds of mental cruelty, as you should, Queen. Joe DiMaggio can be with whoever he wants to be, but don’t make her feel bad.

You married a movie star, sex symbol, amazing woman — what do you want? Just a classic controlling man.

Marilyn would pick herself back up and she would eventually meet someone else, Arthur Miller. Arthur Miller was everything DiMaggio wasn’t: intellectual, politically engaged, and celebrated for his mind.

He had written Death of a Salesman and The Crucible. They first met in 1951, introduced by Elia Kazan, but Miller was married back then.

When Marilyn moved to New York in 1955, they reconnected. For her, Miller represented validation: one of America’s great literary minds seeing past the image to the woman beneath.

When Variety announced their relationship with “Egghead Weds Hourglass,” the crude headline captured how the world saw them. It’s an odd title, but okay.

They married twice in June 1956: a civil ceremony on the 29th and a Jewish ceremony two days later. Marilyn had converted to Judaism without pressure from Miller.

She kept a mezuzah on her door and a menorah that played “Hatikvah.” Egypt would ban her films because of this conversion.

She would describe herself as a “Jewish atheist” for the rest of her life. On their honeymoon in England, filming The Prince and the Showgirl, she found Miller’s diary.

The specific contents have never been fully revealed, but Miller had written something expressing disappointment and doubts about who she really was. Perhaps it was frustration with her insecurities.

The man she married because he saw the “real her” apparently found the real her lacking. The marriage never fully recovered.

Marilyn suffered multiple miscarriages, each deepening her depression. She would eventually become increasingly dependent on barbiturates to sleep, amphetamines to wake, and alcohol to blur her pain.

In 1960, filming Let’s Make Love, she had an affair with co-star Yves Montand. Both were married, and the affair was passionate but brief.

Montand returned to his wife, and Marilyn was left more alone than before. The marriage ended January 24th, 1961.

Miller eventually would not even attend her funeral.

After that divorce, her career would continue, but she would finally meet the famous JFK in 1954. She was introduced by Peter Lawford, who was married to Kennedy’s sister Patricia.

The most plausible account of intimacy with the president places it on March 24th, 1962, at Bing Crosby’s Palm Springs estate. Her masseur, Ralph Roberts, claimed she called him that night with JFK’s voice audible in the background.

Roberts said Marilyn told him this was their only encounter — a single night, not an ongoing affair. But the night that cemented her Kennedy connection in public imagination came on May 19th, 1962.

At Madison Square Garden, celebrating JFK’s 45th birthday, Marilyn wore a dress so tight and nude-colored she appeared to be wearing nothing. It was a sheer gown encrusted with rhinestones that looked like they were sewn onto her body.

Her delivery of “Happy Birthday to You” was slow, sensual, and almost parodic. If you haven’t seen it, you need to go watch it immediately.

Kennedy would joke afterwards, saying, “I can now retire from politics after having had birthday sung to me in such a sweet, wholesome way.” The guy was going, “My wife’s here, you know.”

The only known photograph of Marilyn and JFK together was taken at the afterparty. Robert Kennedy’s involvement is murkier.

Housekeeper Eunice Murray eventually admitted decades later, after years of denials, that of course Bobby Kennedy was there. And of course, Bobby Kennedy had an affair with her.

So, the Kennedys really liked Marilyn Monroe. But Murray’s shifting accounts make her unreliable, so we don’t know for sure.

That’s its own conspiracy theory, but what seems clearer is that in the weeks before Marilyn’s death, both Kennedy brothers cut off communication completely. That makes me think maybe there was something going on.

Maybe one brother got jealous of the other brother being with Marilyn Monroe. But who’s to say?

The Misfits, released February 1961, was supposed to be her triumphant dramatic showcase. The screenplay was by Arthur Miller, with a cast including Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, and Eli Wallach, directed by John Huston.

The shoot was a disaster, and Marilyn was barely functional, hospitalized mid-production. Miller watched his marriage disintegrate while rewriting scenes to accommodate her incapacity.

Gable would push through despite a heart condition, and he would actually die of a heart attack days after filming wrapped. His widow would blame Marilyn’s chronic lateness.

The finished film is haunted by mortality. It would be the last completed film for both Monroe and Gable.

Something’s Got to Give in 1962 embodied everything wrong with her final years. Cast opposite Dean Martin, she missed day after day, often incapable of performing when she did appear.

On May 19th, she left the set to sing “Happy Birthday” to the President. On June 8th, Fox fired her for spectacular absenteeism.

The biggest star of the 1950s was dismissed like a temperamental nobody. Remarkably, she won, and by late June, Fox hired her back with a substantial raise.

Filming would resume in October, but she would never make another film. In February 1962, Marilyn purchased the first home she ever owned.

It was 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood, a Spanish-style property for around $75,000. She decorated it sparsely, never really finishing.

A tile at the entrance bore a Latin inscription: Cursum Perficio — I am finishing my journey. The phrase has haunted biographers since.

