Marilyn Monroe: Who Killed Norma Jean?
The Questionable Death of a Hollywood Dream

She had it all and it sadly slipped through her fingers on the night of August 5, 1962. Marilyn Monroe was only 36 years old when the coroner ruled that her death was a probable suicide and yet, almost 50 years later, the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the glamorous blonde bombshell continue to point to murder.

Born in Los Angeles into a dysfunctional family, little Norma Jean escaped the reality of her mother’s multiple marriages. Shuttled between relatives and foster parents, life was never easy for Norma Jean. Even the fatherhood of Norma Jean was in question.

While Norma Jean’s mother Gladys listed her second husband, Martin Edward Mortenson as her baby daughter’s father on the birth certificate, researchers and biographers often point to Charles Stanley Gifford, a salesman at RKO Pictures as Norma Jean’s biological father.

Depression and suicide were all-too-familiar ghosts in the family tree. Norma Jean’s mother was eventually hospitalized, diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, and the beautiful but sad little girl continued to live in a succession of foster homes and, reportedly, was the victim of sexual abuse. In 1942, at age 16, Norma Jean married James Dougherty more to escape yet another move back to an orphanage than out of love for a man.

Dougherty was soon serving his country in the Merchant Marines on the Pacific Front and Norma Jean kept busy with a factory job painting airplanes. Photographer David Conover, on assignment shooting photos about working women aiding the war effort, spotted Norma Jean and he liked what he saw. He liked her so much that not only did he take photos and launch her modeling career but he took her to bed in a torrid affair that lasted several years.

Life on the Casting Couch? Norma Jean was streetwise enough to know that talent and beauty alone were not going to make her dreams of stardom come true. Sleeping her way to the top, not only got her additional modeling jobs but, perhaps, it also was a sad attempt to find love and acceptance.

Suddenly, life was changing for Norma Jean. Big time changes. In preparation for a screen test at 20th Century Fox, talent scout Ben Lyon not only urged her to go blonde but also to change her name. Just 20, Norma Jean emerged from the cocoon as Marilyn Monroe. Within a year, she’d had bit parts in two movies and history was in the making

By 1948, after making the rounds of several studios, Marilyn gained some critical attention with small roles in 20th Century Fox’s All About Eve and in MGM’s The Asphalt Jungle. Over the next two years, other small roles followed but when Marilyn appeared in Monkey Business, a slapstick comedy starring Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers, she was definitely a girl on her way up.

Although most of her early film appearances had been small parts in comedies, Monroe proved that she had a flair for the dramatic when she played a mentally unbalanced woman who was scheming to murder her husband in the 1953 film, ‘Niagara’.

Fans, however, seemed to prefer Marilyn Monroe cast as the buxom and befuddled blonde. She starred in a string of lavish comedy hits including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire, and The Seven Year Itch.

In between movies, Marilyn Monroe had time to score romantic victories. In June of 1954, Monroe married the NY Yankee superstar, Joe DiMaggio in San Francisco. The rush into marriage with DiMaggio took another wrong turn when Marilyn crammed their honeymoon in Japan with publicity stops and personal appearances. Marilyn’s obsession with fame collided with DiMaggio’s obsessive jealousy. In less than a year, the slugger and the sex-pot would be divorced.

Frustrated at perpetually being cast as a dumb blonde and the endless frenzy of publicity stunts, Marilyn broke her contract with the studio in 1955 and moved to New York to study with Lee and Paula Strasberg at the famed Actor’s Studio. After the dust from legal battles with movie mogul Darryl Zanuck had settled, Monroe returned to Hollywood determined to prove she was capable of being a respected actress ... not just a pretty face with a more-than-endowed hourglass figure.

Monroe also seemed to want a serious romance, as well. Her next husband would be acclaimed playwright, Arthur Miller, The blonde and the be-speckled egghead married in a civil ceremony in NY. Their marriage was a complicated one and doomed to failure after Monroe suffered a miscarriage.

Finding solace in work, Monroe paid her dues in serious movies like Bus Stop as well as earning kudos and a Golden Globe for her role in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot. However, rumors were circulating that MM might be a competent actress but her emotional roller coaster spelled trouble on the set.

Cast in the drama, ‘The Misfits’, written by Arthur Miller, Monroe not only was blamed for endless delays on the shoot but indirectly accused of causing the death of her costar, Clark Gable. Gable who had lived a life full of hard drinking and smoking found Monroe’s prima donna tantrums insufferable and vocally told everyone on the set how frustrated he was. Following Gable’s fatal heart attack, many Hollywood insiders shunned Marilyn.

