by David Wayne
There were many small bruises on Marilyn’s arms and on the backs of both legs. That was noted when the body was first viewed, and it was even filled out on an initial intake form at the Coroner’s Office; however, those bruises were not part of the official report of Coroner Curphey ... but one of her bruises was too big not to note: a large, deep bruise on her left hip that ran all the way from her lower left back, down her left buttock, and which Dr. Noguchi later termed a “sign of violence.” Noguchi eventually questioned the official findings of that autopsy, noting “That bruise has never been fully explained”; that it was a “sign of violence” and it clearly should have been investigated as such.
While Marilyn drank no alcohol on her final day, as none was found in her system, they found enough drugs in her bloodstream to kill an elephant, literally. Over fifteen times a fatal dose. Yet, the internal examination of Marilyn’s body revealed an amazing discovery: her stomach was almost completely empty and there was absolutely no trace of the drugs in her stomach. Nembutal is coated with a thick yellow die, therefore, the doctors immediately knew that if he she had actually swallowed a large number of the Nembutal tablets (and a large number of Chloral Hydrate capsules), as her personal physicians reported that she had, some of the yellow dye should have been present in her stomach, especially in an almost empty stomach, but it wasn’t yellow because there were no drugs in her stomach.
Dr. Noguchi stated that they “found absolutely no visual evidence of pills in the stomach or the small intestine.”51 Yet, the toxicology examination that was conducted by Dr. R.J. Abernathy proved conclusively that Marilyn died from a massive overdose of the drugs pentobarbital (the active ingredient in Nembutal) and Chloral Hydrate, both of which were found in huge amounts in her bloodstream.
Chloral Hydrate has the street-names “Mickey Finn” or simply “Mickeys” or “knockout drops,” because it’s a powerful drug that quickly renders a victim unconscious. It’s also known as the “date-rape drug.” Its use is often implied in TV shows and motion pictures when we witness someone slipping something into a drink and then see the person passed out a short time later. Its use was apparently common by the Mafia, especially circa early 1960s:
“ ... the hypnotic drug had been used the previous year in a num ber of brutal underworld killings and was the mafia’s pharmaceu tical murder weapon of choice.”52
The forensic contradictions led Noguchi back to the toxicology report, which was limited in nature and did not contain results of testing of the kidney, stomach, urine, and intestines, for which Noguchi had sent specific samples, because they would reveal how the barbiturates had entered Marilyn’s body.
Noguchi’s request for the test results of these samples was met with a response that was hard for even a Medical Examiner to digest: There were no results and, furthermore, the samples had all “disappeared.”
Deputy District Attorney John Miner was as shocked at the disappearance as Noguchi was:
“In the entire history of the L.A. County Coroner’s office there had never been a previous instance of organ samples vanishing.”53
At that point, it was apparently too late to obtain further samples.
But the forensics clearly establish that if she had swallowed the pills, then the autopsy findings would have been, by necessity, much different than they actually were.
“The forensic medicine establishes that there is no case on record of a fatal dose by oral ingestion involving such HIGH concentra tion in the blood of both “Pentobarbital” and “Chloral Hydrate”; the victim inevitably dies before the fatal concentration can ap proach such a high blood level. Monroe would have been dead before even reaching 35% of the total barbiturates had been absorbed from the digestive track into her bloodstream. It is not possible that the remaining 65% to be absorbed by the digestive track, vanished without a trace, because when the heart stops beating, the blood stops circulating, and the bodily functions shut down.”54
Deputy D.A. Miner confirmed that if she had taken the pills orally, there necessarily would have been undissolved capsules in her system:
“With that massive amount of intake, there would have been un dissolved capsules. She would have died before all of those cap sules had been absorbed.”55
That rules out oral ingestion. Miner confirmed that:
“So the notion of oral intake of the barbiturates simply does not scientifically stand up. It just didn’t happen that way.”56
Also note that it takes less Nembutal to kill a person when others drugs are taken with it — and Chloral Hydrate was present in high quantity (a minimum of 17 tablets).
It’s also not very feasible that such a lethal dosage could have been taken accidentally by the victim or “over-administered” accidentally by her physicians. It’s just too much dope to be accidental.