She would live there six months before she died. Her primary psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, began treating her in January of 1960.

Rather than maintaining clinical distance, he integrated Marilyn into his family life. He believed she needed normal family bonds her childhood had denied.

He prescribed enormous quantities of medication: barbiturates at three times the maximum recommended dose. He was trying to wean her off Nembutal by switching to chloral hydrate.

This guy was off his rocker. Her internist, Dr. Hyman Engelberg, provided additional prescriptions on top of her other prescriptions.

The doctors had agreed to consult each other, but Marilyn learned to manipulate both of them, obtaining medications without the other’s knowledge. She had a way of manipulating them, as well as them clearly being just not great doctors.

In February 1961, she was committed to Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic in New York. She believed she was going for rest, but instead, she found herself in a locked ward placed in a padded cell.

Her letter describing the experience was harrowing: cement blocks, bars on windows, screaming women. She threatened harm if they didn’t release her, but Joe DiMaggio would rescue her.

Despite their divorce, he flew from Florida immediately, demanded her release, and threatened to tear the building apart. DiMaggio came through.

She would be transferred to Columbia Presbyterian for three weeks. DiMaggio had never really stopped loving her.

In the months before her death, he was increasingly present. He may have even proposed remarrying.

This is something her niece would claim Marilyn planned to accept. But from early July through August 4th, 1962, Marilyn saw Dr. Greenson 27 times in 35 days and Dr. Engelberg 13 times.

Accounts of her mental state are contradictory. Some describe her as hopeful, energized by her Fox victory; others describe despair and a woman unraveling.

Greenson’s notes paint a dark picture full of fears, depressions, and feelings of worthlessness. She told him she felt like a waif, that people only wanted her for what they could get.

Both Kennedy brothers had cut off contact. On the night of August 3rd, she dined at La Scala with Peter Lawford and publicist Pat Newcomb.

The dinner was tense, and Newcomb stayed overnight. On the morning of August 4th, Marilyn called a friend about disturbing overnight phone calls.

Someone was threatening her to “leave Bobby alone,” calling her a “tramp.” She was naturally nervous and exhausted, and it would be her last full day alive.

The sun rose over Brentwood on Saturday, August 4th, 1962, promising another perfect Southern California day. At 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, Marilyn Monroe had barely slept.

She had spent the night tormented by phone calls, at least according to what she told her friend Jean Carmen. Around 6:00 a.m., an unidentified woman had called repeatedly through the night delivering the same venomous message: “Leave Bobby alone.”

The caller had used other words, too, like “tramp” — the vocabulary of jealous rage. Marilyn was shaken, exhausted, and her nerves frayed before the day had properly begun.

Carmen would remember that she sounded “nervous and exhausted.” This was not unusual for her in those final months, but something about this morning felt different.

The threats had rattled her in a way that suggested she took them seriously. By 8:00 a.m., housekeeper Eunice Murray had arrived.

Murray was an unusual presence, hired not through normal channels but on Dr. Greenson’s recommendation. He wanted someone trustworthy keeping an eye on his most famous patient.

Murray reported back to Greenson regularly, a surveillance arrangement Marilyn may or may not have fully understood. The morning unfolded with mundane rhythms.

Handyman Norman Jefferies arrived to continue tiling the kitchen floor. Marilyn drank grapefruit juice, and deliveries came and went: a bedside table and citrus trees for the garden.

The actress who had captivated the world puttered around her small house like any other homeowner on a Saturday morning. Pat Newcomb had slept over the previous night and didn’t wake until nearly noon.

This became a point of friction because Newcomb was Marilyn’s publicist and, in theory, her friend. When she emerged having slept soundly, Marilyn’s mood curdled.

The star herself had barely slept. The threatening calls, the chronic insomnia, and the cocktail of medications — it triggered something.

Seeing Newcomb well-rested while she was ragged and exhausted, the two women argued. The official explanation was jealousy over sleep, but those who knew the situation suspected the real tension lay elsewhere.

Newcomb had connections to the Kennedy family, and she knew things about Marilyn’s relationship with both brothers. Whatever words passed between them, the friendship was strained to its breaking point.

Photographer Lawrence Schiller arrived to discuss business: nude photographs from Something’s Got to Give that might be sold to Playboy. Even in her final hours, the machinery of her image continued grinding forward.

Dr. Greenson arrived at approximately 4:30 p.m. for what would be their final session. He found Marilyn in a state that concerned him, as she appeared drugged, sedated, and not quite present.

Wonder whose fault that is. He would ask Newcomb to leave.

What transpired between doctor and patient will never be known with certainty. Greenson would later tell investigators that Marilyn seemed depressed, but not alarmingly so.

He had seen her in worse states, and he had seen her rally from dark moods before. The session lasted several hours.

When Greenson prepared to leave around 7:00 p.m., he made two decisions that would haunt him for the rest of his life. First, he asked Murray to stay overnight, a precaution suggesting he was more worried than his official account admitted.