Her last film was to be a comedy, George Cukor’s Something’s Got to Give. Again, Marilyn’s behavior delayed the film shooting schedule and was blowing the budget that 20th Century Fox had allocated for the film. Uncompleted, Something’s Got to Give may have proved prophetic because within months, Marilyn Monroe would be dead.

Summer was blooming in Los Angeles. Monroe was again in hot water with the studios. Monroe seemed unconcerned. Perhaps a life on screen was holding less allure than a life in politics? In May of 1962, Marilyn left the audience gasping as she sang in a breathy, sex-kitten voice that only she could pull off, ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President’, to John F. Kennedy. If looks could talk, it was clear that Monroe was sexually infatuated with the President.

Perhaps, Monroe was just attracted to famous men who she couldn’t possess. Long-held rumors have paired her with not only J.F.K. but his brother Robert Kennedy, as well as with crooner Frank Sinatra.

Monroe’s love life was a pandora’s box full of lust and intrigue. Not only had she had numerous affairs as she moved from pin-up girl to starlet to mega star, she seemed destined to become involved with men who wanted everything from her but had nothing to give her in return.

She had several affairs with Mafia-connected men that were part of the 50’s infamous ‘Rat Pack’ led by Frank Sinatra. She partied with Frank, Sammy Davis, Dean Martin, and actor Peter Lawford. Through Lawford, who was married to then President Kennedy’s sister Pat, Marilyn met J.F.K. and Robert Kennedy.

Hollywood was buzzing in 1962 with news that Monroe was sleeping with both of the Kennedy brothers. Talk about double trouble! What was common knowledge in Tinsel Town, however, was discreetly covered-up by the media out of respect for President Kennedy.

The FBI, however, was not going to remain a silent bystander. J. Edger Hoover’s G-Men had a long history of conflict with the Kennedy Clan and agents looking at the rumors of sexual affairs between Marilyn Monroe and both Bobby and Jack Kennedy were being investigated. Add to the scandal, Marilyn’s ties to the Mafia and her history of drugs and booze and scandals were on the brink of discovery. She was becoming a security risk.

Monroe seemed oblivious to the dark forces brewing in her life. She was anxious and depressed. So much so that she was seeing her shrink, Dr. Ralph Greenson, almost daily. Medical ethics seemed to be put aside, and Dr. Greenson took on caring for Monroe as her full-time guru.

Greenson even hired a housekeeper, Eunice Murray, to live at Monroe’s home and report to him daily on all the activities, contacts, and phone calls that Marilyn was making. Looks like Eunice was more of a spy for the good doctor than a housekeeper.

There was lots going on for Eunice to monitor. Marilyn was reportedly hooking up with Jack and/or Bobby Kennedy for sexual trysts at not only the home of Peter Lawford but also had met the President in hotels on his travels, and for a romantic weekend in Palm Springs at the home of singer Bing Crosby. Naively, Monroe believed that she had won the heart of the President and that she would one day replace Jackie Kennedy as First Lady.

The Kennedy boys were backing off from their lover. Marilyn had become increasingly depressed and both Jack and Bobby feared that she might make good on her threats to leak the details of their relationship with her to the press.

Frank Sinatra, reportedly at the behest of the Kennedy’s, arranged for Marilyn to travel to the North Shore of Lake Tahoe on the weekend of July 28, 1962. Monroe flew to the Sierras with Peter Lawford in a private plane owned by Sinatra. She checked into the Cal-Neva Lodge which was co-owned by Sinatra and mobster, Sam Giancana.

Reportedly, she was told by Peter Lawford that she needed to ‘forget’ about the Kennedys. Rumors of that weekend include Marilyn being given drugs by Sam Giancana that caused her to black out while sexually compromising photos of her were taken by the mafia kingpin. Later, the star was reportedly threatened with blackmail over the indecent photos taken that night.

Monroe returned from the Tahoe weekend, not surprisingly, depressed. However, it seemed that by the end of that week, on a hot August night in the enclave of Brentwood, Marilyn Monroe was trying to move on from the events of the previous weekend at Lake Tahoe.