•It should be noted that “in the thousands of fatal cases involving acute barbiturate poisoning due to the ingestion of an overdose, not one case involves the ingestion of over twelve capsules in which no residue has been found in the digestive tract”;57
•As high as the percentile of drugs was in her blood, her liver was even more lethal, containing a level of concentration 2.88 times higher than the level in her bloodstream;
•“No case has ever been reported in which the victim has as high as 4.5 mg. percent pentobarbital and eight percent chloral hydrate in the blood and no refractile crystals or concentrations found in the stomach or intestinal tract”;58
•There is no case on record in the entire history of forensic medicine of the oral ingestion of a fatal dose with such extremely high concentrations of pentobarbital and Chloral Hydrate in the bloodstream. The reason is simple: The patient inevitably dies before the concentrations can get that high;
•If the drugs had been orally ingested, Marilyn would have been dead before the absorption into her blood of even a third of the total amount of barbiturates;
•Digestion stops at death. Therefore, the remaining two thirds of the drugs should have been present in her stomach and digestive tract, but none of the drugs were, which is impossible;
•Pentobarbital actually slows the digestive process. Therefore, the more Nembutal in her system, the slower her stomach would have digested it, further increasing the amount of undigested drug that should have been present;
•Therefore, as biographer Donald Wolfe correctly concluded from the analytical evidence:
“Technology of the modern world of forensic medicine gives the final verdict — Case #81128 was a homicide victim.”59
One extensive investigation concluded that:
“When Dr. Noguchi mentioned in his Omni magazine interview that the drug levels in Marilyn’s liver were three to four times that which was found in her blood, alarm bells should have gone off. If the levels in the liver were that outrageously high then the case could not possibly have been suicide, probable or otherwise.”60
Medical research, however, suggests that we can’t just add the liver content to the equation to reach a higher total, as some researchers have done. The reason is because her liver was in the process of breaking down the same Nembutal that had been in her bloodstream. Tony Plant, a superb medical researcher who has spent many years researching the case of Marilyn’s death, cautions us concerning the liver content:
“The liver concentration is important but not anything we can use to determine how much Nembutal was in her system. It just means that the Nembutal was not injected or administered in travenously or she would have died long before the liver started removing the Nembutal from her blood. And the liver does store Nembutal until it breaks it down into waste and with Nembutal being a drug that clings to fat tissues well, the liver would take awhile to break it down to where it would not test as Nembutal. So we can’t use the liver concentration to figure any Nembutal in her system. What is important is that she had a high tolerance to Nembutal so her body learned how to get rid of the Nembutal faster. It’s her body weight and blood concentration of Nembutal t
hat matters.”61
The above statement is demonstrative of the fact that Mr. Plant conducts medical research in a manner that is quite precise, conscientious and cautious—bear that in mind when we view his conclusions very shortly.
Lividity
As earlier established, lividity doesn’t lie and in this case it clearly reveals that Marilyn’s body was moved twice before the telephone call was made to the police.
Abnormal Colon—Signs of Violence
As noted, the autopsy revealed an abnormally discolored colon and a large fresh bruise on Marilyn’s left hip that the Deputy Medical Examiner classified as a “sign of violence.”62
investigative context
Unlike the literary landscape of most celebrities, the literature on Marilyn’s death is incredibly diverse. At one extreme, biographer Donald Wolfe concludes that her death was basically a national security assassination by the Kennedy Administration; while at the other, respected biographer Donald Spoto paints a pristine picture in which neither Robert nor President Kennedy had anything to do with the woman. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in between.
There is also an unfortunate tendency among researchers to divide into pro- Kennedy and anti-Kennedy “camps,” and to separate the literature on Marilyn’s death accordingly. That may be a good practice for conducting a debate, but it’s a very poor method for discerning the truth.
The DD Group: An Online Investigation Into the Death of Marilyn Monroe is an excellent examination of the major works regarding Marilyn and the circumstances of her death. Its author, David Marshall, makes a good point: It is worth reading everything about Marilyn because, even those works which one disagrees with, may contain very important information. In the same vein, we cannot completely discount specific information just because it is contained in a book in which the conclusions appear to be incorrect. And sometimes, the best information even tends to be obscure.
We’ve read most of the literature, and the best evidence we’ve found is some of the least publicized. For the most comprehensive scientific analysis of the chemistry of Marilyn’s death, we strongly recommend How Did Marilyn Monroe Die? by Tony Plant. It’s the definitive document available. Plant conducted a multi-year medical research study involving long days and weeks spent with pharmacologists, doctors, medical examiners, charts, and medical details and history. He immersed himself in the medical evidence, and his findings were not at all general, they were highly specific.
Key findings of the drug study conducted by Tony Plant were the following:
•Computer chemical analysis determined that to reach the drug levels present, she must have ingested the contents of not less than seventy- seven and not more than eighty-eight pills: sixty to seventy Nembutal and seventeen to eighteen Chloral Hydrate;
•Pharmacy record research determined that Marilyn did not have access to more than twenty-five Nembutal capsules;
•She did not swallow the pills because it is impossible that she would not have any refractive crystals present, since her stomach contained only twenty cc’s of fluid. The Chloral Hydrate would have even slowed down the passing of the Nembutal out of her stomach—it slows down the absorption rate and also the rate at which the liver removes the Nembutal. So that would have actually made it an even better probability of finding Nembutal in her stomach, had she actually swallowed it;
•The high level of drugs in her body could not have been the result of previous drug use that her body had “stored”;
•She could not have “accidentally” swallowed too many pills because to get the amount of drugs found in her system, she would have had to swallow twice as many capsules as a person who was non-tolerant to the drug (Marilyn had a high tolerance);
•If she had swallowed that many capsules, she would have died long before the entire amount had been digested. Therefore, there would have been drug crystals undigested. No crystals mean that she did not swallow the drugs that killed her.