Second, he told Marilyn to take her Nembutal and get some rest. Then he left.

Joe DiMaggio Jr. would call between 7:00 and 7:15 p.m. The son of Marilyn’s second husband had maintained a relationship with her after his father’s divorce.

He was calling with news he knew would please her: he had broken up with a girlfriend Marilyn hadn’t approved of. The conversation was apparently pleasant, even cheerful.

Young DiMaggio would later tell investigators he detected nothing alarming — no slurring, no despair. There was nothing to suggest a woman on the verge of death.

This would become one of the central mysteries. If Marilyn was planning something terrible or already succumbing to a fatal dose of medication, how could she have sounded so normal just hours before she had passed away?

Shortly after, around 7:40 p.m., Marilyn telephoned Greenson to share the good news about young Joe’s breakup. Her mood again seemed improved.

Greenson would remember being reassured, as the Marilyn who rang him up sounded better than the one he had left an hour earlier. Around 8:00 p.m., Marilyn retired to her bedroom with her telephone.

The cord stretched under the door, connecting her to the outside world. Sometime between 7:45 and 8:00 p.m., the exact time is disputed, the telephone rang at Peter Lawford’s house.

Marilyn was on the line. Lawford was hosting a dinner party and had called earlier to invite her, and now she was returning the call.

Something was wrong. Her voice sounded strange — “weird,” Lawford would later describe it, “fuzzy and sleepy.”

Her speech was slurred and her words drifting. Then she said something that would be analyzed for decades: “Say goodbye to Pat. Say goodbye to the president, and say goodbye to yourself, because you’re a nice guy.”

Then the line went quiet, but not dead quiet, because Lawford could hear something on the other end. Marilyn had stopped speaking.

He called her name, but there was no response. Alarmed, Lawford tried to call back, but the line was busy or perhaps simply off the hook.

He called again and again, unable to get through. What Lawford did next — or rather, what he failed to do — would become one of the most controversial aspects of the case.

He did not drive to Brentwood, and he did not call the police. Instead, he called his agent, Milton Ebbins, and asked for advice.

Ebbins suggested trying to reach Marilyn’s doctor or lawyer. Mickey Rudin, her attorney, eventually called the house between 9:30 and 10:00 p.m.

Eunice Murray answered and assured him Marilyn was fine. She was in her room, the light was on, and everything was under control.

Lawford, reassured by the secondhand report, returned to his dinner party. I guess that makes sense if somebody’s calling and reassuring, but even then, I would be like, “Did you go into the room and check on her? Are you hearing her right now?”

Hindsight’s 20/20, but it seems odd. He would spend the rest of his life regretting that decision.

Here is where the official timeline begins to fracture. According to Murray’s initial account, nothing unusual happened for the next several hours.

She went about her business, assumed Marilyn was sleeping, and eventually went to bed herself. Then, around 3:00 a.m., she awoke sensing something was wrong.

She walked to Marilyn’s bedroom door and saw light spilling from beneath it. She knocked, but there was no response.

She tried the handle, but the door was locked. Concerned, Murray called Dr. Greenson.

On his advice, she went outside and looked through the bedroom window. What she saw through the glass was Marilyn lying face down on the bed, unclothed, covered partially by a sheet.

The telephone receiver was clutched in her outstretched hand. She was motionless.

Greenson arrived at approximately 3:30 a.m., unable to open the locked door. He broke a window with the fireplace poker and climbed into the room.

He checked Marilyn’s body and found that she was, in fact, deceased. Rigor mortis had already set in.

She had been gone for hours at this point. Dr. Engelberg arrived around 3:50 a.m. and officially confirmed the death.

At 4:25 a.m., a full hour after the doctors arrived, someone finally called the police. This timeline has never made sense.

If Murray discovered Marilyn unresponsive around midnight, as she initially told some investigators before changing her story, why did she wait over three hours to call Greenson? Murray’s account shifted over the years.

She eventually admitted the bedroom door hadn’t actually been locked, contradicting her earlier claims. She admitted there were aspects of the evening she hadn’t initially disclosed.

Most dramatically, in a 1983 interview with journalist Anthony Summers, later published in his 1985 book Goddess, she admitted on tape that Robert Kennedy had visited Marilyn’s house that afternoon. The housekeeper hired to watch over Marilyn was also, it seemed, watching over her secrets.

When police finally entered the bedroom, they found a scene described countless times but never fully explained. Marilyn lay face down on her bed, unclothed, with a sheet covering part of her body.

Her hand was extended, clutching a telephone receiver as if she had been trying to call someone when death overtook her. Or perhaps the phone had simply been near her hand when she lost consciousness.

The bedside table held a pharmacy’s worth of medication: 12 to 15 bottles. Among them was an empty bottle that had contained 25 Nembutal capsules prescribed just two days earlier.