According to Joe DiMaggio, Jr., he’d talked on the phone with Marilyn a little after 7 p.m. on August 4th and the star seemed unusually happy and upbeat about her future including upcoming movie deals and even a possible re-marriage to her ex-husband, Joe DiMaggio, Sr.

According to testimony, Monroe’s housekeeper, Eunice Murray, found the nude body of Marilyn sprawled in the bedroom at her Brentwood home in the wee hours of August 5, 1962. However, a phone call reporting the death did not reach the West LAPD until 4:25 a.m. The call to the police was not made by Eunice Murray but by Dr. Hyman Engelberg, Monroe’s personal physician.

By the time the police arrived, they discovered not only the body of Marilyn Monroe but the housekeeper, Dr. Engelberg and the psychiatrist, Dr. Greenson all present. The police were immediately suspicious when the trio admitted that they’d found the body 4 hours earlier but hadn’t called the cops until they’d notified the Publicity Department of 20th Century Fox.

Wild speculation was ignited as hot as the Santa Ana winds that scorch the Hollywood Hills. Dr. Thomas Noguchi, L.A.’s ‘Coronor to the Stars’, as he’s been dubbed, concluded that suicide was the ‘likely’ cause of Monroe’s death. However, Noguchi claimed that evidence samples were missing and that the police investigation at the death scene had been so tarnished by sloppy police work that it was impossible to give a clear verdict into the exact cause of the star’s death. In fact, the coronor admitted that tissue samples and lab work had either been lost or deliberately destroyed and that Monroe’s corpse showed unusual signs of lividity which indicated that the body had been moved several times after her death.

The autopsy found no trace of drugs in her stomach eliminating the traditional view that, perhaps, Marilyn had simply taken too many sleeping pills. There was speculation that the star could have been given a drug by injection or even an overdose administered via a rectal enema.

Could drugs have been administered to Monroe to silence her from spilling the beans on the Kennedys? Peter Lawford would later testify that he’d spoken to Monroe the night before her death and she seemed ‘suicidal’. Marilyn’s hairdresser, Sidney Guilaroff, explained that the star had confided in him that she knew dangerous secrets about the Kennedys and she was ready to reveal them to the world. This claim was backed up by other friends including actress Terry Moore.

There were also questions arising about the time of Monroe’s death. When her body was picked up by the coroner’s office around 6 a.m., the corpse was reportedly in an advanced state of rigor mortis which would indicate that she had died before midnight. This is in direct conflict with Marilyn’s housekeeper’s statements as to the probable time of death as about 3 a.m. Subsequently, Marilyn's studio publicist would reveal that he had received a phone call about 10 p.m. alerting him that the star had died of an overdose of pills.

Adding fuel to the fire, Eunice Murray’s son-in-law, Norman Jefferies, would later say that at about 10 p.m. on the night before her death was reported to the police, Robert Kennedy and two men arrived at the star’s home and demanded that the housekeeper and Jefferies leave. Following orders, the two left the house and when they returned about an hour later, they found Monroe lying unresponsive on her bed. Backing Jefferies’ statement up, was testimony from a neighbor, Elizabeth Pollard, who said that she’d seen Robert Kennedy and two men, one of which resembled Peter Lawford, at the door of Monroe’s house.

Who are the probable suspects in the suspicious death of Marilyn Monroe?

Did the Kennedy’s silence the star to prevent her from taking down the Camelot presidency of JFK? Did Sam Giancana use his knowledge of Marilyn to try to sabotage RFK who was an arch enemy of the mob? Had Marilyn’s physician and psychiatrist simply bungle her prescription meds and inadvertently create a fatal overdose? Did the CIA, which had been keeping the star under surveillance and were worried about the star blackmailing the President take action? Could J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI have arranged for the murder of Marilyn? Or, did Marilyn Monroe simply take a self-induced overdose of barbiturates that ended her life?

Marilyn Monroe’s funeral, arranged by Joe DiMaggio, was held in Hollywood and a mere 30 people were invited to attend. Lee Strasberg, Marilyn’s acting coach and the main beneficiary of her estate, gave the eulogy and heartstrings were pulled as ‘Over the Rainbow’ was played at the close of the service.

Marilyn Monroe was laid to rest (something she never found in life) at the Westwood Village Park Cemetery. Her remains were placed in a pink marble crypt and continue to attract fans to her grave-site.

This is the stuff that Hollywood is made of. The tragedy is that in the case of Marilyn Monroe, her death was all too soon and all too real.