The pills could not have been swallowed because (aside from the fact that there was nothing nearby to swallow them with!) the victim dies before they can digest that many pills. When the victim dies, the heart stops and so does the digestive system, inevitably leaving un digested traces of the drugs in the stomach and intestines- which she didn’t have!
Therefore, “with this amount she would have died long before the entire amount had completely digested past her stomach and completely past her small intestine. So in simple terms it would have taken so many capsules to kill Marilyn that there should have been undissolved capsules and been a lot of drug crystals found in her digestive system. No crystals mean that she did not swallow the drugs that killed her.”63
If she had swallowed the pills, then:
•The fact that there was no yellow die in her stomach from the pills may be explainable, but is certainly not likely;
•The fact that there was no capsule residue at all found in her stomach or intestines is almost impossible to explain;
•The fact that there were no refractive crystals found anywhere in her stomach or intestines is literally impossible to explain (if the drugs were ingested orally);
•Proving to a scientific certainty that she did not swallow the pills. The drugs—by scientific necessity—were ingested by a means other than oral, i.e., either anal or injection.
Marilyn had far in excess of a fatal dose. And when her established high tolerance for the drug is factored into the equation, it was a massive overdose— one of 77-to-88 pills, and one that could not have been ingested orally (impossible), or via injection or IV (both would have bruised her substantially making the marks easily identifiable at autopsy). Therefore the vehicle of ingestion was anal:
“Marilyn did not swallow the drugs that killed her. She didn’t have any oral Nembutal in her possession. Still it was a very large amount of Nembutal that killed her and since it wasn’t swallowed or injected that only leaves enema bulb or IV (which would have taken a long time and left a mark).”64
Nor could it have been the result of some horrible medical miscalculation. That possibility has been suggested, because liquid Nembutal can also be administered via enema. The largest bags it was medically distributed in, circa 1962, were fifty cc bags of the drug. So, it has been posited that possibly someone meant to give her five cc’s but accidentally gave her all fifty cc’s instead.
However, that would not account for the huge amount of drugs that were found in Marilyn’s body. A full bag was 50cc’s of liquid Nembutal, equal to 37.5 grains, the equivalent of 25 1.5-grain tablets of Nembutal. Marilyn had over double that much Nembutal in her bloodstream (leaving liver content totally out of the equation), almost triple that much (the most accurate medical method comes out to the equivalent of between sixty to seventy Nembutal capsules). And she had no access to Nembutal. Even if we pushed it and factored in the missing twenty-five capsules prescribed to her, it’s still not nearly enough Nembutal (and since there were no refractive crystals in her digestive tract, they could not have been swallowed anyway). Now note the very clear conclusion of medical researcher Tony Plant:
“My calculations actually come up with more than fifty cc’s in her blood and if so then she was murdered on purpose.”65
Non-Suicidal Frame of Mind
An examination of Marilyn’s actions on the last day of her life provides a profile of a person who is clearly not contemplating suicide. The Timeline which follows tells us a great deal about Marilyn’s frame of mind.
When reconstructing a crime scene, it’s often helpful to “work-the -evidence backwards”; to start at the end and come forward. Doing so in the case of Marilyn’s death, we can begin with the fact that there was an obvious cover-up. There is substantial evidence that—for whatever reason—facts were covered up, stories were changed, and evidence linking Marilyn to an affair with President Kennedy and/or Attorney General Robert Kennedy was “taken care of” to protect the White House. That fact is indisputable.
COMPREHENSIVE TIMELINE
Reconstruction of Last Day
of Marilyn Monroe’s Life
Saturday, August 4, 1962
Shortly after FBI Director Hoover warned President Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy about the Administration’s vulnerability to blackmail from the President’s “liaisons” (February, 1962), JFK broke off his relationship with Marilyn. It has been established that, somehow, during that process, Marilyn became romantically involved with Robert Kennedy, and then that relationship got “cut off” at some point (quite possibly on August 4).66
It is also well-established that Marilyn’s home was “wired;” her phones were tapped, and there were also covert listening devices in it. The Justice Department had her phones tapped and the mob, via Jimmy Hoffa (arch-enemy of Robert Kennedy), had her under electronic surveillance. The mob also had Peter Lawford’s Santa Monica beach home wired, the presumed purpose being to “get dirt” on the Kennedys (who often visited there), just as Hoover had warned. Lawford (who is the brother-in-law of the Kennedy brothers and their protector in Hollywood) actually knew that his phones were bugged and went to pay phones when he needed to talk to the President (and was patched right through by standing orders to the White House operator). FBI surveillance of Marilyn on her vacation to Mexico City revealed that a friend of hers was also a high-ranking Communist, which also worried the FBI.67