A partially empty bottle of chloral hydrate sat nearby, with only 10 capsules remaining from a prescription of 50. If all that medication was taken, it would have been a massive, un-survivable dose.

The two drugs together were particularly lethal because each amplified the effects of the other. There was also no note and no signs of struggle.

Questions were raised about whether she could have taken that many pills without more water present. There was only a little glass of water on the counter.

Her stomach, when autopsied, would prove empty, with no visible residue of the dozens of capsules she had supposedly ingested. The phone records that might have revealed who Marilyn called in her final hours disappeared conveniently.

Captain James Hamilton of the LAPD, who had connections to the Kennedy family, allegedly confiscated them. They were never seen again.

At 4:25 a.m., Dr. Engelberg dialed the police and spoke the words that would shock the world: “Marilyn Monroe has died. She’s committed suicide.”

The determination was made before any investigation had occurred, before any autopsy, and before any evidence had been properly examined. In that first phone call, the narrative was already being established.

Within hours, reporters descended on Fifth Helena Drive and the news spread across the country and then around the world. The most famous woman of her generation was dead at 36, found alone in her bedroom clutching a telephone, surrounded by empty pill bottles.

The sun rose over Brentwood on Sunday, August 5th, 1962. For Norma Jeane Mortenson — the unwanted child, the foster kid who had stared at the RKO water tower and dreamed the hardest — the journey had ended.

The mystery of how it ended was only beginning. Sergeant Jack Clemmons was the watch commander at the West Los Angeles Police Station when the call came in at 4:25 a.m.

A woman was dead at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive. The name meant nothing to him until dispatch added the detail: Marilyn Monroe.

Clemmons arrived within minutes, becoming the first law enforcement officer to view the scene. What he found and what he would later claim to have found would fuel conspiracy theories for decades.

The bedroom was small, modest by Hollywood standards, and Marilyn lay face down on the bed, her body positioned almost too perfectly. The staging struck Clemmons as odd.

In his experience, barbiturate overdoses didn’t produce such composed death scenes. Victims typically vomited and thrashed, and he felt the scene had been arranged and she had possibly been murdered.

Dr. Greenson and Dr. Engelberg were already present, along with Eunice Murray. Clemmons would later claim Murray was operating the washing machine when he entered.

This was a very unusual activity for the middle of the night, suggesting perhaps that evidence was being laundered along with her linens. But Murray would deny this, and the discrepancy was never resolved.

Clemmons asked questions and received answers that didn’t really add up on the timeline. Discovery around 3:30 a.m. and police called at 4:25 a.m. left nearly an hour unaccounted for.

When he pressed, the responses were vague. Phone calls had been made; people had been notified; the delay was unfortunate but innocent.

The sergeant would leave troubled, but without authority to investigate further. Years later, after retiring, Clemmons became one of the most vocal proponents of the murder theory, insisting he had witnessed a cover-up in progress.

His credibility, however, proved complicated. Clemmons was a member of the Police and Fire Research Organization, an anti-communist group, and he was later indicted for conspiracy to libel a state senator and eventually resigned from the force.

Whether his claims reflected genuine observations or ideological paranoia remained an open question. Dr. Thomas Noguchi was 35 years old and still on probation when assigned to perform the autopsy on the most famous woman in the world.

It was an unusual choice, as a case of this magnitude typically went to the chief medical examiner, Theodore Curphey. The chief coroner oversaw the proceedings while delegating the actual cutting to his young deputy.

Noguchi approached the body with meticulous care. He weighed her at 117 pounds and noticed advanced rigor mortis consistent with death occurring many hours before discovery.

He examined every inch of her skin for needle marks, checking elbows, forearms, fingers, toes, the scalp, and the thighs. He would find none and no puncture wounds anywhere.

He found one superficial bruise on her lower back, insignificant enough to have come from bumping into furniture. Her organs appeared healthy: no signs of violence, no defensive wounds, and nothing to suggest a struggle.

Then he opened her stomach and, like we said before, it was empty. This finding would become one of the most debated aspects of this case.

Marilyn had supposedly ingested between 40 and 50 barbiturates, enough to fill a small cup. The pills should have left some residue, but instead Noguchi found nothing but hemorrhaging of the stomach lining.

This indicated irritation consistent with oral ingestion of a caustic substance. But the contradiction seemed impossible because how could someone ingest dozens of pills and leave no trace?

Defenders of this theory pointed out that chronic barbiturate users develop accelerated absorption rates. Critics countered that no absorption rate could eliminate all evidence of such a massive dose.

The liver told a different story. Pentobarbital levels measured 13.0 mg, dramatically higher than in the blood, indicating chronic or heavy barbiturate use over an extended period.

Marilyn’s body had been saturated with these drugs for so long they had accumulated in her organs. The blood work would reveal what had killed her, if not precisely how it entered her system.

Chloral hydrate measured 8.1 mg; the therapeutic range topped out at 30, and the lethal threshold was approximately 100. Marilyn was at 80% of a fatal dose from this drug.

Pentobarbital, the active ingredient in Nembutal, measured 4.5 mg. The therapeutic range extended to 12, so lethality began around 40, meaning she was 12% over the lethal threshold.

The numbers alone didn’t capture the full picture because chloral hydrate and pentobarbital were synergistic. Each amplified the other, so taking them together wasn’t addition; it was multiplication.

The combined dose was catastrophically, un-servably toxic. Dr. Noguchi drew samples for further testing of stomach contents, organs, and blood, which was standard protocol for any questionable death.

These were sent to head toxicologist Raymond Abernathy for additional analysis, and then they disappeared. Abernathy destroyed them before supplementary tests were completed.

His explanation was bureaucratic: the case had been closed, samples were no longer needed, and storage space was limited. But the destruction meant certain questions could never be answered.

Had the drugs been introduced orally, or was there another route? Rectal administration, injection into muscle tissue — some method that wouldn’t leave needle marks.

Noguchi wasn’t informed of the destruction until years later. “A great shame,” he would say later on.

The loss haunted him for the rest of his career, reoccurring in nightmares where he was accused of complicity in whatever cover-up might have occurred. Coroner Curphey recognized that determining manner of death required more than physical evidence.

He convened a psychiatric prevention team — experts who would examine Marilyn’s mental health history and render an opinion on whether she was the type of person who might do that. The team reviewed her records and interviewed her doctors to compile a psychological profile.

Their findings painted a picture of a woman in profound distress: severe fears, frequent depressions, and abrupt mood swings. She had been taking sedative drugs for years and was well aware of their dangers.

Most damningly, this wouldn’t be the first time that she would do this or attempt. On more than one occasion, she had taken pills — too many of them — only to call for help and be rescued.

The pattern was established: crisis, gesture, salvation. Perhaps she had followed the same pattern on August 4th, ingesting these pills and reaching for the phone, but this time the rescue hadn’t come.

She might have not actually wanted to do that, and she expected someone to come help her. This is equally as devastating.

On August 17th, 1962, Curphey announced the official finding: Marilyn Monroe had died of acute barbiturate poisoning. The manner of death was classified as a “probable suicide.”

The word “probable” was crucial because it acknowledged uncertainty and left room for doubt. Noguchi himself was reluctant to rule definitively, but “probable” became, in the public mind, simply “suicide.”

The investigation was remarkably cursory by modern standards and questionable even by 1962 standards. Reportedly, no fingerprints were taken from the pill bottles, and no forensic analysis was conducted on the drinking glass.

The crime scene was not secured, as people wandered freely in and out for hours before and after the police arrived. The bedroom was cleaned, sheets changed, and potential evidence handled by multiple parties before anyone thought to preserve it.

Most critically, Marilyn’s phone records vanished. These records would have shown exactly who she called on her final day and who called her.

They might have confirmed Peter Lawford’s account or contradicted it. They might have revealed whether Robert Kennedy had been in contact with her and explained the threatening calls she reported.

Captain James Hamilton of the LAPD Intelligence Division was later identified as the person who confiscated them. As we said before, Hamilton had connections to the Kennedy family and had provided security services during their Los Angeles visits.

Crime reporter Jack Tobin would later claim Hamilton personally told him he possessed the telephone history of the last day or two of Marilyn Monroe’s life. The records were never seen again.

Joe DiMaggio would be the one to claim Marilyn Monroe’s body. Despite their divorce eight years earlier, he had never stopped loving her.

Now he stepped forward to handle arrangements, determined to give her in death the dignity denied in life. His first decision was exclusionary.

He banned virtually everyone from Hollywood: studio executives, celebrity friends, and industry figures who had profited from her image while failing to protect the woman behind it. DiMaggio held them responsible, “morally if not actually,” for her death.

The service was held on August 8th, 1962, at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery. Only 31 mourners attended — a startlingly small number for the most famous woman in the world.

DiMaggio was there with his son, and Marilyn’s half-sister Bernice Miracle flew in from Florida. Dr. Greenson attended with his family, and Lee Strasberg delivered the eulogy.

Arthur Miller did not attend; his third wife was nine months pregnant, and he allegedly sent two bouquets instead. The casket would be bronze, lined with champagne-colored silk, costing around $25,000 paid by DiMaggio.

Marilyn wore a green Emilio Pucci dress, one of her favorites. Her longtime makeup artist, Allan “Whitey” Snyder, prepared her face.

She had actually once made him promise that if she died before him, he would do her makeup one final time. He needed gin to get through it.

The autopsy had damaged her hair, and mortician’s wife Agnes Flanagan used a wig to restore the famous blonde waves. After the service, DiMaggio sat beside her open casket for hours, unable to leave.

When the moment came to close the lid, he broke down completely, kissing her and whispering, “I love you,” over and over. He would send roses to her grave three times a week for the next 20 years.

The official investigation concluded within weeks, but closure proved elusive. Almost immediately, alternative theories circulated.

The Kennedy connection was whispered in Hollywood circles and discussed in newspaper columns and investigated by journalists who sensed a larger story. The inconsistencies, timeline gaps, missing phone records, and empty stomach refused to disappear.

Robert Kennedy’s whereabouts on August 4th became a subject of intense speculation. He was in the Los Angeles area that weekend for a family gathering at Lawford’s beach house.

His wife insisted he was in San Francisco when Marilyn died, but witnesses would later claim to have seen him in Brentwood that afternoon entering her house. The FBI, which had maintained a file on Marilyn since 1955 due to her connection to Arthur Miller, monitored the conspiracy theories.

They apparently conducted no investigation — classic FBI. If Hoover possessed evidence linking the Kennedys to her death, it remained locked in private archives.

Eunice Murray quietly left the country for several months after the funeral. This fueled speculation she had been paid to be unavailable for follow-up questions.

Greenson seemed haunted by his failure to save his most famous patient. He had seen her that afternoon, recognized her vulnerability, and asked Murray to stay overnight precisely because he was worried.

Still, she had died. Nearly all LAPD files related to Marilyn Monroe’s death were destroyed in subsequent years, officially in compliance with departmental procedures.

Yeah, shut the up. The timing was never adequately explained.

Routine files were purged periodically, but the death of the most famous woman in the world was hardly routine. Investigators who later sought access found almost nothing.

What survived were fragments: copies made by interested parties, notes preserved by individual officers, and documents that escaped the shredder. These would become the foundation for every subsequent investigation and every book and every documentary and every attempt to reconstruct what actually happened.

The deconstruction ensured that the full truth could never be established. Whatever secrets those files contained died with them.

Beyond the conspiracy theories, there was simply grief. Millions of Americans had grown up with Marilyn Monroe, watching her on screen, buying magazines with her face, and following her marriages and comebacks.

She had been part of their lives in a way that transcended ordinary celebrity. Now she was gone, dead at 36 years old, and the loss felt personal even to people who had never met her.

Letters poured into newspapers and fan clubs. Ordinary people tried to articulate what she had meant: her beauty, yes, but also her vulnerability.

There was a sense that behind the glamorous facade was someone who struggled just like they did. She had made failure look survivable and loneliness look universal, and then failure and loneliness had taken her.

Marilyn Monroe had spent her life being wanted, and in death she was mourned by a nation that had never truly known her, but felt somehow that they had lost someone essential. In the immediate aftermath, most Americans accepted the conclusion, but acceptance eroded over time.

The 1960s brought assassinations that shattered public trust in official narratives. JFK was killed in November 1963, and the Warren Commission’s conclusions satisfied almost no one.

Robert Kennedy fell in 1968, as did Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. In Vietnam, Americans learned to distrust what their government told them about death.

We still do today — where are the Epstein files? In that climate of suspicion, Marilyn’s “probable suicide” looked less like a careful conclusion and more like a convenient one.

 

The Kennedy connections that had seemed like gossip in 1962 took on a new significance as the brothers themselves became victims. If powerful forces had conspired to kill the president and his brother, might those same forces have silenced the woman who knew too much?

The conspiracy theories multiplied, books appeared, and documentaries aired. The official finding was never quite definitive; it became just one theory among many, endorsed by authority but not necessarily by truth.

The conspiracies began before Marilyn Monroe’s body was even cold. In the hours between her death and the official announcement while doctors and housekeeper were still constructing their timeline, whispers had already started circulating through Hollywood.

Something wasn’t right and the story didn’t add up. At the center of every widespread theory stood the same family name: Kennedy.

It would take years for these whispers to coalesce into published accusations and decades for them to become a permanent feature on American conspiracy culture. But the essential elements were present from the beginning: the famous actress, the powerful brothers, and the inconvenient woman who knew too much.

It was a narrative that wrote itself, requiring only the willingness to believe that official explanations were lies. Whether any of it was true remained six decades later impossible to prove and equally impossible to dismiss.

The affair or the affairs that Marilyn allegedly conducted with the Kennedy brothers, with President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, became the foundation upon which all the other conspiracy theories were built. The evidence was substantial but circumstantial.

Marilyn had known both brothers since the mid-1950s, moving in the same social circles through Peter Lawford. She had attended parties at the Lawford beach house, been photographed at political events, and cultivated connections to power that went beyond mere celebrity.

The Happy Birthday Mr. President performance crystallized public suspicion into something approaching certainty. No woman sang to a man that way unless something was happening between them, or some fire was there, some spark was there.

It was either a confession or a provocation, or possibly both. But what actually occurred between Marilyn and JFK remains disputed.

The relationship with Robert Kennedy was even murkier. There were claims that he was there that day visiting Marilyn in her own home, but again at this point we don’t know much else other than all of this circumstantial evidence.

If the Kennedys or forces acting on their behalf had wanted Marilyn dead, what would have driven them to such extremity? First, there was the threat of exposure, as Marilyn, the theory went, had grown tired of being used and discarded.

She was angry enough to threaten going public. A press conference was supposedly planned at which she would reveal everything.

This threat was existential for the Kennedys. JFK’s presidency was built partly on his image as a devoted family man — aren’t they all?

Second, there was the question of what Marilyn knew. The Red Diary became a central artifact of conspiracy lore — a journal in which she allegedly recorded sensitive information gleaned from conversations with the Kennedy brothers.

It supposedly contained nuclear secrets, CIA plots to assassinate Castro, and details of the Bay of Pigs disaster. This diary included a lot of insane stuff, allegedly.

Lionel Grandison, a former coroner’s aide, claimed to have seen the diary. His account was detailed: a red-covered notebook filled with political secrets and intimate confessions.

But Grandison had been fired from the coroner’s office for stealing from corpses, and his testimony, offered years later in exchange for payment, could not be corroborated. Third, there was the simpler matter of reputation.

Even without nuclear secrets, a public relationship between a Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe would have been scandalous. The family had invested too much in their image of Catholic rectitude to allow it to be tarnished.

If Marilyn was murdered, how was it done? The empty stomach presented the central puzzle.

She had supposedly swallowed 40 or 50 capsules, yet no residue remained. One theory pointed to suppository administration — barbiturates introduced rectally, bypassing the stomach entirely.

This would have required cooperation or incapacitation from the victim. The injection theory ran into a significant obstacle because Noguchi had examined her body exhaustively for needle marks and found none.

Theories countered that certain sites might have been missed or that a fine enough needle would leave no visible mark. The destruction of tissue samples meant microscopic analysis could never be performed — how convenient.

Donald Spoto, whose 1993 biography offered the most carefully researched alternative, proposed accidental death through medical negligence. His theory held that Marilyn’s doctors had failed to coordinate prescriptions and she had manipulated Engelberg into prescribing Nembutal without Greenson’s knowledge.

That evening she took the Nembutal, and later Greenson, unaware of what she had consumed, administered a chloral hydrate enema — a treatment method he reportedly used with some patients. The combination would prove fatal.

In Spoto’s scenario, the staging of the death scene wasn’t a government conspiracy, but a cover-up by two physicians desperate to avoid malpractice consequences. This one’s interesting as well.

The timeline discrepancies, the changed sheets, and the delayed call to police all could be explained by panicked doctors rather than CIA assassins. But beyond the Kennedys themselves, suspicion fell on the agencies that served and sometimes surveilled them.

The FBI had maintained a file on Marilyn since 1955, opened during her relationship with Arthur Miller. Documents released years later showed agents tracking rumors about her death, but the Bureau apparently conducted no investigation.

If Hoover possessed evidence linking the Kennedys to her death, he kept it locked away. The CIA theories were more lurid but less substantiated.

Norman Mailer in his 1973 book speculated that FBI or CIA rogue elements might have killed her, perhaps in revenge for the Bay of Pigs. Mailer later recanted on 60 Minutes, admitting he had included it primarily to boost his book sales.

Slimy — that’s gross, dude. But his honesty didn’t prevent the theory from taking on a life of its own.

Wiretapping allegations added another layer. Bernard Spindel, an electronics expert who had worked for the Teamsters, claimed he had bugged Marilyn’s home on orders from Jimmy Hoffa, who wanted evidence of Bobby Kennedy’s affair.

Fred Otash, a former LAPD officer and private investigator, made similar claims. He said he had recordings of her final hours that would prove what really happened.

Neither man ever produced these recordings, and the 1982 reinvestigation found the wiretapping claims baseless. But the allegations had already embedded themselves into conspiracy lore.

Organized crime offered another set of suspects. Sam Giancana was the boss of the Chicago Outfit, a man who moved between gangster circles and show business.

He shared a mistress with JFK, Judith Exner, and he allegedly participated in CIA plots to assassinate Castro. His connection to Marilyn was tenuous; both had visited Frank Sinatra’s Cal Neva Lodge, but evidence they ever met remained circumstantial.

Jimmy Hoffa presented a more direct motive. The Teamsters’ president despised Bobby Kennedy with a passion bordering on obsession.

An affair with Marilyn properly documented and exposed might have been a weapon against his enemy. Milo Speriglio alleged in 1982 that Hoffa and Giancana had conspired to kill Marilyn.

His evidence was thin: hearsay, speculation, and unverifiable sources. Darwin Porter claimed five mafia hitmen had entered Marilyn’s home, subdued her with chloroform, and administered a fatal barbiturate.

The scenario was cinematically vivid, but supported by nothing resembling credible evidence. Twenty years after Marilyn’s death, the questions had grown loud enough that authorities could no longer ignore them.

Los Angeles District Attorney John Van de Kamp ordered a threshold investigation — a review to determine whether a full criminal investigation was warranted. Lead investigator Ronald “Mike” Carroll spent more than three months examining documents, interviewing witnesses, and evaluating conspiracy claims.

Carroll’s 30-page report was definitive in rejecting murder theories. The investigation found no credible evidence supporting a murder theory.

I mean, they didn’t have a lot of stuff to look at because a lot of it got destroyed, but all right. Noguchi’s autopsy was deemed competent and the “probable” ruling was reasonably supported by data.

The witnesses who had promoted conspiracy theories were almost without exception unreliable. The wiretapping allegations were investigated and found false.

The Red Diary either never existed or had never been seen by any credible witness according to these people. Grandison was dismissed as discredited.

The report acknowledged problems with the original investigation: “factual discrepancies and unanswered questions remained.” But the discrepancies and missing evidence did not equal murder necessarily.

Carroll’s conclusion was stark. If Marilyn had been murdered, the crime would have required a massive, in-place conspiracy involving everyone at the death scene, the coroner’s office, and most of the LAPD officers assigned to the case.

Such a conspiracy was theoretically possible, but practically incredible. If you know anything about the government now, though, anything’s possible, isn’t it?

Van de Kamp permitted himself an editorial comment: “On the basis of the known facts, permit me to express the faint hope that Marilyn Monroe be permitted to rest in peace.”

She would not be, because the conspiracy theories survived partly because their proponents were skilled at presenting discredited evidence as credible revelation. Robert Slatzer claimed to have married Marilyn in a secret Tijuana ceremony in October of 1952.

The marriage, he said, lasted only three days before being annulled. But it made him a confidant who understood her better than anyone, and based on this knowledge, he concluded she was murdered.

The marriage almost certainly never happened, and no documentary evidence supported Slatzer’s claim. Friends from that period had no memory of such an event.

But Slatzer was persistent and persuasive, and his story provided the foundation for books and documentaries and the 1982 reinvestigation itself. John Miner presented a different credibility problem.

He had been present at Marilyn’s autopsy and had interviewed Greenson as part of the original investigation. Decades later, Miner claimed Greenson had played him audio tapes recorded by Marilyn herself — tapes proving she was not willing to take her own life.

The tapes never surfaced, and Greenson had died by the time Miner went public. Miner’s credibility deteriorated under scrutiny; he had lost his law license, lied about working for the Kinsey Institute, and gone bankrupt before selling his transcripts.

James Hall claimed to have been an ambulance attendant who responded before her death was officially reported. In his account, she was still alive, comatose but breathing, when the ambulance arrived.

He said Greenson had injected adrenaline directly into her heart, but the injection killed her. That’s what this guy is saying.

Hall failed a polygraph test and he had been paid $40,000 by a tabloid. His account contradicted the actual ambulance driver, Ken Hunter, who told the 1982 investigation that Marilyn was clearly dead when he arrived.

Her body was cold, having been lifeless for quite some time. All the conspiracy theories are still debated today.

But at the end of the day, Marilyn Monroe had spent her life being looked at, and in death she could never stop being examined. Autopsy photos were analyzed, timeline discrepancies parsed, and witness statements compared in an endless search for the truth that remained perpetually out of reach.

The girl who had stared at the RKO water tower and dreamed of becoming a movie star had achieved something beyond stardom. She had become a permanent American mystery, with her death as famous as her life and her final hours as scrutinized as any role she had ever played.

The curtain had fallen, but the performance never ended. The tile at the entrance to her Brentwood home bore a Latin inscription: Cursum Perficio — I am finishing my journey.

It is a haunting reminder of what happened. In the decades since that August night, armies of investigators, journalists, and amateur sleuths have searched for answers in timeline discrepancies and missing phone records and contradictory statements of witnesses who changed their stories with the years.

They have found theories, but they have not found truth. Perhaps they were looking in the wrong place.

The mystery of how Marilyn Monroe died has eclipsed something more important, and that is how she lived. The unwanted child who became the most wanted woman in the world.

She was the girl who educated herself through public libraries and sheer determination. She was the actress who outmaneuvered studio executives and built her own production company when women were treated as decorative property.

She was the reader of Dostoevsky who let the world believe she was a dumb blonde because she understood how to weaponize underestimation. She contained multitudes and was reduced to a single image: the white dress, the subway grate, the performance of desirability that obscured the performer herself.

Whatever happened on August 4th, 1962, Marilyn Monroe deserved better than she received. Better from her parents, her husbands, and her doctors.

She deserved better from a culture that consumed her image while dismissing her humanity. She absolutely deserved to grow old.

Remember the girl at the orphanage window staring at the studio water tower and dreaming harder than anyone. Norma Jeane Mortenson came into this world unwanted and Marilyn Monroe left it alone.

The journey is finished, but the questions remain. That is that on the life and very mysterious, unfortunate, and untimely death of Marilyn Monroe.